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Should solitary confinement be considered a form of torture?

To virtually no one’s surprise, scientists are increasingly finding that solitary confinement induces a host of psychological and physiological problems in prisoners. The time has come, say a growing number of concerned citizens, to call it for what it really is: Torture. Top image: Steve McQueen in Papillion (1973) A pair of recent articles have…

io9 George Dvorsky

Bizarre GMO wheat mystery in Oregon

A farmer in Oregon recently discovered unkillable wheat in his fields. He’d sprayed the whole field with a pesticide called Roundup, but this patch of wheat wouldn’t die. Convinced he’d discovered a new super-wheat mutation, he sent some to a scientist. Carol Mallory-Smith was that scientist, an expert in weeds, who immediately knew that the…

io9 Annalee Newitz

To Avoid Cyber Espionage, Russia’s Switching Back to Typewriters

Hackers aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so Russian spies are wising up and taking their most sensitive intelligence offline. Not offline like off the internet. Offline like off computers altogether. The Russian state procurement agency FSO recently announced that it was interested in spending up to 486,000 rubles (about $14,800) on at least 20…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

Is the book industry sexist or just starved for great women authors?

There’s a huge gender divide in speculative fiction publishing — especially when it comes to science fiction and space opera, which are incredibly male dominated. And yesterday, Tor UK’s Julie Crisp wrote a revealing post that started a fascinating discussion. Top image: Cover art of Justina Robson’s Natural History. Crisp’s article basically boils down to…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

The Most Important Ingredient in Your Next Phone Battery Could Be Rice

We all know how a bowl of rice can save your phone after an unexpected swim, but that’s not all it can do. Before you know it, rice could be a very important ingredient inside all your devices’ batteries. A very important part of any gadget’s lithium-ion battery is a graphite anode. But with all…

Tech News Eric Limer

Nokia Lumia 1020 Hands On: This Actually Might Be Amazing

The first question you’ll have about Nokia’s new Lumia 1020 is how the photos look. And yes, they’re so very sharp. But what may have been overlooked is that the rest of the phone, which is still, you know, a phone, is (almost surprisingly) on point too. Before you even get to the camera, you…

Tech News Kyle Wagner

Why You’ll Love the Lumia 1020’s Manual Focus

Nokia came forth today with its new Lumia 1020 phone. As anticipated, it’s all about the camera. 41 megapixels, woweeee! Xenon flash, egads! But along with those readily recognizable specs is a more subtle camera feature that will certainly warm the hearts of phone photographers everywhere: manual focus. Every photo enthusiast wants more control. With…

Tech News Michael Hession

The Most Random Ways to Burn 200 Calories

Calories are pretty nebulous. We’ve taken a couple of looks of what 200 of ’em actually look like in terms of real food, but there’s a more important question: what do you have to do to get rid of them? You know all the classic answers, but ASAP Science has a couple of stranger alternatives…

Tech News Eric Limer

You Don’t Know Squat About Pacific Rim

You think you know all about Pacific Rim, the robots-stomping-monsters epic that opens tonight? You haven’t even scratched the surface. We went deep inside the making of Pacific Rim and talked to the stars and VFX crew, plus director Guillermo del Toro. And we learned the Pacific Rim secrets they didn’t include in the trailers.…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders

Decapitated worms regrow their heads with old memories intact

It’s hard to let go of some memories, even if your head has been chopped off. Well, at least if you’re a flatworm. When these tiny critters are decapitated, their heads and brain eventually grow back. But more remarkable than that, so too do their previous memories. Scientist who study planarian flatworms have known for…

io9 George Dvorsky

The Tri-Folds Sofa Gives You Plenty of Places to Stash the Remote

Every sofa doubles as a black hole that sucks and traps the pocket contents of all who dare sit on it. But when the TV remote goes missing in a room accented with this lovely Tri-Folds sofa by Camille Paillard, the odds are pretty good that it’s just hiding inside one of its folded pockets.…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

How Nokia’s Radical New Zoom Tech Works

Nokia’s new Lumia 1020 comes with a host of features you might not be used to on a humble smartphone. And one of the most intriguing is the Lumia’s radical new approach to zoom. Here’s how it works. Because the Lumia 1020 shoots so many pixels on the 41MP sensor, it doesn’t have to lose…

Tech News Kyle Wagner

Wildly Creepy Belgian PSA Actually Stole Someone’s Identity

You’ve undoubtedly been warned about how easy it is to have your identity stolen online over. And over. And over again. But we just never learn. Clearly, it’s going to take a little something more to hit the message home. Something like, oh, stealing an actual person’s identity, terrifying him, and creating what might be…

Tech News Ashley Feinberg

Windows Phone Just Got Instagram (Sort Of) and Vine (Really)

So hidden in Nokia’s announcement of some new apps for its Lumia line was a little announcement about Hipstamatic. It’s making a lens app for Nokia, and it can share your photos to other social networks. Including Instagram. So, essentially, Windows Phone just got its first real Instagram app. The bad news is that the…

Tech News Kyle Wagner

New Star Trek comic to explain those darned 1990s Eugenics Wars

Khan Noonien Singh was truly the greatest genetically enhanced soldier who fought in the Eugenic Wars of the 1990s — the only problem is that no one seems to remember them happening. IDW will try to correct this problem by releasing Star Trek: Khan, a comic that explains whatever the hell happened. Regular readers might…

io9 Rob Bricken

Broken Satellite? The Next Generation Canadarm Will Fix What Ails You

Commander Chris Hadfield may be the new poster boy for the Canadian Space Agency, but before the Mustachioed Ontarian hit the scene that crown was held by the supremely versatile Canadarm telerobotic system. Now a new generation of robo-arms are taking to the skies, where they’ll act as orbiting satellite mechanics. The Canadarm is a…

Space & Spaceflight Andrew Tarantola

Astronomers have discovered a blue planet beyond our solar system

In a major breakthrough, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have seen the true color of a planet outside our solar system. HD 189733b, as the gas giant is called, is blue. A deep, vibrant, cobalt blue. And just wait til you hear why it’s that color. An international team of researchers led by Oxford…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

We asked the writer of Sharknado some very serious questions

Tonight, Syfy debuts the greatest shark disaster epic since Sharktopus. It’s called Sharknado. And yeah, it’s about a tornado — full of sharks. Thunder Levin wrote the script, and we caught up with him to ask some philosophical questions about this important film that forces us to question the very nature of reality itself. io9:…

Movies Annalee Newitz and Rob Bricken

Nokia Lumia 1020: A Great Camera in a Real Phone

Phones in cameras are so good now. Sort of. They’re good when you compare their output to the smudgy, iffy images we put up with so many years, but an S95 can still blow them out of the skies. Maybe that changes with the Nokia Lumia 1020, which we’ll meet today. The camera is 41…

Tech News Kyle Wagner

An Excerpt from Dave Goldberg’s “Universe in the Rearview Mirror”

The day is finally here! My new book, The Universe in the Rearview Mirror, is being released today! Many of the topics in the book were prompted by all of the great questions from the io9 community, and I wanted to thank you again by offering you this free excerpt. Also, starting right now (2pm…

Books & Comics Dr. Dave Goldberg

Should solitary confinement be considered a form of torture?

Bizarre GMO wheat mystery in Oregon

To Avoid Cyber Espionage, Russia’s Switching Back to Typewriters

Is the book industry sexist or just starved for great women authors?

The Most Important Ingredient in Your Next Phone Battery Could Be Rice

Nokia Lumia 1020 Hands On: This Actually Might Be Amazing

Why You’ll Love the Lumia 1020’s Manual Focus

The Most Random Ways to Burn 200 Calories

You Don’t Know Squat About Pacific Rim

Decapitated worms regrow their heads with old memories intact

The Tri-Folds Sofa Gives You Plenty of Places to Stash the Remote

How Nokia’s Radical New Zoom Tech Works

Wildly Creepy Belgian PSA Actually Stole Someone’s Identity

Windows Phone Just Got Instagram (Sort Of) and Vine (Really)

New Star Trek comic to explain those darned 1990s Eugenics Wars

Broken Satellite? The Next Generation Canadarm Will Fix What Ails You

Astronomers have discovered a blue planet beyond our solar system

We asked the writer of Sharknado some very serious questions

Nokia Lumia 1020: A Great Camera in a Real Phone

An Excerpt from Dave Goldberg’s “Universe in the Rearview Mirror”

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