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How America’s First Female Detective Helped Foil An Assassination Plot

History isn’t certain if Kate Warne, America’s first female detective, had that career path in mind when she walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency. It’s possible she was applying to be a secretary. But she so impressed Allan Pinkerton that he hired her as an agent — a job she proved unusually well-suited for. This…

What’s The Best Book To Read On Vacation?

Summer’s coming up, and with it, hopefully some time to settle into the sunshine with a good book. But which book? Tell us in the comments about your favorite summer vacation read (whether or a beach, in the mountains, or just in your room with the a/c on high). And, of course, let us in…

Find Out Which Android Apps You’re Really Addicted To

You know you spend a lot of time on your smartphone, but what are you doing with it? It’s a question QualityTime (Android 4.0+) attempts to answer, monitoring activity on your handset and revealing the apps that you just can’t pull yourself away from. Here’s how to get the app up and running on your…

You Might Not Even Notice This Wallpaper Is Made From Images of Space

One of the wonderful things about our nation’s Copyright Act is found under Section 105, which stipulates that the stuff government agencies—like NASA—create is free for anyone to use. Which makes projects like this space-plastered wallpaper possible. If you walked by a wall decorated with this wallpaper designed by Calico Wallpaper and BCXSY, you probably…

The Wrong Drug Reaction Could Literally Make Your Skin Peel Off

Good morning, and get ready to get a bad case of internal shivers! This morning’s body horror is provided by toxic epidermal necrolysis, which can be induced by… so many things. So many things. Toxic epidermal necrolysis begins when angry red patches erupt on the skin on your face. And your chest. Also your genitals.…

Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Kill Jobs, and Not Just for Drivers

The first road-legal autonomous truck made a splashy debut earlier this month. The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is shiny and new, but it will not be good for everyone. Autonomous trucks will destroy jobs, Scott Santens points out at Medium, killing the truck stop as we know it. Even if you reserve no particular nostalgia for…

Bandai’s Figuarts Hulkbuster Is Insanely Awesome

They’ve teased it for a very long time, but it’s finally here: Bandai have revealed their Figuarts Hulkbuster, and they’ve really pushed the boat out. Scaled in line with the other Avengers: Age of Ultron Figuarts, the Hulkbuster stands at around 10 inches tall, and is packed with the amount of crazy hyper-articulation you’d expect…

How do you spot—and then stop—scientific fraud? Simple, you just follow the math. Nautilus has a pieceon how the researcher with the most retractions ever (183!) was finally caught. The story not only includes plenty of sick science burns, it also details a statistics-based procedure to catch future frauds.

Pebble Apparently Can’t Keep Up With Its Own Growth

The crowdfunded watch, Pebble, which became a darling of Kickstarter success stories, may be facing serious financial problems, despite raising a staggering $20 million on the site. Sources say that the company is getting a bit too big and can’t support the success. It has supposedly taken out a $5 million loan with an additional…

The One Actor You Never Expected To See Again In The Flash Season 2

James Gunn’s new horror film casts one of its leads. See Captain America and Crossbones duke it out in new Captain America: Civil War set pictures. Plus, Steven Moffat discusses The Doctor and Clara’s relationship and his most challenging Doctor Who script yet. Spoilers Now! Top image: The Flash. Independence Day 2 Vivica A. Fox,…

2015’s Top New Species Include Two Animals with Cool Breeding Habits

Let’s hear it for newly-discovered species with interesting sex lives! A pufferfish that builds complex circular spawning nests and a frog that gives birth directly to live tadpoles have been picked as two of the the International Institute for Species Exploration’s “top 10” new species of 2015. Top image: A spawning nest (mystery circle) of…

Build This Brass Stirling Engine To Keep You Hypnotized At Work

Not every building set has to be made from colorful plastic bricks. If you’re looking for something a little more challenging—and rewarding—than Lego, Hermann Böhm has created this gorgeous stainless steel and brass stirling engine kit that will take you about three satisfying hours to build. And of course it’s fully functional once assembled. The…

Here’s One Way to Stop Being Ticklish

For some of us, being tickled by so-called “friends” and “family” is a nightmare. But can we use the fact that we can’t tickle ourselves to stop being ticklish when other people come at us, grinning? According to Dr. Emily Grossman, yes. Yes we can. Of course, the method presented in this video does presume…

How Do You Measure a Sea’s Level, Anyway?

There are about 330 million cubic miles of water in the world oceans today, 97% of all the water on the planet. Early in our planet’s 4.5 billion year history, water from the atmosphere and from the interior of the Earth gradually collected in the low areas on the planet’s surface to form the ocean…

A Simple Security Flaw Puts ‘Millions’ of Wi-Fi Routers in Jeopardy

A security firm has revealed that a simple mistake in a Linux device kernel could be putting millions of Wi-Fi routers at risk. SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab has discovered the flaw, which Ars Techinca refers to as “amateurish,” in a driver referred to as NetUSB. The driver, as its name suggests, is installed on routers…

The Easter Egg Hidden In Ex Machina‘s Source Code

You cannot accuse Alex Garland’s Ex Machina for ignoring the details. Even a glance at a page of code was an Easter egg. Redditor Infintie_3ntropy was annoyed when some code that appeared on the screen had nothing to do with the actual film. But once the code was run in python2.7, the result was the…

The Closest Look Yet at Ceres’ Many Bright Spots

Earlier this month we discovered that Ceres’ pair of mysterious bright spots were, in fact, not two—they were many, many more. Now, we’ve got the closest look yet of the spots thanks to NASA’s Dawn mission. This image, captured on May 16th, show a group of the brightest spots on the dwarf planet. Taken from…

Amazon’s one-hour delivery service now includes local businesses—including D’Agostino, Gourmet Garage and Billy’s Bakery—in Manhattan. For $8, you can be feasting on groceries, cooked meals and cupcakes within the hour.

Flickr’s Image Recognition Tool Is Making Some Embarrassing Errors

Well, this is awkward. Flickr’s seemingly impressive image recognition system is making some embarrassing slips when identifying black people and concentration camps, according to the Guardian. The newspaper explains that the new algorithm, which is designed to tag and then filter images by content, is “misfiring frequently.” It describes how a portrait of a black…

A Tiny Satellite With Enormous Solar Sails Is Orbiting Our Planet

It’s a good day for innovative space technology. The Planetary Society’s technology demonstration of solar sails to propel microsatellites hitched a ride into orbit with the launch of the secretive X-37B space plane. The LightSail project is testing solar sail technology for a mission in 2016. https://gizmodo.com/the-air-forces-mysterious-space-plane-is-going-into-orb-1704817585 Top image: Artist’s concept of the LightSail microsatellite.…