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Why history has forgotten the man who discovered protons and electrons

Today we have positive and negative charges in an orderly binary system. We owe that orderliness to its original discoverer — Charles Du Fay. If he hadn’t stepped in, we might have been calling charges by their colors. Charles Du Fay was a scientist in the early 1700s, when people were first playing with electricity…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

40 Years of Nike’s Most Iconic Shoe Designs, Visualized

Nike’s impact on both pop culture and the shoe industry is unrivaled. It’s consistently one of the most popular brands in the world and has an insane sneakerhead following. But of all the hundreds of shoes released since the 1970s, what are its most iconic designs? British designer Stephen Cheetham took it upon himself to…

Tech News Peter ha

What do supernovae and salad dressing have in common?

Hint: The above video still shows a simulated example of the phenomenon they share. When you place a dense layer of fluid atop a less dense layer of fluid, it results in what physicists call a Rayleigh-Taylor instability. You can observe this effect in everything from salad dressing to lava lamps to evolving supernovae. Two-dimensional…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Dead Ostrich Takes Flight as a Cyborg Quadcopter Monstrosity

If you thought things couldn’t possibly get any more ridiculous than the catcopter, you were woefully gloriously wrong. Now, the same disturbed minds that brought you flying cats have an all-new monster. Enter the OstrichCopter. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-why-you-cant-use-a-cat-as-a-quadrotor-5892623 Willed into being by visual artist Bart Jansen and technical engineer Arjen Beltman,the OstrichCopter is (obviously) a completely custom…

Tech News Eric Limer

This Electric Plane Could Be the First to Top 250 MPH

While Boeing’s Dreamliner can’t seem to stop blowing batteries, there’s a new breed of light aircraft emerging that hope to use them rather than jet fuel. This e-plane, dubbed the Long-EZ, aims to be the fastest of them all. https://gizmodo.com/future-stunt-pilots-could-train-in-these-all-electric-p-533027421 Developed by Chip Yates, the electric Long-EZ is based on the Rutan Long-EZ, a homebuilt…

Tech News Andrew Tarantola

The chemistry of the corpse flower’s wretched stench

Earlier this month, a titan arum (a.k.a. “corpse flower,” a.k.a. amorphophallus titanum, a.k.a. “large, misshapen penis”) bloomed for the first time in over half a decade at the U.S. Botanical Garden in Washington D.C. In this quick video from BytesizeScience, the USBG’s public science educator Todd Brethauer explains the science behind the plant’s legendary stank.…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Microsoft Has to Change SkyDrive’s Name Because of a Lawsuit Now, Too

Ha. In a pain-in-the-everything development for Microsoft, it’s agreed to change SkyDrive’s name because it infringes on a trademark owned by British Sky Broadcasting Group, one of the largest media organizations in the UK. This is, of course, deeply funny. Last year, Microsoft had to rename its Metro interface after it lost a slapfight over…

Tech News Kyle Wagner

Special Software Lets the NSA Collect “Nearly Everything” You Do Online

Just when you thought the scale of the NSA’s surveillance programs couldn’t get more superlative, new details about a special software suite show that analysts can access “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet.” If it uses HTTP, the NSA can get it. The software’s known as X-Keyscore, and it’s gnarly. Not only…

Privacy & Security Adam Clark Estes

A terrific road trip for horror film lovers

Travel Kinja Roadtrippers has a great road trip across horror film locations in the United States. It includes the hotel from The Shining, the house from Poltergeist, and the beach from Jaws. https://roadtrippers.kinja.com/fuck-this-one-is-great-im-loving-this-kinja-972809570 https://roadtrippers.kinja.com/americas-most-iconic-horror-movie-filming-locations-956464494

Sploid Jesus Diaz

Great, Now Robots Can Outsmart Tripwires

Until now, quadraped robots have been a bit like terrifying mechanical sprinters: They go and go and go, but if they run into an obstacle, they’re gonna fall like a tangle-legged AT-AT. So because the prospect of bots that can throw cinderblocks and climb buildings wasn’t terrifying enough, Italian researchers are teaching robots how not…

Tech News Mario Aguilar

Who won Comic-Con, Superman/Batman or Avengers 2: Age of Ultron?

Are you sick of Comic-Con yet? I hope not, because the ol’ mailbag is full of questions regarding the events of this year’s nerd prom. Man of Steel 2! The new origin of Ultron! Why the people who get into Hall H are the chosen ones! If a fake mailman from the future can’t explain…

io9 Rob Bricken

What Would Happen If the Whole World Peed in the Ocean at Once?

I don’t really remember the first time I peed in the ocean. But it must’ve been when I was a girl, during one of my family’s numerous summer vacations to the Jersey shore. We rented the same property in Wildwood Crest year in and year out: a modest 3-bedroom apartment just blocks from the beach.…

Tech News Lauren Wolf - CENtral Science

Pacific Rim recut as a classic Godzilla movie is just the best

What if Pacific Rim tossed out the whole “we’re not doing Godzilla” pretense and just went full classic Kaiju crazy? We bet it would feel a little something like this. Watch as Guillermo del Toro’s monsters are recut to sound just like the original big bad kaiju in this amazing recut of the Pacific Rim…

Trailers Meredith Woerner

This Weird Portable Shower Sprays Water Up Instead of Down

The Viteo Shower is a portable outdoor shower that sprays water from below. It’s not just a fancy name for a hose, either. At least we think. Gravity exists, so you have to wonder how this contraption works. Created by Belgian-Australian designer Danny Venlet, it’s a simple disc that’s activated by your body weight. When…

Tech News Leslie Horn

Facebook’s New Timehop-Like Feature Shows You What You Did a Year Ago

You may have thought Facebook couldn’t become any more of an artificial orgy of nostalgia than it already is, but if today’s new test feature takes hold, get ready to wallow like you’ve never wallowed before. Very much in the vein of Timehop, Facebook now wants to remind you of everything you and your thousand…

Social Media Ashley Feinberg

These Wild Hidden Pictures Could Protect the Money of the Future

We’d all be printing money if it were easy, and that’s why government folks try so hard to make it hard. This crazy visual effect could be the latest trick up their anti-counterfeiting sleeves. And man is it awesome to watch. The measure demonstrated in the video above is something called a moiré pattern, the…

Tech News Eric Limer

Is a superhero dressed in a burka sending the wrong message?

Meet Pakistan’s first caped crusader, The Burka Avenger — a new superhero who’s promoting girl power in that country. But the new animated character is dressed in a burka, and that’s causing no small amount of controversy in Pakistan and abroad. The animated action-comedy features Jiya, a teacher with secret martial arts skills who uses…

io9 George Dvorsky

Next-generation game consoles will pretty much feel the same

Theoretically, the next Playstation will be 50% faster than the next Xbox. But according to this simulated graphics comparison test, you shouldn’t care. At the end of the day, games will pretty much feel the same, says Sam Gibbs at Gizmodo: “whichever next-gen console you buy at launch you’ll probably be fine.” https://gizmodo.com/in-theory-this-is-how-the-xbox-one-compares-to-the-ps4-974197622

Sploid Jesus Diaz

These Super Geeks Created a Virtual Reality Version of Paperboy

The only thing nerdier than keeping an old NES hooked up to your TV to play your favorite old games is recreating your favorite old games using virtual reality equipment. That’s exactly what this crew of programmers did recently with Paperboy. A team of supernerds from the custom video game studio Globacore recently built a…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

Samsung Denies Trying to Artificially Inflate Its Benchmark Scores

Yesterday, it was reported that Samsung had rigged the Galaxy S4 to perform better in benchmarks. Today comes Samsung’s terse response, which answers some questions, but leaves others flapping in the wind. https://gizmodo.com/samsung-rigged-the-s4-to-unnaturally-perform-better-in-971577921 In part, the reason reporters thought that Samsung was goosing the benchmarks was because the phone’s GPU operates at 533MHz in tests…

Gadgets Mario Aguilar

Why history has forgotten the man who discovered protons and electrons

40 Years of Nike’s Most Iconic Shoe Designs, Visualized

What do supernovae and salad dressing have in common?

Dead Ostrich Takes Flight as a Cyborg Quadcopter Monstrosity

This Electric Plane Could Be the First to Top 250 MPH

The chemistry of the corpse flower’s wretched stench

Microsoft Has to Change SkyDrive’s Name Because of a Lawsuit Now, Too

Special Software Lets the NSA Collect “Nearly Everything” You Do Online

A terrific road trip for horror film lovers

Great, Now Robots Can Outsmart Tripwires

Who won Comic-Con, Superman/Batman or Avengers 2: Age of Ultron?

What Would Happen If the Whole World Peed in the Ocean at Once?

Pacific Rim recut as a classic Godzilla movie is just the best

This Weird Portable Shower Sprays Water Up Instead of Down

Facebook’s New Timehop-Like Feature Shows You What You Did a Year Ago

These Wild Hidden Pictures Could Protect the Money of the Future

Is a superhero dressed in a burka sending the wrong message?

Next-generation game consoles will pretty much feel the same

These Super Geeks Created a Virtual Reality Version of Paperboy

Samsung Denies Trying to Artificially Inflate Its Benchmark Scores

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