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Bluetooth Beacons Will Help Blind People Navigate London’s Tube

A new smartphone app and Bluetooth beacon system is currently being trialled at Pimlico Station on the London Underground, and could revolutionise the way blind and partially sighted people navigate the UK capital’s Tube system. Born from the Royal London Society for Blind People’s Youth Forum, the Wayfindr system offers independence to those that would…

The man who dreamed up the Keurig K-Cup has some regrets, not just about selling his stake in the popular company for a song, but for the amount of waste the non-recyclable single-serving coffee brewing pods have generated: nine billion pods were sold last year, most of which now languish in landfills.

In 1923, Daylight Saving Time Was Actually Illegal In Some States

Americans in most states (but not all) will “spring forward” their clocks tonight. Most people know that Daylight Saving Time caught on as part of energy-saving efforts during World War I. But did you know clock-changing actually became illegal in some places once the war concluded? In a fascinating look back into its archives, Time…

Backing Up An Entire Nation Is Unsurprisingly Difficult

You might not realize it, but the most technologically advanced nation in the world is a small ex-Soviet state in Eastern Europe. Estonia has pioneered secure digital identities for its citizens, helping it become a frontrunner in everything from online voting to preventing Craigslist ripoffs. But it also makes the country a particularly juicy target…

Jeremy Renner And Amy Adams Will Greet Aliens In Ted Chiang Adaptation

HOLD UP. Is Hollywood actually planning a genre movie that’s not a sequel or reboot? Signs point to yes, since Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams are set to star in scifi drama Story of Your Life, an adaptation of a Nebula Award-winning Ted Chiang short story. Denis Villeneuve will direct. The Hollywood Reporter has the…

On Sailor Moon Crystal, Sailor Jupiter Is The Worst Flirter Ever

This week’s Sailor Moon Crystal was a little all over the place. Instead of focusing on a single story like the excellent character piece for Sailor Mercury, it tried to be two things at once, never quite hitting highs in either. But it did tell us this: Sailor Jupiter seriously needs to step up her…

Amazing photos of naked people completely covered in honey (NSFW)

Beholdthe amazing photography of Black Little. This outstanding series belong to his latest monograph, called Preservation. It opens today at the Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City, California. If you are in Los Angeles, go see it. If you are not that lucky, you can see how beautiful it looks here [NSFW!] Blake Little is an…

The characters on House of Cards have terrible sleep hygiene. “I’ve been pretty appalled by the Underwoods’ poor sleep habits,” notes science writer Jordan Gaines Lewis on her blog. In observation of Sleep Awareness Week, she lists three simplesleep hygiene rulesthat Frank and Claire would be wise to follow.

Watching uranium emit radiation inside a cloud chamber is mesmerizing

Here’s a really neat, classic experiment that’s always fun to see. When you place uranium inside a cloud chamber, you can see it decay and emit bits of radiation. It’s like seeing little alpha particle torpedoes shooting out in every direction, leaving a trail behind. You can actually do this type of experiment at home…

Black bun fried frog burger looks scary but is probably delicious

Fried frogs can look frighteningly like failed science experiments and imagining eating them might conjure gooey liquid slime down your throat but they’re actually quite enjoyable to eat. So even though this black bun burger looks like it has disgustingly trapped a gross frog, I’m sure it tastes just fine. The burger is being sold…

Android Is Coming to Virtual Reality, WSJ Says

Well, if Google’s small cardboard-based foray into virtual reality last year wasn’t a big enough hint, a new report from the Wall Street Journal says that Google is about to get even more serious about VR—by trying to become the standard OS for headsets everywhere. The WSJ reports that two people “familiar with the situation”…

The Best of Gizmodo This Week

This week we upped our security game, obsessed a bit over smartphones, sequenced the genetic material in an apartment, and literally saw the future of VR. Here’s a look back. Everything We Think The Apple Watch Can Do The Apple Watch is one of the more intriguing pieces of hardware to come out of Cupertino…

What it looks like in the Arctic Circle when the Sun never sets

This time lapse shows what 24 hours of a summer day (and I guess, a summer night) looks like in the Arctic Circle. You can see the Sun rising and setting like it normally does anywhere else but instead of disappearing beyond the horizon as the Earth turns, it pops right back up and the…

What Is The Best Thing To Do When A Grenade Is Thrown At You?

Ideally you’ll never be in the situation in the first place, but let’s say a grenade is being lobbed at your face—what should you do? Dan Rosenthal, a U.S. Infantry veteran, schools us. Hint: unless you’re Captain America, don’t try to throw it back. Presumably if you’re in a place where grenades are getting thrown…

Iditarod Dog Race Moves 225 Miles North In Search Of Snow

After the rocky, injury-plagued, snow-light conditions of last year’s Iditarod Trail Sled DogRace, this year’s even warmer season means the starting line of the race will move 225 miles north. It will still end in Nome, Alaska, but it’ll begin in Fairbanks rather than Anchorage. The Seattle Times reports: A weather pattern that buried the…

What’s the First Thing You Ever Pirated? 

Tell us about your dark past … with downloading and sharing media or software. What’s the first thing you ever pirated? Were you sharing something you’d bought legally, or were you getting something for free? Pirating technology has come a long way since the early Napster days. Our torrent clients are even secretly mining Bitcoin!…

1970, The Year We Accidentally Bombed Mexico (Again)

The United States hasn’t always had a great relationship with Mexico, but in 1970 things were pretty congenial. Then, in July, an Athena rocket went off course with vials of radioactive material. Some say the resulting impact created the “Mapimi Silent Zone.” In 1947, a V-2 rocket, launched into the air by the United States,…

This Is What Lockheed’s New Laser Can Do

Lockheed Martin recently tested its new Advanced Test High Energy Asset (ATHENA) laser—not to be confused with the Navy’s laser—on the Ford F-150 pictured above. The weapons system hit the truck’s running engine from a mile away. The engine doesn’t run any more. [Lockheed Martin] Contact the author at [email protected]. Public PGP key PGP fingerprint:…

Windows 93: The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have With an Operating System

A few months ago, a pair of French hackers teased a new project called Windows 93. It was a wonderfully weird web-based operating system, some sort of spoof on Windows 95, packed to the gills with insidery internet jokes. And late last night, the digital artists released the full version. It’s still wonderfully weird, thank…

These Buildings Were All Built Around Trees

Oftentimes – too often, it seems – we clear trees to make way for buildings. These structures turn that expectation on its head; every entry in this collection has been built to accommodate a tree or trees, in surprising and creative ways. The HemLoft Treehouse, designed and constructed by Joel Allen in Whistler, Canada, 2008-2011…