Latest

Why do paper cuts hurt so much, and what do they have to do with lobsters?

As SciAm’s Ferris Jabr explains in the video up top, the short answer is: nociceptors. Many animals have these sensory neurons. Some animals have weird ones. Take naked mole rats, for example — NMRs have mutated sodium channels that limit physiologically “normal” nociceptor firing, thereby blunting sensations of pain. https://gizmodo.com/the-naked-mole-rat-cant-feel-pain-from-acid-burns-now-5868776 Similarly, humans with mutations in…

Watch the first episode of Bravest Warriors, from the creator of Adventure Time!

We’ve been waiting months — countless aeons of interstellar time! — to watch Bravest Warriors, the space adventure show created by Adventure Time’s Pendleton Ward. And now, not only is there a new comic book on the stands, but the first episode is live at Cartoon Hangover, the YouTube channel for Fred Seibert’s Frederator Studios.…

Parallels for Mac has been updated to run Windows 8. Retina Live Tiles, here we come!

These Beastly Klipsch Speakers Are Your Dealzmodo-Exclusive Deal of the Day

Airplay is the best way to get quality wireless audio into your home. Klipsch makes some fine-sounding Airplay products, including the G17 Airplay Speaker, which is packing some great internals. It’s got four speakers total: two 10-watt tractrix horn tweeters, and two 20-watt woofers. And since it’s an Airplay speaker, you don’t have to worry…

How Flavor Chemists Make Your Food So Addictively Good

If you eat processed foods — which most of us do — there’s a good chance you’ve tasted something that was designed by a flavor chemist. But getting pre-packaged foods to taste exactly the way they do is no easy task. It’s a process that requires everything from supertasting chemists to the sourcing of hundreds…

AT&T Reverses: You Can Use iPhone 5 FaceTime Without Wi-Fi (Updated)

After months of complaining, AT&T will now doing the right thing, unchaining customers with regular tiered data plans to use FaceTime on their LTE phones and iPads with nothing more than a cell signal. It’s good, but definitely not enough. AT&T says the change will take place within the next “8 to 10 weeks,” and…

The Americans: Awesome New Spy Series, or Homeland for Morons?

This first trailer for FX series The Americans has us scratching our heads. That’s a lot of good and a lot of bad crammed into one 30 second spot. The good news is, it’s starring Keri Russell (Felicity) and set in the 1980s, so that should be fun. The bad news is, it kind of…

Google Autocomplete Makes Wonderful Emo Poetry

Does it ever feel like the Google Search autocomplete is speaking to you? Or that there’s something a little less than random about the way the searches stack up? It’s like poetry, man. Google Poetics is a Tumblr of all the wonderful stanzas Google’s algorithm spews out. [Google Poetics—Thanks, Alyssa!]

Iran Tried to Shoot Down American Drone

This kind of thing is bad if you don’t want a war to start: last week, two Iranian fighter jets fired their machine guns at an American Predator drone in international airspace. The attack was kept quiet until right now. CNN reports that the drone was unarmed and conducting “routine maritime surveillance,” and that it…

No, Iron Man 3 did not just have a major rewrite

There’s a rumor going around that Iron Man 3 has hit a major creative snag. According to Roger Wardell, who frequently leaks Marvel Studios info on his Twitter account, the movie is undergoing a massive, last-minute rewrite: Wardell tweeted this back in September, but for some reason, his tweet is making the rounds in the…

NASA Dismantles the Last Traces of the Space Shuttle Program

When NASA cleans their garage, they always end up with the largest yard sale in the world. The giant platforms in the photo above are just part of the last shuttle-era equipment being removed from the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building. The VAB was created in the late 60s to assemble the entire Saturn…

Read Ken Liu’s amazing story that swept the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards

Ken Liu’s incredible story “Paper Menagerie” just became the first work of fiction to win all three of SF’s major awards: the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award. And we’re proud to be able to reprint the whole story, right here at io9. Here’s your chance to find out what all the excitement…

Memopads and Desk Organizers Were Meant To Be Together

Before you get too excited about this brilliant desk accessory that provides a place to jot notes while organizing your various writing implements, you need to know it has a very dark secret: it’s expensive. Like unjustifiably crazy expensive for what is essentially a stack of paper. After seeing it you have to wonder why…

When blind people hallucinate

There’s a relatively obscure medical condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. It happens to people who are either losing their sight, or completely blind. Suddenly, one day, they see vivid and detailed hallucinations. It’s been documented since the 1700s, and even today nobody is quite sure why it happens. Charles Bonnet, according to anyone who knew…

‘Perfect storm’ of geological factors make the Eastern U.S. more susceptible to strong earthquakes than previously thought

As if the folks out on America’s east coast don’t already have enough to worry about after the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy, it now looks like last year’s magnitude-5.8 earthquake in Virginia was no anomaly. According to a report presented this week at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting, the highly populated area around…

With a Smartphone Dock For a Heart, This Teddy Bear Will Terrorize Your Kids

If Teddy Ruxpin had tried harder to keep up with technology he wouldn’t have risen from the grave using proprietary digital cartridges. Instead, he’d have a smartphone dock embedded in his torso like this Japaese Cocolo Bear does. https://gizmodo.com/teddy-ruxpin-is-back-109304 Available sometime this month for about $62, Cocolo connects to almost any phone using its headphone…

11 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About James Bond

You don’t know all the secrets of James Bond. The swashbuckling, cocktail-sipping superspy has spent over 50 years as a cultural phenomenon, defeating plans for world destruction and riding on insane vehicles — and along the way, he’s had more than his fair share of weird stories and strange interludes. Now that he’s back in…

There’s now a Hulu Kids section, with 43 child-friendly, commercial-free channels. Barney! Spongebob! TV babysitting!

Red Marble: Unreal Portrait of the Sun Eclipsed By Earth

This beautiful, unreal portrait of the Sun was taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory as it was moving into its eclipse season: Twice a year, for three weeks near the vernal and autumnal equinox, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft moves into its eclipse season-a brief spell when Earth blocks its view of the sun…

Your Account Probably Wasn’t Hacked, Twitter Is Just Paranoid

If you got a password reset notice from Twitter last night or this morning, don’t worry, your account wasn’t hacked. When Twitter notices suspicious activity indicating that an account might have been compromised, it resets the password just to be on the safe side. That’s a good thing! But last night the system spazzed. According…