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How Cosmetics Companies Farm Human Skin to Test Their Products

As you slathered conditioner onto your noggin this morning, you probably weren’t thinking about lab-grown skin coins (if you were, r u ok?). But human skin grown in a lab is a booming business—and how it’s made is a little-known and fascinating story. Image: An Organovo bioprinter. Yesterday, Bloomberg’s Caroline Winter brings us news of…

This Awesome Pacific Rim Kaiju Can Carry Your Jaeger Toys To Their Doom

Otachi is basically the Batman of NECA’s Pacific Rim toy line at this point. The Kaiju beastie ranks up there with main star Gipsy Danger for variant toys, but only one comes with a feature for it to grab other mech toys and carry them up to their rapid-descent death. That’s pretty damn cool. NECA’s…

A Map Showing The “Most Distinctive” Causes Of Death By State

For the most part, the things that kill Americans are fairly consistent from state to state. But as this new map by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clearly shows, not all states are equal when it comes to certain risks. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes are among the leading causes of…

Apple Rolls Out Force Touch 15″ MacBook Pro and Cheaper iMac Retina

You don’t always have to wait for a keynote for new Apple products, as is the case today with a sneaky rollout of some new Macbook Pro and iMac with Retina 5K configs. The coolest new update is a 15” MacBook Pro that features Force Touch trackpad, previously only found in the 13” version and…

A close look at the crazy interfaces from The Avengers: Age of Ultron

One of my favorite things about watching movies is seeing the film’s vision of the user interfaces on screens and computers. They’re almost always over the top (like they were in the first Avengers) but I love to imagine that we’ll see all those exploded graphics in our future and pretend that all that information…

Apple Probably, Likely, Definitely Building Its Electric Car

Technology is filled with all kinds of rumors, real and fabricated. It gives us a look at what might be and will be. BitStream gathers the whispers all in one place to divine what the future has in store. Rumors of Apple building an electric car have been swirling for a few months now, but…

Hand-Finished Wooden Toy Boats Too Beautiful To Ever Get Wet

Knowing that millions of copies of a plastic toy can be easily churned out of a giant machine makes wooden toys feel even more special, luxurious, and worth taking care of. Italian boatmaker Riva recently commissioned MadeInDreams to turn some of its more popular models into wooden toy boats, and the results are so beautiful…

A Force Awakens Star Hints At A Huge Secret. Plus The NEXT Mad Max!

Lex Luthor might be wearing a familiar outfit in Batman v. Superman. The next Mad Max movie already has a title. Check out a clip from tonight’s Flash finale. Plus a set video from Suicide Squad, and teasers for what’s next on Orphan Black and iZombie. So many spoilers! Top image: Star Wars Episode VII:…

6 Reasons to Use Plex to Create Your Own Personal Netflix

Plex is a free software package for your computer that lets you stream your local movie or music files to other devices free of charge. Whether you’re watching from a laptop downstairs or from a smartphone in another city, it gives you the ability to create your own personal Netflix (and Spotify) service. If you’ve…

You Can Now Use ‘Netflix for Torrents’ Popcorn Time in Your Browser

It’s over a year since Popcorn Time burst on to the scene, allowing you to stream torrents rather than download them. It’s had its ups and downs—but now you can use it in your browser. The new website, at PopcornInYourBroswer.net, provides much the same service as Popcorn Time always has. Just now it’s in your…

DIY Prosthetics: The Extreme Athlete Who Built a New Knee

Brian Bartlett lost his leg at 24. He now has one of the most famous prostheses in the world. Rose Eveleth meets the man who just wanted to ski again When Brian Bartlett was 24 he was hit by a car from behind so hard it ripped his right leg off instantly. It all happened…

This Is the World’s Most Efficient Black Silicon Solar Cell

Solar power is getting much, much better. Now, a team of scientists has created the world’s most efficient nanostructured black silicon solar cell—which converts an impressive 22.1 percent of incident light into electricity. The team, from Finland’s Aalto University and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, have smashed the existing record for such a cell by an…

The Difference Between Hard and Soft Wood Has Zero to Do With Hardness

Generally speaking, wood is often put into one of two categories- hardwood and softwood. But what exactly makes a given piece of wood qualify as either hard or soft and how did those definitions come about? Perhaps the most important and misunderstood aspect of defining wood as either hard or soft is that it has…

Facebook loves to remind you—over and over—all the stuff your friends do. Don’t worry, I’m sure your work is much more fulfilling than whatever it is they’re doing. [PHD Comics]

The Neuromancer Movie Lives Again

The long-delayed movie adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer has a second chance at life now that a Chinese media company has stepped up with money. A film’s been in the works for nearly a decade. In 2007, it was going to be helmed by Joseph Kahn. Then, in 2010, it was in the hands of…

This Rubber Film Generates Power as It Stretches

It might look like some kind of food wrap, but this roll of red rubber is rather more special than that: it’s a new flexible material that creates electricity as it deforms. Materials that create electricity when they’re subjected to pressure are nothing new. Known as piezoelectrics, they’re typically made either of solid ceramics that…

Did the last episode of Game of Thrones have a hidden death scene? Vanity Fairhas slowed down a scene and dug up some possible foreshadowing and book clues to come to the conclusion that, yes, someone may have died without us noticing.

Apple and Google Beg Obama to Reject Encryption Backdoors

A collection of tech giants, including Apple and Google, along with noted cryptologists, have sent President Obama a letter urging him to reject government proposals to include backdoors in encrypted communication systems. The letter, sent Tuesday, was obtained by the Washington Post. The newspaper explains that the plea is signed by “more than 140 tech…

See Just How Beautiful Neverland Is in the New Pan Trailer

The first trailer for Joe Wright’s Pan focused pretty hard on the characters and the relationship between Hook and Peter. This one doesn’t add much new to our understanding of the plot, but, man, is Neverland gorgeous. There are globes of sea water filled with fish, a sky full of crystal, and lush jungle. It…

Simon Pegg Worries The Love Of Science Fiction Is Making Us “Childish”

In a new interview with the Radio Times, Simon Pegg says that the genre that he’s spent pretty much his entire career celebrating could actually be causing society to become “infantilized.” And he might want to “retire from geekdom.” Is he trolling, or has he really gotten so little out of years of science fiction?…