Jamie Condliffe

This Pavilion Is Made From… Cardboard?

This cubic pavilion was constructed in the heart of Valencia in March. With its crisp, straight geometric lines and lustrous silver finish, it looks like it’s made of metal: aluminum? Some kind of steel? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s cardboard. The structure, known as the Ekklesia pavilion, was built by the art collective Pink Intrude,…

Taylor Swift vs. Tim Cook in a Cartoon

Taylor Swift and Apple have been enjoying a back-and-two over the last 24 hours about streaming royalties—a conversation that’s made Apple look like the artist-exploiting, money-churning behemoth that it is. To the extent that it U-turned. Go Swfit? [Joy of Tech]

Stunning Image of Saturn’s Moon Captured from Just 300 Miles Above It

The pock-marked surface of this spherical chunk of rock looks a lot like images of our own Moon—but in fact, this is much, much further away. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft buzzed by Saturn’s moon Dione on June 16th, passing just 321 miles from its surface. As it soared through space, it also captured this amazing image…

An Awesome Modern Take on the Statistical Atlas of the United States

The Statistical Atlas of the United States is a treasure trove for data lovers produced by the Census Bureau—but the last one to made dates back all the way to 2000. So Nathan Yau decided to make his own, using just publicly available data. It’s amazing. “With more data than ever, it seems like there…

View of the galaxy? Check. Earth’s moody atmosphere? Check. Sci-fi-like view of the International Space Station? Check. Yep, that’s a damn fine picture from astronaut Scott Kelly. [Scott Kelly]

There Are Now Over 12,000 Marvel Comics on the Kindle Store

Amazon has announced a new deal with Marvel that will see over 12,000 back-issue comic books available directly from Amazon’s Kindle store. Amazon acquired the comics download platform Comixology back in 2014, but the new initiative makes the Comixology app pretty much redundant if you use the Kindle Store. Now, you can download single issues—be…

California Finally Reveals Details of Self-Driving Car Crashes

Last month, it came to light that 8 percent of the self-driving cars on the road in California had been in collisions—though the state didn’t reveal any more detail than that. Now, it’s made a U-turn and published details about the crashes that involved the autonomous vehicles. The Associated Press reveals that California state officials…

Reddit is to start encrypting all of its traffic using HTTPS by the end of the month.

The Blue Angels Look Totally Suicidal in this Photo

As the Blue Angels rip through the sky above the Ocean City Air Show in their F/A-18 Hornets, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were a single aircraft. They’re just so. Amazingly. Close. It’s partly a trick of the angle, of course, the perspective fooling our brains into thinking that they’re sitting atop each other.…

Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German—along with the existing English, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish.

Scientists Image a Shock Wave Pulsing Through Diamond for First Time

Even the hardest of materials react to immense pressures. In this image, x-ray imaging reveals how a laser-generated shock wave propagates through a piece of diamond. The shock wave was created in the three-centimeter piece of diamond, which was just 0.3 millimeters thick, by a high-intensity laser pulse. It provided 12 trillion watts of power…

Send This List of Alternative Internet Acronyms to Clueless Friends

Go on, it’ll be funny. (Full version, created by Doghouse Diaries, below.) [Doghouse Diaries]

Sprint Halts Data Throttling Thanks to New Net Neutrality Rules

With the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules in place, Sprint is already feeling the effects: it’s no longer throttling the speeds of its wireless internet connections. The carrier has been limiting the speeds of data connections for years now, reducing the flow of data for the heaviest users when its networks were particularly…

This Heart-on-a-Chip Uses Gravity to Mimic a Human Pulse

This small, clear block may not look much, but it uses some of the world’s most basic physics to accurately recreate the rhythms of the human heart in the laboratory. This certainly isn’t the first heart-on-a-chip to be created. But microfluidic devices like it have in the past required mechanical pumps or hand-driven syringes to…

You can now order an Apple Watch online then pick it up in-store using the company’s “Reserve & Pickup” system.

Watch This Lovely Profile of a TV Repairman Turned Artist

Bill Czappa is a TV repairman. But he’s no ordinary TV repairman: he creates sculptures from the discarded components and materials that he collects during his day job. This video tells his story. Czappa’s repair shop is also a studio and gallery, a space where he builds and displays his art as well as mending…

This Is Where Philae Phones Home

Earlier this week, the Philae lander finally woke up after seven months in hibernation on Comet 67P. And this is rather plain desk where the messages arrived. Well, what were you expecting? The European Space Agency released this wonderfully normal photograph yesterday, and it’s a lovely reminder that very normal people do very exciting science…

This Official Raspberry Pi Case Houses Your Mini PC for $8

If you love your little Raspberry Pi computer dearly, you can now provide it with a little more protection using this official case for the device. And the good news is that it only costs $8. While many people have already crafted their own cases for the devices—in particular using Lego—this one has been designed…

Russia’s Testing a ‘Microwave Gun’ That Will De-Arm Drones at 6 Miles

A state-owned Russian engineering company has developed, and is now testing, a new kind of super-high-frequency gun that is said to be capable of deactivating unmanned aerial vehicles from over six miles away. Sputnik News claims that a representative from Russia’s United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation has explained the capabilities—though not the technical features—of the new…

The Nepal Earthquake Shifted Mount Everest by an Inch

The recent Nepalese earthquake turned swathes of Kathmandu into rubble and killed 8,700. But it also had a large—if less perceptible—impact on one of Nepal’s largest assets: it shifted Mount Everest by three centimeters. According to the state-run China Daily newspaper, local geologists have determined that the first earthquake to hit Nepal this spring shifted…