Technology

Are Humans Turning Into Gods?

Our friend Jason Silva—writer, filmmaker and founding host/producer of Current TV—is making a new documentary celebrating humans reaching their ultimate potential, the inexorable evolution that is turning us into gods. He’s quite optimistic about it. I’m not so sure-JD “First we build the tools, then they build us” – Marshall McLuhan Turning Into Gods is,…

Tech News Jason Silva Nov 29

Bioencryption can store almost a million gigabytes of data inside bacteria

A new method of data storage that converts information into DNA sequences allows you to store the contents of an entire computer hard-drive on a gram’s worth of E. coli bacteria…and perhaps considerably more than that. The idea of storing data inside bacteria has been around for about a decade. Even very simple bacteria have…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Nov 26

Nuclear Holocaust Really Is The Sum Of All Fears

The specter of nuclear holocaust has haunted humanity for more than 60 years now. Here are some of the reasons that a nuclear nightmare is the worst one of all. Last month I wrote about five times we almost nuked ourselves by accident. I received more emails in response to that article than anything I’ve…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Nov 25

Why do American and Japanese people have such different attitudes towards robots?

Japanese and American attitudes towards robots have been different for over half a century. In a fascinating interview with robot collector Justin Pinchot over at Collectors Weekly, discover a few possible reasons why. Photo by Justin Pinchot, from his collection. Collectors Weekly asks Pinchot about American attitudes to robots and he responds: The worry was…

io9 Annalee Newitz Nov 25

It’s a Little Weird When Your Family Gets Geeky

As many prepare to trudge home for Thanksgiving, an old dread is in our hearts. Our poor, confused parents and their malfunctioning routers that need fixing. But maybe even scarier? Now they’re starting to embrace the same tech we do. One of the perkiest perks of having a tech savvy spawn is the comfort of…

Tech News Sam Biddle Nov 24

Incredible panoramic, time-lapse views of plants, carnival construction, and Mars

There’s a cool new bit of photographic magic from the same group of imaging geeks who created the program GigaPan, which creates perfect panoramic photographs with the help of a robot-controlled tripod. Now you can see panoramas change over time. GigaPan creators Randy Sargent and Illah Nourbakhsh, formerly of NASA, perfected the GigaPan software at…

io9 Annalee Newitz Nov 23

A camera that can see around walls

In ridiculously futuristic technology news, engineers at MIT have come up with a camera that can record things outside its direct line of vision. It does this by outpacing the speed of light. Nothing ruins a photo like a solid wall standing between the camera and the object that it needs to photograph. Cameras depend…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Nov 18

Kites Are Much Cooler When Affixed with LED Lights and Fireworks

Kites? Kites aren’t that cool. You know what’s cool? Kites with freaking LED lights and fireworks attached to them—that’s cool! And that’s what’s in this video: a bunch of cool kites with cool lights and fireworks galore. Enjoy. Here’s more information, courtesy the video’s YouTube description: These amazing kites are flying over the Caspian Sea…

Gadgets Matt Cherette Nov 10

DARPA developing a robotic pilot for their flying car

Today the US Department of Defense announced that they would be collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to develop an autonomous copilot for DARPA’s upcoming “helicopter jeep” project. Yes, the military is developing a helicopter jeep. Here’s the scoop on DARPA’s flying car from CMU: https://gizmodo.com/darpa-takes-a-crack-at-the-flying-car-5519819 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar Nov 9

Liquid radio — Could temporary jets of seawater be used as functioning radio antennas?

Apparently so: as PopSci reports, “communications are vital” for vessels at sea, but deck space for “all the large antennas necessary for long-range (and often encrypted) communications” can be hard to come by. “So U.S. Navy R&D lab SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) engineered a clever scheme to turn the ocean’s most abundant resource…

io9 Geoff Manaugh - BLDGBLOG Nov 6

This is the city of Sydney morphed into a male and female

One hundred and sixty thousand citizens of Sydney, Australia had their faces photographed in order to make one set of composite faces for the city. See the faces of the city’s neighborhoods below. The face project was conducted at local street fairs. Sydney residents who participated filled out a consent form and had their pictures…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Nov 6

A live, updating list of problems voters have had with voting in 2010

Our Vote Live is a website where the Election Protection Coalition logs every complaint or problem that people report with voting, from finding their polling place to operating weird voting machines. It’s fascinating to watch all the problems roll in. Already, there are almost 2,000 problems, and it isn’t even election day yet. Check it…

io9 Annalee Newitz Nov 1

Coffin technologies that protect you from being buried alive

In the eighteenth century, rumors swirled about people accidentally buried alive when they lapsed into a deathlike state from cholera. As a result, the safety coffin was invented. Here’s how it worked. From those eighteen century fears there arose a thriving cottage industry of inventors who promised to protect the seemingly-dead from being prematurely interred.…

io9 Annalee Newitz Oct 28

Water plus graphene will soon equal computers

Graphene was hailed as a miracle substance. Easy to make and cheap to acquire, it could help with anything from DNA sequencing to power production. Now, thanks to water and physics, it could soon be turned into a computer. https://gizmodo.com/sequencing-dna-just-got-easier-5594345 https://gizmodo.com/three-recent-breakthroughs-that-will-change-your-comput-5283284 Graphene has a lot of incredibly useful properties. It’s just carbon, meaning you can…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Oct 26

New technology allows us to draw, erase, and redraw wires on circuitboards

Proving that our childhood years spent with crayola firmly in hand haven’t gone to waste, new research from University of Wisconsin-Madison uses a scanning probe microscope to draw and erase conducting nanowires. The researchers put three-atom-thick layers of lanthanum-aluminum-oxide on top of strontium-titanium-oxide, which then forms an “electron gas” between the layers. The tip of…

io9 Tim Barribeau Oct 20

Teen to Plead Guilty to Staging Bomb Hoaxes For Lulz

A North Carolina teenager has agreed to plead guilty to a federal conspiracy charge for phoning in hoax bomb threats to colleges, middle schools and FBI offices around the country for the amusement of a live internet audience. Ashton Lundeby, 17, and his associates staged bomb hoaxes from mid-2008 until Lundeby’s arrest in March of…

io9 Kevin Poulsen - Threat Level Oct 19

“Unexpected pornography-seeking behavior” found in dermatology database

Online archive DermAtlas, which compiles medical photographs of human skin, received some weird search requests, so dermatologists decided to investigate. After monitoring for six months, they reported a high statistical likelihood that people were “seeking pornography,” not dermatological information. The paper detailing one medical database’s brave attempt to figure out whether anyone was actually using…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Oct 18

Robots are stealing our jobs and the love of our children

It looks like our automated creations are beginning to get the best of their meatbag overlords. Two studies show that automated labor is increasingly taking over middle-class jobs and that babies will regard humanoid robots as sentient beings. First off, a recent paper by economists David Autor and David Dorn notes that automated labor has…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar Oct 16

Robot arm punches human to obey Asimov’s rules

Isaac Asimov would probably have been horrified at the experiments under way in a robotics lab in Slovenia. There, a powerful robot has been hitting people over and over again in a bid to induce anything from mild to unbearable pain – in apparent defiance of the late sci-fi sage’s famed first law of robotics,…

io9 Paul Marks - New Scientist Oct 15

5 times we almost nuked ourselves by accident

We spent the Cold War in perpetual fear that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would start an intentional nuclear conflict. The truth is, we came far closer to blowing ourselves up with nuclear weapons than we ever came to WWIII. Nuclear incidents have a bunch of ominous military code names, like Broken Arrow, Faded Giant or…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Oct 15

Are Humans Turning Into Gods?

Bioencryption can store almost a million gigabytes of data inside bacteria

Nuclear Holocaust Really Is The Sum Of All Fears

Why do American and Japanese people have such different attitudes towards robots?

It’s a Little Weird When Your Family Gets Geeky

Incredible panoramic, time-lapse views of plants, carnival construction, and Mars

A camera that can see around walls

Kites Are Much Cooler When Affixed with LED Lights and Fireworks

DARPA developing a robotic pilot for their flying car

Liquid radio — Could temporary jets of seawater be used as functioning radio antennas?

This is the city of Sydney morphed into a male and female

A live, updating list of problems voters have had with voting in 2010

Coffin technologies that protect you from being buried alive

Water plus graphene will soon equal computers

New technology allows us to draw, erase, and redraw wires on circuitboards

Teen to Plead Guilty to Staging Bomb Hoaxes For Lulz

“Unexpected pornography-seeking behavior” found in dermatology database

Robots are stealing our jobs and the love of our children

Robot arm punches human to obey Asimov’s rules

5 times we almost nuked ourselves by accident

‘Marvel Rivals’ Wants to Start Being More Than Just a Hero Shooter

‘How Do We Make Sure That Claude Behaves Itself?’: Anthropic Invited 15 Christians for a Summit

See the Next ‘Hunger Games’ in This Trip Down Memory Lane

Indie Animation Is Having a Moment on YouTube

Trump’s World Liberty Financial Makes FTX-esque Move, Borrows Against Its Own Crypto Token

Steven Soderbergh Wanted to Take ‘Bond’ Back to the ’60s

If You Make Fart Music, ChatGPT Will Be the Most Supportive Girlfriend You Could Ask For

This Loud-Ass Party Speaker Almost Got Me High AF

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

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