Latest

The best hour of science fiction television I’ve watched in forever

With the season finale of Person of Interest, this show has established itself as one of the best near-future science fiction series since Max Headroom. In a tense, multi-layered episode, we witness the transformation of two great minds: one belongs to the mad hacker Finch, and the other to his AI creation, the Machine. Spoilers…

What Space Does to Each of Your Five Senses

Commander of the International Space Station and awesome-stronaut Chris Hadfield just finished a weeklong series called “Senses in Space,” where he describes what spending a long time in space does to each of your perceptions. And apparently, space is generally pretty bad for you. In the following five videos, Hadfield talks about blurred vision, loss…

First image from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes changes everything

Apes on horses! Apes on horses! Apes on horses! Apes on horses! Matt Reeves (beloved director of Let Me In and Cloverfield) has been given the task of creating a sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Today Reeves revealed a glimpse of what’s to come via his Twitter feed. And it is…

Germany’s Post-World War I Scheme to Extract Gold from Water

In order to pay Germany’s staggering World War I reparations, one of the country’s greatest scientific minds created a plan to concentrate and remove gold from seawater. Fritz Haber, a Nobel Prize winner, went from creating chemical weapons to panning for gold in the ocean. But could this have worked? The Shadow of World War…

A Solar Eclipse Unlike Any You’ve Ever Seen

During a total solar eclipse, our view of the Sun’s disk is blocked entirely by the Moon. The Sun’s corona, however, remains very much in view – a roiling wreath of spellbinding atmospheric activity. The image above was captured by Czech photographer Miloslav Druckmüller on July 22, 2009, when the Moon blocked our star from…

11 Online Chat Cliches We Should All Agree to Stop Using

One of the many unbearable things about the internet is how we use certain words and phrases until they are completely void of any meaning at all. And, because it’s the internet, the most insufferable trends stick around long after they’re welcome. The thing is, the internet has a mob mentality, and we’re all culpable…

The short, ignominious life of n-rays

You’ve heard of x-rays and gamma rays, but you’ve probably never heard of n-rays. It’s not surprising. N-rays don’t exist. And yet there are multiple independently published papers claiming that they do. Learn how one scientist’s vision infected nearly everyone around him. Rene Blondlot was not stupid. He’d made an early measurement of the speed…

Browncoats Assemble: ABC really did pick up Joss Whedon’s SHIELD!

ABC has announced that they’ll be picking up Joss Whedon’s Agents of SHIELD. And already, the first bit of teaser footage has leaked and been hastily scrubbed from the internet. Here’s what we saw — plus a bunch of other upcoming TV shows, including Adult Swim’s frat-boy ghost comedy. UPDATE: NOW it’s official! ABC Agents…

Watching Your Brain Freak Out on a Scanner Calms You Down

People who observed their own brain activity using real-time fMRI feedback were better able to control and reduce their anxiety, a new study says. In a quirky new experiment, researchers at Yale University found that simply showing people what their anxious brains look like was enough to help those subjects lessen their anxiety. The participants…

Alaya Dawn Johnson is here answering your questions from 1-2 PM PST

This month, the io9 Book Club read Alaya Dawn Johnson’s incredible book The Summer Prince. Johnson will be here today, from 2-3 PM PST, to answer any questions you have about that novel, about her 1920s vampire novels, about YA fiction, or about fantasy and science fiction writing in general. https://gizmodo.com/the-io9-book-club-is-in-session-lets-talk-about-the-s-494062535 https://gizmodo.com/jazz-age-new-york-is-full-of-vampires-in-alaya-johnsons-5558974 She’ll be here…

Every Single Major League Baseball Game Is Your Deal of the Day

There are roughly 2400 baseball games in a season, but depending on your TV situation, you only get a small fraction of them. That sucks, especially if you’re not in your favored team’s home market. Maybe one day we’ll be able to order à la carte channels, but until then your best bet for watching…

This Sleek Briefcase Hides an Easy To Clean Portable Pet Potty

In what will surely lead to some wacky mixups at the office, Modko’s upcoming Shake looks like a stark white briefcase, though it’s actually a portable place for your pet to potty. But before you get completely disgusted, it seems like the folks at Modko have thought this one out. The worst part about your…

Google Drive Is Down (But How You Can Access Your Files Anyway) (Updated)

If you’re opening Google Drive to a blank screen and/or server error message, you’re not alone. Despite Google’s Apps Status Dashboard’s encouraging green dots, everyone we’ve spoken to seems to be running into the same problem. Fortunately, you can still access Google Drive from the desktop app and via mobile. The search box as well…

Apple’s Got a Huge Waiting List of Cops Who Need iPhones Cracked

It’s no secret that the police aren’t very good at breaking into encrypted iPhones, but they’ve been asking Apple for help. A lot of help. According to reports by CNET the government asks for so much help that the “please decrypt this iPhone for me” waiting list is at least seven weeks long. https://gizmodo.com/ios-encryption-is-so-good-not-even-the-nsa-can-hack-it-5934234 Law…

Who’s the best “innovation superhero”: Iron Man, or Batman?

Right now, Iron Man has the #1 movie in America. But is he the superhero who best exemplifies the inventive spirit of American science and engineering? Or is that Batman, whose Batsuit and nearly limitless supply of gadgets are a constant inspiration? Image via Salvation Ink. Over at the Washington Post’s innovation blog, they were…

OpenTable Is Secretly the Best Thing on the Internet

No one hates OpenTable. No one finds it small or inconsequential or twee, as so many modern startups or services can be. No one thinks it does a bad job, or that it treats its users as property or hostages. On an internet that takes no greater joy than in being the first (or millionth)…

An Interactive Map of Racist, Homophobic and Ableist Tweets in America

This is The Geography of Hate – a cartographical collection of every geotagged tweet in the continental U.S. between June 2012 and April 2013 in which the word “chink,” “gook,” “nigger,” “wetback,” “spic,” “dyke” “fag,” “homo,” “queer” or “cripple” was used in an explicitly negative way. Created by the datavisualization experts at Floating Sheep, the…

Amazon just released theCloud Drive Photos app for iOS, meaning iPhone users can finally manage their Cloud Drive photos on the go just like their Android brethren.

Did government scientists really create a secret quantum internet?

No, not really. But for two years, researchers at Los Alamos National Labs have been working on something they call network-centric quantum communications — and this could usher in the next generation of hyper-secure, scalable, and affordable quantum cryptographic techniques. We spoke to the lead researcher to find out more. Earlier this week, MIT’s Technology…

Philips Dimmable LED Lightning Review: So Much Light, So Little Juice

If it glows like, works like, and even dims like an incandescent, it must be an incandescent bulb, right? Wrong. The 8W Philips EnduraLED only draws a fifth of the power to produce the same warm illumination as the filament bulbs you’ve already got. What Is It? The light bulb that just eliminated your last…