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A LED Robot That Makes Long Exposure Light Painting Easy

Making those ethereal long exposure photos where you ‘paint’ an image with an LED light requires a combination of artistic talent, skill, and patience. But if you’re lacking all three, just order one of these $100 Thymio II robots, that can be easily programmed to do all the light painting for you. Is some of…

How the Super Bowl failed its transit-riding attendees, an L.A. museum that collects houses, and why Monarch butterflies are dying (spoiler: because of us). Plus a McDonald’s in Queens, Millennials in St. Louis, and biking in Las Vegas. It’s time for your weekly Urban Reads. What was promoted as the “Mass Transit Super Bowl” was…

Amazing video puts actor into six iconic scenes in one brilliant shot

Movie magic makes fantasy worlds feel real everyday, but this short film called “Icons” takes it to a whole other level by transforming one actor over and over again, putting him in multiple iconic scenes and works of art in a single incredible shot. From the Thinker to Mad Men to Reservoir Dogs to Daft…

These Futuristic Houses Will Blow Your Mind

Some of these sleek, weird houses look like they’ve been ripped out of the twenty-second century — and some look like they’re from the next millennium. Get ready to move into the freaky saucer homes of tomorrow. Sleeper House or Sculptured House, Genesee Mountain, Colorado (Charles Deaton, 1963) This famous elliptical house was one of…

This time-lapse makes me want to move to South Dakota

This is one of the most arresting compilations of landscape and astrovideography we’ve seen in ages. Titled “Huelux,” created by photographer Randy Halverson, the video plays like a greatest-hits reel of natural phenomena in South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah. The whole thing is fantastic, but it was the scenes from the Mount Rushmore State –…

A Safer Way To Clean Your Camera’s Sensor

Dust on your camera’s sensor is a tormenting problem made worse by the fact that attempting to clean it is slightly risky. The Sensor Gel Stick could offer an easier and safer way to go about getting grime off the delicate surface. The idea is simply to dab the sticky gel lightly on the image…

Will Smallpox Reemerge in Siberia as Corpses Thaw from Climate Change?

In an article primarily about the potential folly of holding onto stockpiles of smallpox virus for research purposes—a now-eradicated plague that humans no longer have natural immunity to and that would very likely cause a worldwide catastrophe should it escape from the lab—the BBC includes one awesomely horrible detail. Could the frozen bodies of smallpox…

Paper Review: This Could Be Your Only Facebook App… Someday

Paper may not be a total Facebook replacement yet. But it does have the potential to change the way you interact with Facebook as a whole. In other words, it’s everything that Facebook Home wasn’t. And that’s a great thing. What Is It? Facebook’s new, standalone app that places your timeline and everything in it…

When a Bar Full of Women Was a Nightmarish Dystopia

Harry Grant Dart had quite an eye for the future. The early 20th century illustrator imagined women driving flying machines, the airmail of the future dropping from the sky, and even a world of robot butlers long before the word robot had even been coined. But one of Dart’s illustrations from 1908 was perhaps the…

Doctor Who director says Capaldi brings back the classic dark Doctor

What kind of Doctor will Peter Capaldi portray on the next season of Doctor Who? In our exclusive interview with director Ben Wheatley, we learned a whole lot about what classic influences this new Doctor will be channeling. Plus find out about Wheatley’s brilliant plans for the movie of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise. Wheatley, whose…

​The time Batman fought evil with the power of racism

Batman’s had a pretty spectacular career, but even the Caped Crusader has a few moments he’d like to forget. Chief among them would probably be his first live-action excursion, a serial released in 1943 that featured Bats squaring off against a mad Japanese scientist/horrible stereotype. So if you want to check out the adventures of…

Can Sochi Get Its Shit Together?

By all accounts—except maybe Vladimir Putin’s—the small Russian resort town of Sochi isn’t ready for the Olympics. In fact, coverage of the preparations has taken on a downright panic-stricken tone. Can Sochi pull it out of the flames? The answer is yes—but at a steep cost. Last week, we posted images of Sochi’s half-finished Olympic…

A chart that explains time travel in Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls

There are a few basic ways that time travel works in stories. For the paperback release of Lauren Beukes’ time travel serial killer tale The Shining Girls, artists Adam Hill and Sam Wilson put this chart together. It explains The Shining Girls — and oh so much more. Beukes told io9: When I wrote The…

Is there a comedy about geeks that gets it right?

I think we’ve talked ad nauseam about how ambivalent we all feel about the “geek humor” in The Big Bang Theory. It’s a show that laughs at geeks, but not with them. But are there any comedies that get it right when it comes to geeks, and can get us all laughing along with the…

First high quality moon panorama since the Apollo 17 in 1972

At last, a good panorama from China’s Chang’e 3 lander.It shows a three-step time-lapse of the Jade Rabbit robotic rover heading south, getting away from its mothership “likely never to return again.” Zoom in: Here’s one of the latest high quality panoramas from a lunar mission: A near 360-degree view from the Apollo Lunar Surface…

Giant Meter-Long Spaghetti Lets You Live Out Lady and the Tramp

Valentine’s Day is less than a couple of weeks away, and if you’ve yet to plan a romantic evening with your sweetheart, don’t sweat it. This tube of meter-long spaghetti lets you recreate that famous scene from Lady and the Tramp. Because what’s more romantic than a couple of runaway dogs fighting over table scraps…

Most awesome essay about science fiction type fonts ever

You know those sexy, sans serif fonts in the movie 2001? They appear in the credits, but also on pretty much all the technical equipment on the spaceship. Well, now a font enthusiast has figured out what those fonts are, and written an incredibly funny, illuminating essay about the typography of 2001. Dave Addey is…

The Government Wants Our Cars and Trucks to Talk to One Another

The U.S. Department of Transportation brought us one step closer to that utopian future where cars never crash on Monday with the announcement that it will move ahead with vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V) technology. In short, the government wants all the cars on the road to talk to one another. It makes perfect sense, especially where…

The winners of the Adventure Time T-shirt contest are just smashing

Seriously, these are the only things we want to wear, ever. See Finn and Jake — and the Ice King and Flame Princess! — a whole new way, and sport them on your chest. Including a brilliant Star Wars/Adventure Time mashup. GRAND PRIZE WINNER – $2,000 cash “Star Adventure” by Blanca Vidal She says her…

Watch a rocket sled attached to a parachute shoot through the desert!

The folks over at JPL’s Low Density Supersonic Decelerator project have been building a rocket sled — and here it is in action! In this video, scientists test out the rocket sled by attaching it to a parachute and shooting it onto a railroad track in middle of the desert — followed up, of course,…