This new BioLite NanoGrid functions as a hanging work light or lantern, a multi-point area light, a powerful flashlight and a portable power source for your electronics, all in a single $100 product. The ultimate camping gadget? I got my hands on a unit to find out. What’s It Supposed To Do? BioLite’s first product … Continued

Randall Munroe has really outdone himself with today’s xkcd. The infographic shows when a certain story was published and then compares that date to the length of time — either in the future or past — to when the story actually took or will take place. To understand this chart, called “Stories of the Past … Continued

The new Terminator movie will give us another look at the iconic scene from the original film, where a naked killer robot arrives in the past to hunt down Sarah Connor. But now it appears as though we’ll be seeing a lot more of Naked Arnold Schwarzenegger than we had in the past… but he … Continued

Did Edward Snowden actually damage national security? There’s no way in hell to tell from official documents released to the press—they’ve been thoroughly redacted to the point of uselessness. Well, that’s not true: They’re useful in showing that the government isn’t exactly eager to reveal concrete proof that the revelations about its surveillance abuses have … Continued

Six thousand bucks is a lot of money, but it’s small change compared to the price of many professional camera kits. That’s why this instructional post from Alex Wild caught my eye. Wild is talented photographer, and his subjects are mostly insects (we’ve featured his work on io9 on multiple occasions), which makes sense; he’s … Continued

Three Al-Jazeera reporters have been arrested in the wake of the drones of Paris mystery. It’s likely the reporters were using drones to film a poorly-thought-out segment on the mystery drones, not the original perpetrators of the problem. We have so many questions. What were the journalists thinking? The “unknown drones” story was big international … Continued

They’re not glowing on their own. They’re tagged with a fluorescent protein that shows the flower doing a very strange thing — a thing that humans take for granted. Here’s how flowers get rid of their own organs. What if, at a certain point in your life, you could just shed an ungainly limb, a … Continued

How can you tell what’s real, in a world where huge industries, governments and religions are all trying to force-feed you manufactured realities? Philip K. Dick sums up the challenges of detecting reality in a world that resembles Disneyland, in this great 1978 quote. It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which … Continued

Since Google acquired the artificial intelligence company DeepMind for $628 million last year, it’s put the software to hard work…playing Atari 2600 video games. But no really, learning how to play 49 different Atari games showcases the promises—and the weaknesses—of DeepMind’s software. A paper published today in Nature details how the AI learned to play … Continued

Do you prefer your bat ears small, medium, or extra large? Not matter which way, Sideshow has you covered with their latest 1:6 Batman figure, which has more Bat-faces and Bat-Cowls than you can shake a bat-stick at. Sideshow’s ‘Gotham Knight’ figure is the latest in their long line of 1:6 DC figures, and is … Continued

Oh, it is a VR headset. How the hell did you fit that in your pocket? It’s collapsible? Okay, we need to talk about this. There’s been a lot of talk recently about cramming your phone into a VR headset, but nobody’s talking about one of the biggest problems with that idea: Phones are portable … Continued

This was probably inevitable, but it’s still pretty perfect. Caine Wise, Channing Tatum’s part-canine character from Jupiter Ascending, acts out his own version of the famous Three Wolf Moon t-shirt. And you can buy it to wear or hang on your wall. Artist Stefanie Masciandaro came up with this wonderfully silly tribute to the Wachowskis’ … Continued

This was only a matter of time, right? Lady Gaga took to Twitter to announce that she will be joining American Horror Story: Hotel. Which we can only hope is like those Cosmopolitan commercials, but with more masturbating ghosts. Gaga released this video with her wearing a creepy mask while making the announcement. People are … Continued

Yeah, don’t get too excited. Because this isn’t connecting DC’s TV universe to its cinematic universe, Henry Cavill will definitely not be showing up on TV in his Superman costume, and because the new Supergirl show has figured out a way to minimize the Man of Steel as much as possible. Here’s the newest casting … Continued

In 1975, a man sustained a terrible injury to his brain that left him, among other things, unable to distinguish tastes. He couldn’t tell sugar water from salt water. In 2005, one experiment caused him to strongly prefer sugar to salt. Here’s the tweak that changed things. Patient B has spent much of the last … Continued

An Italian neuroscientist who has been advocating for head transplants now wants to make one actually happen. He’ll be announcing a project at a surgical conference later this year. Here’s how the proposed human head transplant will work—supposedly. In 2013, Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group proposed that human head transplants could soon … Continued