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Even More Casting Rumors for Batman Vs. Superman and Star Wars: Rebels

The next season of Doctor Who’s taking its cues from the greatest era of the classic series. A loose end from Amazing Spider-Man is tied up. And Chris Pratt went to a lot of trouble to be cast in Guardians of the Galaxy. Plus new hints about Warcraft, Agents of SHIELD and more. Spoilers now!…

LG’s TVs Could Be Collecting Your Data Even When You Tell Them Not To

If you consider your TV a private safe haven, it might be time to think again. A UK blogger has discovered that LG’s smart TVs seem to collect personal data even when such functionality is explicitly forbidden by its user. Doctor Beet noticed that his LG set was sending his private data, regardless of whether…

Why Nuclear Bombs Create Mushroom Clouds

Why do nuclear bombs make mushroom clouds? The phenomenon all comes down to a little something called the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, and by extension, convection. I’ll begin with the somewhat longer, but less geeky explanation before descending once again into extreme nerdery. It all starts with an explosion that creates a Pyrocumulus Cloud. This ball of…

IBM’s Fractalizer Turns Any Tumblr Into a Trippy Fractal

IBM’s engineers must have been at a loose end, because they’ve just launched a new site called the IBMblr Fractalizer, which takes any Tumblr and spits it out as a series of fractals. It’s part of a small celebration by IBM of Benoit Mandelbrot, who discovered back in 1978 that nature’s repetitive and complex patterns…

Watch LG’s G Flex Self-Heal After a Knife Attack

While the curved display of the LG G Flex smartphone may be little more than a novelty, the smartphone’s true innovation looks as if it sits elsewhere within its frame — it’s “self-healing cover”. And this is more than just a party trick — the G Flex is the mobile equivalent of the X-Men’s Wolverine.…

The Chemistry of Baking Cookies

Shove a tray of dough into the oven and something magical happens: that raw mixture of ingredients is transformed into a delightful circle of deliciousness, a cookie. If you’ve ever wondered exactly what science was behind baking, though, this video explains. Zipping through everything from protein structures to the Maillard reaction, it explains some pretty…

What Are These Boxes Doing Floating Through Space?

This might look like the start of a scene from Gravity, but you’re actually looking at three nanosatellites—known as Cubesats—which have just been released in space. They were deployed from a Small Satellite Orbital Deployer attached to the Kibo laboratory’s robotic arm aboard the ISS. CubeSats are cute little things: they have a volume of…

Which Companies Are Encrypting Your Data Properly?

We’ve asked the companies in our Who Has Your Back Program what they are doing to bolster encryption in light of the NSA’s unlawful surveillance of your communications. We’re pleased to see that four companies—Dropbox, Google, SpiderOak and Sonic.net—are implementing five out of five of our best practices for encryption. In addition, we appreciate that…

The FCC’s New Chairman Wants to Rewrite How Phones Work

Tom Wheeler, the newly crowned chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has ambitious plans. He’s already on a crusade to get carriers to allow cellphone unlocking, and now he plans to rewrite the technology that supports the nation’s ageing landline phone network. That modest goals comes to light in a New York Times article which…

Logitech PowerShell: A Slim, Sturdy, (Maybe Dope) iOS Gaming Controller

The anticipated gaming controllers for iPhone and iPod Touch are arriving in droves it seems. Today, we’re getting our first look at the Logitech PowerShell, an insanely simple little gamepad that’s supposed to turn touch gaming into something closer to console gaming—without going overboard. The timing of today’s announcement is conspicuous given that the Moga…

Apple’s Future HQ Just Got Final Approval

Apple’s shiny new headquarters—which look part amazing office space, part futuristic Apple store—has been in the planning for years. Now, Apple’s received final approval from the City of Cupertino to get started. This building is going to be very real. A unanimous vote back in October has finally given rise to official approval now. That…

Google’s neat, new wireless charger—for the Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 7—is now available in the Play Store. $50 to you, my friend.

TWTIT: I Ducked You Once In Silence

Look, if you’re angling for tickets to Camelot, there are plenty of better ways than this. Besides, how do you expect your duck to buy those tickets? It’s a duck.

Xbox One Review: Absolutely Amazing (When It Works)

Eight years later, the Xbox 360’s successor—and Microsoft’s latest bid to take over your living room—is here. Somehow it’s both worth the wait and quite not fully baked. What Is It? Uh, it’s the Xbox One. The crazy ambitious follow-up to the Xbox 360, a wildly successful console and arguably the winner of last generation’s…

Unbelievable: Each scene in this video is made from one still photo

This scene of an approaching owl is not a video. It’s a still image. Seriously. One still image manipulated to appear like a video scene. In fact, each scene in the following video is made from one photo only. It’s unbelievable. How did they achieve this incredible feat? Make Productions turned still photos from the…

Recreating pictures from your childhood as an adult is always great

Two thoughtful sons came up with a wonderful gift for their mom: they would recreate old childhood photographs of themselves, from 20 years ago, as adults. They would visit the same spots as the pictures, wear similar clothes as their kid self once did, pose the same way as they did two decades ago, and…

Watch toy robots hilariously poke fun at our smartphone addiction

Quick, where’s your phone? Within arm’s reach? On your desk? Next to your computer? Charging? Or possibly, in your hand at this very moment? Yeah, we can’t get enough of our phones. Big Lazy Robot VFX poked fun at humanity’s addiction to smartphones in this clever toy robot video iDiots. Yeah, we know what we…

Music as Legal Metaphor (via io9)

Over at i09.com, Ria Misra hosted Georgetown law professor Rebecca Tushnet in an excellent discussion about the future of transformative works, notably fan fiction and mashups. The site’s readers posted questions to Tushnet, which she responded to in depth — this was no rapid-fire Reddit AMA. Given io9’s focus on science fiction, it’s no surprise…

San Francisco’s flying car, circa 1920

This 1920 photo was taken at the corner of Hoffman and 23rd St., in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, on what looks like a rather foggy day. Clearly, geeks in San Fran have been trying to build flying cars for a pretty long time. You can see this photo, along with many other historical photos of…

The Past Isn’t Dead. It Isn’t Even Mute. (via Paleofuture)

It’s been over a decade since MIT published The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 by Emily Thompson, who won a MacArthur grant a few years later. Paleofuture’s Matt Novak recently shared news of the Roaring Twenties soundscape project, which Thompson developed with Scott Mahoy. There’s something deliriously…