Latest

NASA Spent $349 Million on a Test Tower It May Never Use

Six months ago, NASA finished building a brand new $349 million vacuum test chamber—but it was no occasion for celebration. The space program it was built for was canceled years ago. This huge structure in Mississippi is now more readily seen as a massive symbol of pork. In the Washington Post today, David A. Fahrenthold…

Museum Receives A Million Dollars’ Worth of Taxidermy

And you thought you had a lot of random stuff lying around the house. The Virginia Museum of Natural History just scored a taxidermy collection so enormous, its value is over $1 million. The haul consists of some 230 items gathered by Gregory Speck, who made the donation when he moved out of his Manhattan…

A URL Trick Let You Use Someone Else’s Delta Boarding Pass

A BuzzFeed intern and NYU senior recently claimed to have hacked Delta’s paperless boarding pass system by changing just one digit in a URL. “On Delta, you can change the URL of your boarding pass and get someone else’s boarding pass,” Dani Grant wrote in a Medium post. “Even if they’re on a different airline.”…

This Short Video Explains Why You’ve Never Met An Alien

Given the extreme age of the Galaxy, extraterrestrial civilizations should have occupied every corner of it by now. Yet we see no signs of this. A short new video produced by New Scientist beautifully explains why the Fermi Paradox is a very real scientific problem and why it should be taken more seriously. An accompanying…

Cinderella Trailer Is Everything A Live-Action Disney Movie Should be

This new trailer for Disney’s Cinderella only further confirms our suspicions that this live-action adaptation is almost a scene-for-scene remake of Disney’s cartoon fable. GOOD. After a year of gritty Alice in Wonderland war tales and crappy Maleficent backstories where she doesn’t turn into a dragon, it’s nice to see a movie that remembers wonder.…

Sony Hackers Threaten Terror Attacks at Theaters Showing The Interview

In a warning published by Variety, the Sony hackers threatened to carry out an attack on the premiere of The Interview, as well as other showings of the Seth Rogen comedy. Update: “We are still analyzing the credibility of these statements, but at this time there is no credible intelligence to indicate an active plot…

The Only Truly Intimate Online Experience Left

The internet has long promised a certain kind of connection between people, one that is now close to being fulfilled: We can reach anyone, at any time, anywhere! But while the web was born in plain text in IRC chat rooms and messageboards, our online conversations were supposed to be multimedia, dynamic, and visual by…

$40 in Play Credit with a Chromecast, Tiny Mirrorless, and More Deals

We already knew that the Google was bundling in $20 in Google Play credit with the Chromecast for the holidays, but Best Buy is currently adding in an additional $20 in credit on top of that. This means that you’re literally paying $30 to get $40 on Google Play, and a Chromecast thrown in for…

ThinkGeek Holiday Blowout, Free LOTR Movie, and More Deals

ThinkGeek has some great gift ideas for the nerds in your life, and a lot of their most popular items are discounted today. Plus, free shipping! [Think Geek is Having an Everything Sale | Free Shipping with Code SHIPUS] We already knew that the Google was bundling in $20 in Google Play credit with the…

Move over, Valencia, you smug sepia-tinted ass clown. Instagram is releasing five new filters today—Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Perpetua, and Aden—its first round of new vintagey camera effects since 2012.

12 Reasons Robots Will Always Have An Advantage Over Humans

We puny humans can be depressingly fragile and flawed, a realization that’s all the more discouraging when we consider the incredible potential for robots. Here are 12 reasons why machines will always have the edge over us meatbags. Top image: Scene from Automata. Before we get started, it’s important to point out that I took…

Tuesday Game Room: Nothing But Xrd Edition

If you thought last week was bad, well, we’ve got an even lighter week ahead of us as all things gaming wrap up for the holidays. But it’s time to dig into that back catalogue you’ve been saving for now! Tell us what you’ll be jumping into before Christmas in this week’s Tuesday Game Room!…

Drought Cost California 11 Trillion Gallons of Water

11 trillion. 11,000,000,000,000. However, you wrap your brain around it, that number is hard to fathom. But that’s how many gallons of water California’s three-year drought has sucked from the Earth, according to NASA. In coordination with airborne measurements and orbiting satellites, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory created first-of-its-kind data by calculating the volume…

Drone Footage Shows Extent Of Greenpeace’s Damage To Peru’s Nazca Site

Last week, Greenpeace activists provoked international outrage when they undertook a publicity stunt, trespassing on the Nazca Lines World Heritage Site. Newly released done footage shows how much damage they left behind. https://gizmodo.com/this-greenpeace-stunt-may-have-irreparably-damaged-peru-1669728616 As PBS Newshour reports: The Nazca figures were drawn between 500 BC and 500 AD by removing a thin patina of dark…

Former Employees Are Suing Sony Pictures For Not Protecting Their Data 

Sony’s ex-employees are suing the company over for failing to secure its computer system and exposing their information. Two former employees have filed a class action lawsuit against Sony Pictures. Michael Corona, an employee from 2004 to 2007, and Christina Mathis, who worked at Sony between 2000 and 2002, filed the complaint in the federal…

You Will Never Want To Bounce These Stunning Leather Basketballs

Most of us don’t mind playing with a basketball made from synthetic materials because they’re just going to get all scuffed up on the court, and they’re cheap. That being said, there are always those who prefer the finer things in life, and for them a game of hoops is only enjoyable when played with…

What Every Minute of the Day Looks Like In Color

If you’ve got an extra tab to spare in your browser and a love of graphics or web design, check out this fun online clock that converts the current time into its corresponding six-character color hex code. The site’s background also happens to reflect the current color value, and over the day it will slowly…

There May be a Way to Hit the Pause Button on a Pregnancy

There are a handful of species, around the world, that can figuratively put a pin in a pregnancy and come back to it at a more convenient time. It’s called delayed gestation, or embryonic diapause. But how widespread could it be? Embryonic Diapause and the Animals Who Love It What do the sea otter, the…

Review: Lego Friends, City, Star Wars advent calendars–day 16

Day 16 of the 2014 Lego advent calendars gives us more food and drink, a snowmobile (snōtorcycle?) and a guy that can take on the whole Empire himself. See images and a review of the 16th day of mini builds after the jump! Friends Advent Calendar (41040) Today is sort of a throw away day.…

How Neal Stephenson Is Helping To Make Snow Crash‘s Metaverse A Reality

Magic Leap’s mysterious augmented reality tech promises to “bring magic back into the world.” And now Neal Stephenson, who imagined the virtual Metaverse in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, has joined the company. He tells io9 why this technology may “demand a new way of thinking.” Top image via Magic Leap website Magic Leap had…