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A Medieval Recipe Could Kill Hospital Superbugs. No, Really. 

Staph infections are one of the most pervasive and annoying bacterial infections faced by hospitals every year. It infects half a million people in the US every year, with symptoms ranging from skin infections to heart problems — and worse, some strains (commonly known as MRSA) have evolved to resist common antibiotics. As it turns…

Expanding Wheels Cover Every Type Of Terrain

The normal tire has been adapted over the course of a century to be pretty damn good at carrying people places. But from time to time they still break, Ackeem Ngwenya is a Royal College of Arts graduate who has been working on his expanding wheel concept for a few years now.I met him two…

Buying a Samsung Galaxy S6? You might want to wait: LG just invited us to an event on April 28th, where it’ll likely introduce the G4, another new Android flagship. Oh, and did we mention we haven’t reviewed the Samsung GS6 yet? Look for that later this week.

Glow-In-The-Dark Tampons Are Being Used To Fix Broken Sewers

The UK has a problem: thanks to bad plumbing and a groaning sewer system, ‘grey water’ — the stuff that comes out of your dishwashers and washing machines — is ending up in rivers, bringing all sorts of contaminants with it. Hi-tech solutions exist to monitor the problem, but a much cheaper (and more amusing)…

There’s a Modern TV Hidden Inside This Classic 1950s Philco Predicta

There’s nothing quite as retro-futuristic as the Philco Predicta television from the late 1950s. That bubbly, detached picture tube. The metal frame. It’s gorgeous. Unfortunately, the iconic TV set is also notoriously unreliable—and what good is a broken Predicta TV? Well, it turns out it makes a pretty bitchin’ monitor frame. Redditor Imapm (or “ModularDuck”…

You’ve Never Read A Book About Magic And Loss Like Signal To Noise

Plenty of books use magic to talk about coming-of-age stories and the secrets that people bury… but few of them are as sad, or as evocative, as Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel Signal to Noise. Her story of three friends in Mexico City and their musical obsessions feels true, as well as truly sad. Spoilers ahead……

If You Could Only Use One Social Network, What Would It Be?

Few of us have the mental bandwidth to care about the latest hot new social thing. When Foursquare split its app, I never downloaded Swarm in protest. I never signed up for Ello. Do I sound too get-off-my-lawn when I say screw Snapchat? The never-ending influx of new platforms makes me wonder: If I had…

Microsoft’s New Spartan Browser Is Taking Its First Step Into the Wild

As Windows 10 inches ever closer to its summer release, Microsoft’s been adding new features piecemeal to the preview version of its next-generation operating system, and this may be the biggest update yet. Microsoft’s brand-new browser, Spartan, is about to get its first taste of open internet. We got a brief tour of Spartan at…

Custody Battle Over Massive Emerald Worth $370 Million Rages On

It’s 180,000 carats and weighs 840 pounds. Its value is estimated somewhere in the $370 million range, but really, the Bahia Emerald is so rare it’s virtually priceless. No wonder the raw gem, which was found in 2001, is such a hot property — and has been at the center of a legal saga that’s…

See how the Dreamworks logo before its movies changed over time

Ethan Jones is back with another interesting visual breakdown of movie logos, this time focusing on DreamWorks. You know that intro sequence, where a fishing line gets dropped into the water from a boy on the moon. Here are all the variations that have popped up in DreamWorks movies since they first started using the…

That Time New York City Wanted to Put Highways On Top of Its Skyscrapers

Some might say New Yorkers had more money than sense in the Roaring Twenties. Somewhat profoundly, John K. Hencken’s idea to build highways on top of skyscrapers in Manhattan required both. Bummer about that stock market crash—otherwise these elevated boulevards might have been built! Emphasis on the might have. The plans to build a 16-mile-long…

Now It’s Alien Isolation‘s Amanda Ripley’s Turn To Get An Action Figure

Ripley figures are apparently like buses — you wait ages for one, and then a bunch come along at once. Now Ellen’s daughter Amanda is joining the Ripley figure party as well. Rejoice! For those unfamiliar, Amanda was the protagonist of last year’s Alien Isolation, a video game set 15 years after the first Alien…

Journey to the center (ahem, “centre”) of the earth, with this interactive applet created by the folks at BBC Future. It’s… surprisingly engaging. Contact the author at [email protected].

The Bizarre Schemes of the Silk Road Investigator Who Broke Bad 

Two former federal agents have been charged with fraud and money laundering while they were working on a task force devoted to bringing down infamous online drug bazaar Silk Road, and the charges paint a picture of a 15-year DEA veteran going rogue in such an over-the-top fashion that it’s hard to believe this isn’t…

All black squid ink bagel with Jamón Ibérico is yummy dark magic food

Mission Chinese Food and Black Seed Bagels teamed up to create the wildest breakfast sandwich in New York: an all black, squid ink bagel with white poppy seeds that has been schmeared with whipped kefir-anchovy butter and made irresistible with Jamón Ibérico. The black bagel bun looks jarring but I’m sure this tastes fantastic. You…

Photoshop Contest: Is There Anything Worse Than an iPad Selfie Stick?

Earlier today, we found a device that might be the very pinnacle of human garbage: theiPad Selfie Stick. But as we all know, things can always get worse. And that, dear readers, is where you come in. A few of you have already graced us with your wretched creations,seen here: And here: But let’s not…

Amidst The Field Of Hieroglyphics 

Dr. Bulygin hadn’t just found human writing among the broken monoliths. He’d discovered a Rosetta Stone, humanity’s linguistic gateway to the community of the cosmos. Concept art by Shahab Alizadeh. You can follow Alizadeh’s work on deviantART and Facebook, and you can purchase prints from his INPRNT shop. Alizadeh’s gallery is filled with luminous, often…

Feds Want Reddit to Give Up Personal Info of Darknet Market Redditors 

Federal agents want Reddit to turn over the personal data of five prominent Redditors active in the Darknet Markets subreddit. IP addresses, names, and other data about five Reddit users active in Darknet Market discussions have been requested. Earlier this month, the popular drug-and-weapon peddling darknet market Evolution vanished in an apparent scam by its…

Iconic hairstyles of famous characters from pop culture

Our favorite TV show characters and movie stars and cartoons are often remembered for how they look. The outfits they wear, the cars they drive, the weapons they use, the swagger they carry and the hairstyle they have. Here’s an infographic showing 65 different famous hairstyles. Some can be recognized instantly, others I’m not so…

It’s Very, Very Easy for Hackers to Steal Your IRS Account

The only thing that sucks worse than doing taxes is a hacker stealing your identity, doing your taxes for you, and then depositing your return in a random bank account, where it can later be transferred to Nigeria. Sound impossible? It’s not, according to the story of an unlucky man named Michael Kasper. Long story…