Bryan Lufkin

Why Wind Power Is Finally Taking Off in America

Last year saw a lot of wind turbines and farms being built. So many, that as of 2015, the wind industry has installed 75 gigawatts of electricity-generating capacity. That’s enough to power 19 million American homes. Today, the American Wind Energy Association announced the industry added 8.6 gigawatts of wind power capacity to the national…

Beware This Android Malware That Erases Your Phone With a Single Text

It’s been a bad week for people’s phones, and it’s not getting any better: A Danish security firm’s found malware that ravages your Android phone with a single text—erasing data or sending rogue calls and texts. Denmark-based security firm Heimdal detected the malware, called “Mazar,” which sends text messages that include an ostensibly harmless multimedia…

Fearing Cannibalism, Aquarium Cancels Octopus Sex Show on Valentine’s Day

At the Seattle Aquarium, the annual tradition of watching live octopuses bone on Valentine’s Day was canceled last night. Why? Cannibalism concerns, of course. The aquarium staff was worried that the huge male scheduled for sex was so huge that he would simply devour the females. Which is funny since typically it’s the larger female…

Apple Promises to Fix the 1970 Bug But Still Won’t Say What Causes It

Apple posted on its website this morning that it “officially acknowledges” setting your iOS device’s date to May 1, 1970 or earlier will render it completely unusable. But an upcoming software update will prevent the insidious bug from bricking your handheld. Internet tricksters want you to believe that setting your iPhone’s date to 1/1/70 unlocks…

Holy Hell, the US Military Made the Fastest Quadcopter I’ve Ever Seen

DARPA, the Pentagon’s research division, just revealed a speed demon quadcopter that flies 45 miles an hour. It’s like a cheetah drone. I can’t stop watching glorious footage of this glorious cheetah drone. It’s a product of DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Autonomy program (FLA), whose goal is to beef up drone processing power that’ll let them…

Google Is Killing Picasa Because Google Photos Is Way Better

Picasa, Google’s photo storage service that you’ve probably forgotten exists, will officially die starting May 1. Which is fine by us, considering how great Google Photos is. “After much thought and consideration, we’ve decided to retire Picasa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos,” Google…

The shoe-maker ASICS just announced its acquissition of FitnessKeeper, Inc., which owns the popular exercise app Runkeeper. What will ASICS do with its shiny new app and its 33 million users? It’s very unclear.

Watch the First Footage of The Powerpuff Girls Reboot

Behold, Cartoon Network’s first footage from the Powerpuff Girls reboot. Buttercup sounds different. Rest assured she still has zero time for your BS. In this scene from the first episode (“I Am Not a Princess”), Buttercup puts the smack down on Manboy, a hirsute villain “born of brawn and musk,” who wants to turn Townsville…

More Convincing Proof We Need to Build Gondolas In American Cities

La Paz, Bolivia’s famous gondola system celebrates its second anniversary in May as a successful, low-cost travel option that moves 100,000 people per day. It’s also setting a global standard for a type of transportation that should be way more popular. The gondola system serving the citizens of Bolivia’s capital city is called Mi Teleférico…

OK Go’s Fun New Music Video Was Filmed on a Zero-G Aircraft

The alt-rock band that made “viral music videos” a thing with treadmill gymnastics and Rube Goldberg machines on YouTube is back. This time, OK Go is busting open pinatas in zero gravity. To shoot the music video for their new single, “Upside Down & Inside Out” (released directly to Facebook earlier today), the band boarded…

This True American Hero Built a VR Version of Duck Hunt

Joseph Delgado is my new hero. The 21-year-old computer science student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, took his Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 and morphed the 8-bit NES classic into a virtual reality adventure. It looks super fun. The development process sounds relatively simple, too. Delgado converted the 2D sprites into 3D models…

Tesla Is Losing Money But Making More Cars

Despite losing money last quarter, Tesla shares are still up after their earnings report. Why? Because the company is beating estimates on how many cars it will be able to produce this year. Tesla expects to ship 80,000 to 90,00 Model S and Model X cars in 2016, beating forecasts that the company would only…

These Rescue Drones Search Forest Trails Like Robot Rangers

Swiss researchers have come up with AI that lets small quadcopters automatically identify and follow man-made trails in forests. They say it’s to help in search-and-rescue, but it also sounds like nanny state drones that could one day hunt me down in the woods as I dodge search lights on my scramble toward sweet freedom.…

The Only Cool Way to Ride a Hoverboard is to Turn It into the Flying Cloud from Dragon Ball

Hoverboards ruined Christmas, burst into flames, look foolish, are widely banned, and don’t hover. Lame all around. Except when you turn one of them into a famous magical item from one of the world’s most beloved anime series. That’s what this guy did when he dressed up as Goku from Dragon Ball and motored around…

Seamless Is Down and We’re All Going to Starve (Updated)

My existence hinges on three things, each interconnected: Food, laziness, and websites that bring food to me. Today, the third has been rendered null. Thus begins the domino effect that leads to me wasting away to death. And I didn’t even get to try that new sushi place down the street. Seamless is down, and…

Amazon Launches On-Demand Sommelier Service in Japan

Wine’s slowly becoming popular booze in Japan—it’s even closing in on sake in terms of consumption. So Amazon Japan’s starting a new service to meet the need: On-demand sommeliers who booze hounds can call for wine-buying tips. For free, Japanese Amazon users can now phone the tech giant, which’ll connect them with certified booze experts…

Inside the Tech Behind New York’s Monstrously Fast Gigabit Wifi

New York City is replacing busted old payphone booths with amazing free gigabit wifi hotspots in 10,000 locations around the city. We’ve already tested an early version of the new service and it’s fast. Now we finally know why. The blazing wireless internet—which we clocked at a ridiculous 400 Mbps—is enabled by components developed by…

Scientists Found a Way to Control Machines With Your Mind, No Brain Surgery Required

The US military is looking for ways to insert microscopic devices into human brains to help folks communicate with machines, like prosthetic limbs, with their minds. And now, DARPA’s saying scientists have found a way to do just that—without ripping open patients’ skulls. In the DARPA-funded study, researchers at the University of Melbourne have developed…

Twitter Says It’s Shut Down 125,000 Terrorist Accounts Since May

Terrorist groups like ISIS use social media to rally support around the world, using sites like Twitter to mobilize sympathizers into possible plots. But in a blog post today, Twitter says that kind of behavior flagrantly violates its terms of service, and reports that it’s suspended tens of thousands pro-ISIS accounts since May. “We have…

Watch a Robot Golfer Sink a Hole-in-One Just Like Tiger Woods

A robot just pulled off the best possible move in the game of golf. In the opening round of this year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open, LDRIC the Golf Robot sank a hole-in-one on the par-3 sixteenth hole. Tiger Woods did the same thing on the same hole back in 1997, which helped launch his superstar…