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Welcome To Throb, A Site All About The Science Of Sex

Welcome to Throb, a new site exploring the intersection of science and sex. Here you’ll find news and explainers on sex and romance, touching on neuroscience, chemistry, physiology, ecology, anthropology and culture, physics, and medicine. (You’ll also find gear and book reviews!) I’m Diane, and for a long time I’ve been living a double life…

Tech News Diane Kelly

On Person Of Interest, It’s Always A Trap

Last night’s episode of Person of Interest felt ridiculously rushed, with 100 important developments crammed into an hour and a lot of implausible twists. But it still had some really fascinating ideas — including the question of how quick you should be to deem other people expendable. Spoilers! Basically, “Asylum” was about people walking into…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Missouri Owes Its Odd State Shape To Just One Guy

The shape of Missouri mostly makes sense: It’s bounded by straight lines and river routes, except for one deviation, where suddenly the state’s shape juts out randomly. It’s called Missouri’s bootheel — and it owes its creation to just one guy. In response to our question about fascinating stories hidden in our maps, commenter jtwood…

io9 Ria Misra

Microsoft Just Nonchalantly Showed Us the Single-Device UI of the Future

Phones are getting bigger. Computers, smaller. And according to Microsoft, soon there won’t be any difference in their software at all. It’s a more radical vision than you’d think. On stage at Microsoft Build today, Joe Belfiore spent just a few minutes introducing a fairly big vision for the future of UI within the company.…

Tech News Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

The Trick to Cracking a Master Combo Lock in 8 Tries or Fewer

Look, we all know that Master combo locks, which go for $4 a pop, are not paragons of security. But damn, this looks easy. In a new video, hacker Samy Kamkar demonstrates a dead simple trick that he claims can break into most Master combo locks in just a few tries. It’s so easy because…

Privacy & Security Sarah Zhang

Nightmare Video Game Turns Your House Into A Horror Movie—NOPE NOPE NOPE

Behold a smart phone game so clever/horrifying we’ll probably never play it. Night Terrors is a game that puts ghosts into your home. Never use your phone again! Want to experience movie-level horrors right in the private hell of your own home? Then Night Terrors, the Indiegogo-funded game app is for you. Because who wouldn’t…

io9 Meredith Woerner

Is There A Right Reason To Put A Zoo Animal On Anti-Psychotics?

It’s tough to know what drugs zoos and parks use to keep their animals calm. The zoos themselves usually aren’t talking. Some trainers and researchers do reveal what animals are “on,” and the news, while troubling, isn’t all bad. Blackfish’s Legacy The documentary Blackfish drew attention to SeaWorld and the way animal abuses there were…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

15 Ridiculous Headlines From The Dr. Oz Show’s Website

Dr. Oz is in hot water over his promotion of garbage weight loss cures and anti-GMO fearmongering. His defense? The doctor claims his widely popular TV program “isn’t a medical show.” Which, if you ignore the fact that he often wears scrubs and has the word doctor right there in his show’s title, might have…

Tech News Matt Novak

Combat Tech Is Turning Baltimore Into a Paramilitary Zone

In response to rioting and violent protests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, the National Guard was deployed for riot control in Maryland for the first time since the 1968s race riots. Some 500 troops patrol the city, clad in body armor, with automatic rifles strapped across their chests. In 1968, mobilizing guardsmen…

Tech News Mario Aguilar

Watch A TED-Talk Audience Member Move Someone Else’s Arm With Her Mind

Neuroscientist Greg Gage created quite a stir during a recent TED-Talk when he used a simple, inexpensive DIY kit to enable an audience member to move the arm of another participant. [TED]

io9 George Dvorsky

Windows 10 with Holograms Looks Freaking Awesome

You’ve heard that Microsoft is trying to build the holodeck, yes? With a visor called Hololens that you wear on your head? It turns out Hololens is a full Windows 10 computer, and using it looks totally awesome. Sure, you can see crazy holographic objects that appear to exist in the real world, like I…

Tech News Sean Hollister

Watch this insanely fast drone fly at impossible speeds into the clouds

Holy crap. Once this drone decides to go, it just guns it like a warp speed rocket ship into the air. It’s so fast that I can’t believe it’s real. But Quadmovr has been showing iterations of its super fast drone for months now and everything else in the video seems to be moving at…

Sploid Casey Chan

10 Truly Bizarre Stories About Taxidermy

Taxidermy is a skill and art form that many think is plenty weird all on its own, even though it was practiced by luminaries like Charles Darwin and Theodore Roosevelt. It stretches from the lows of PT Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid to the highs of the myriad museums of natural history to the macabre artistry of…

io9 Lauren Davis

Even Hollywood Has Some Major Doubts About Warner Bros.’ DC Movie-verse

There have been plenty of fans who have complained about Warner Bros.’ attempts to replicate Marvel’s money-generating Cinematic Universe with DC. But they’re not the only ones — some Hollywood executives also doubt WB can pull it off, because the studio seems to be going about it in the worst way possible. All this comes…

Movies Rob Bricken

This Gigantic Godzilla Figure Is A Wonderfully Chunky King Of Kaiju

When Godzilla came out last year, there were a lot of jokes about how the premiere Kaiju of the movie world had, errr… a bit of a weight problem. I didn’t particularly notice it, until this ginormous (and amazing looking) figure reminded me just how meaty old ‘Zilla was. The figure, by X-Plus, is around…

Tech News James Whitbrook

Microsoft Edge Is the Official Name of the IE-Slaying Spartan Browser

One of the most exciting additions to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 10 operating system is the IE browser killer, Project Spartan. We’ve been excited for months and months, but Spartan was never even meant to be the new browser’s final name, but today Microsoft revealed the official moniker of its next-gen window to the internet—Microsoft Edge.…

Tech News Darren Orf

Ask Your Questions About Finding and Mapping Lost Urban History

Los Angeles is no stranger to failed infrastructural schemes and vanished landscapes. But did you know that a nine-mile bike highway once traveled part of the way from LA to the nearby city of Pasadena? It’s one of 19 map-annotated essays about the city featured in the new book LAtitudes: An Angeleno’s Atlas. On Monday…

Tech News Alissa Walker

A Surprisingly Dark Webcomic About A Girl Warrior Aiding An Ex-Unicorn

On its face, Natalie Riess’ webcomic Snarlbear sounds like a candy-coated fantasy: a young girl is transported to the Rainbow Dimension, where she ends up fighting monsters and trying to help a cursed unicorn prince reclaim his throne. But the world Riess creates is actually much more sinister. Snarlbear has a somewhat familiar opening: an…

Books & Comics Lauren Davis

This “Liver On A Chip” Lets Researchers Forgo Animal Testing

Testing new drugs on animals can be costly, cruel, and ineffective. In the quest to identify an alternative, a U.K. biopharmaceutical company has developed a “liver on a chip,” an important advance in the effort to minimize, and even put an end to, animal experimentation. Image credit: CN Bio Innovations via Bloomberg Testing experimental medicines…

io9 George Dvorsky

Hillary Clinton Says All Cops Should Wear Body Cameras

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for body cameras for all police in a speech about law enforcement reform at Columbia University earlier this morning. She cited the rash of police violence toward black men, including Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Eric Harris as an impetus for change. “We should…

Tech News Kate Knibbs

Welcome To Throb, A Site All About The Science Of Sex

On Person Of Interest, It’s Always A Trap

Missouri Owes Its Odd State Shape To Just One Guy

Microsoft Just Nonchalantly Showed Us the Single-Device UI of the Future

The Trick to Cracking a Master Combo Lock in 8 Tries or Fewer

Nightmare Video Game Turns Your House Into A Horror Movie—NOPE NOPE NOPE

Is There A Right Reason To Put A Zoo Animal On Anti-Psychotics?

15 Ridiculous Headlines From The Dr. Oz Show’s Website

Combat Tech Is Turning Baltimore Into a Paramilitary Zone

Watch A TED-Talk Audience Member Move Someone Else’s Arm With Her Mind

Windows 10 with Holograms Looks Freaking Awesome

Watch this insanely fast drone fly at impossible speeds into the clouds

10 Truly Bizarre Stories About Taxidermy

Even Hollywood Has Some Major Doubts About Warner Bros.’ DC Movie-verse

This Gigantic Godzilla Figure Is A Wonderfully Chunky King Of Kaiju

Microsoft Edge Is the Official Name of the IE-Slaying Spartan Browser

Ask Your Questions About Finding and Mapping Lost Urban History

A Surprisingly Dark Webcomic About A Girl Warrior Aiding An Ex-Unicorn

This “Liver On A Chip” Lets Researchers Forgo Animal Testing

Hillary Clinton Says All Cops Should Wear Body Cameras

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