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Scientists Can’t Agree If Dinosaurs Were Warm-Blooded or Cold-Blooded

Paleontologists have spent a vast amount of time digging up dinosaur fossils, studying them, and then slating Jurassic Park. But despite the effort, some questions still remain about our predecessors on this planet — including whether or not they were cold-blooded. One of the most recent papers to tackle this question was a 2014 study,…

Come Chat With Us For The Season 5 Finale Of Game Of Thrones

The fifth season of Game of Thrones comes to a close tonight on HBO and it’s been a contentious season, to say the least. Weigh in in the comments with your thoughts on how the season went, and how this last episode stacks up.

1st Edition Of The Hobbit Sells For £137,000

A pristine copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit has sold at auction for a record £137,000 (just over $213,000 US), more than double the record for the previous record, set in 2008. One reason for the high price? Tolkien signed the copy for Katherine Kilbride, a student of Tolkien’s in the 1920s. Tolkien inscribed…

This Is The Best Image Of Pluto And Charon Ever Taken

Taken June 9th from New Horizons, at a distance of 42 million kilometers, this is the best picture we’ve got to date of Pluto and its moon, Charon. Image credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Emily Lakdawalla

Aspiring Astronaut Photographs the ISS From 40 Thousand Feet Up

Did you know you could spot the International Space Station from an airplane? Neither did I! But photographer and aspiring astronaut Trevor Mahlmann had an inkling on a Southwest flight last week. So, he got out his gear and managed to shoot this gorgeous, long-exposure photo of the space station zooming by like a shooting…

A Simple Little Cube Wants to Be the Remote Control For Your Smart Home

Smart home devices are seeping into our lives. But as the number of remotely adjustable aspects of home life grows, keeping track of all the apps that control everything could become a bit of headache—a fact which doesn’t really jive with the smart home philosophy of being as lazy as possible. Enter “Cube,” an innocuous…

Take A Look At 40 Behind The Scenes Pictures From Jurassic Park

While Jurassic World has been making a killing at the box office this weekend, we wanted to take a look back at the film’s roots. Here’s an album of behind the scenes images from the original flick. The thing that struck us was the physical props that they used. It’s almost completely unthinkable that any…

Here’s A Practical Puzzle: How Quickly Can You Toast And Butter Bread?

This week’s puzzle is an optimization problem: Can you determine the fastest way to toast and butter three slices of bread? (It’s harder than it sounds.) SUNDAY PUZZLE #35: Optimizing Toast This week’s puzzle was suggested by reader Caroline S. Upon further investigation, I found that it traces back, as many puzzles do, to puzzle…

The Technology to Build Organ Banks is Coming

Welcome to Reading List, a weekly collection of great tech reads from around the web. This week we explore the future of organ banking, the role of art in humanizing data-driven cities, and more! Enjoy. Once an organ is removed from its donor, there’s a very short period of time in which it can be…

Weekend Listening: Write Brothers’ Take Flight 

Take Flight, the debut album from The Write Brothers, equal parts rapper Devon Ewalt and producer Dante Davinci is a seamless blend of geeky wordplay and hip hop. It’s a fun, engaging record, one that’s catchy and intimate at the same time. Joined by guest vocals by the likes of Annie Costa, Caroline Rose, and…

Thirty Year Old Commodore Amiga Still Controls Heat and AC at 19 Schools

Controlling your house’s thermostat with your phone may seem cutting edge, but in the 1980s, you could program a Commodore Amiga to do the exact same thing. Thirty years later, one such archaic system, at least, is still hard at work. In 1985, the Grand Rapids School Public School District purchased a Commodore Amiga to…

The Secret Meaning Of Jurassic World: “Hey, Let’s All Fall In Love”

Now that you’ve seen Jurassic World, now’s a great time to check out our in-depth, revealing interview with director Colin Trevorrow. He talks about the themes of the movie, how to make the “monster movie” action fresh in the age of Sharktopus… and why Bryce Dallas Howard never takes her heels off.

Elon Musk: The Tech Maverick Making Tony Stark Look Dull

Elon Musk was born in 1971 in South Africa, just as the Space Race was drawing to a close. It seems as though he had missed the best bits – so perhaps that is what inspired by the man who would later spend his billions on doing his damndest to kickstart humanity back into the…

Uber’s Raising a Billion Dollars to Make China its Largest Global Market

China’s gobbling Uber up. And it’s about to see a lot more of the black cab ride-hailing service, according to a letter leaked to The Financial Times last Thursday, in which Uber CEO Travis Kalanick revealed his intentions to raise over a billion dollars to expand UberChina. Uber is still dwarfed in China by competitor…

Here’s The Final Oculus Rift, Coming In Early 2016

This is it: the final consumer version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. It’s coming Q1 2016, and it looks just like the version that leaked two days ago! We went to see Oculus’s announcement live in San Francisco. Here’s the scoop. We’re not getting raw specs or a price point today, but Oculus…

Saturn’s Ghostly Outer Ring is Mind Blowingly Massive

Almost every time we have a look, Saturn seems to become even more incredible. Space rain falls from icy rings into the gas giant’s atmosphere. Two of its moons, Titan and Enceladus, are among the best candidates in our solar system for finding alien life. The latest revelation? Saturn’s faint, outermost ring is an absolute…

Orphan Black Answers The Question We’ve Been Asking Since The Pilot

Orphan Black sent a few of its characters abroad this week in search of answers — and boy, did they find a big, weird one. But the best storyline of the week happens at home, when one of our Leda clones makes a very deep — and violent — familial connection. From the moment that…

In the beginning, Little Golden Books were either based on classic fairy tales or featured wholly original stories and characters. But that all changed in 1944, when the publishers signed a licensing agreement with Disney, which has been in place ever since. via Mentalfloss

Jurassic World Conquers The Weekend Box Office With Record Debut

Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World has pulled in an astonishing $204.6 million debut in North America, and $511.8 million worldwide. The film has overtaken Avengers: Age of Ultron’s record take in the United States (although it hasn’t quite overtaken the original Avengers film from 2012), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 for the…

Student Calls For Eradication Of Graphic Novels From English Course

A student enrolled at Crafton Hills College has protested the inclusion of a number of graphic novels in the curriculum for her English 250 course. Tara Shultz, along with her parents and friends have called for the “eradic[ation] [of the books] from the system,” and have complained to the College’s administrators over their inclusion. The…