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Three Steps You Can Take to Protect Yourself From Online Spying

The recent PRISM scandal has validated both the general public’s growing unease with federal law enforcement agencies, and many of the fringe element’s accusations about Big Brother’s online behavior. Whether or not it’s legal under the PATRIOT Act, just knowing that the government can rummage through your online life doesn’t sit well with many folks.…

William Fichtner is our new Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

We’ve seen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set photos of Megan Fox as April O’Neil and the titular turtles in their mo-cap suits, but who will be wearing Shredder’s mask? William Fichtner is stepping up to the villainous plate. http://morningspoilers.io9.com/tmnt-set-photos-of-megan-fox-500889734 It was revealed last month that Fichtner would appear in the film as an iconic TMNT…

Cyborg minds > cyborg bodies

When we think of cyborgs, we tend to think of the images we know from popular culture. But because movies and TV have to be visually entertaining, they tend to depict mainly the kind of cyborg upgrades that just look flashy – humans with robot arms and legs, prosthetics, etc. And of course, that kind…

The Greek gods play a wacky game to decide who will rule Olympus

When Max fills out an online personality test as a goof, the worst thing he expects to get is a computer virus. He doesn’t expect Hades, Greek god of the underworld, to show up in his living room—and he certainly expect Hades to be purple-skinned and four feet tall. Now Max is caught up in…

We’re going to need some giant robots when Pacific Rim meets Jaws

Just when you thought it was safe to go anywhere near the water, artist Matt Ferguson delivers this clever rendition of the classic Jaws poster with one of Pacific Rim’s kaiju. Fortunately, giant robots is precisely what this movie’s got. Ferguson is also the artist behind those amazing original series Star Trek movie posters we…

Exactly How the NSA Is Getting Away With Spying on US Citizens

The Guardian published a new batch of secret leaked FISA court and NSA documents yesterday, which detail the particulars of how government has been accessing Americans’ emails without a warrant, in violation of the Constitution. The documents lay bare fundamental problems with the ineffectual attempts to place meaningful limitations on the NSA’s massive surveillance program.…

The 1960s Batman theme song, as sung by actual bats

What if real bats sang the old Batman theme song? Well, their “Nana Nanas” would fall outside the range of human hearing. But Ulrich Seidel and his Bat-organ give us something close. Seidel reduced actual bat noises to human-audible frequencies, and then assigned the different bat notes to different keys on his keyboard (which he…

Chairs Designed By Little Kids Are Hideously Adorable

An eye for good design isn’t something you’re born with; you’ve got to learn it. But everyone has to start somewhere, and this is what it looks like when kids take their very first awkward stabs at furniture design. The results are sort of horrifyingly cute. The little experiment was orchestrated by Kingston University students…

Starfire talks Raven into a Girls’ Night Out on Teen Titans

This week in the world of cartoons, Adventure Time features five more graybles, Peter Parker and the Hulk swap brains, and Kaijudo returns for a second season. Tranformers Prime, TMNT, and Gravity Falls should be back next week. As always – minor spoilers ahead! Ultimate Spider-Man – “The Incredible Spider-Hulk” You’re the Hulk – one…

Wozniak on Jobs’ Biopic: ‘Young Steve Wasn’t a Saint’

The first trailer of the upcoming Steve Jobs’ biopic starring Ashton Kutcher is here. I asked Steve Wozniak—close friend of Steve Jobs and Apple co-founder—about it. Here’s what he said: About Jobs’ portrayal I have a little bug in me that says that this movie will portray Steve as a saint who was ignored, rather…

The Math Behind Cicadas’ Bizarre 17-Year Life Cycle

It makes sense that an animal might hid away in the ground while it’s maturing, but 17 years is a long, seemingly random amount of time. But it’s not like cicadas picked a number out of a hat and were stuck with it. There’s a something specific about that number, and numberphile is sussing it…

Helena Bonham-Carter is trading Bellatrix LeStrange’s black magic for something brighter as the fairy godmother in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella. She joins Lily James as the will-be princess, Cate Blanchett as her stepmother, and Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden as the prince.

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Toe Jam (NSFW)

If we’re going to keep up the hypocritical charade of, on one hand, expecting pruitanical censorship of human anatomy while, on the other, selling 8-year-olds Juicy Couture then we might as well put those silly black bars to good use. Just look at what the Brighton Port Authority (BPA the band, not BPA the BPA)…

Duke Ellington: Jack The Bear

This is gonna be a classy Friday night. You don’t have to groove to Duke Ellington all the time, but when you do you should turn on Jack The Bear. This chart showcases Jimmy Blanton (Jack the bear…get it?), a bassist who at 22 brought the band to a new level in the early 1940s.…

This Week’s Top Comedy Video: Much Ado About Cast Interviews

Let’s face it; Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing probably won’t find the same billion-dollar box office success of The Avengers. But if this contribution of totally real cast interviews from co-stars BriTANick is any indication, it’ll be a whole heck of a lot funnier. The rest of this week’s comedy videos, including poker night,…

Most Beautiful Items: June 15 – June 21, 2013

It’s the longest day of the year, so I don’t really know what you’re doing not being outside right now. But since you’re here, take a moment to check out some of the best pieces of art, architecture, and design, we found this week. Artists Are 3D-Printing a Room That Looks Like An Alien Cathedral…

What’s the greatest story ever told about robot consciousness?

We may or may not find an extraterrestrial civilization in your lifetime — but that doesn’t mean we won’t encounter a different sort of consciousness. Robots could soon be the strangers in our midst, and science fiction has prepared us. What’s the best story for understanding how robots might think? Please share your favorite story…

Do You Have Digital Photos of Yourself As a Kid?

Who doesn’t love baby pictures? It’s fun and nostalgic to remember what you were like as a kid. But do you keep your baby pictures stored on your computer or are they squirreled away in a yellowing album in the basement of your parents house? We started sharing some of our baby pictures in our…

Deaf Boy Hears Dad’s Voice for First Time Following Brain Stem Implant

Deaf since birth, three-year-old Grayson Clamp was born missing his cochlear nerves. Recently, however, Grayson became the first child from the U.S. to receive an experimental auditory brain stem implant. This video shows his reaction upon hearing his dad’s voice for the first time. The cochlear nerves are the bundles of axons responsible for carrying…

Spend your weekend teaching a computer to recognize art

The internet was originally used to help academics exchange information. It has been abused ever since. To honor that lasting achievement, here’s how you can misuse a site that was designed to help people identify written characters, to draw cat pictures instead. Shapecatcher is a site meant to help people identify unicode characters such as…