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The UK Moves to Block All Internet Porn by Default

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a sweeping set of reforms on Monday that seeks to limit access to online pornography and do away with the more obscene materials. In a speech, Cameron outlined a new filter system that will compel all British internet users to select whether or not they want family-friendly filters in…

NBC’s new Dracula trailer is full of sex, violence, and mustaches

Okay, given the plethora of bad Dracula adaptations and NBC’s history of being terrible, I did not expect NBC’s 10-episode Dracula series to look so… awesome. I definitely didn’t expect all that blood, either. As this new trailer shows, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers makes a nicely intimidating Dracula, although he is kind of a messy eater. We’ve…

AT&T is offering a $200 online discount for early iPhone upgrades, bringing the price of a 16GB iPhone 5 to $450. The offer, open to all customers regardless of current phone or contract end date, seems to be an effort to boost sales leading up to the iPhone 5S debut. Updated: An AT&T spokesperson reached…

“Write faster” song sends George R.R. Martin into guitar-smashing rage

George R. R. Martin has had it with your “write faster” jokes. And he’s not taking your lip anymore, so when Woostock performed “Write Like the Wind” by Paul and Storm at Comic-Con, Martin couldn’t help but stop by and SHUT IT DOWN. Here’s another angle. Neil Gaiman also pops up to warn everyone that…

A fascinating new hypothesis that could explain (and prevent) AIDS

Over at Youreka Science, medical researcher Florie Charles has a great video that introduces you to a cutting-edge hypothesis about how HIV progresses into the fatal disease AIDS. If correct, we may be able to develop treatments that would prevent AIDS from taking hold. Based on a recent paper from UC San Francisco researchers, the…

11 Map Tattoos That Pay Tribute to Cities and Their Systems

Tattoos, just like hometowns, leave a permanent mark. If you harbor a special attachment to a city or town—even if you left long ago—inking it on your body forever is often a fitting tribute. In many cases, maps symbolize far more than just a street grid: It might be a city you’ve only dreamed about,…

10 Scientific and Tech Visionaries Who Experimented With Drugs

Is intelligence related to an increased likelihood of recreational drug use? It’s an interesting hypothesis, and one that’s been gaining momentum in recent years. If a definitive link between intellectual capacity and drug use does exist, it will likely be some time before anyone establishes one. Having said that, this much is for certain: history…

New Google Earth Hack Lets You Nuke Any City in Devastating 3D

A perverse fascination with nuclear fallout and blast radii isn’t that weird. Don’t you want to know how hard you and everything you know is going to disappear from the face of the Earth in the unlikely case that some maniac drops twenty kilotons of atomic death on your front door? Now you can see…

Motorola X Rumored Specs: Not the Droid You’re Looking For

Android Police has gotten ahold of the alleged specs of Motorola’s upcoming Moto X smartphone, and they’re not very impressive. But at least that means you can afford it. The phone will allegedly have a 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm S4 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 4.7-inch 720 x 1184 resolution screen, a 2.1 megapixel camera on…

The Greatest Libertarian Novel of the Year… and of All Time?

Cory Doctorow has managed to win the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction for a second time, with his novel Pirate Cinema. He also won this award in 2009 for Little Brother. Meanwhile, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon won a special “Hall of Fame” award. Here’s the full press release: Cory Doctorow won the…

The massive “corpse flower” has finally bloomed! It smells awful!

For the first time since 2007, a titan arum has bloomed at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington D.C. Also known as a “corpse flower” for the smell of rotting flesh that it emits, the massive blossom is expected to reach “peak smell” early this morning. Hooray for peak smell!(?) Top image by Bill O’Leary…

The World’s Biggest Data Breaches, Visualized

It sometimes feels like there’s a big data breach in the news every week—but some are far worse than others. This data visulization shows the world’s biggest data breaches to date, and how they compare over time. Put together by the team at Information is Beautiful, the interactive viz reveals some interesting trends. First, it…

SanDisk Connect: Share and Stream Your Mobile Media Anywhere (For Less)

When was the last time you held a roll of 35mm film in your hands? For a vast majority of folks, it’s been a while seeing as how most cell phones now pull triple duty as our comms, our cameras, and our pocket computers. But getting photos and files off your phone has always been…

This Week’s TV: Axe Cop comes to network TV! And fights space zombies!

There’s a brand new TV movie with a premise so ridiculous, Sharknado is looking more plausible all the time. And Axe Cop goes to Zombie Space Island! Also on TV this week: the funniest-sounding Futurama in ages, Jonathan Frakes directs Falling Skies, and the origin of Adventure Time’s BMO. Check out tons of clips and…

Watch the triumphant reveal of the Batman/Superman movie logo

Yeah, it’s just a movie logo, but it was also arguably the biggest moment of this year’s Comic-Con. I hate to admit it, but even knowing what’s coming it’s still shockingly powerful to actually see. Of course, watching a single image drive 8,000 people in a lunatic ecstasy is also pretty cool. [Via Nerd Bastards]

Leap Motion Controller Review: Waiting For the Future to Catch Up

Ever since Leap Motionteased its small, high-resolution motion controller over a year ago, we’ve all been itching to get our hands on it, so to speak, in more detail. And here’s the deal folks: It is a spectacularly competent motion controller for your PC. The catch is, that’s worth less than you might think. For…

Anakin Skywalker’s hometown is about to be overtaken by sand dunes

If you build your home in the middle of a dune field, you’re gonna have a bad time. Consider the buildings of Mos Espa (the Tatooinian city featured in The Phantom Menace), which are about to be buried by a hill of sand advancing steadily across the Tunisian desert. The Star Wars set, scientists predict,…

Rumor: Canon Is Testing a 75-Megapixel Pro DSLR

As camera rumors go, this one’s pretty insane: Photography Bay is claiming that a reliable source has told it that Canon is testing “a pro-sized body like the 1D X” which packs a sensor with over 75 megapixels. Which: wow. As well as an insane sensor, Photography Bay also claims that the rear screen is…

Three Scifi Pioneers Talk About Making the First Great Space Movie

A rare kinescope recording from 1950 preserves a live TV interview with three giants in science fiction—George Pal, Robert A. Heinlein and Chesley Bonestell—on the set of the pioneering space movie, Destination Moon. Despite seeming a little creaky now, Destination Moon was a sensation when it was originally released. At a time when movies about…

This animated Snowpiercer prequel reveals how the world froze

If you’re wondering how the last remnants of humanity are circling the globe on a train in Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer, this short animated prequel movie explains it all: A failed experiment to stop global warming caused the Earth to freeze over (which I guess means it didn’t fail as much as it worked far too…