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Satellite imagery reveals how gold mining is destroying tropical forests

The picture above is terrible. It shows the catastrophic effects of the deforestation caused by the current gold rush in the tropical forests of South America. The consumption of gold worldwide is increasing in the last years due to the global economic crisis and the instability in the financial markets. According to a paper published…

Watch more cute monster animation drawings get inserted into daily life

I just love the fake cartoon reality that augmented reality artist Marty Cooper creates within our world because his character drawings pack so much personality that I just want them to be real. Here he is with part three in his Aug(de)mented Reality series, which splices crazy cute monster drawings into normal situations of real…

Another Independence Day Star Is Coming Back For The Sequel

Have Marvel and Sony found their new Spider-Man? Could an Avenger fall in Age of Ultron? Neill Blomkamp talks about his Alien movie. The next Star Wars may begin with a crash landing. Plus, what’s next on Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and more. Rejoice, for there are spoilers! Top image: The Walking Dead.…

Cats Using Instagram, and Everything Else You Missed Yesterday

Cats posting to Instagram, Microsoft invading Android tablets, LG’s goes metal on the G4. This is all the news and rumors from the past 24 hours, all on BitStream. We have reached peak technology. Pack it up. We’re done. Whiskas, a company known more for feline food than feline wearables, is working on a “Catstacam,”…

This MCU Themed House Turns Your Living Space Into Avengers Tower

Sure, there’s being a fan of the Marvel movies — watching them all, going to midnight screenings, buying the merch, reading the comics — and then there’s decking your house out with wall-spanning prints and giant logos. That’s like, Coulson-levels of fanboying right there. The job was taken on by Absolook Interior Design, who took…

How a Bee Sting Saved My Life

Ellie Lobel was ready to die. Then she was attacked by bees. Christie Wilcox hears how venom can be a saviour. “I moved to California to die.” Ellie Lobel was 27 when she was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme disease. And she was not yet 45 when she decided to give up fighting…

These Light-Emitting Fibers Could Make Fabrics That Glow

A team of researchers has developed a new light-emitting fiber than could be woven into fabrics, providing flexible smart fabrics than can illuminate themselves. The fibers use a stainless steel wire core, which is coated with a thin layer of ZnO nanoparticles and then wrapped in electroluminescent polymer. Finally, a transparent coating of carbon nanotubes…

A German Airbus A320 Has Crashed in the French Alps

A passenger airplane operated by German airline Germanwings—Lufthansa’s low-cost division—has crashed in the Alps in southern France. The Airbus A320 crashed close to the mountain village of Barcelonette during a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. The French TV station iTele reports that there are at least 142 passengers and 6 crew-members were aboard. Newspaper Le…

This is what happens when you ask OK Go to make your commercial

Damian Kulash—lead singer of OK Go and the guy who creates their popular music videos—just made this neat commercial for the Chinese home furniture brand Red Star Macalline. The ad features the band members and follows the same visual style as their video The Writing’s on the Wall. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us…

“It costs how much for 10MB? Forget it, my email can wait.” [Truth Facts]

Curiosity Has Found Nitrates Important for Life on Mars

Samples obtained by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars have been analyzed and shown to contain nitrogen compounds, that are a source of nutrients for living things. Researchers have been scouring Mars for signs of organic carbon, but they’ve now discovered signs of nitrates at three areas on the Red Planet—Rocknest, John Klein and Cumberland. The…

Graphic novel I Kill Giants, about a young woman fighting real and imaginary monsters,is making its way to the big screen. Joe Kelly will adapt his own graphic novel into a screenplay. And Anders Walter, of Oscar-winning short Helium, will direct. [Deadline]

This Is What the First Growth Spurt of a Star Looks Like

A team of astronomers has pieced together data from orbiting observatories to create this image of a star undergoing a huge growth spurt during the earliest phase of its development. In the images, the protostar known as HOPS 383 appears to accumulate a huge mass of gas and dust in a very short period. Known…

Last Week’s Solar Eclipse As Seen From Space

The European Space Agency’s PROBA-2 minisatellite caught the March 20th solar eclipse, with the ESA creating a time-lapse video of its images. See the full video below, and images of it from the ISS. Image credit: ESA/ROB While these images came from a machine, astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti took her own images of the eclipse from…

Xiaomi’s New Mi TV 2: A 40-Inch Android-Powered Smart TV for $320

Xiaomi’s onslaught of affordable technology continues. The Chinese company has today launched its new 40-inch Mi TV 2: a powerful smart TV running an Android-based OS that will sell for $320. https://gizmodo.com/this-xiaomi-action-cam-beats-a-gopro-hero-on-specs-and-1688860914 The new TV features a 40-inch full HD LED panel by Sharp with 5000:1 contrast ratio, a Cortex-A9 quad-core 1.45GHz CPU, 1.5GB of…

10 fun things you can do to play with fire

Everyone has a little bit of pyromania in them, it just depends on when it wants to come out. After watching this Brusspup video of 10 tricks to do with fire, I know exactly when I’m going to start playing with fire again: the next big power outage. I’m totally going to make fire tornadoes,…

Facebook Clarified its Policies. Now How About Fixing Them?

Facebook recently updated its community standards. As the company noted in the announcement accompanying the change, their “policies and standards themselves are not changing,” but that they wanted to provide more clarity to a set of existing rules that have often been misunderstood by users. While some of the changes provide significantly more detail as…

Car-Sized Salamander Fossils Found In Mass Grave In Portugal

Back in the Triassic, giant amphibians were major predators. When their lake home dried up, the creatures — most closely related to modern salamanders — went extinct. And the resulting mass grave of a species called Metoposaurus algarvensis has been found in Portugal. Image: Joana Bruno The amphibians lived in water, and their primary food…

A Bar On Board A Plane? Now You’re Talking

When you talk about the price difference between economy class and business class, or business and first, you have to find some pretty significant differences before you can justify that extra cash. (Unless someone else is paying, or you can snaffle an upgrade using points or some smooth talking.) But if you’re looking for a…

Hubble Gives Us A Wide-Angle View Of An Entire Galaxy

The Hubble telescope is probably best known for its incredible close-up images of everything from star formation to Jupiter’s shrinking spots. But my favorite Hubble pics are always the sweeping, broad views of galaxies — and its latest is a real beauty. What you’re seeing is an edge-on view of spiral galaxy NGC 5023, which…