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The HTC One A9’s price is up and down like a yo-yo. After starting life at $400 then jumping up to $500, it’s now on sale in the HTC online store for $400 once more. Whether you wanna buy the thing, though, is another matter entirely.

Interactive Visualization Shows How Your Day Compares to Everyone Else’s

Sometimes at the end of long, hard week, it’s easy to wallow in self pity: “I doubt many people have it this hard,” you think to yourself. But this interactive visualization can help you see just how many people share your experiences of day-to-day life. Put together by Nathan Yau, the charts make use of…

How Netflix Could’ve Looked in the 1950s

The Phlico Predicta was a TV that, in design terms at least, was way ahead of its time. But what if it had come loaded with Netflix? Well, that’s what a bunch of Netflix engineers wondered, too—so they decided to adapt one of the 1950s TV sets so that they could watch the streaming service…

These Are the Best Architectural Images of the Year

The winners of the 2015 Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards were announced last week as part of the the World Architecture Festival—and the results are predictably stunning. The image above, shot by Fernando Guerra, took first prize. It shows the vibrant orange, yellow and green hues of the EPFL Quartier Nord, a new mixed-use building…

Time Warner Cable Trialling Roku in Place of Cable Boxes From $10 Per Month

Time Warner Cable has announced that it’s going to perform a trial run in which it will allow customers in New York City and New Jersey to use a Roku instead of its usual cable box. Users will be able to access up to 300 live TV channels and 20,000 On Demand choices through the…

Tim Cook: We May Make a Medical Product, But It Isn’t the Apple Watch

Apple may make a medically approved device, but it won’t be the Apple Watch. At least that’s a according to Tim Cook in an interview with The Telegraph. In the interview, Cook explained that the disruption that FDA accreditation would cause to the product release cycle of the wearable would ultimately put him off having…

How Computers Broke Science—and What We Can Do to Fix It

Virtually every researcher relies on computers to collect or analyze data. But when computers are opaque black boxes that manipulate data, it’s impossible to replicate studies – a core value for science. Reproducibility is one of the cornerstones of science. Made popular by British scientist Robert Boyle in the 1660s, the idea is that a…

Sony Only Just Got Round to Killing Betamax

You’ve got to give Sony full marks for effort: despite the fact that Betamax has been a running joke for about two decades, the company is only officially killing the dead format just now. The last Betamax products you can buy are a couple of tapes, since the last recorders were discontinued in 2002. It’s…

This Giant LEGO TARDIS Is a Shameless Ad and I Don’t Care

This life-size LEGO TARDIS is not a thing that you will ever buy, or touch, or see. It’s really just a reminder of the hundred-dollar LEGO sets you should probably buy your kids. But I still love it wholeheartedly. The giant TARDIS was made with help from a bunch of fans at the BRICK show…

These Bluetooth Headphones Custom-Fit To Your Ears in Under a Minute

Custom-fit headphones are the kind of thing that sound like a ridiculous extravagance, right up until the moment when you get your first pair. Unfortunately, that moment normally involves hundreds of dollars and a lot of inconvenience. Well, it used to. Revols is a Canadian startup with a neat concept: Bluetooth headphones with a new…

World’s Biggest Coal Company Has Been Lying About Climate Change, Surprising No-One

A two-year investigation into Peabody Energy has concluded something that two minutes with Google could probably tell you: the coal giant has been telling some big fat lies about climate change. Following a multi-year investigation, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (previously star of such hits as Investigating Airbnb and That Time Exxon Lied) has…

Back to the Future II expertly edited to show the real 2015

We all know this by now: the 2015 in Back to the Future II didn’t happen in real life. We failed. But! We can totally make things right by changing the past, as in re-editing Back to the Future II to include things that actually happened in the year 2015. It actually works out quite…

Watching this guy climb the Eiffel Tower made me lose feeling in my fingers

Ostensibly, the Eiffel Tower seems like a decent structure to climb. There are so many exposed parts that you could hold on to and so many paths to climb up that there’s no real wrong move. But then you realize, as you watch James Kingston scale the tower, that it’s actually a terrifying climb because…

Building Scaffold Inside the Capitol Rotunda Is a Work of Art Itself

The United States Capitol Dome is currently under restoration; the scope of the project both interior work to the rotunda, and exterior work on the dome. This eye catching time lapse video, released in October, shows how scaffolding and drapery were added inside the rotunda after the installation, to protect the building flooring and historic…

Humans Who Lived in Caves to Study Isolation Slept for 30 Hours at a Time

A year in space is nothing—to study the isolation that astronauts might experience, scientists first lived in caves for months at a time, isolated from all environmental cues. No offense to Commander Scott Kelly, I’m sure zero-gravity life is hard. But the caves seem much worse. This incredible Atlantic story about humans living in isolation…

In 400 Days, Only Dane Cook and Superman Can Hear You Scream 

Most people know that astronauts preparing to go on deep space missions undergo serious mental evaluations. That kind of long, dark disconnection and isolation is too much for some to handle—and being able to handle it, while doing your job, is a huge priority. That idea is taken to another level in 400 Days, a…

Self-Driving Cars Will Be On Roads by 2020 But US Cities Won’t Be Ready for Them

Even though at least seven autonomous car programs swear they’ll be street-ready by 2020, the truth is that US cities are woefully unprepared for this reality. Only six percent of the US’s largest cities include any language about self-driving vehicles in their long-range transportation plans. That’s according to a new report from the National League…

The 5 Most Gruesome Tourist Murders of All Time

There are plenty of things to worry about while traveling, without adding being brutally murdered into the mix. But it happens more often than you’d think, even in places that seem like paradise. Read on for terrible tales of vacations gone nightmarishly wrong. 1. Michael and Thelma King Michael and Thelma King weren’t typical tourists.…

Back-Flipping Fish Look Before They Leap Across Land

Mummichogs are a type of oxygen-breathing fish that flourish in the small pools that form as the tide recedes. But sometimes that pool evaporates or becomes toxic for the fish. So mummichogs have figured out how to move short distances across land in search of the next shallow pool via a series of backward tail…

These Fictional Space Postcards May Make You Go Back to Snail Mail

Space is a pretty fascinating place, but what makes it even more exciting is that in fiction, it offers unlimited possibilities. Want to imagine a planet that’s only sand? Sure. A planet that’s all water? Okay. A planet populated by giant talking robots? That works, too. That infinite concept is on full display in a…