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Bacon, Selfie, and 36 Other Brand-New Emoji Are On the Way

It has already been a great year for emoji. Apple recently began supporting a refresh of certain characters, including more racially and gender-diverse people as well as a few new emoji like an Apple Watch. Now a 💣🐚: 38 brand-new emoji are coming! Unicode, the consortium of designers and developers who decide which elements of…

Tech News Alissa Walker May 21 '15

How To Get Into The Witcher Novels

If you play video games, you might be familiar with The Witcher. But before Geralt of Rivia dazzled gamers in CD Projekt Red’s series, he was the star of Polish writer Andrzej Sapowski’s hit fantasy novels. Want to know more about the literary origins of the Witcher? Here’s everything you need to get started. Origins…

io9 James Whitbrook May 21 '15

Margaret Atwood Will Periscope Her Secret Time Capsule Book

Margaret Atwood’s new book is going in a time capsule. And you won’t be able to read it for nearly 100 years. But wait! There’s a consolation prize for us mere mortals who won’t be around in 2114! Atwood will be livestreaming the encapsuling ceremony on Periscope next week! Atwood’s new work is part of…

Tech News Matt Novak May 21 '15

The Pentagon Wants Special Ops To Carry DNA Scanners

The United States’ most elite soldiers have been collecting DNA samples from suspected terrorists for years. But because analysis normally takes three weeks, it’s been a pretty useless chore. Now, however, U.S. Special Operations Command is testing a machine that can do it in 90 minutes. Get ready for advanced biometric warfare. The basic idea…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes May 21 '15

The making of Star Wars at Madame Tussauds is beyond impressive

When Madame Tussauds nails a wax sculpture, they really nail it. And for Star Wars at Madame Tussauds in London, they perfectly recreated pretty much every character in the saga in such lifelike detail that it looks like the sculptors and artists are just applying makeup to the real actors in this behind the scenes…

Sploid Casey Chan May 21 '15

Islamic State Forces Have Seized The World Heritage Site Of Palmyra

Five days after capturing the Iraqi city of Ramadi, ISIS forces have now taken the historic desert city of Palmyra in central Syria. Given Islamic State’s penchant for destroying historical artifacts and ancient monuments, there’s now concern that these ruins, a UN World Heritage site, could be destroyed. Top image: Zeledi/CC. Credit: Aotearoa/CC. Here’s what…

io9 George Dvorsky May 21 '15

Video: This machine robot peels an orange so fast

Of course by letting a machine do your fruit peeling for you, you lose a good amount of the orange and don’t get that fresh citrus scent on your hands but you do get an orange that’s ready to eat in seconds! I have to say though, I’d love to see this machine tackle more…

Sploid Casey Chan May 21 '15

At Last, We Understand What Turns Fruit Flies On

We’ve been breeding the fly Drosophila melanogaster in the lab for decades. We’ve tinkered with their genes — giving them extra legs, curly wings, or odd colored eyes – in pursuit of understanding genetic inheritance and how tissues develop. But until now we didn’t know which chemical made them start to mate. Image: Anna Schroll…

Tech News Diane Kelly May 21 '15

9 Great Science Fiction Books For People Who Don’t Like Science Fiction

So there’s someone in your life who doesn’t like science fiction. Nobody’s perfect. But the good news is, genre is expansive, and there’s almost always a little corner of it where even the most science fiction-averse person can curl up and enjoy themselves. Here are 10 science fiction books for people who don’t like science…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell May 21 '15

How Verizon Buying AOL Subverts an Open Internet

Telecommunication companies were up in arms in February after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) made net neutrality the law of the land by classifying broadband internet as a utility, seeming to ensure there would be no pay-to-play fast lanes. Not so fast. As Verizon’s planned acquisition of AOL reminds us, there’s another way to cash…

Tech News Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay and Hong Guo - The Conversation May 21 '15

Our Favorite Android, iOS, and Windows Phone Apps of the Week

This Thursday we’ve got apps you’re going to want to download on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Microsoft ups its Android app game even further by pushing out Office for Android phones (finally). One of the best and exclusive readers out there gets a snazzy new iOS app. And if you’re a Windows Phone acolyte,…

Tech News Darren Orf May 21 '15

NSA Planned to Sneak-Attack App Stores to Put Spyware on Smartphones

Another day, another cynicism-inducing reminder that the NSA hasn’t just been unlawfully dragnet spying on our digital lives—it has also rigged up new and complicated techniques to do so, like hijacking app stores to put spyware on smartphones. The NSA and its “Five Eyes” intelligence allies planned to put custom spyware on smartphones by tapping…

Privacy & Security Kate Knibbs May 21 '15

Silly video explains exactly why Daredevil should be called Batman

Batman is a billionaire playboy who really shouldn’t be a superhero and definitely doesn’t have any legitimate claim to the name ‘Batman’. Because the Batman name is so much more fitting for Daredevil, a superhero who is blind and uses sonar to see and prefers the night. Plus, the Daredevil name fits another comic book…

Sploid Casey Chan May 21 '15

Sweden’s Most Bizarre Unsolved Murder Was (Maybe) Committed By A Vampire

Precious little information exists about what’s known as the Atlas Vampire Murder, so named for the neighborhood in Stockholm where it took place in 1932 … and for the gruesome crime-scene details left behind by an unknown assailant. Quite obviously, the latter is why this long-cold case is still so tantalizing. The victim was Lilly…

Tech News Cheryl Eddy May 21 '15

This 200-Trillion Watt Laser Produces Plasma Hotter Than The Sun

It’s amazing that scientists can recreate natural phenomena in labs experiments, including plasma many times hotter than the center of our own sun. In the middle of the photo above you can see a little star, white hot plasma produced by a 200-trillion watt laser. The photo shows the Trident Laser at the Los Alamos…

Tech News Attila Nagy May 21 '15

First Trailer For Maze Runner Sequel The Scorch Trials Is Crazy As Hell

Hey, so I don’t know if you read James Dashner’s dystopian scifi YA novel The Maze Runner. Hit book, hit movie, big-ass maze involved. Well, the first trailer for the movie sequel, subtitled The Scorch Trials, is here, and I don’t know what the hell is going on. Also, I’m pretty sure there’s no more…

io9 Rob Bricken May 21 '15

Lolz, Thanx, and Bezzy: Welcome to the Sad, Sad Future of Scrabble

We have no one to blame but ourselves. The publishers of the official Scrabble wordlist have announced the addition of words like “blech,” “lolz,” and “thanx” to the list. To borrow a word from their new list, YEESH. Image: Mega Pixel Collins is the British maker of the widely-used Official Scrabble Wordlist, but according to…

Tech News Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan May 21 '15

“Ya Ever Feel Like Galileo?” Highlights from a U.S. Climate Hearing

This is one of the greatest/saddest highlight reels I’ve ever seen from a U.S. government hearing on climate change. Last week, the Committee on National Resources got experts and politicians together to explore whether climate change and carbon emissions should be considered “environmental impacts” in federal projects. Captured here are about 10 minutes of meandering…

Climate Change Annalee Newitz May 21 '15

We’ll Need Science Fiction To Imagine The Mind-Boggling Future Of War

A Greek writer taps away on his typewriter by candlelight,trying to make sense of the cyber war that started with a hacked pacemaker. AnAmerican major awaits trial for treason as the Pacificdescends into war. Russian forces attack adarkened Estonia. These aren’t science fiction stories — they’re entries in the Art of Future Warfare contest. All…

io9 Steve Weintz May 21 '15

“I Can’t Afford Not to Have That Money”: The Worst PayPal Horror Stories

Yesterday, PayPal agreed to pay customers $15 million for ripping them off over the past few years. After I wrote about it, reader horror stories started flooding my inbox and comments. Here are some of the worst cases of frozen funds, scams, and skeevy collection agencies: Secret credit lines I made a five dollar purchase…

Tech News Kate Knibbs May 21 '15

Bacon, Selfie, and 36 Other Brand-New Emoji Are On the Way

How To Get Into The Witcher Novels

Margaret Atwood Will Periscope Her Secret Time Capsule Book

The Pentagon Wants Special Ops To Carry DNA Scanners

The making of Star Wars at Madame Tussauds is beyond impressive

Islamic State Forces Have Seized The World Heritage Site Of Palmyra

Video: This machine robot peels an orange so fast

At Last, We Understand What Turns Fruit Flies On

9 Great Science Fiction Books For People Who Don’t Like Science Fiction

How Verizon Buying AOL Subverts an Open Internet

Our Favorite Android, iOS, and Windows Phone Apps of the Week

NSA Planned to Sneak-Attack App Stores to Put Spyware on Smartphones

Silly video explains exactly why Daredevil should be called Batman

Sweden’s Most Bizarre Unsolved Murder Was (Maybe) Committed By A Vampire

This 200-Trillion Watt Laser Produces Plasma Hotter Than The Sun

First Trailer For Maze Runner Sequel The Scorch Trials Is Crazy As Hell

Lolz, Thanx, and Bezzy: Welcome to the Sad, Sad Future of Scrabble

“Ya Ever Feel Like Galileo?” Highlights from a U.S. Climate Hearing

We’ll Need Science Fiction To Imagine The Mind-Boggling Future Of War

“I Can’t Afford Not to Have That Money”: The Worst PayPal Horror Stories

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