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When Words Come To Life: Some Beautiful Examples Of Kinetic Typography

The best opening titles and other screen titles are beautiful works of art — but sometimes, text can be more than just an ornament. Sometimes, text can spring into action, conveying concepts and delighting the eye with its brilliant action. Welcome to the universe of kinetic typography. Opening titles from North by Northwest (1959) Psycho’s…

3D-Printed Flutes Can Produce Notes that Regular Flutes Can’t

3D Printing has been around long enough for playable 3D-printed instruments to exist, but most musicians will still opt for one made using traditional methods. That could soon change, however, as researchers have found a way to design and 3D print musical instruments capable of producing unique notes that traditional instruments can’t. Researchers from the…

A Surprising Scientific Use For Powdered Milk

Hey, friends, what do you recommend I do with this pile of powdered milk here? Stir it up with some water and drink it for the calcium? Use it to make some candy? OR MAYBE I SHOULD SCIENCE WITH IT? io9’s comment of the day today comes from commenter and biological researcher DarkPrince010 who explains…

The FCC Continues Kicking Ass By Subsidizing Broadband Internet

A little over a year ago, the Federal Communications Commission seemed like an evil cabal of cronies, threatening to ruin the US as we know it. Today, the agency is making decisions to help securing the future of the internet, giving broadband to poor people, and banning robocalls. Isn’t this a pleasant surprise. Net Neutrality…

This Exoskeleton Rig Makes Factory Workers 10 Times Stronger

Folks in manufacturing jobs are subject to labor that can literally be back-breaking. But this exoskeleton prototype—one of the first designed specifically for industrial work—could make objects with exhausting heaviness feel up to 10 times lighter. Engineering and research institute Fraunhofer IAO held the first live demo of its Robo-Mate exoskeleton prototype last week. The…

This Hologram Darth Vader Toy Is Actually To Scale With The Movies

Star Wars fans: Did you know that the hologram of Darth Vader that appears in General Veer’s AT-AT in The Empire Strikes Back was 20 inches tall? If you did, then wow, that is some spectacularly detailed trivia you have in your noggin. Your reward? This accurately scaled, bright blue Darth Vader figure. The latest…

So It Turns Out That Sparrows Are Evil

Remember in the Bible, where it says, “not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it”? If I’d known what God knows about sparrows, I’d have been keeping an eye on them, too. Passer domesticus, the common house sparrow, is a tiny little bird. The fact that it’s tiny is…

A Grim Discovery Inside This Suitcase Uncovered More Than One Murder

June 18, 1934 was a typical day at Brighton Railway Station — except for a fetid odor emanating from an unclaimed trunk in the cloakroom. An attendant alerted the police; when they broke it open, they found a woman’s torso, wrapped like a macabre parcel. She was five months pregnant. Her legs were found days…

The Next Apple Watch May Be Way Less Reliant On An iPhone

Rumors are an endless ouroboros of speculation. As soon as one device is announced/launched/shipped fresh gadget hearsay about The Next Generation begins. With some Apple Watch buyers still awaiting their precious wrist-strapped cargo, we’re already hearing more and more about the next one, and to be honest, it sounds way better. The famous purveyor of…

Apollo Mission Footprints Are Disappearing Faster Than We Thought

Meteor showers and cometary debris are kicking up lunar dust at rates much higher than initially assumed, producing towering clouds above the Moon’s surface. But what goes up must come down — meaning it’ll only be a matter of time before those iconic astronaut footprints will be gone forever. Though we can’t see it from…

The Original Star Wars Is Finally Getting Shown In A Chinese Theater

When Star Wars came out in 1977, China was still in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, and foreign films were not screened in Chinese theaters. And even in recent years, China has maintained strict quotas for overseas movies. So it’s taken 40 years for Star Wars to reach Chinese movie theaters. According to…

The Internets Just Exploded with Pope Francis’ Climate Change Encyclical

Today Pope Francis unleashed a mighty call-to-action over climate change and other catastrophes caused by humans. This coalescence of faith and science is rare enough, but judging by the excited buzzing of social media, the Dope Pope has struck a major nerve. In the encyclical, or “teaching letter,” Francis single-handedly bitch-slapped the politicians and corporations…

What’s The Greatest Work Of Fan Fiction Ever Created?

One of the glorious things about the Internet is how easy it is for fans of certain stories to share the fiction, comics, illustrations, and movies that they’ve created themselves. And sometimes, that fiction is as great as (or brilliantly skewers) the official works that inspired it. What are your favorite fan works? One of…

Stunning full color HD video from the ISS shows life on Earth in motion

This video is taken from space. And yet we can see so much detail on Earth that it’s almost unbelievable. Cars are driving on roads and buildings are moving throughout the day and boats are crawling through rivers, remember this isn’t your run of the mill drone footage, this is all taken from an ultra-HD…

This 1990s Guide to Using the Web Is Delightful

Once upon a time you didn’t just use the internet, you were a “nethead” who “surfed the web” and “sailed data streams.” This is how we talked about the internet. I took a trip down memory lane recently when I stumbled on You Can Surf The Net!, an internet how-to guide from 1995, on the…

Samsung’s nasty keyboard vulnerability, potentially leaving millions of Samsung devices vulnerable to attack, will be getting an OTA update that will resolve the issue. Be sure that you have Automatic Updates activated in your security settings, and you’ll be all patched in a few days. It’s better late than never, I guess.

Hilarious 1996 News Clip Warns About the Dangers of Virtual Reality

Are you excited for our virtual reality future? Well, don’t get too excited just yet. Because there are hidden dangers! Or at least that was the message from this hilariously alarmist NBC News segment from 1996. Brian Williams (look at that baby face!) introduces the report: In focus this evening, those so-called virtual reality games.…

“Virgin Births” Won’t Save The Smalltooth Sawfish From Extinction

The critically endangered smalltooth sawfish was recently found to be capable of asexual reproduction. It’s an exciting discovery for many reasons, but breathless claims by the media that sawfish could save their species from extinction by resorting to virgin births are wrong, wrong, wrong. Let’s explore why. For those who missed the news: A couple…

Can We Ensure That Our First Encounter With Alien Life Is Ethical?

In April, NASA Chief scientist Ellen Stofan predicted we would “have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade,” and “definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.” Assuming this timeline is correct, how do we ensure the life we encounter—which astrobiologists predict will be non-sentient—will be respected? “With every passing day, it grows more…

These futuristic Nike shoes are inspired by the Back To The Future shoes

Because 2015 in real life hasn’t caught up to 2015 in Back to the Future, we don’t quite have dreamy auto-lacing Nike shoes. But! What we do have are these slick new Nike Hyperdunk 2015 that totally look ripped from the future and were actually inspired by the Nike MAG from BTTF 2. The silhouette…