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The Death of the SIM Card Is Nigh

SIM cards are dead; Long live e-SIMs. A report from the Financial Times yesterday afternoon brought news that both Samsung and Apple are close to agreeing on a common architecture standard for an electronic SIM card that would replace physical SIMs completely. It would allow you to change your carrier without having to switch cards…

Ellen Pao Says the Trolls Are Winning

Reddit’s former CEO Ellen Pao wrote a melancholy op-ed about the harassment she faced and the overall state of Internet communities. Her outlook is pretty bleak. In the piece, Pao connects the treatment she received by Reddit mobs with overall statistics on internet bullying: Fully 40 percent of online users have experienced bullying, harassment and…

Pluto’s Moon Nix is a Perfect Little World in Latest New Horizons Photos

Nix is one of the smaller moons of Pluto, paired with Hydra after the massive Charon. Until this morning, the most detailed view we’d ever had was only a few pixels large. Now we’re seeing this elongated rock from just half a million kilometers away in the highest resolution photo we’re getting from New Horizons.…

Japan Just Cancelled Its Outrageously Expensive Olympic Stadium Design

And in doing so, made itself a poster child for rethinking the insane costs of major sporting events like the Olympics, explaining that it would start over with a new design. Could the tide be turning against the idea that cities have to spend billions to host the Games? Early this morning, the Guardian reported…

10 Stories We’d Love (And 10 We’d Hate) in the Back To The Future Comic

One of the many things that makes the Back to the Future trilogy great is how tight the story is. There’s a beginning, middle, end and though the story weaves in and out of those moments, it’s incredibly self-contained. Which is why the idea of a Back to the Future comic book sounds so weird.…

The ESA’s Head Just Dropped a Proposal to Build a Village on the Moon

The European Space Agency has a brand new head. Johann-Dietrich Woerner took over the agency two weeks ago and he just dropped a major new proposition: Let’s build a village on the moon. In an interview with the BBC, Woerner first made mention of the proposal: We should look to the future beyond the International…

This Robot Is Hitchhiking Across the US (Please Don’t Steal His Boots)

If you happen to see a robot on the side of the road this summer, don’t be afraid to pick him up. That’s just hitchBOT, a friendly hitch-hiking robot trying to make his (her? its?) way from Boston to San Francisco. Designed by Canadian researchers, hitchBOT is part art project, part social experiment. Can robots…

How the Black Death Advanced Medical Science, With Help From the Pope

One of the most awful diseases in the world caused a surprising advance in medicine. Though the Black Death killed roughly a third of the people in the nations it touched, it ended half a century of religion-induced medical ignorance. The dissection of corpses has always been at least a little controversial. The need to…

Velociraptor’s Feathered Cousin Is the Stuff of Drug-Infused Nightmares

Indominus might’ve grabbed our eyeballs and our cash this summer, but genetically modified raptor-rexes with an insatiable lust for human blood aren’t the only badass new dinos on the block. In fact, Zhenyuanlong suni, a Velociraptor cousin that looks like a tortured peacock on steroids, is arguably even cooler, because it actually existed. “This new…

Can the Agents of SHIELD Trust Anyone Ever Again? We Asked the Cast!

We talked with Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), Skye (Chloe Bennet), Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), Lance Hunter (Nick Blood), Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki), and others to get the scoop on what’s next for Agents of SHIELD after the dramatic end to season two. Gregg says that he doesn’t think the challenges to Coulson’s leadership are over—when…

A Senator Learns Why Four Bottles of Gin and An Angry Mistress Don’t Mix

Contemporary politicians do their best to supply us with a steady stream of scandals. But the strange case of New Jersey State Senator—shot by his mistress, Ruth Jayne Cranmer, in 1931—would grab headlines even today. This was during Prohibition, of course, but it started with lots of gin. Four bottles, to be exact, according to…

The Thoughtful Mr. Holmes Presents the Great Detective in a New Light

Reframing familiar literary characters is not a new idea; think The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Once Upon a Time, even Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, which stars Ian McKellen as an aging Sherlock, offers an unusually thoughtful take on the concept. Based on Mitch Cullin’s novel A Slight Trick of…

Watch these amazing F-18 night launches from an aircraft carrier

Here’s a really cool video of F-18s taking off from the USS Theodore Roosevelt at night. It’s so cool to see these flying beasts just kick off in an instant with flames burning at their tails. And it’s even more impressive to see this happen at night. With all that said, my favorite part of…

How Could We Destroy the Moon?

Nothing wrecks a beautiful night sky like that hideous, pockmarked skylight. What would it take to destroy our moon, and eliminate the enemy of stellar astronomy for all time? Top image: Using imagery collected by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA created this video of the Moon rotating 360° about its axis. Click on the photo…

Ant-Man Is A Perfectly Competent Superhero Movie

Marvel’s latest superhero movie, Ant-Man, is very well made. It has some good action and a few really clever bits. There are some funny parts, along with some not-that-funny parts. This movie pretty much gets the job done. But it’s not particularly memorable, or especially amazing. Minor spoilers ahead… In a sense, Ant-Man shows how…

Uber Zings NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio With Sick In-App Burn

Uber’s famous for using aggressive tactics. Its latest stunt is aimed directly at New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio. The company added a tab to the app to illustrating what would happen if the mayor’s new “Uber cap” bill passes. When you fire up the app, the new “De Blasio” tab is along the…

Bruce Campbell Told Us How Bad Things Get in Ash vs Evil Dead

We spoke with Ash vs Evil Dead stars Bruce Campbell and Lucy Lawless, who both emphasized how absolutely abysmal Ash is at everything he’s being called on to do. Thank god Lawless’ Ruby, who is trained and always pristine, is also on the case. Contact the author at [email protected].

The WSJ saysthat Hulu’s plotting a no-ads version of its premium service that’ll cost $12-$14 per month. Pricey! But ads are terrible. We hate them. What’s to be done?

Humans Can’t Stop Crashing Into Google’s Driverless Cars

Google’s driverless cars keep getting into fender-benders, and the company keeps stressing that the crashes aren’t a result of a computer glitch or rogue robotics system. Google’s cars are getting dinged for the same reason regular cars do: because people who drive make mistakes. The most recent incident happened on July 1, when a driver…

This Is No Moon—It’s a GIF Party!

Click in a little closer, people—this GIF Party is flying right towards you. What were you up to this week? What did you do? What did you see? What did you say? Tell us all about it using our common tongue around these parts: interpretive GIFing. GIF via NASA footage.