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A Poignant Look at Life in America’s Trailer Parks

A lot of people turn their noses up at trailer parks. That’s unfair, and David Waldorf’s photo essay about the Brookside Trailer Park in Sonoma, California show us that there’s beauty everywhere, trailer parks included. Waldorf spent years driving to Brookside in a Uhaul that he’d set up to be a mobile studio. The accomplished…

What Went Wrong With The Giver Movie?

The Giver by Lois Lowry isn’t just a ground-breaking YA novel. It’s a powerful fable about the relationship between an old man and a child, who struggle with the memories their “perfect” society has chosen to forget. And now it’s been turned into an okay movie that’s missing the magic of the book. What happened?…

The first touch-sensitive LCD basketball court in the world is awesome

Nike has created this huge touch-sensitive LCD basketball court for a training session with Kobe Bryant. The court has built-in motion sensors that track every player’s movements individually. It can also display training exercises for them to follow and show statistics on performance. Check out the amazing video. The space—located in Shanghai, China—is called the…

Comments Are a Little Different Today

If you’ve been reading io9 for more than a year, our new comment setup may look a lot like something you’ve seen before. To fix our spam and abuse problem, we’ve brought back the “pending comments” system. That means you guys have more control over what you see. https://product.kinja.com/re-introducing-pending-replies-1621601466

Why Do Creationists Place So Much Importance On A Prehistoric Mollusk?

Along the Grand Canyon section of the Colorado River sits a canyon that was carved out of redwall limestone by flowing water. There, the rocks contain fossils of the orthocone nautioloid, which lived 500-200 million years ago. But a prominent young-Earth creationist says they’re solid proof of Noah’s flood. [Image: British Geological Survey.] The redwall…

The Secret US Drone Program that Killed JFK’s Eldest Brother

The Ryan Firebee is widely considered the first true UAV developed by the US military, however, it was far from their first attempt. Take Operation Aphrodite, which loaded B-17s with high explosives and remotely crashed them into enemy targets, for instance. This early UAV program wasn’t just an abject failure, it may well have changed…

7 Rules for Recording Police

We republished this post from Reason two years ago; the information is still valid, and given the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, seem more relevant than ever. We’ve made minor edits to account for some technological and legal advances since the original publication date, but the key points are there. It seems trivial to say…

Renovo Coupe: The Electric Dream Car For Gasoline-Crazy Gearheads

A Silicon Valley startup just revealed the latest piece of electronic future-tech, a 500-horsepower, all-electric supercar that does zero to 60 faster than a Porsche 911. But the most important part of the Renovo Coupe isn’t cutting-edge at all: It’s that gorgeous body, designed in 1964. Over at Jalopnik, our pal Damon Lavrinc spoke with…

Ask An Expert About The History Of Our Fascination With Robots!

What is it about robots that gives them such a hold on our imaginations and such a perennially prominent place in pop culture? Despina Kakoudaki is here to answer our questions about robots in fiction and why we can’t seem to get enough of those stories. Kakoudaki is the author of the new book Anatomy…

This Clever Carpet “Printer” Brushes Pictures Onto Your Rugs

You know that incredibly satisfying feeling of seeing a freshly vacuumed carpet with the fibers all perfectly upright and unmarred by footprints? Designer Yuta Sugiura has found a way to take advantage of that effect to print detailed images on a rug or carpeting using a handheld machine he developed and built. It works kind…

Report: Microsoft Will Drop Windows 9 Preview Next Month

ZDNet reports that Microsoft will release a preview of Windows 9, next month, in advance of of the general release, which is expected in Spring 2015. Which of the the rumored improvements will Microsoft show off in the early preview? So far we’ve heard a number of rumors about what Windows 9 might have in…

The Schiller Effect Makes Stone Seem to Light Up Internally

This rock isn’t being lit from behind and it’s not see-through. It, like others, seems to light up internally. This internal glow baffled people for centuries, until a combination of physics and geology gave us a clue as to cause of the Schiller Effect. The Stones That Glow From the Inside The stone above is…

Cat owners may claim that their pets love ice cream and doughnuts, but it’s the fat they enjoy. The taste receptor for sweet is encoded in two genes. In cats, a chance mutation appears to have broken one of these genes. That’s why tigers, lions, and your kitty will never have a sweet tooth.

5 Essential Add-Ons That Will Make Your Gmail Great

If you could add just one improvement to Gmail, what would it be? Chances are there’s an add-on, extension or plug-in that does exactly what you want—a thriving ecosystem of third-party tools has grown up alongside Google’s email client over the last ten years, and we’ve highlighted five of the most useful for you to…

How VFX Made the Guardians of the Galaxy Characters Come to Life

The vigilantes in Guardians of the Galaxy are a multi-species motley crew, and naturally it took a lot of computer-based magic to come to life. FX Guide has the scoop on how a vast team of VFX artists made a mouthy raccoon, a teenage tree, and the rest of the gang look like aliens you…

io9 Newsstand: Best Stories for the Week of August 11 – 16

One of my favorite ways to consume short stories (besides toasting them lightly in the oven) is via podcast. I can listen to a story when reading is impossible or not advisable. I’m not brave enough to bring my Nook into the bath, but I love to hear a great voice talent spin the story…

​Sharpening Blowgun Darts On Piranha Teeth

In part one of this series, Laurel C. Allen heads into the Peruvian Amazon in search of science. What she finds are big bugs, dragon’s blood and pisco sours. https://gizmodo.com/into-the-amazon-boats-breakfast-and-blowguns-1623974867 Through the plane’s windows, rivers are suddenly plunging through dense forest, coming in from all corners, doubling back on themselves, curling in impossible directions. The…

Cool 3D visualization captures the motion of famous olympic athletes

Felix Deimann—a motion designer based in Dortmund, Germany—created this awesome video that captures the motion of famous olympic athletes like Nadia Comăneci, Michael Phelps, the US basketball Dream Team and Usain Bolt, turning it into a continuous flow of beautiful abstract shapes. This is Deimann’s thesis project: Movements of famous Olympians where digitalised into 3D…

While The GIF Party Is Away, The Trivia Party Will Play

No GIF Party this week, folks. Instead we’re having a different kind of party — a Trivia Party! How do you play? It’s easy. Just tell us a fact or tidbit you’ve collected from somewhere in the annals of science, history, art, or any other field. You choose — it’s your Trivia Party, you can…

TMZ Thinks This Is an iPhone 6, Bless Its Heart

TMZ, famous for showing us some of the world’s most prominent genitalia, has another big exclusive on its hands—this time for all you tech nerds out there. “Drool, geeks,” the headline reads, and behold the glorious watermarked images of a phone that is almost definitely not the iPhone 6. But hey, let’s give them the…