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A Hiker Stumbled Across This Incredibly Rare 2,000-Year-Old Gold Coin

Finding money on the floor is rarely this exciting. This single gold coin was discovered by a hiker and Israel’s Antiquities Authority has since established that it’s one of only two ever discovered. The coin’s 2,000 years old—and, before you ask, priceless. The coin dates to the year A.D. 107 and shows the Roman ruler…

Report: Google, WhatsApp, and Facebook to Strengthen Encryption Services

The government is still trying to break the encryption on the San Bernadino iPhone. But now a report by The Guardian suggest that Google, WhatsApp, and Facebook are all planning to strengthen their encryption services. The report claims that Whatsapp is about to roll out encryption for its voice calls, Google is investigating “extra uses”…

These Liquid Metal Spheres Can Solder Without Heat

Soldering is still an incredibly common and useful process for repairing electronics, but it could be about to get a little cooler. Quite literally, because researchers have developed a new way to solder without heat. Researchers from Iowa State University have developed a way to encapsulate liquid droplets of metal in a thin shell so…

Minecraft Is Now a Playground for AI Experiments

Microsoft has announced that it’s starting to use Minecraft as a space in which to build, test and develop new artificial intelligence systems. The new platform, developed by academics, will be made available to everyone over the summer. A team from Microsoft’s UK research lab in Cambridge has developed the new system, which is called…

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…