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Twitter Stats, Apple Dreams, and Other Stories We Didn’t Post

So much news passes before our collective eyes every day that we couldn’t possibly cover it all. Mostly because much of it isn’t worth covering! But here are a some borderline tidbits we passed on, just in case. The Most Boringest Apple Patent in the Land Some Apple patents make us thrill at the possibilities…

Tech News Brian Barrett Nov 10

Deep sea cephalopods can switch between transparent or opaque for better camouflage

Cephalopods continue to astound us on a daily basis. New research has shown that deep sea cephalopods not only have incredible camouflage powers, but can switch between being transparent and opaque at will. For sea creatures, the best type of camouflage depends greatly on the conditions and the depth. When it’s comparatively light, transparency is…

io9 Tim Barribeau Nov 10

Sony’s CEO Says Every TV It Makes Loses Money

Sony’s made a lot of money selling TVs over the years. So it’s kind of a shock to the system to hear its CEO Howard Stringer say that it needs to completely overhaul the way it does business in televisions. Stringer said at a breakfast hosted by The Wall Street Journal that companies had backed…

Tech News Kyle Wagner Nov 10

An Eye-Popping Look at the Making of Terra Nova‘s Cities and Dinosaurs

The computer generated effects on Fox’s Terra Nova are some of the most ambitious ever created — especially for a weekly TV show. But you probably didn’t realize quite how much of the sets and backdrops on the show were created using CG. We’ve got an exclusive look at the effects reel created by international…

Television Charlie Jane Anders Nov 10

Why the microbes in cow stomachs could help make biofuel

Last month I was lucky enough to visit one of the biggest genomics labs in the world. At the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, CA, huge rooms full of genome sequencing machines work 24/7 to crunch the codes that create life. And the research here, funded by the US Department of Energy, has…

io9 Annalee Newitz Nov 10

Create your own Harry Potter epilogue and win the final Deathly Hallows DVD

Do you dislike J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter epilogue? Think you can do better? Prove it to us with your own original epilogue, and we’ll reward you with your own Deathly Hallows: Part 2 DVD! Write, draw, paint, photoshop, or film your own take on Harry Potter should have ended (in the epilogue) and you could…

io9 Meredith Woerner Nov 10

New Athlete Tracking Technology Could Lead to Artificial Sportscasters

They’re slowly taking over our world, but the one skillset that robots and computers haven’t mastered yet is sportscasting. Keeping track of every single player on a basketball court is a real challenge for an artificial intelligence, but researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland may have developed a system that could…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski Nov 10

Will Ray Kurzweil make Roland Emmerich’s Singularity movie even more unrealistic than 2012?

Roland Emmerich has pushed bad science to its limit before, most notably with the amazing 2012. But for his upcoming movie Singularity, he’s actually enlisting the help of Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near, to help him revise the script. On the one hand, this means the movie will accurately reflect Kurzweil’s theories…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Nov 10

This Deep-Frying Portable Grill Is a Jack of All Noms

Like a swiss army knife for epicureans, the collapsible Blacktop 360 grill includes all the cooking surfaces you’ll need to prepare breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everything in between. There’s even an optional cutting board for something called veg-e-tables. Surrounding a deep fryer with a 20 oz. capacity you’ll find a griddle for frying up breakfast…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski Nov 10

American Horror Story teaches us teenage mass murderers deserve sympathy too

After the insanely paced two-part “Halloween” episode, American Horror Story slowed things down by trudging its characters through a slough of despond. Pretty much everyone was tapped by the shit stick this week — ruining young love, work reputations and pregnancies along the way. We also got to meet the Pig Man, and started to…

io9 Meredith Woerner Nov 10

Watch a Guy Magically Balance 3000 Coins on Top of a Single Dime

I don’t know how this guy managed to build a 3,118 coin coin tower on top of a single dime on the corner of a table but boy did he do it. It took him 7 hours, over 200 dollars in change plus some presumably insane weed smoking to pull it off. The final tally…

Tech News Casey Chan Nov 10

See electron tweezers at work

We already have optical tweezers, which allow tiny quantities of matter to be held and manipulated by beams of light. With electron tweezers we might be able to grab hold of single atoms. A team observing how small quantities of metal behaved as they were transitioning from solid to liquid noticed something funny happened when…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Nov 10

Watch the Menacing Asteroid’s Trajectory As It Swished By Earth

How close did asteroid 2005 YU55 get to Earth? Not close enough to endanger our civilization, but close enough to take some fun videos. Like this short film of its trajectory as it passed by recorded by NASA Swift’s satellite. https://gizmodo.com/this-asteroid-is-getting-way-too-close-to-earth-5855571 Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope started to track the asteroid just right after its closest approach…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz Nov 10

This Hillis plot will humble you with its representation of humanity’s true place in nature

You’re looking at an artistic representation of what is known as a Hillis plot — a visual snapshot of the evolutionary relationships connecting Earth’s various life forms. Evolutionary biologists would call this a big, circular phylogenetic tree. The Hillis Plot featured here was transposed onto a cross-sectional image of an English oak tree by artist…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Nov 10

iOnRoad for Android: When Phones in Cars Make Them Safer, Not Deathtraps

Typically when we’re talking about using your smartphone while driving, it’s either for maps or because it’s making your car into a death trap. iOnRoad is a pretty darn good attempt at using your phone to make you safer. What’s it do? It’s an app that uses your phone’s native camera and sensors to tell…

Tech News Kyle Wagner Nov 10

Are There Nukes Near You?

There are 5,113 nuclear weapons in the US right now, Mother Jones reports. That’s enough to destroy the entire planet many, many, many, many times over. And then there are the country’s aging nuclear plants. Are any close by? This terrific map by MoJo shows how littered our continent is with nuclear stuff—active weapons ready…

Tech News Sam Biddle Nov 10

iOS Doesn’t Need More Stupid Gestures

How many gestures can Apple implement in iOS? Apparently not enough! These new gestures, detailed in a recent patent may end up in your iPad or iPhone in the future. Seriously Apple—NO. The first patented gesture is “Swipe and Hold,” designed to allow users to navigate faster through a series of photos, instead of having…

Tech News Jesus Diaz Nov 10

Six Tools to Simulate a 2011-2012 NBA Season of Your Own

So today represented a pretty important typically uneventful and depressing day for the ongoing NBA labor negotiations. Commissioner Stern and the players’ union are going to meet again at noon tomorrow, but talks haven’t been very productive, and I need some goddamn NBA basketball. Here are some proactive ways you can get your NBA fix,…

Tech News Kyle Wagner Nov 10

Why Are We Still Buying Ringtones?

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. $2.1 billion worth of ringtones were sold this year? Who still buys these things? Why? I thought we all had our phones permanently set to silent. $2.1 BILLION?! Peter Kafka used the Gartner stat in an All Things D post to highlight the slow rate at which…

Tech News Adrian Covert Nov 10

Yes, Kickstarter Is Terrible. It’s Also Everything Great About Technology

Kickstarter is full of awful, ill conceived, downright dumb ideas. So is the internet. So is the universe. But it’s also festooned with crazy-good thinking, ingenuity, and imagination. It’s fun and unfettered. It’s the opposite of the tech industry. http://gawker.com/5858118/end-online-panhandling-forever Here’s how the technology we use ends up being created: Companies conceive of products using…

Tech News Sam Biddle Nov 10

Twitter Stats, Apple Dreams, and Other Stories We Didn’t Post

Deep sea cephalopods can switch between transparent or opaque for better camouflage

Sony’s CEO Says Every TV It Makes Loses Money

An Eye-Popping Look at the Making of Terra Nova‘s Cities and Dinosaurs

Why the microbes in cow stomachs could help make biofuel

Create your own Harry Potter epilogue and win the final Deathly Hallows DVD

New Athlete Tracking Technology Could Lead to Artificial Sportscasters

Will Ray Kurzweil make Roland Emmerich’s Singularity movie even more unrealistic than 2012?

This Deep-Frying Portable Grill Is a Jack of All Noms

American Horror Story teaches us teenage mass murderers deserve sympathy too

Watch a Guy Magically Balance 3000 Coins on Top of a Single Dime

See electron tweezers at work

Watch the Menacing Asteroid’s Trajectory As It Swished By Earth

This Hillis plot will humble you with its representation of humanity’s true place in nature

iOnRoad for Android: When Phones in Cars Make Them Safer, Not Deathtraps

Are There Nukes Near You?

iOS Doesn’t Need More Stupid Gestures

Six Tools to Simulate a 2011-2012 NBA Season of Your Own

Why Are We Still Buying Ringtones?

Yes, Kickstarter Is Terrible. It’s Also Everything Great About Technology

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