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A Rain-Detecting Automatic Pet Door That Keeps Them Inside and Dry

On one hand, having a pet door installed means you don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn to let your dog or cat out. But on the other hand, it also gives your pet access to a possibly wet and muddy yard whenever they want. Which is why the Petwalk automatic pet…

The io9 Book Club is in session! Let’s talk about Dead Witch Walking.

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. In February, we read Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking. Jump into comments to get started talking about it! Photo by chameequa For those unfamiliar with the io9 book club, here’s how it works: You read the book. We create a special book club post on…

This 1920s Shockwatch Was Like a Taser For Your Wrist

While those of us here in the early 21st century argue over the future of smartwatches and smart rings, inventors of the 1920s would probably think we’re all a bunch of babies. Sure, your Pebble might have caller ID. But can it incapacitate a potential mugger with a 10,000 volt high frequency shock? I didn’t…

Words of Radiance puts the “epic” back in epic fantasy

Maybe you read Brandon Sanderson’s first entry in The Stormlight Archives, The Way of Kings. Maybe you’re just familiar with his work from finishing up Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Whether you’ve been hyped for Words of Radiance or not, you are not prepared for how fantastic it is. Indeed, The Way of Kings…

Los Angeles To Launch Nation’s Largest Interactive Urban Trail Network

Los Angeles is a big place—over 400 square miles. Even though it’s home to the country’s largest urban park, many of its residents don’t have easy access to public green space—or they might not know where the nearest one is. A new “interactive interpretive” urban trail system hopes to close that distance, while connecting Angelenos…

Watch a Pro Table Tennis Player Take Down a Robot Opponent

After an anxious month’s wait, we finally get to see the ultimate showdown of man vs. machine on the only battleground that matters—table tennis. The results? Humans: 1, KUKA robot: 0. Our future mechanical overlords still have quite a ways go. Put on by KUKA Robot Group to show off what its flagship machine can…

Why gluten-free foods aren’t necessarily healthier

Now that many of us are trying to avoid gluten like the plague, a slew of gluten-free products have started appearing in our stores. Unfortunately, many of these foods are advertised or understood as healthy alternatives, which is often far from the truth. Before we get into this, it needs to be pointed out that…

Lost Girl‘s love triangles become polygons when the Wanderer is revealed

It was a grab bag of folklore on this week’s Lost Girl — some of it brilliant, some of it laughably terrible. Odin’s crows, Japanese puzzle boxes, Chinese fae, and even a biblical serpent/demon. Bo has made up her mind once and for all to find out who the Wanderer is, and the writers have…

10am-11am PST: Brian Greene Q&A on string theory

New pasta with tomato popsicle may be yummiest or yuckiest thing yet

Japanese people claim that ice cream company Gari-Gari Kun makes the best popsicles in the world. They’re about to introduce a new popsicle flavor: Pasta with tomato sauce. The tomato sauce is inside the popsicle in gelatin form. It sounds terrible but something tells me that it must taste good. Yummy or yucky, I really…

Why Self-Portraits Aren’t A Good Idea When You’re a Burglar

Taking a photo of yourself while inside someone else’s house illegally might not be the first, second, or even third thing you’d think to do—especially when using your victim’s own camera or cell phone—but, hey, you’re probably not a burglar. Taking pics of yourself while holding your victim’s property is probably also not something you’d…

Two-year-old girl loves Cosmos (and space pajamas) so damn much!

A family recorded their 2-1/2-year-old daughter Delilah reacting to the premiere of Cosmos. We like to think that one day in the future, when Delilah is receiving accolades for piloting the first manned ship to Venus, we will all look back on this clip and say “I remember when.” H/t Chris Person. [Davonne Maria via…

Astronomy and Toast

Since I started talking about the io9 Space subsite on Twitter, promoted tweets in my feed switched to adverting ways to avoid burning bread. I hadn’t previously considered that the high correlation between loving astronomy and night owls would result in an equally strong correlation with breakfast incompetence. While puzzling over the failures of targeted…

This one man made 134 of the weirdest movies ever

Fred Olen Ray was already a legendary director of B movies and exploitation films back in the early 1980s. But amazingly, he’s just gotten more prolific with time. His IMDB page lists 134 films with titles like Bikini Girls from the Lost Planet, Super Ninja Bikini Babes, Invisible Mom II, Droid Gunner and Wizards of…

Game of Thrones is catching up to George R.R. Martin: “It’s alarming.”

When HBO decided to make a TV series of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff sat down with Martin and he told them how the story ends, in broad strokes. But now that the show is catching up to Martin’s books, he’s told them in…

I want to buy all these amazing retro-futuristic movie posters

Laurent Durieux is one of my favorite illustrators and designers ever. His re-imagined movie posters—recreated in an exquisite retro-futuristic style—are simply a true pleasure. I love to get lost in the fine detail and admire his perfect command of color and shading. You can buy his amazing artwork here. Laurent Durieux has been working two…

Conan Explains Bitcoin Once and For All

We have endeavored time and again to explain Bitcoin, but do any of you really understand it? It doesn’t help that the mysterious digital currency keeps disappearing. Thankfully, here’s a Conan O’Brien bit to set the record straight once and for all. OK, so this video doesn’t explain much of anything. But do any of…

Senator Feinstein Asserts That the CIA Spied On Senate Computers

Today, Senator Diane Feinstein backed up reports that the CIA had illegally searched Senate computers in an effort to figure out what the Senate knew about its torture activities. It turns out that the CIA acted exactly the way we expect the CIA to act—and that’s a problem. For those of you catching up, McClatchy…

Exclusive reveal of Enemy’s optical illusion poster

Is it a key or is it Jake Gyllenhaal and his doppelgänger whispering sweet nothings to each other? We’ve got the exclusive reveal of the poster for the curious indie movie Enemy, based off the exceptionally trippy book The Double by Jose Saramago. In Enemy, actor Jake Gyllenhaal plays a simple man who discovers his…

Co-author of stem-cell study ‘loses faith’ in paper

After claiming to have developed a novel technique for coaxing the growth of stem cells in an acid bath, Japanese researchers have come under scrutiny for apparent irregularities. In the latest twist, one of the paper’s coauthors has admitted that the study should be retracted. Soon after the paper was published, it was criticized for…