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Tiny Thumb-Sized Hedgehog Lived in Canada 52 Million Years Ago

During the early Eocene epoch, North American mammals were quite different from what we see today. Here’s one example: researchers have just uncovered a 2-inch-long fossilized hedgehog in British Columbia. That’s the size of your thumb. It’s the tiniest hedgehog known to science. The researchers, writing in the most recent issue of the Journal of…

How Thumbsticks Came to Control the Modern World

It’s no small feat translating a user’s wishes into computer commands. Controlling massive robots in chaotic, fast-paced action of modern console games like Titanfall—and yet even children are able to intuitively tear through AI fodder in their digital mechs. How? Using dual analog thumbstick controllers. And they’re not just for games. Any wizened gamer knows…

This Rule About Drone Surveillance Is Just Plain Absurd — And Scary

Right now, in the United States, law enforcement can put you under drone surveillance without a warrant — as long as the drone never lands on your property. What the hell is going on here? How can this be legal? First of all, let me assure you that this kind of surveillance is going on…

Dive Through Ice Caves and Skip Over Crevasses

Glaciers are an exotic world of beauty. In this video, a drone flirts with light filtered through translucent walls, capturing that ethereal mix of blue ice, white snow, and chilly brightness that defines glaciers. Take five minutes to ride along, swooping through caves and dancing around icy crags. Glaciers fascinating me. The various textures of…

iCracked Mobile Screen Repair Will Now Fix Your Shattered Samsung

iCracked is a mobile service that fixes your shattered, waterlogged, or otherwise busted up smartphone wherever you are. Back when they were iPhone exclusive, we tested them and loved their work. Now they’re working on Samsung phones. Smashing your screen still isn’t a good idea, but now Sammy users have a backup. iCracked will fix…

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot: Still The Biggest Storm In The Solar System

The diameter of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been shrinking about 500 miles a year since 2012. It bears mentioning, however, that, even in its diminished state, Jupiter’s ruddy storm system is truly gigantic. The image above comes from John Brady’s “The Size of Stuff,” a post at Astronomy Central that uses comparisons like this…

Orphan Black has officially been been renewed for a third season. Production starts in September and we’ll be seeing new episodes in Spring 2015. Party on, Clone Club! Thanks, John Doe, for the heads up. Gif from the Orphan Black Tumblr.

Razer Blade 2014 Review: Great For Games, Overkill Otherwise

Razer’s badass Blade gaming laptop is back with a screen that’s insane, and the power to push some serious pixels. But that doesn’t do you much good when getting by day-to-day is a little bit of a struggle. What Is It? A powerhouse gaming laptop compressed down into a form so svelte it could be…

Stealth bomber concept splits in three, reassembles like Voltron

This “Voltron” stealth bomber seems out of a science fiction movie, but it’s one of the aircraft concepts that military powerhouse BAE Systems is working on: A single bomber/drone would fly as one from the home base, then divide into three airplanes to execute different tasks in the same area and reassemble to return to…

Never-Before-Seen Photo of Europa Shows Rivers of Red Ice

The folks at JPL just published a new image of the surface of Europa – Jupiter’s watery, chaotic, eruptive, and potentially life-harboring satellite. The photograph illustrates the contrast between the moon’s relatively pure water ice (blue-white terrain) and its saltier, and thereby ruddier, surface ice. According to JPL, the image area measures approximately 101 by…

Proof That Boxtrolls Will Be One Of The Year’s Most Striking Movies

Laika’s next stop-motion venture, The Boxtrolls, is bringing a lush world of crooked buildings, lavish costumes, cheese-fiending villains, and, of course, the Boxtrolls themselves with their elaborate mechanical inventions. We visited the set, and if you have any doubts about the movie’s glorious puppets, props, and sets, take a behind-the-scenes look at The Boxtrolls. Top…

A Rare Tour of the Long-Secret Russian Town Where Cosmonauts Are Born

If you went looking for Zvezdny Gorodok, aka Star City, on a map in the 1960s, you’d have no luck. This small town outside of Moscow was long a state secret, and for good reason: It was the base where Cosmonauts came to train for—and recover from—space flight. And it’s still cooking. “Deep within the…

Homestar Runner Is Coming Back To Life!

This April, for the first time in many years, Michael and Matthew Chapman, released a brand new Homestar Runner cartoon. It was wonderful. And now, here’s even better news: the flash cartoon website will be churning back to life full time. Eeeeeemail! According to Vulture, Matt Chapman dropped this wonderful news on the Jeff Rubin…

Biker launches from 100-foot ramp, jumps off his bike using a parachute

26-year-old Brad O’Neil wanted to beat a new “Hey look I can do something really stupid that will potentially kill my neck” record, so he used a 100-foot-long, 60-foot-high ramp to jump into the air using his bike, only to jump off the bike at the highest point using a parachute. SPLOID is a new…

We Tried the Disposable Coffee Lid of the Future And It’s Actually Great

For all our crippling caffeine addictions, the disposable coffee cup is a highly imperfect art at best. Seattle-based company Vaporpath wants to change that with a total coffee cup lid overhaul. But is the fancy new redesign actually superior to its classic brethren? We decided to find out for ourselves. First, the claim.Vaporpath’s Viora coffee…

Journey into the Dystopian World of Abandoned Soviet Submarine Bases

You’ve entered an enormous building scoured by ocean tides and haunted by hulking machines, slowly rusting away. It looks like the set for a post-apocalyptic movie, but it’s actually a real-life Soviet submarine base, left over from the Cold War. Kraternyy, a secret base (1987-1994) on an uninhabited volcanic island named Simushir, Kuril Islands (via…

What’s More Dangerous: Martha With a Drone, or Martha With a Hashtag?

Poor Martha Stewart. She can fold a fitted sheet and polish an antique tea service better than any living human, but she doesn’t seem to have mastered #the hashtag. Having seen the carnage she’s wrought with just her smartphone camera, we’re pretty certain Martha’s drone work will end up being A Not Good Thing.

Why The U.S. Government Is Purchasing Water Guns

America is fighting a war against a formidable foe. After years of looking for a weapon to achieve victory, researchers have decided to repel the invaders with powerful water guns. Photo by Chris Reid The enemies in our crosshairs? Invasive species of carp that are consuming algae at an alarming rate. Silver carp and bighead…

A Love Story About A Cyborg Leaving Her Wife On A Space Elevator Launch

The lyrical short film Auroras takes us into a neon-lit future where space elevators rocket people past the atmosphere, but the story at its heart is a familiar one: that of two lovers separated by circumstance, dreaming of the day they’ll be reunited. Writer and director Niles Heckman partially funded Auroras through Kickstarter, allowing him…

Smallpox Virus Samples Found In Unprotected Government Fridge

While preparing for move to a new location, researchers at the US National Institutes of Health discovered a cardboard box inside a storage room refrigerator. To their horror, the vials inside were labeled “variola” — the name of the virus that causes smallpox. The virus that was supposed to have been eradicated in 1980 doesn’t…