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This is hands down the most breathtaking version of Curiosity’s descent we’ve seen yet (Updated)

Drop whatever you’re doing and watch this. A few days ago, NASA released the full-resolution video of the Curiosity rover touching down on the surface of Mars. It’s absolutely beautiful, but the images were only captured at about four frames per second, resulting in clear but choppy footage. That’s where this video comes in. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-land-on-mars-5936921…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Watching reruns can actually help restore willpower

Time to break out the DVDs! New findings out of SUNY Buffalo suggest that watching summer repeats of your favorite TV show may actually be good for you. Ever since psychologists discovered that willpower was a finite mental resource, people have been looking for ways to tap into and restore it. Now, in a study…

Television Michael Ann Dobbs

This Coffee Shop Just Wants Everyone To Stop Instagramming Already

Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco had something of a problem with loud customers being all “hipstery” and annoying the neighbors, so they posted a notice kindly asking hipsters to shut the hell up. Only a few days later, the sign had to be amended to include another forbidden act which had suddenly become popular:…

Tech News Eric Limer

This Is the Coolest Solar Energy Generator You’ve Ever Seen

Solar panels are a great way to generate sustainable electricity. They’re not as great at looking pretty. This spherical-lens solar energy generator designed by André Broessel, on the other hand, is strikingly sleek. By using a ball lens, and positioning it just right, Broessel was able to create a generator that’s not only awesome-looking, but…

Tech News Eric Limer

These jellyfish photos are some of the most gorgeous underwater images we’ve seen in ages

We’ve featured photographer Alexander Semenov‘s work before. At the time, we called the Russian biologist’s images perhaps the most beautiful undersea photographs we’d ever seen. https://gizmodo.com/perhaps-the-most-beautiful-undersea-photography-weve-ev-5877674 Semenov has been busy since we last checked in with him, adding to his ever-growing “Underwater Experiments” series. For the last several months, he’s been churning out gorgeous views…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The only time it pays to be stabbed repeatedly happens to be during sex

What if every time you had sex, you had to agree to let your partner stab you first — would it be worth the trade-off? While you’re mulling that over, consider this: in some species of hermaphrodite sea slug, the trade-off is flipped, with some slugs enduring the unpleasantries of sex in the hope of…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Ants Have Been Using Internet Algorithms For Millions of Years

Mankind has been able to accomplish some pretty impressive things, but some of them were around long before we figured them out. Ants, for instance, hunt for food in a way that’s basically the same as the Internet’s Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and they were doing it long before the Internet was around. It all…

Tech News Eric Limer

Continuum renewed for second season. Now when will the U.S. get it?

Canada’s time travel cop show Continuum is set for a second season, so we may actually get some resolution on the insane cliffhanger the show left us with. According to the Showcase channel, the show will have a 13-episode second season (up from 10 episodes for its first season) in 2013. This is great news…

Television Charlie Jane Anders

Your Smartphone Is Worth Over $1,000 in Traditional Gadgets

Your smartphone can do a lot, but how much would you have to pay to get that same kind of functionality out of traditional, single-purpose gadgets? The Next Web did the math on it, and the answer is: A lot. If you were to buy gadgets to replace all of your phone’s built-in features (a…

Gadgets Eric Limer

Why you should be watching Hulu’s creepy deal-with-the-devil series The Booth at the End

A father whose child is dying of leukemia. A Catholic nun who no longer hears God speaking to her. An elderly woman whose husband is suffering from Alzheimer’s. A man whose only ambition is to date a centerfold model. Each of these people in the Hulu series The Booth at the End wishes for something…

Television Lauren Davis

Crowdfund interplanetary warfare, a voice-activated computer, and a surreal short by Jodorowsky’s son

Adan Jodorowsky wants to take you on a magical tour through mythical Miami where a husband searches for his wife’s lost voice. A voice activated home computer lets you live out your Star Trek computer fantasies, sans Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. A moleskin sketchbook teaches you how to draw comics — or at least improve your proportions…

io9 Lauren Davis

Would You Ride This Weird Foot-Powered Bike Thing in Public?

“Ride” might not even be the right verb here, because the “rider” is strapped in and sort of hangs from the frame. In any case, this contraption, called the Fliz Bike, is a prototype intended to make biking more maneuverable for urban environments. It may succeed at that, but it just looks weird, partly in…

Tech News Eric Limer

Dropbox Just Enabled 2-Step Verification, You Should Go Turn It On

Not too long ago, Dropbox was the victim of a security breach, and as a result, they said they’d cook up a 2-step verification system for the service. Now it’s here, and you should go turn if on if you keep anything of value in your Dropbox, or even if you don’t. To turn the…

Privacy & Security Eric Limer

The Oatmeal’s Tesla Museum campaign has totally obliterated its fundraising goal

Last week, we told you about The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman’s mission to purchase the land, laboratory and foundation beneath what was once Nikola Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower, and to erect a museum in Tesla’s honor. At the time, Inman was gunning to raise $850,000 (to be matched dollar-for-dollar by a grant from New York State)…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

EcoXPower Will Charge Your Phone And Keep the Lights On While You Bike

Making use of pedal-power to charge your phone or power headlights isn’t a brand new biking technology, but the EcoXPower brings something new to the table by letting you do both of those simultaneously. Touting itself as the first gadget with this kind of multi-tasking power, the EcoXPower has two main parts. First is the…

Gadgets Eric Limer

Bill Nye: “Creationism is not Appropriate for Children”

If the denial of evolution is holding society back, what can be done about it? According to Bill Nye, the answer lies in cutting our losses, favoring science education in our youth over stagnant arguments with benighted adults. Here, Nye makes the astute observation that those who opt to deny evolution elect to live in…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

NASA discovers 100 million year old dinosaur footprints in its backyard

Let’s face it: the words “NASA,” “space” and “dinosaur” don’t go together nearly as often as they should, which is why everyone is so excited over the footprint pictured here. Recently discovered on the grounds of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, experts say the massive footprint was made by an armored, plant-eating…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Could These Patented Smart Gloves Be a Google Glass Peripheral?

As if Google’s cyber-glasses weren’t sci-fi enough, the search giant is also apparently looking into cyber-gloves. The patent “Seeing with your hand” has been granted to Google, and could be the beginning of a future Glass peripheral. The patent outlines a glove with a camera on the fingertip, with gyroscopes and accelerometers built into the…

Tech News Eric Limer

How Facebook Design Is Tricking You Into Sharing Info

You already know that Facebook and privacy don’t really get along, but many “improvements” to the service are making it easier and easier to share everything without even knowing. Avi Charkham rounded a bunch of these tricks up over at TechCrunch, and they’re as subtle as they are sketchy. Some of the changes seem to…

Social Media Eric Limer

How Science Saved a Dream That ‘War of the Worlds’ Ruined

War of the Worlds deserved the splash it made when it first came out, from both a dramatic and scientific point of view. It did, however, wreck my youthful ideas of space travel. Fortunately, science has recuperated them. I learned about the legend of War of the Worlds well before I ever heard the plot.…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

This is hands down the most breathtaking version of Curiosity’s descent we’ve seen yet (Updated)

Watching reruns can actually help restore willpower

This Coffee Shop Just Wants Everyone To Stop Instagramming Already

This Is the Coolest Solar Energy Generator You’ve Ever Seen

These jellyfish photos are some of the most gorgeous underwater images we’ve seen in ages

The only time it pays to be stabbed repeatedly happens to be during sex

Ants Have Been Using Internet Algorithms For Millions of Years

Continuum renewed for second season. Now when will the U.S. get it?

Your Smartphone Is Worth Over $1,000 in Traditional Gadgets

Why you should be watching Hulu’s creepy deal-with-the-devil series The Booth at the End

Crowdfund interplanetary warfare, a voice-activated computer, and a surreal short by Jodorowsky’s son

Would You Ride This Weird Foot-Powered Bike Thing in Public?

Dropbox Just Enabled 2-Step Verification, You Should Go Turn It On

The Oatmeal’s Tesla Museum campaign has totally obliterated its fundraising goal

EcoXPower Will Charge Your Phone And Keep the Lights On While You Bike

Bill Nye: “Creationism is not Appropriate for Children”

NASA discovers 100 million year old dinosaur footprints in its backyard

Could These Patented Smart Gloves Be a Google Glass Peripheral?

How Facebook Design Is Tricking You Into Sharing Info

How Science Saved a Dream That ‘War of the Worlds’ Ruined

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