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Drive Director Nicolas Winding Refn Explains How The Best Movie Posters Tell a Story All on Their Own

Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t collect movie posters. And yet, he’s about to release a book of movie posters. It’s a typical curiosity from the director of Drive and Bronson, who was at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas to talk about the book, which is called The Act of Seeing. Before we got to that though,…

io9 Germain Lussier

Shooting Challenge: Vanishing Point

Two parallel lines slowly intersect, then seem to vanish into the distance. No wonder it’s called a vanishing point. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge, we want you to photograph it. The Challenge Take a photograph that features a vanishing point. The Method We take it for granted now, but the vanishing point was a…

Tech News Mark Wilson

How A Pharmacist Named F. C. Achard Doomed Us All

One present to the King of Prussia launched an industry that, if current experts are to be believed, will kill us all. Learn how a pharmacist started a factory that has caused the destruction of many, and the enrichment of a few. In 1798, a humble Prussian pharmacist known as F. C. Achard was hard…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Hitting Jell-O with a tennis racket gloriously slices it all up

Tennis racquets are excellent at turning objects—namely, tennis balls—into blobs because the strings have just the right amount of give to absorb a bit of punishment. What’s even cooler though, is when something—like Jell-O—goes straight through the webbing and gets cut and sliced and chopped into jiggly flying snake-like objects. You can’t actually see that…

Sploid Casey Chan

Why The Nazis Believed They Could Win the Battle of Britain

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that one nation tried to defeat another using airstrikes. Here’s how the Nazis thought they could do it—and how agonizingly close they actually came to achieving victory. The Fall of France The future looked exceptionally bleak for Britain in…

io9 George Dvorsky

OS X El Capitan Is Here, Go Download Right Now

As promised, the lastest version of OS X is available for download now. You should probably update as soon as you can! El Cap is full of bunches of new features mostly aimed at refining the OS X experience. You can read our guide to the latest and greatest here.

Tech News Mario Aguilar

Here’s the Camera Compared In Every Single iPhone

Everyone knows the 12-megapixel iPhone 6s camera is better not really that much better than the 8-megapixel iPhone 6. But think about this: The first iPhone camera was only two megapixels. How much of a better photo does that equate to? The makers of the Camera+ app have a comparison. Over at their blog SnapSnapSnap,…

Tech News Alissa Walker

US Cybersecurity Policy in One Sad Cliche: “People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Rocks”

The US doesn’t have a problem punishing foreign hackers. The government killed an ISIS hacker with a drone in August. It quickly sanctioned North Korea following the Sony hack. So why hasn’t the United States retaliated against the OPM hackers? Watching the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on US cybersecurity policy on Tuesday, it seems…

Privacy & Security Kate Knibbs

10 Ultra-Weird Science Fiction Novels that Became Required Reading

You want a really weird ride? A science fiction or fantasy epic that stretches your brain like taffy and ties it into strange irregular shapes? Forget television or movies: books are where the really off-kilter stories are told in speculative fiction. A while ago, we listed 10 ultra-weird science fiction books that you’ve never read.…

io9 MaryKate Jasper and Charlie Jane Anders

Vinyl Record Sales Generated More Money This Year Than Free Streaming Music

The vinyl resurgence is real, but artists are still getting screwed. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) reported that U.S. consumers bought $226 million worth of vinyl records in the first half of the year. Contrast this to $162.7 million in revenues from ad-supported streams from the likes of Pandora and Spotify, and it…

Tech News Kaila Hale-Stern

Limitless Is Turning Into a Light-Hearted Comedy and I’m Pretty OK With It

Limitless started out last week as a dark sci-fi drama filled with ailing fathers and a botched superdrug that ravages the human body. Last night, its second episode took a sharp turn into light-hearted territory, with comic book-style speech bubbles floating in the air and James Bond fantasy sequences. I’m all about it. In the…

io9 Bryan Lufkin

California’s Using Its Amber Alert System to Find Hit-and-Run Drivers

Since 1996 Amber Alerts have been used to tell drivers to watch for cars associated with child abductions. But Amber Alerts are relatively rare (thankfully), so in the best possible use of the system the rest of the time, California is using them to find cars involved in hit-and-run crashes. Enacted by a bill signed…

Tech News Alissa Walker

Nvidia’s Game Streaming Service Launches Tomorrow, and Will Cost You $8 a Month

The Shield is Nvidia’s Android TV gaming powerhouse, and Grid isi ts software soul—a streaming service that lets you play a selection of titles over the internet. Think like a Netflix for FPSes. But Grid is changing. Starting tomorrow it will launch out of beta under the new name GeForce Now, with an $8-per-month subscription…

Tech News Darren Orf

This Little Piggie Was Bred To Be A Symbol Of Danish Resistance

It was the early 1900s, and Danes in Schleswig, repressed under German rule, decided to use biology to fight back. No, they didn’t make a biological weapon. They made a pig. This is the Danish Protest Pig. The state of Schleswig-Holstein is, today, under German rule. It’s a peaceful place, full of picturesque wind farms,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Back to the Future Trilogy Will Stream Exclusively on Amazon Prime In October

Are you ready for October 21, 2015? That’s the date that Marty McFly arrives in the future — at least according to the second Back to the Future movie. But if you’re planning on watching the trilogy to celebrate, you’ll only have one streaming option: Amazon Prime. Starting October 1st, Amazon has the exclusive rights…

Tech News Matt Novak

Get To Know The Incredible Starships of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy

The third book in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, comes out next week. Need a refresher course in the ships and personnel of her thrilling space-opera universe? We’ve got an exclusive infographic from Orbit Books. Here’s the complete infographic, which explains the relative sizes and strengths of the three different classes of ships…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Video: Making a handmade glass bottle from sand is so hard

The concept is easy enough to follow: find sand, melt the crap out of it at over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then watch sand turn into glass. But when you want to do something with that molten glass like say, make a glass bottle, it gets so much harder. You have to juggle so many…

Sploid Casey Chan

A Chart Showing How the Way America Uses Its Land Changed Over the Last 60 Years

This chart from the USDA shows just what’s been going on in the American landscape over the last six decades. Part of the takeaway is what has changed—the rise of cities and we’ve stopped grazing so much of the forestlands—but it’s also just as notable for what hasn’t changed. Top image: 1932 photo of ranger…

io9 Ria Misra

A movie’s first and last scene, compared side-by-side (NSFW)

We’ve seen film editor Jacob T. Swinney juxtapose the first and last shot of a movie before. Now he’s back again, comparing how 70 more movies open and close. Obviously there may be some vague-ish spoilers in some of the closing shots and a few of the scenes in this cut are NSFW but it’s…

Sploid Casey Chan

Japan’s Ultra-Poisonous Pufferfish Holds the Key to the Pain Killers of the Future

Fugu, the Japanese pufferfish that’s a luxe delicacy but also courses with neurotoxins more poisonous than cyanide, might help scientists gin up pain-killing drugs in the future. For killer pain, a killer fish might be the solution. A dish that’s as risky as it is fancy, fugu must be specially prepared by a licensed chef…

Tech News Bryan Lufkin

Drive Director Nicolas Winding Refn Explains How The Best Movie Posters Tell a Story All on Their Own

Shooting Challenge: Vanishing Point

How A Pharmacist Named F. C. Achard Doomed Us All

Hitting Jell-O with a tennis racket gloriously slices it all up

Why The Nazis Believed They Could Win the Battle of Britain

OS X El Capitan Is Here, Go Download Right Now

Here’s the Camera Compared In Every Single iPhone

US Cybersecurity Policy in One Sad Cliche: “People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Rocks”

10 Ultra-Weird Science Fiction Novels that Became Required Reading

Vinyl Record Sales Generated More Money This Year Than Free Streaming Music

Limitless Is Turning Into a Light-Hearted Comedy and I’m Pretty OK With It

California’s Using Its Amber Alert System to Find Hit-and-Run Drivers

Nvidia’s Game Streaming Service Launches Tomorrow, and Will Cost You $8 a Month

This Little Piggie Was Bred To Be A Symbol Of Danish Resistance

Back to the Future Trilogy Will Stream Exclusively on Amazon Prime In October

Get To Know The Incredible Starships of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy

Video: Making a handmade glass bottle from sand is so hard

A Chart Showing How the Way America Uses Its Land Changed Over the Last 60 Years

A movie’s first and last scene, compared side-by-side (NSFW)

Japan’s Ultra-Poisonous Pufferfish Holds the Key to the Pain Killers of the Future

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