Julian Whitcrosse, Author at Gizmodo

Help the New York Times find a better superpower metaphor

Over the weekend, New York Times tech reporter Nick Bilton posted an article about how Facebook can use its deep integration with other sites and apps (through Facebook Connect, the Open Graph developer platform, and Like buttons) to detect what’s happening on the Internet before anyone else. “Facebook is more tapped into the pulse of…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 15

The stupidest statistic you’ll see this week

Godzilla failed in his apparent goal (at least in the first movie) to crush all the people of Japan under his big reptilian foot. But what the radiation-blasting monster couldn’t achieve by brute force, the Japanese may themselves bring about by their own habits of reproduction—or lack thereof. A new study from a group at…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 14

Man pulled over for being radioactive

Last Wednesday, Mike Apatow was getting on to Interstate 84 in Newtown, CT, when police stopped him for no reason he could determine. When the cop told him that his car had set off his radioactivity detectors, it started making sense: Apatow was most certainly radioactive. Earlier in the day, Apatow had had a bit…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 14

Genetically engineered viruses could someday make typing-powered gadgets possible

There have been quite a few efforts to harness people power, by putting specially designed energy harvesters in exercise machines, yo-yos, or right inside your shoes. But none of them have been quite as thin or just downright cool as a new device that uses a paper-thin electrode packed with viruses to turn mechanical energy…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 13

Innocent people may have been framed for murder…by bugs?

A couple of years ago, a 28-year-old man ran into trouble in the scenic Brenta River near Padova, Italy. Witnesses saw him struggling in the water; soon after, he drowned. When Stefano Vanin, a forensic scientist at the University of Huddersfield in Great Britain, analyzed the body, the unfortunate man showed no signs of injury…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 13

Finland’s brilliant plan for dealing with nuclear waste: pulling a Keyser Söze

After decades of planning and $12 billions of investment, the United States grand plan to dispose of the nation’s nuclear waste in Nevada’s remote Yucca Mountain melted down in political rancor like… well, kind of like a nuclear plant melting down. The Obama Administration pulled the plug on funding the project without specifying any technical…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 13

Can peeing in a lake really kill fish?

There’s been a story kicking around in the news recently about a fight in Hamburg, Germany, where recreational swimmers have supposedly killed fish by peeing in Eichbaum Lake, making fishermen really (get ready) pissed off. Reading this set off my potential-Internet-baloney alarm bells: short articles, coming from a foreign country, based off one English-language report,…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 12

Britain’s national forensics lab is auctioning off their stuff, start your own CSI

Grabbing a bullet can be harder than you might think. If it’s buried deep inside a wall, how could you get your fingers around it? For that matter, you really shouldn’t be getting your fingers around this bullet—you might get charged with some crime. The solution is obvious: you need a tool to pull out…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 12

The emotional illusion that makes the future (and the past) look so rosy

“Ah, the good ol’ days.” “They just don’t make [X] like they used to.” “Back in my day…” The wealth of English phrases about how great things used to be might be a tip-off that our quirky ape brains are biased toward looking toward at the past in a happy light. And indeed, many psychologists…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 12

Will multinational corporations someday end up owning all our land?

Hundreds of years ago, European colonists took possession of much of the surface of our planet through unsubtle means: murder, subjugation, and their special move, bringing horrific new diseases. Nowadays, the wealthy and powerful expand their domains less confrontationally, but the effects can still be pretty harmful. Interests in rich countries — mainly multinational corporations…

io9 Julian Whitcrosse May 12

Julian Whitcrosse

Help the New York Times find a better superpower metaphor

The stupidest statistic you’ll see this week

Man pulled over for being radioactive

Genetically engineered viruses could someday make typing-powered gadgets possible

Innocent people may have been framed for murder…by bugs?

Finland’s brilliant plan for dealing with nuclear waste: pulling a Keyser Söze

Can peeing in a lake really kill fish?

Britain’s national forensics lab is auctioning off their stuff, start your own CSI

The emotional illusion that makes the future (and the past) look so rosy

Will multinational corporations someday end up owning all our land?

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