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Tech NewsShoe Chandelier Marks Your Suburban Gang Territory
Sneakers hanging from telephone lines has long been an iconic image of urban life—which is why it inspired designers Peter Pracilio and Oscar Lopez to develop this Shoe Chandelier. Why they chose to make a light out of it is unclear, but it has a very compelling weirdness about it. The good news is that … Continued
By Sean Fallon -
io9
Rumored Star Wars Game Has Stretchy Ships
One of the best video games to come out of the Star Wars universe was The Knights of the Old Republic, which is set 4,000 years before the events in A New Hope, and was also the first RPG set inside the Star Wars world. The original game came out in 2003 with a sequel … Continued
By Kevin Kelly -
Tech NewsGadgets
Dealzmodo: Lite-On PC Blu-ray Drive $130
While we think you should wait to buy a standalone Blu-ray player until the 2.0 (“full profile”) spec hits to get interactivity and picture-in-picture, there’s no reason to wait for a PC drive, except for the price to drop. Newegg has a 12X Blu-ray drive from Lite-on for a pretty cheapo $130. Just remember you … Continued
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Tech News
We Dump Coffee, Coke, OJ and Milk All Over a Shiny New Toughbook: Did It Survive?
Click to viewOn Tuesday we asked you about the one thing you wouldn’t want spilled on your keyboard, and we were surprised how much you had to tell us. We have a brand new Y7 Toughbook laying around the apartment, which Panasonic claims can handle six ounces of liquid poured right into the keyboard. We … Continued
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io9
Earth Battles The Moon, Who Wins?
NASA is readying two spacecraft to slam into the Moon’s South Pole in an effort to find hidden polar ice a year from now, which gives Hollywood plenty of time to prep the movie and release it when all of this Moon-violence is at a fever pitch. After the spacecraft crash dead-on into the moon, … Continued
By Kevin Kelly -
Tech News
Question of the Day: What’s the Best Hard Drive Deal You Can Find?
This is a bit of a self-serving question of the day, but here’s something for readers to participate in. What’s the best hard drive deal you can find right now? We’re talking preferably internal and SATA, but if you’ve got a hot Swedish deal for an external USB drive, we’d love to hear about that … Continued
By Jason Chen -
io9
Why All Female Superheroes Look the Same
This chart compares the body mass index (BMI) of superheroes in Marvel comics with those of typical American women and men. Researchers Karen Healey and Terry Johnson used physical stats from Marvel’s Web site to show that the vast majority of female superheroes are underweight, though the males are mostly normal. Just to remind you, … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
NASA to Intentionally Smash Two Spacecraft Into the Moon
NASA is planning to intentionally smash two spacecraft into the surface of the moon, hoping to reveal some water ice under the surface of the moon’s south pole. Hey, where’d they get this idea? Hmm, it seems pretty familiar… Regardless of whether or not NASA is now taking cues from my favorite sketch comedy show, … Continued
By Adam Frucci -
io9
Three-Pound Mini-Calculators Were The Wave of the Future Circa 1970
Except for that rabid gang of early adopters, most of us hold back on purchasing new technology; it’s only going to get cheaper (not to mention less buggy). If you need an example of this, take a peek at the Sharp LC-8 advertised here. One of the first wave of transistorized electronic calculators in the … Continued
By Lynn Peril -
Tech NewsGadgetsNSA Gets the Best AT&T Coverage Around
Yes, this is real, and spectacular. The Billboard Liberation Front has launched an “improvement” campaign on AT&T billboards in the SF area “to promote and celebrate the innovative collaboration of these two global communications giants” with their massive warrantless domestic spying program (explained by a cute bear). We’re waiting for some “Yes, the NSA can … Continued
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io9
The Weakest Superheroes Of Postmodern Lit
Superheroes have busted out of their pulpy roots, and now they’re boldly leaping into a whole new era of postmodernism. It started with creators like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, but now the postmodern trend has made the jump to actual literary authors of literature, who use the “modern mythology” of superheroes to explore themes … Continued
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io9
Discover Blackenstein’s Secret Weakness!
Punches don’t stop Blackenstein. Bullets don’t stop Blackenstein. The world’s crappiest Frankenstein rip-off, from what may be the world’s worst blacksploitation film Blackenstein, is an unstoppable juggernaut of asthma and cranial deformity. Even the laws of good storytelling are no match for this undead exhumation of every monster-movie cliche ever, with a blacksploitation gloss on … Continued
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Tech News
Tributaries T12 Power Strip Is Overkill With 12 Ports, Eight of Which Rotate
Tributaries has had a rotating power strip on the market before, but this T12 seems like they’re going all out—and by all out, we mean adding two extra ports to the strip. The whole thing comes in at an amazing 12 ports, eight of which rotate at up to 90 degrees so AC adapters don’t … Continued
By Jason Chen -
io9
Watch Out for Organleggers
Over at the Oxford University Press blog, there is talk of a new social menace: the organlegger, a person who sells organs on the black market. Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction editor Jeff Prucher writes that the term originated in the work of scifi writer Larry Niven, but quickly got picked up by Rudy Rucker, … Continued
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io9
You Can’t Stop The Terminator (We Hope!)
The destiny of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is not yet written, Executive Producer Josh Friedman told a conference call about the series today. Fox hasn’t made any decisions yet about its fall 2008 line-up, so there will be a “post-game” discussion after Monday’s two-hour season finale. The show’s done well with some key demographics, … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgets
USB Speedometer Measures WPM From Super Slow to Court Reporter Speed
We can see this USB typing Speedometer being extremely useful for young typists who want to improve their speed, or Brian Lam if he ever wants to type faster than three words per minute, but it’s a USB gadget that plugs into your computer and tells you how fast you’re typing. If you want to … Continued
By Jason Chen -
io9
Bald Gunslinging Robots Make Theme Parks Fun!
Long before Michael Crichton opened up the can of dinosaurs and let them run loose inside a theme park with Jurassic Park, he had already visited the world of theme parks going bad. In the early 1970s, he wrote and directed Westworld, the tale of an android-filled theme park where the robots get a little … Continued
By Kevin Kelly -
Tech News
Lenovo’s Official X300 Comparison vs. MacBook Air Shows Why It’s Better For Business Dudes
You saw the 5 takes on the Lenovo X300, the X300 benchmarked vs. the MacBook Air, and even Mossberg’s review, but what does Lenovo think about the comparisons between the two laptops? Well, obviously, they think their machine is better, but the reasons given for why it’s better appeals to Lenovo’s core audience—the traveling corporate … Continued
By Jason Chen -
Tech News
Desktop PC Start Button Eliminates Gamer’s Crack
If you thought plumber’s crack was bad, imagine a gamer in crawling under his desk to turn on his PC. He’ll never have to do that again if he grabs one of these Sharkoon PC Jump Start Buttons, which hook up via USB to his PC and allows him to not only start a computer, … Continued
By Jason Chen