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Stanley Nineteen13 Carbonated Drink Bottle Review: Hot and Bubbly

Cold beers and hot days are at odds. At the end of a long summer hike, it’d be nice to relax with a cold, but by the time you’ve humped it down a trail, the beer or soda is never frosty or fizzy. Will this bottle save us from drinking beer-flavored bathwater? It’s Friday afternoon,…

Project Purple: Scott Forstall Tells All About the iPhone’s Creation

The Apple vs. Samsung case has been druging up all kinds of secrets. Today, in his testimony, Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall had some interesting things to say about the iPhone’s secretive development back in 2004. https://gizmodo.com/heres-the-real-original-ipad-prototype-in-all-its-fat-g-5927173 Tasked with building a super-team by Steve Jobs, Forstall carefully selected the individuals best suited to…

Mars Curiosity Makes First Discovery—And It’s Crucial for Human Interplanetary Travel

The Mars Curiosity hasn’t even made it to Mars yet and it’s already made a discovery that vital the future of manned space travel: The exact type of radiation astronauts would likely encounter on their way to the Red Planet. This is so freaking awesome. Until now, scientists and engineers could only guess about this…

Why hello, it’s a robotic manta ray

Behold Dr. Hilary Bart-Smith of the University of Virginia’s Mantabot, a silicone-winged machine based on the the cow-nosed ray, an eagle ray found off of North America’s Atlantic coast. It may lack the grace of the extraterrestrials from The Abyss, but it’s a robotic manta ray — hard to be churlish in that department. Explains…

Arizer Extreme Q Vaporizer Review: Bargain Take on a Great Vape

The $670 Volcano has been the undisputed king of vaporizers for a long time. But it hasn’t evolved much, and its ultra-high price hasn’t come down much, either. Can the Arizer Extreme Q fill in for the Cadillac on a Chevy budget? https://gizmodo.com/taking-the-670-volcano-vaporizer-for-a-test-drive-5219983 What Is It? A super versatile vaporizer used for “aromatherapy.” Some people…

Cockneys vs. Zombies trailer is surprisingly hilarious!

Check out the shocking first trailer for Cockneys vs. Zombies, starring Brick Top from Snatch.. Here we thought we were dealing with another silly mockbuster — but we were so wrong! Filled with excellent actors like Alan Ford, Rasmus Hardiker, Harry Treadaway, and Michelle Ryan, Cockneys vs. Zombies looks pretty slick, and the old man…

Sip a Soup Supper Out of This Sleek Steel Thermos

People who enjoy soups on the go have long suffered awkward plastic thermoses and missing spoons, but no more. The Black + Blum Thermo-pot provides a stylish steel solution. Also a built-in spoon. The thermos itself is made from a corrosion-resistant steel, while its cap has a natural cork top and plastic threading that ensures…

These fish could be harbingers of a major human health crisis

Bad news, everyone. Researchers have discovered that 15% of the coral trout living in Australia’s great Barrier Reef are suffering from what’s been described as a scalier version of melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. That’s unsettling for a number of reasons, but there are two big ones that should immediately give you pause.…

AT&T will shut down its whole 2G network by 2017. [WSJ]

How To Defeat Your Enemies on the Internet

The internet began as a pure place, free of malice and bad manners. Today, rudeness and horror abound. From friends you know and people you’ve never met, abuse comes in many forms. Maybe it’s a nasty comment on a Facebook photo. Maybe it’s an insulting tweet. Maybe it’s writing “FUCK U SLUT” on your wall…

The Singularity is Sexy: The Loveliest Robot and Cyborg Art [NSFW]

We’re all scared of killer robots, but deep down we hope that one day our robot creations will be our friends. And lovers. There’s something disturbing about the notion of a robot sex slave, but we like to imagine that one day robots will love us of their own free will. And that some of…

Robots and Cyborgs gallery #2

“Gynoid #11” by Hajime Sorayama, via Miscellaneous Pics “Gynoids” by Hajime Sorayama, via Miscellaneous Pics “Heart Gynoid” by Dan Redding, Fine Art America “Machinery Freedom and Visual Literature by Jeffery Scott, via Factory 1019 Robot Girl by CK, via Fembots are Sexy by Laughing in the Mechanism, via Asphyxium and Fembots are Sexy Sorayama-Esque Robot…

This Hot Wheels Elite Ferrari 412 T2 Is Your Vroom-Vroom Deal of the Day

I had a decent Hot Wheels collection back in the day. Even had one of those garages with the little plastic trays for storing them. Hundreds of cars easily collected and thrown around the room. My own personal use for them usually evolved beyond the race track to alien cars that could speak and fight…

Read Carl Sagan’s letter (politely) telling Warner Bros. their Contact script sucked

You may have recently encountered Carl Sagan’s 1954 reading list out in the internet. But the Library of Congress has posted some much more interesting papers from the scientist, novelist and all around fascinating guy: a draft of the 1995 letter he sent to Warner Brothers about the adaptation of Contact. The first two pages…

Can “cliodynamics” help historians predict future unrest?

Unlike physicists and chemists, historians have been unable to formulate grand equations or immutable laws. The trends of history, it would seem, are outside the scope of reproducible science. But a new discipline called “cliodynamics” is looking to change all that. After studying and mapping key indicators of history, University of Connecticut’s Peter Turchin believes…

Assemble This Strikingly Spartan Lamp Any Way You Want To

There’s elegance in simplicity, and with this DIY, multi-configuration lamp, you can decide what kind of elegant simplicity is just right for you. Dino Sanchez’s lamp kit aims to give you that pleasure of putting things together with your hands without having to sift through a bunch of non-nonsensical IKEA-like instructions. With just a Phillips-head…

The Real Reason Why Mondo’s Posters Look So Much Cooler Than Regular Movie Posters

The genius of Mondo’s posters is the way they make us see familiar science fiction and fantasy classics anew. They take the images that we’ve grown up with, and reimagine them. Sometimes with minimalism, sometimes with incredible ornateness. What’s the secret of Mondo‘s success? We sat down with creative director Justin Ishmael and poster artist…

Samsung thinks kids call the iPhone Home Button a “Bellybutton.” What the hell is going on in that courtroom? [Twitter]

A stylish film about what happens when Superman’s dog goes to the bathroom

Well, I didn’t anticipate writing that headline this morning, but Brett Underhill’s sleek (albeit scatological) short about the bodily functions of Superman’s dog Krypto forced my hand. Explains Underhill of Superman’s Best Friend, “After a long day working two jobs, Superman’s duties never seem to end when Krypto decides that this must be the place.”…

Proof That Futurama Is the Smartest Show on Television

Good news, everyone! It’s the Futurama appreciation episode. We pay tribute to our favorite moments in the series, and talk about other scifi comedy TV shows you can watch when you’ve watched every Futurama episode twelve times. Bay Area Science Festival director Kishore Hari helps us (and several volunteers) act out the solution to the…