Latest

Arrow‘s Starling City Is Getting A Comic Book Name Change

When Arrow first began, it was reticent to show off its comic past—Oliver Queen was a snarly Batman-type, the Green Arrow became “The Hood” and “The Vigilante”, and Star City became Starling. But as the show increasingly embraces its roots, those things have changed (okay, not Ollie)—and now the city has too. Yes, just as…

Watch Boston Dynamics’ Robot Run Outside Oh God They’re Coming For Us

Possible cause of the singularity Boston Dynamics is secretive about upcoming projects, but new footage shows their robots in action—and the results are highly unsettling. First you can see Spot, an agile autonomous quadruped ripped directly from Isaac Asimov’s nightmares, opening a door with the arm it sports instead of a face. Spot would almost…

Get a Load of This Goddamn Sneaky Octopus

Cephalopod experts at UC Berkeley have discovered that the larger Pacific striped octopus—seen here outstretched—employs a rare hunting strategy. Instead of pouncing on its prey with all eight arms (a common technique among octopuses), it extends a single limb, like a grabby toddler, and startles its prey into clutches. Below, you can watch the octopus…

Want to See More LGBT Superhero Comics by LGBT Creators? Support This Anthology

Oath is an upcoming collection of comics featuring original LGBT superheroes written and drawn entirely by LGBT creators. The black-and-white anthology sounds massive: over 240 pages long with work from over two dozen creators. Oath editor Audrey Redpath just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. The artists and writers announced so far run…

I Helped Catch Detroit’s Tiger With A Weed Whacker And A Tarp

So you’ve got a tiger loose in your local abandoned auto plant. Who you gonna call? Detroit area bus driver Andy Didorosi, obviously. He’s my buddy, I just called and had him walk me through what happened. “So it’s this British photographer David Yarrow doing a fashion shoot in the Packard Plant,” explains Andy. “This…

Google’s Awesome Project Ara Modular Smartphone Delayed Until 2016

As hinted in tweets last week, Google is officially delaying the launch of its Project Ara modular smartphone concept until next year. Back in January Google announced that it would be launching a test of the phone in Puerto Rico this December. Puerto Rico is having considerable economic and environmental problems at the moment, which…

Watch Two Sex Educators Show It’s Safe to Make a Dental Dam from Plastic Wrap

Sex educators Megara Bell and Brian Flaherty (both from the Boston group Partners in Sex Education) are a little stiff on camera, but the message of their delightful science demonstration (with controls!) is clear. If you’re in a pinch, microwavable plastic wrap is impermeable to viruses and you can use it to fashion a MacGyver-like…

A Glorious 3D Glimpse of a Massive Martian Canyon

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission has sent back a dramatic image of the Ophir Chasma terrain on Mars, giving us an unprecedented 3D look at one the Solar System’s largest canyons. The feature is part of the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars, a massive gash along the equator that’s nearly as long as the United…

The Saga of NASA’s Short-Lived “Lost” Logo

NASA’s current logo dates back to 1959. It’s sort of a mess—a wonderful, retro-nostalgic mess—that’s hard to reproduce and doesn’t scale well. In fact, NASA even changed to a different logo that lasted almost 20 years before switching back. What happened? The saga of the “lost” logo illustrates how humans naturally resist change—especially when it…

Scooby-Doo Will Return to the Big Screen the Way He Should: Animated

Over a decade has passed since everyone’s favorite, slobbery, mystery-solving dog was on the big screen—and even then Scooby-Doo was presented in an unfamiliar, live-action form. Warner Bros. has now announced he’s coming back to theaters in 2018 the way he should, in a feature-length animated film. Warner Bros. Pictures, under the Warner Animation Group,…

UK Doctors Actually Got Together and Studied How Much Ears Grow as We Age

A group of UK doctors got together and measured ear growth with age. Then they decided to teach us all the European terms for big ears. Because why not? We all know that ears and other body parts made of cartilaginous material grow as we age, but no one really knew how much it grew.…

That Massive IRS Hack Was Way More Massive Than We Thought

Remember that awful news of Russian hackers stealing the personal information of 100,000 taxpayers? Turns out the Internal Revenue Service lowballed the number. The agency now says that over 600,000 people were targeted with 300,000 unlucky persons losing their data privacy completely. This is disconcerting, but it’s not surprising. Months before the massive attack was…

Shake Shack’s newest burger is a surf and turf lobster and beef beauty

My, my, my. Shake Shack, unquestionably the best tasting burger chain on the face of planet Earth for people with discernible taste and half working tongues, is upping the decadence in its latest burger by going surf and turf. That is, they’re adding a beautifully buttery layer of lobster to their already perfect burger. I’m…

This Week’s TV:  Fear the Walking Dead Reveals How the Zombie Apocalypse Began!

Kim Dickens battles a zombie horde in LA the series premiere of the Walking Dead spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. Astronauts Wives Club and Killjoys end their first seasons, and an Autobot created by fan committee makes her animation debut! All on This Week’s TV. Tonight Wander Over Yonder (9PM, DISNEY XD) “Wander heroically faces…

Not to be outdone by June which just had its warmest temperatures ever recorded, July has now smashed all its own previous temperature records. NASA just confirmed that the 2015 Julywas the warmest one ever seen. It’s getting pretty warm up in here, folks.

Ultralight Knives, Convertible Tents And Working With Dogs: What’s New Outside

It’s the dog days of August, so you’ll want to read this ode to working dogs. And cool down by watching a couple of nut jobs climb an iceberg. And check out the innovations in this new line of ultralight climbing knives. Here’s what’s new outside. An Ode To The Working Dog: Our friend Will…

An Imaginary Friend Considers Retirement When His Creator Starts to Grow Up

In the short film So You’ve Grown Attached, Ex is the only person that moody kid Izzy likes, and he’s not really person—he’s her imaginary friend. But now that Izzy is getting older, Ex’s boss is encouraging him to retire. Ex is reluctant to leave Izzy’s side, but is he just holding her back? Kate…

Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover Explain How Bandette Can Be Bright and Fun and Scary All At Once

Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover are the writing and art team behind Bandette, named for the costumed teen thief who battles sinister master criminals and stays one step ahead of the law in its pages. We talked to Coover and Tobin about what it takes to make the relentlessly charming Bandette work. io9: Describe Bandette…

How DNA Could Replace Hard Drives

The capacity of our digital storage devices has skyrocketed in recent years. But there’s one storage medium that still kicks the crap out of our state-of-the-art solid state, and humans didn’t invent it. It’s called DNA. A team of scientists is trying to figure out whether the double-helix molecules that encode every plant, animal and…

Chastity Belts Were Definitely Not A Medieval Thing

It’s the stuff of legends: the knight riding to the Crusades with the key to his lady’s chastity belt tucked under his armor. But it’s about as real as stories of Prester John or the Holy Grail. As Sara Laskow writes for Atlas Obscura: References in European texts to chastity belts go back centuries, well…