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Could Supergirl Bring An Iconic — And Weird — Comics Villain To Life?

Batman and Superman duke it out in some totally insane Batman v Superman artwork. Phil Lord discusses how the Flash movie will stand out from the TV show. Star Trek 3 gets a title. Chris Pratt quashes the latest casting rumors. Plus, clips from Inside Out, and what to expect next year on The Flash.…

Thankfully, Doctors Are Making a Catheter That Hurts Less

If you’ve ever had a urinary catheter, you’ll know they’re unpleasant. If you haven’t, imagine someone threading a tube up through your urethra into your bladder and … yes, yes they hurt. Mercifully, scientists are working out how to make the process less painful. Here’s how. Urinary catheters are used when it’s impractical for a…

This 55-Inch LG Display Peels Off the Wall Like a Poster

LG consistently produces impressive screens, and this one is no exception. The 55-inch OLED panel is just 0.97 millimeters thick, and can be removed from its magnetic wall mounting like a poster. The screen, shown off at an LG event in South Korea on Tuesday, weighs just 4.1 pounds. It’s clearly much, much skinner than…

How a Hacker Could Hijack an Airplane From Their Seat

Reports that a cybersecurity expert successfully hacked into an aeroplane’s control system from a passenger seat raises many worrying questions for the airline industry. It was once believed that the cockpit network that allows the pilot to control the plane was fully insulated and separate from the passenger network running the in-flight entertainment system. This…

Can You Solve This Vietnamese Math Puzzle for 8-Year-Olds?

If you thought the Singaporean logic puzzle was tough, brace yourself for this math problem that was originally set for eight-year-old students in the Vietnamese town of Bao Loc. It’s apparently even stumped someone with a doctorate in economics with mathematics. As Alex Bellos points out on The Guardian , it’s not a theoretically difficult…

An Australian is suffering a rain of spiders. The phenomenon, called “Angel Hair” for the dusting of webs that covers the area, is the result of the combination of a mass hatching of spider and the babies taking to the wind on silk parachutes in perfect weather conditions. [ABC News]

That, and mutter “someone’s gonna lose their jobs over this” under your breath as you mash the F5 button furiously. [Kind of Normal]

A French Telecoms Firm Wants to Buy Time Warner Cable

The Comcast-Time Warner merger may be dead—but that doesn’t mean the two will continue on as-is. Now, it appears that the French telecoms firm Altice is sniffing around Time Warner Cable. Both Reuters and Wall Street Journal report that the French company is in advanced talks to buy the regional cable company Suddenlink—which operates in…

Stars and Clouds Battle to Take Over the Night Sky

Sunset at Joshua Tree National Park gives way to bright stars, while streaky clouds try to obscure their emergence. Cloudy Night Sky by National Park Service/Lian Law/flickr/CC BY 2.0 Contact the author at [email protected].

Google Tone Sends URLs to Nearby Computers Using Sound

Google has published a Chrome extension that allows you to share URLs in an interesting new way. Click a button and a simple chirrup from your computer’s speakers sends the link to other devices in earshot. The little piece of software called Tone is inspired by the fact that “while digital communication methods like email…

Mapping Comes to Android Wear With Google Maps Update

An update to Google Maps has brought with it an interesting added bonus for Android smartphone users: access to maps, right there on your wrist. Android Central reports that, following an update to Google Maps version 9.9 on a corresponding phone, an LG Watch Urbane boasted an icon for the app, too, in its launcher.…

Scotland Yard Worried That Star Trek Would Cause a Doomsday Cult

New documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request show that Scotland Yard kept a secret dossier on various science fiction shows and movies out of a fear that they would cause rioting and cyber attacks. On the list of worrying imports were Star Trek, The X-Files, Roswell, Dark Skies, and Lawnmower Man. We’ll…

Scream Queens Trailer Asks If a Serial Killer Is Scarier Than a Sorority

Honestly? Emma Roberts’ sorority girl is definitely scarier than that guy in the devil outfit. It’s hard to take seriously anyone who takes inspiration from the head chopper in Caligula. This full-length trailer gives us way more information than we’ve had before, with our lead joining the sorority that her mother died in twenty years…

KFC Puts Keyboards In Trays So Greasy Chicken Fingers Can Keep Texting

Kentucky Fried Chicken in Germany just cooked up the weirdest fast-food techno-marketing stunt. For a week, restaurants lined their serving trays with disposable Bluetooth keyboards instead of paper liners. Not even joking. The idea is that you sync the keyboard to your phone before eating a plate of fried chicken, granting you the ability to…

Looper Meets Groundhog Day In This Eerie, Atmospheric Short Film

In the short film ROTOR, a security guard sits in a creepy factory, while small, odd things happen around him. But it’s only when he investigates a mysterious intruder that all of those little oddities come to a head. Nils Vleugels wrote and Maarten Groen directed ROTOR, which stars Raymond Thiry and was produced by…

The US Is Testing a Storm Surge Warning System for Hurricanes

The wall of wind-driven ocean that accompanies a hurricane is called a “surge” for a reason: This isn’t a gentle rising of the water level, it’s violent and destructive—sometimes more so than the hurricane’s winds. This hurricane season, for the first time, the National Hurricane Center will be testing a prototype storm surge warning system…

How A Notorious Chemical Weapon Led To The Invention Of Chemotherapy

Mustard gas was, and is, one of the most terrifying weapons of war. It made people break out in blisters, and killed them slowly over weeks. It also inspired one of the first effective forms of cancer therapy. Here’s how. Mustard gas lingers for days, making soldier’s skin break out in blisters and burning their…

These Folks Took One Self-Portrait A Day—Watch Them Age Before Your Eyes

It can be hard to notice incremental changes in people when we see them every day, but what if you saw all those little changes played on fast forward? These people took photos of themselves at regular intervals (often every day) in order to highlight how they change, age, and grow over time. The 40-year…

NYC’s Centuries-Old Dream of Expanding Into the Hudson River Lives On

The tiny, constricting footprint of Manhattan is one of the things that turned it into a real estate juggernaut. At the same time, developers and futurists have dreamt of permanently expanding the city into the water around it. And they’re still trying. You may remember the plan from a few months ago, when DNA Info…

How To Raise The Stakes In Your Story Without Wrecking Your Characters

The best science fiction and fantasy stories are impossible to tear yourself away from — and often, that thrilling sense of momentum comes from the sense that the danger to the world keeps getting bigger and scarier. But how do you raise the stakes without sacrificing your characters? All images by Mateusz Orzminski (More at…