Latest

Back Of The Box – 12/07/2014

The holiday season is upon us, and while we’re all busy hanging decorations and buying gifts, Toybox is miraculously still here, somehow. Let’s take a look back at the first week of December, and the start of Toybox’s fourth month of operation (four months! What the hell!). All in all, December’s started on an above…

The Day Computer Games Got Sexy

Welcome to Reading List, a short round up of great science and technology reads from around the internets. This week we have a sexy foray into the first erotic computer game and the story of a scientist whose discovery of the rare element francium ultimately caused her death. Get to readin’. Softporn, released in 1981,…

A Brief History of Space Travel as Told by the Art That Inspired It

Humanity has been obsessed with exploring the stars for millennia, it just took a little while for us to obtain the means of actually doing so. In his new book, The Art of Space, author Ron Miller explores both how we developed the technology necessary for space travel and how that technology has steadily migrated…

Watch An Epic Trailer For The Hobbit Movie That Could Have Been

L.A.-based editor Joel Walden wanted to know what a trailer for The Hobbit might have looked like, had Peter Jackson’s trilogy been released as a single film. The result, which Walden calls “The Hobbit: The Complete Journey,” is pretty excellent. “With Peter Jackson’s final chapter in the ‘Middle Earth Saga’, ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of…

‘Detoxing’ Is Bullshit

Eating healthy is one thing, but unless you’re treating a drug addiction, “detoxing” is nonsense, from a medical perspective. Case in point: Companies that peddle detox diets can’t even name the toxins they’re supposedly ridding your body of. Here’s The Guardian’s Dara Mohammadi: Much of the sales patter revolves around “toxins”: poisonous substances that you…

Protests, Slums, Bass Pro Shops: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week

Protesters are shutting down freeways, bridges, and tunnels across the U.S. The country’s largest shantytown is being dismantled in the heart of Silicon Valley. And a proposal from a famous outdoor retailer could threaten Memphis’s strangest landmark. It’s What’s Ruining Our Cities this week. Protests are disrupting America It’s been a tumultuous few weeks in…

In 1911, Albert Einstein Told Marie Curie To Ignore The Trolls

On Friday, a digitized trove of Albert Einstein’s writings and correspondence was made available online. While perusing the collection, astrobiologist David Grinspoon found a letter addressed from Einstein to famed physicist, chemist, and two-time Nobel-Laureate, Marie Curie. That letter’s gist? Ignore the trolls. The translated letter, originally dated November 23, 1911, appears below: Smart dude,…

Report: Sony Leak Traced to a Bangkok Hotel

According to Bloomberg, the source of thehuge Sony Pictures leak has been traced to a five-star hotel in Thailand’s capital. Leaching off of the St. Regis hotel’s high-speed wi-fi, the hackers, currently believed the work of the North Korea-linked group DarkSeoul, carried out their devastating and embarrassing attack, leaking 47,000 SSNs and other sensitive information.…

​The First Theory of Evolution Involved Fish People

Anaximander lost out to Aristotle in the running for Most Famous Ancient Greek Philosopher. That’s a shame, as he may have been the first person to come up with the idea of “animals evolving from other animals.” The only problem is, the spin on it he came up with involved post-puberty humans hatching from fish…

The World’s First Official Batmobile Has Been Sold At Auction

You might look at this and baulk, thinking ‘that’s not the 1966 Batmobile though!’, but this is the very first officially licensed Batmobile, having preceded Adam West’s TV ride by 3 years – and it just sold for a pretty penny at auction. This Batmobile was first built in 1963 by Forrest Robinson, an adaptation…

Tons of Albert Einstein Documents Are Now Online for Free

On Friday Digital Einstein went live, bringing with it a treasure trove of Einstein letters, correspondences, postcards, and notes detailing the life of one of the world’s greatest thinkers. As The New York Times reports, these are The Dead Sea Scrolls of physics and you can read them today for free. Of course, many of…

Can You Solve This ‘Extremely Difficult’ Star Trek Puzzle?

This week’s brain teaser will boldly go where no puzzle has gone before. Try and keep up. This week’s puzzle was created by University of Kentucky mathematician Raphael Finkel, and recommended by io9 reader Shahab Tasharrofi. ” I created the puzzle as a test case for some software I wrote that assists puzzle creators,” Finkel…

NASA’s Orion spacecraft, designed to ferry the first humans to Mars, lifts off from Cape Canaveral on Friday morning. Orion reached speeds of 20,ooo mph and traveled 3,600 miles from Earth before a successful splashdown in the Pacific. [Bill Ingalls/NASA]

9 of Our Favorite Gadget Travel Companions

Traveling nowadays doesn’t require much technological preparation. If you’ve got your smartphone, you’re pretty much good to go. But there are still tons of gadgets that can make your trip from point A to point B—whether by plane, train, or automobile—more enjoyable. Last week, I asked you what were some of your favorite gadgets to…

Review: Lego Friends, City, Star Wars advent calendars–day 7

Day 7 of the 2014 Lego advent calendars gives us some furniture, a window ledge and a turret that actually shoots. See the review of the 7th day of mini builds after the jump! Friends Advent Calendar (41040) The Friends calendar today is a simple table. I’m guessing the next several days will be chairs…

You Can Now 3D Print Star Wars’ New Lightsaber

Soon Disney will begin lining its commercial Star Wars coffers with plastic action figures, T-shirts, and collapsible lightsabers. But one French 3D printing outfit took more of a “screw it, I’ll do it myself” approach by creating a 3D-printed version of the new Star Wars lightsaber. One of the many things to love about widespread…

NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Awakens To Begin Pluto Mission

After nine years and a journey of nearly 3-billion miles (4.8 billion km), NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons robotic probe has awoken from its hibernation in preparation for a unprecedented flyby of Pluto and other celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt. Above: Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft as it approaches Pluto and its largest…

This Funeral Director Can Teach You A Lot About Embracing Death

Caleb Wilde, a sixth-generation mortician and creator of the hugely popular blog Confessions Of A Funeral Director, has a unique perspective on death – but he’s trying to change that. Photo Credit: Matt Eich via Matter | CC BY 2.0 Over atMatter, Eric Puchner serves up one of the more captivating profiles we’ve read in…

Dolby Wants Its IMAX Competitor to Be The Future of Cinema

The advent of the internet, torrenting, and legally dubious streaming sites have threatened theaters for years, but cinemas are still big business and Dolby is investing in its future with Dolby Cinema. Dolby Cinema is the well-known audio company’s take on the IMAX movie-going experience. As you’d expect, the cinema will be completely powered by…

What Would Life Be Like On A Flat Earth?

Earth is round, but that shouldn’t keep us from speculating about the implications of a flat planet. The latest episode of Vsauce is all about a hypothetically flat planet called Earth, and the very real people who believe in that planet’s existence. It’s a good one: See also: [Vsauce]