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Mars Orbiters Survive Unprecedented Encounter With Comet Siding Spring

Yesterday, comet Siding Spring hurled past Mars at half the distance between the Earth and moon, bringing a massive cloud of dust along with it. To protect its space-based assets, space agencies employed precautionary measures, and they appear to have worked. https://gizmodo.com/martian-robots-brace-for-close-encounter-with-comet-sid-1648159011 Top image: NASA. The comet made its closest approach to Mars at 2:27…

Skype Lets You Send Doodles Now (If You’re on Windows Phone)

Skype’s latest update includes a new drawing feature, so you can send your friends doodles while you video chat them. The feature is debuting on Windows Phone, and Skype hasn’t announced any plans to bring it to iOS and Android. Last week, Skype launched Skype Qik, a video messaging app that took a cue from…

17 Things You Can Do in OS X Yosemite That You Couldn’t Do in Mavericks

If you installed OS X Yosemite at the end of last week then you’ve no doubt been busy exploring its various tools and features. Here are 17 new things you can do with the software, from hiding the traces of your Web browsing to recording screen activity on an iPad. 1. Search smarter Spotlight isn’t…

You can already buy the TARDIS’ latest look

Well, that was quick. This past weekend’s episode of Doctor Who,Flatline, saw The Doctor’s timeship display a new ability to protect itself from imminent destruction – Siege Mode, which turned the TARDIS into a teeny, nigh on invincible Gallifreyan cube. Now you can buy a Siege Mode TARDIS of your very own! https://gizmodo.com/this-year-doctor-who-is-built-around-a-character-arc-1648044673 The replica…

The Garcia Effect Nitpicks A Clockwork Orange So You Don’t Have To

The most famous scene in the film A Clockwork Orange is the one in which Alex DeLarge goes through a brutal conditioning process to give him an aversion to violence. But aversion conditioning is not as simple as that, and the Garcia Effect shows why. Conditioned Responses A Clockwork Orange doesn’t have heroes, but it…

Report: Chinese Authorities Are Now Targeting iCloud Users

Right on the heels of the iPhone 6 launch, Chinese authorities are now reportedly extending the Great Firewall to include iCloud services. That includes the iMessages, Contacts, and Photos of any of its citizens that own an iPhone. In other words, China’s government could be tracking their every move. This is scary but not altogether…

It’s io9’s Halloween Costume Show! What Are You Wearing?

Different Doctor Who characters converging from all of space-time, the finest set of costumes in all of Westeros, and more are all on io9’s Halloween Costume Show! Come add yours to the mix. Whether they’re still in progress or just waiting for the right moment in the season, post pictures of your Halloween costumes (please…

Can You Possibly Be Ready For My Little Pony: The Movie?!

It doesn’t matter whether you are or not, because it’s coming in 2017. The film will be made and released by Hasbro’s new Allspark Pictures label, which is also doing the live-action Jem and the Holograms movie. Hmm… can anyone say “Hasbro Cinematic Universe”? (I kid, I kid.) According to Variety: Hasbro Studios will take…

Here’s How the New Gmail App Will Finally Tame Your Inboxes

Email is the bane of my existence. Trying to keep all my inboxes up to date and organized often feels like a full-time job. I’ve tried a couple of email clients now and nothing seems to work just the way I want it, but this leaked view of Gmail’s Lollipop makeover, first spotted by Android…

The World’s Largest Battery-Electric Vehicle Is This Articulated Bus

If when you think of electric vehicles you picture tiny lightweight cars designed to maximize their battery life, BYD Motors is about to blow your mind. At the recent 2014 American Public Transportation Association Expo in Houston, the company revealed a new articulated bus that it’s claiming is the world’s largest battery electric vehicle—unless the…

You still have two days if you want to suggest a name for the site where the Philae lander will touch down on Comet 67P/CG. (Currently, the site is simply called Site J.) The only rules are that the name can’t be a person, and it should include a brief explanation on why it would…

Captain Boomerang Is One Stylish Boomerang Thrower On Arrow

Check out the first look at Spartacus’ Nick Tarabay as long-time Flash rogue Captain Boomerang, who will be making his inaugural appearance on Arrow later this season! (Don’t worry, he’s already slated to come to The Flash series, too). For a dude carrying multiple boomerangs on him, he’s looking dapper as hell. Clearly he’s modeled…

Laser physicists from Australia have built a reversible tractor beam capable of retrieving tiny particles. It’s nowhere near as strong as the beams portrayed in scifi, but it’s the first long-distance optical tractor beam capable of moving particles one fifth of a millimeter in diameter a distance of up to 20cm. Scaled up, it could…

5 Ways to Hide From Common Surveillance Tech

We may not be in a total surveillance state yet, but thanks to the FBI’s insane new facial recognition system, a 1984-esque reality doesn’t seem quite so far away. Fortunately, scientists and designers alike are hard at work building counter surveillance solutions to ease (and hide) our worried minds. Some are complex, others wildly simple,…

This Experiment Shows We’re Low On Good Samaritans And High On Irony

How likely are you to stop and help a stranger? Do you think that would change if the ethos you subscribe to is all about helping others? Here’s an experiment that tested that very idea. In 1973, a series of young Princeton students were sent across campus to give an important talk. Some of the…

A Timeline for your next 6 years of Comic Book Movies (so far)

The past few weeks have been kind of crazy for Comic book movie announcements – it can be hard to keep up with who’s putting out what, and when. Comics Alliance have put together this convenient time-line of all the latest Comic Book Movies so you can plan your Cinema trips well in advance. The…

Who Will Be X-Men‘s Apocalypse? Plus Revealing Game of Thrones Photos!

There are a ton of new Interstellar details. Get a good look at most of the Avengers crew. New reports on Pacific Rim and How to Train Your Dragon reveal what’s being planned for those franchises. Plus a major Grimm spoiler from its star, and what’s next for the Queen siblings on Arrow. Top image:…

Kindle Voyage Review: The Best E-Reader Lots of Money Can Buy

For the last week, I’ve been reading off of a Kindle e-reader that somehow costs twice as much as a brand new Kindle Fire HD tablet. What a world! And while I still don’t know if the Kindle Voyage is worth $200 (or $290 for the 3G model) I do know that it’s the best…

Watch classic album covers come to life in this cool music video

Mayokero is the first song of the album Acowpella Beatbox by Israeli artist Roy Kafri. The music video—directed by Vania Heymann, a second year student in Bezalel School of Art and Design—is brilliant. It takes classic album covers and animates them to sing along the song in a completely seamless way. Roy Kafri is an…

Comet C/2013 A1, known as Siding Spring, passes Mars, just yesterday. In fact, it passed closer to Mars than any comet has ever passed by Earth in recorded history—so scientists are excited to see what the craft orbiting Mars made of it. [SEN/Damian Peach]