Latest

Gelatin made with human DNA will make snacks safer

Gelatin is an essential ingredient in gummy snacks and marshmallows, not to mention vaccines and drug capsules. Manufacturing it is a messy, inconsistent process, but now scientists can create perfect gelatin with human DNA. The only obstacle seems to be our own squeamishness. In 2011, scientists in Beijing reported on a method of creating large…

Why haven’t the Wombles conquered America?

Anybody who’s spent any decent amount of time in the U.K. knows the Wombles — like little furry cousins of the Borrowers, they live in Wimbledon Common and collect the garbage that we humans leave behind. The popular book series by Elizabeth Beresford spawned a pretty iconic TV series and more than one major pop…

Priceline is buying Kayak for $1.8 billion. They better not screw it up.

The Very Best of the Disney/Star Wars Mash-Up Art

You may have heard, Disney bought Lucasfilm last week and promised a Star Wars: Episode VII by 2015. https://gizmodo.com/newly-merged-disney-lucasfilm-plans-new-star-wars-films-5957058 This means just one thing: tons and tons and tons of Disney/Star Wars mash-up art. And some of it is pretty damn clever. Check out the best of what the internet has to offer. Via Will…

This Credit Card Costs $100,000 and an Imbecile’s Soul

This credit card is made of gold and diamonds. Called Visa Infinite, you have to pay $100,000 to the Russian ‘Sberbank in order to get it. You also need to be a complete imbecile. A very rich imbecile, but a complete imbecile nonetheless. The card itself costs $65,000 to make. The other $35,000 get deposited…

Fly Far, Far, Away for Free

In the words of a great man, “Winter is coming.” And though, given the current rate of climate change, that may or may not be true, the impending fall gloom is definitely reason enough to get out of town. Lucky for you, we’re giving away a $150 gift certificate to Jet Blue – perfect for…

Canada Welcomes a New Member To Its Horned Dinosaur Family

After being discovered and misidentified back in 1958, the fossil remains of a massive twenty foot long, two-ton horned dinosaur found in Alberta have finally been acknowledged as a new species. Although there’s no evidence, scientists* speculate that Xenoceratops foremostensis fled north from what is now the United States 80 million years ago after being…

The Pickup Truck of Bikes Laughs at Handlebar Baskets

The next time you ride your bike to the grocery store and discover you can’t stock up on discount watermelons because of your wimpy basket, you’ll wish you had the cargo carrying capacity of the Donky. It’s designed for hauling full-on golden labs, not wimpy Toto-like terriers. The bike’s ample cargo capacity is made possible…

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…