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Where Hipsters Eat, Visualized

You probably turn to Yelp to look for single, stand-out restaurants and businesses. But there’s a lot of data inside all those reviews, which can make for fascinating analysis—letting you spot trends across geographic locations. This map, for instance, shows where the word “hipster” crops up across NYC reviews—and hey, look, Williamsburg wins out! But…

Twitter’s trialling a new “Embedded on these websites” notification system, which shows a list of articles that appear in popular tweets. That means you can quickly see the sources lurking behind a post—which is kinda neat.

A Russian Rocket Just Exploded Over Kazakhstan as It Launched

A Russian rocket just crashed seconds after it was launched from a spaceport in Kazakhstan. Footage from local news channels shows how the rocket wobbled through the sky as it rose into the air, before disintegrating and falling back to Earth. The rocket, called Proton-M, was carrying three navigation satellites into space—but was fortunately unmanned.…

How Big Is the Ocean?

It’s one of those impossibly stupid questions because it takes someone impossibly smart to give an answer to someone just as impossibly smart to understand but hey, if you’re into massaging your brain a little bit tonight and have run out of all questions for the day, ask yourself this: just how big is the…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Eenen

Because, really, who hasn’t dreamed that their favorite bowl of noodles and broth had the power to genesis a brand new civilization? Nobuyoshi Sakashita animated this awesome fable revolving around a trio of brothers with an unhealthy attachment to Udon.

Canon EOS 70D: Yet Another Incredible Video DSLR From Canon

Canon has always been one step ahead of the pack when it comes to putting video in DSLRs. From the pro 5D to the beginner Rebel T’s, it’s been a leader. But the new tech in the Canon EOS 70D could change things forever once again. The Canon EOS 70D uses a new 20.2-megapixel APS-C…

What Happens When You Take Hundreds of Pictures at the Same Spot

Photographer Pelle Cass had a genius idea for his series Selected People: what if he took hundreds of pictures from the same location and then picked out people and animals from each of those pictures and combined them into a single image. It shows the random life of a single setting in one image. Wired…

Amputee Creates Prosthetic Leg With Lego

Watch Christina Stephens—a practicing occupational therapist and clinical researcher who lost her foot after a crush injury—build herself a working prosthetic leg out of Lego. Why did she do it? Someone in my research lab jokingly suggested I make a prosthetic leg out of legos. The joke’s on you—I went home and did it. Please…

What The Most Popular Web Browser Is in Each Country in the World

The green is Chrome. The blue is Internet Explorer. The orange-ish color is Firefox. If you can see any red or grey that would be Opera and Safari, respectively. And though I personally believe all browsers have become horrible in their own ways, having Chrome at the top of most country’s usage list according to…

How Many Apps Does an App Need to Sell to Be in the Top Apps List?

When the App Store was fresh and new, you’d see different apps pop up in the Top Apps list. Those Top Apps lists were actually usable. But ever since Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja and whatever else decided to squat down, it’s the same damn apps over and over. So how popular does an app…

A Website Exposes Instagram Frauds Who Use Filters But Tag #nofilter

As sacred a hashtag as #tbt is on Instagram, the hashstag #nofilter is right there with it. If the selfie’s purpose is to crown your own face with likes, not using a filter on a picture and then bragging about it through a hashtag is to megaphone your arrival as an artist. Like saying you…

What’s inside a cup of coffee?

Coffee. It’s amazing. It’ll make you poop, and lower your risk of depression. But have you ever stopped to wonder what’s actually inside your daily cup of joe? https://gizmodo.com/why-does-coffee-make-you-poop-5975041 https://gizmodo.com/10-reasons-coffee-is-both-the-best-and-the-worst-bevera-5861402 In the first installment of its new video series, “What’s Inside,” Wired takes a close look at the pick-me-up more than 50% of Americans rely…

Genius Puts Incredibly Destructive Hulk Inside Grand Theft Auto Game

Adding greatly to the usual mayhem of the video game Grand Theft Auto, a player modified GTA IV to include a crazily realistic Incredible Hulk. This video of the Hulk is just nuts. Watch him take out whole squads of cops and throw cars at helicopters.

Doctor Who engagement photoshoot is seriously spot-on fantastic

We’ve seen plenty of fantastic science fiction wedding revelry lately, but this Doctor Who engagement photo session (including a TARDIS built by the bride’s father) floors us with its style. The whole thing is really quite lovely. This was shot by Davey Morgan Photography, and we applaud the bride and groom to-be, Laurie and Justin…

UberX in LA: It’s Illegal. It’s Great. It Needs to Stop.

Despite the fact that it’s currently banned in Los Angeles, UberX is defiantly still up and running. I used it for the first time this weekend. This so-called ride-sharing service from San Francisco-based Uber Technologies is supposedly the future of cabs. Much like similar services Lyft and Sidecar, UberX seeks to “disrupt” the taxi industry…

Why Harry Potter Won’t Have as Much Staying Power as Luke Skywalker

Where are all the new heroes? This summer, in particular, it feels like we’re drowning in reboots. And a big part of our summer malaise has to do with the “copy of a copy of a copy” problem. But why is it so hard to create a new hero who gets some traction? I think…

io9 editor Annalee Newitz in Melbourne, Australia this Thursday!

It’s the very last stop on my book tour, and of course it’s in the fine city of Melbourne, Victoria. I’m discussing my book, Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, at the Wheeler Centre on July 4, from 6:15-7:15. Come out and say hi! The event is free, but bookings…

Bummer: Bad Molly Kills 1, Ruins Concert For 100+ Others

A bad batch of MDMA powder is blamed for the death of one concertgoer in Washington state, while more than a hundred others reportedly overdosed on what turned out to be a potent cocktail of LSD, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA—the same mix that made Ecstasy popular 20 years ago.

How to Burn Bridges With Awful Friends

Every now and then you realize that one of your family friends is an awful person. It may have been the Paula Deen case bringing some secret racists into the open. Or the Supreme Court’s recognition of gay marriage getting the homophobes out of their closet. Here are some tips to cut them out of…

Beloved Extinct Tortoise “Lonesome George” Stuffed For Museum Display

When the humongous Galápagos tortoise known as “Lonesome George” died in 2012, the last of his particular species died too. Now the American Museum of Natural History has the chance to display the taxidermied tortoise so kids can learn about creatures forever lost to time.