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Why Daylight Saving Time Is Pointless

Ugh. You’re up an hour early, your body hates you for it, and even a gallon of coffee can’t get your day on track. Daylight saving sucks. But you know the worst part? It doesn’t have to be like this. >> This article was first published in March 2013. Daylight saving isn’t as old as…

Watch John Oliver Thoughtfully Explain Why Apple Is Right About Encryption

“The FBI and its supporters can be weirdly dismissive of [the encryption] issue, in ways that indicate they don’t fully understand how technology works—or are pretending not to,” explained Jon Oliver on Last Week Tonight. And so begins his wonderful take on the state of encryption. This 20-minute segment sees Oliver taking on the entire…

Teen Wins Dubai World Drone Prix as Country Announces ‘World Future Sports’ Games

Over the weekend, Dubai hosted the first ever World Drone Prix, the winner of which was a 15-year-old pilot from England. He walked away with a cool $250,000, while Dubai itself took the opportunity to announce that it will host the World Future Sports Games. The World Drone Prix saw four pilots at a time…

Watch a Groundbreaking New Science Mission Blast Off For Mars

Sleep? Who needs that when you can watch one of the coolest Martian science missions of the decade blast off for the Red Planet? That’s happening very early tomorrow morning—and if you’re up at odd hours, you won’t want to miss it. https://gizmodo.com/a-major-european-mission-to-mars-will-hunt-for-signs-of-1763874937 After years of preparation, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos are finally…

How Google’s Leaner AI Could Move Speech Recognition Offline

Google’s artificial intelligence is getting speedily (and worryingly?) better, as its recent slam-dunk of a human Go champion demonstrated. That victory required highly computationally-efficient AI rather than just brute force, something Google thinks could help it move speech recognition offline. The speech recognition we’re all used to in Siri and Google Now relies heavily on…

Here’s How a Desktop Will Look in Virtual Reality

Good, desktop-compatible VR headsets are just about ready to ship to average consumers. In addition to all the demos of skydiving and porn, people are also going to want to use their Rifts as glorified web-searching machines, which will look a little something like this. There’s already a few VR desktop solutions, but BigScreen is…

This Is the Handwriting Robot I’ve Always Needed

Thanks to the number of computers in my childhood (and an unnaturally short attention span), my handwriting has always hovered between awful and indecipherable. So clearly, what I need is a machine to do my writing for me. Axidraw is a “personal writing and drawing machine” created by Evil Mad Scientist. It can hold anything…

Sales of Adult Coloring Books Have Skyrocketed In The Last Year

Walk into a bookstore these days, and you’ll likely see an enormous stack of them: adult coloring books. Sales of the books have skyrocketed in the last couple of years, but their success might hide some depressing news for the publishing industry. Quartz has a really intriguing look at the sudden spike in interest in…

A Mysterious Teaser For Code 8 Is All About Robot Cops Chasing Mutants 

A short, intriguing teaser for a film called Code 8 just hit the web, and it looks like the best of Chappie and Almost Human, with a dash of X-Men thrown in. The teaser tells us that 4% of the population possess ‘abnormal’ abilities’, and that that small number make up 60% of arrests, before…

Disney Takes Credit For Today’s Lost Hour In A New Alice Through The Looking Glass Trailer

Suffering through today’s shift in time? Disney’s taking the credit for it by releasing a new trailer for their upcoming sequel to 2010’s Alice In Wonderland, Alice Through The Looking Glass. Take a look: It looks as bright and zany as the last one, and it’ll be interesting to see how it stacks up against…

Keep Track of Every Mission Throughout The Solar System With This Handy Map

There’s been dozens of probes that have gone out exploring the solar system since 1959’s Luna 2 probe. PopChartLab has gone and noted down each one since in this beautiful poster of the Solar System. From the Luna 2 in 1959 to the DSCOVR in 2015, this color-coded chart traces the trajectories of every orbiter,…

Long-running Star Wars podcast TheForceCast is closing down. Run by TheForce.net for a decade, the podcast has been a major touchstone of Star Wars Fandom. Behind the scenes changes and uproar over the show’s new direction brought it to a halt. Tosche Station has an in depth look. Contact the author at [email protected].

Hamilton Paired With Star Trek Works Perfectly In This Amazing Mashup Video 

If you’re like us, you’re either obsessed with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, or have some friend who’s been talking about it non-stop. Jackson Lanzing went and mashed up the musical with 2009’s Star Trek, and it’s pure gold. It’s a really fantastic retelling of the film (your milage will probably vary depending on whether you liked…

Trump Defends His Tweet of Fake ISIS Video: “All I Know Is What’s On The Internet”

Yesterday Donald Trump tweeted a now-debunked video showing that the protester who jumped a barrier at a recent rally was an ISIS supporter. This morning Chuck Todd asked Trump on Meet the Press about the fake video, to which Trump replied, “I don’t know, all I know is what’s on the internet.” Trump had stated…

Ken Liu Tells Us How He Picked Out The Best Stories For His Epic Collection

It’s no secret that we love Ken Liu’s fiction – his novels and his short stories. Last week, Saga Press released his debut collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, and we decided to have a chat with him about how he went about narrowing down a decade’s worth of fiction into one volume. Liu…

Watch 11 Minutes Of Batman v Superman, Constructed From All Of The Film’s Promos

Every cinematic blockbuster is accompanied by a massive publicity campaign that carpet bombs the public with trailers, trailers for trailers, TV spots, more trailers and exclusive glimpses to make sure that it’s a huge hit on opening weekend. It’s no different for this month’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which sees its publicity campaign…

Lee Sedol Has Beaten Google’s AlphaGo For The First Time

It turns out that Google’s AlphaGo isn’t unstoppable. Yesterday, the AI had won three out of the five matches in its series against Lee Sedol, but today, the computer’s human opponent triumphed. Lee Sedol was upset after his loss to the system yesterday, apologizing for his failure to beat the machine. Today, he was far…

The Evolution of the TV Camera From Football Fields to Space in 40 Steps

It is a cliché that our TV watching habits are changed a lot in the past few decades. But if we look back in time, we can see how broadcasting technology has been changing continuously since the first television programs were telecasted for the first TV sets, and how broadcasters have innovated to keep us…

WhatsApp’s Encryption Could Be The Subject Of The Next Justice Department Showdown

As Apple has been embroiled in a contentious fight with the United States Justice Department, another fight has been brewing over the nature of secure communications. According to the New York Times, the department is setting its sights on Whatsapp and its encrypted communications. The newspaper has reported that the Justice Department is weighing how…

There’s A Life-Sized First Order TIE Fighter At SXSW This Year

If you’re anywhere near this year’s SXSW in Texas, you owe it to yourself to check out one really cool exhibit: a life-sized First Order TIE Fighter, constructed by prop building group Project X1. The group is run by Belgian 501st Legion members, who have a reputation for building insanely detailed, life sized props: since…