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An Illustrated History of Unbelievably Camouflaged Ships

It’s difficult to hide from an enemy when you’re inside an enormous ship, or part of a vast Naval fleet. And yet many ships in history have been well-camouflaged, despite a distinct lack of cloaking devices. Here are some of the most amazing examples. USS West Mahomet (a steel-hulled cargo ship of the U.S. Navy,…

Why Won’t the MLB Use This $100, Injury-Preventing Bat?

For the most part, change in habits comes to sports in waves of inconvenience. You can usually convince players to buy into some radical new tactic if it yields results, but changes that risk sacrificing performance in the name of self-preservation are shut right out. And so it is that baseball players are rejecting a…

The Most Influential Movies of the Last Century According to Wikipedia

When it comes down to it, what makes a movie “good” is a matter of taste. Even bad movies have their fans. What makes a movie “influential” is a little easier to try and brute force. Especially when you have Wikipedia on your side. Massaged into being by the Arg! Team, this massive list ranks…

Is this the first arrest ever recorded by Google Glass?

On July 4, a fight broke out on the Jersey Shore boardwalk. Documentary filmmaker Chris Barrett happend to be wearing his Glass at the time — and what he recorded may go down as the first arrest ever caught with the device. It’s not the most spectacular video we’ve ever seen, but it’s likely the…

Cree LED Bulb Review: Nobody Needs to Know You’ve Gone Green

LED light bulbs have always been a bit like car repairs: they’re either good quality or affordable, but very rarely both. And it’s all very well and good that these bulbs use a fraction of the electricity as incandescents but dropping $30-$40 on a single bulb—especially when they’re so alien looking—keeps many consumers from switching…

Microsoft Actually Considered These Idiotic Names for the Original Xbox

“Xbox” is a pretty good name for a console, right? Yeah, of course it is. You know what isn’t? Literally everything else Microsoft considered before landing on “Xbox”. In an interview with Edge, Xbox godfather Seamus Blackley explained that “xbox” (shortened from DirectX Box) was not legally sound as a product name, so they went…

Government Destroys $170k of Hardware in Absurd Effort to Stop Malware

This is a story about government incompetence on the grossest, most unforgivable scale. Here’s how the Economic Development Administration unnecessarily spent $2.75 million to fight a common case of malware. Warning: much innocent hardware was lost. Yes, even the mice. In December 2011 the Economic Development Administration (an agency under the US Department of Commerce)…

Tonto WTF?!

Now that we’ve all had time to digest the appalling mess that was The Lone Ranger, we need to talk about Tonto. Johnny Depp managed to create a character who is a horrifying mashup of Jar Jar and Jack Sparrow. What the hell happened there? Spoilers ahead. It’s hard to deny the similarities between Tonto…

Oh my god they made another Chucky movie

Holy crap there’s a new movie about that murderous little ginger doll Chucky. Witness the return of the monster we were all fine with leaving behind in the 80s and 90s, in the trailer for Curse of Chucky. Here’s the official synopsis of the film that’s coming out on DVD along with all other 6…

How easy is it to fake mental illness?

It’s probably not as easy as you think – but determining when someone is faking is also notoriously difficult. Top image by JustCallMe_♥Bethy♥_ via flickr In a fascinating piece for BBC News, Sam Judah looks at recent examples of people who have faked mental illness – whether to absolve themselves of heinous crimes or to…

What’s the greatest cosplay character or concept of all time?

This past weekend was Anime Expo, the ginormous celebration of all things anime, and the sheer amount of lovely cosplay will melt your brain. Check out a gallery below — but also please tell us: What character or concept makes for the best cosplay in the universe? Please include photos of the greatest character or…

The Navy’s Advanced Guns System Fires Rocket-Powered Artillery Shells

The 54-caliber, 5-inch naval artillery shells fired by Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are brutally efficient at destroying surface ships, aircraft, and land targets. But they’re little more than pea shooters compared to the 6.1-inch rocket-propelled, GPS-guided shells shot by the new Zumwalt-class’ Advanced Guns System. The Advanced Gun System is the next generation of naval artillery…

The Way Stats Decide Who Gets Organ Transplants Is Flawed

So your doctor has determined that you need an organ transplant. Now there’s some important criteria that will help determine how fast you’ll actually receive that transplant. But is the way the data is crunched actually serving patients as well as it can? Not exactly. The system for determining who gets a transplant varies depending…

50 Of The Best Movies Ever Are Your Blu-ray+Digital Deal Of The Day

Today you can get yourself an awesome blu-ray collection in one click. Amazon is offering the Best of Warner Bros. 50 Film Collection for $185, which is over $400 off the original retail price, and quite the bargain for 50 amazing films. Even if you managed to get all of these separately for $10/pop, that…

Green Lantern stands tall in the cover to DC’s Absolute Blackest Night

DC Comics is releasing the massive Absolute Edition of Geoff Johns’ best-selling Blackest Night mega-event this Wednesday, and io9 is proud to reveal the book’s true cover. The 2009 comics crossover event depicted the darkest prophecy in the DC universe mythos coming true, as Nekron and the Black Hand use their Black Power Rings to…

This Book Showed ‘80s Kids the Computerized, War Games War of Tomorrow

Here in the 21st century, soldiers can be sitting in a room in New Mexico while piloting an unmanned aerial vehicle halfway around the world in Afghanistan. Back in the early 1980s this kind of reach was still largely the stuff of science fiction. But the incredibly rapid development of computing power and satellite communications…

iOS7 beta release 3 is out today and it fixes some of those pesky beta 2 bugs. It’s not perfect yet, but go and check it out if you’re into tinkering.

This Man Died While Peeing on NYC Subway’s Tracks Today (Updated)

This is Matthew Zeno, the 30-year-old man who allegedly died today in New York City’s subway after peeing on the electrified third rail. He was instantly electrocuted. Update: police has confirmedthe man died electrocuted after he fell on the third rail. His Facebook friends have started to post farewell messages on his wall. According to…

Twitter Just Fixed the Most Annoying Thing About Twitter

So what’s the most annoying thing about using Twitter across multiple devices? I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that direct messages don’t sync. Well, Twitter is finally addressing that annoyance today by adding in DM sync. Finally! The update is being pushed out to seven different platforms: Android, iPad, Mac, twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com, TweetDeck and…

All the ways Google is asked to censor the web, in one handy chart

Google recently released statistics on all the legal requests it gets to censor the Web via its many services, from Search to YouTube. Now Sebastian Sadowski has created some handy visualizations of all the ways information is being censored — perhaps without you even realizing it. Sadowski allows you to pick your view based on…