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Here Are Some Foods To Help You Hack Your Sweet Tooth

Body hackery can be surprisingly low-tech, especially if you’re trying to hijack any person with a sweet tooth. There are a bunch of foods that chefs are using to hack your tastes buds into thinking their food tastes better, or at least sweeter, than it is. Artichokes and Sweetness A lot of chefs will serve…

​”Happy Foot” And “NoseySmurf” — The NSA’s Programs All In One Chart

The Pulitzer Prize-winning news group ProPublica has compiled a list of all NSA programs revealed in the past year and plotted them on a chart based upon whether they are bulk or targeted, foreign or domestic. As is often the case with covert agencies, the codenames achieve the perfect balance of goofy and ominous. “Most…

Carbon Nanotube Transistors That’ll Save Moore’s Law Are Coming in 2020

Our world of amazingly tiny electronics is about to get even tinier. After a decade of research, IBM says it’ll bring carbon nanotube transistors to market by 2020. The company is now readying the technology to take over from silicon transistors, and that opens up a lot of exciting doors. Currently, Intel’s smallest silicon transistor…

Write Some Six-Word Science Fiction With Us!

Can you tell us a story in only six words? Your stories last time ranged from the dystopian fashion cycles of the future (You say “parasite”. I say “accessory”. — angusm) to a reversed zombie attack (Zombie brains actually are surprisingly tasty. — Fauxcused) and now we want to hear more! So settle down at…

This Is What Riding The World’s Tallest Water Slide Looks Like

Behold the POV footage from Kansas City’s insane 17-story water slide. This is the Verrückt, a water slide we’ve been tracking for sometime now. It’s so big it has its own trailer. And now Schlitterbahn Park, home of the Verrückt, has released this video of a sandbag that was pushed down the monstrosity with a…

When Did We Discover That We Needed Oxygen To Live?

One of the major things that keep us from colonizing space is oxygen. Other planets don’t have that much of it, and we really need it. But when did we first learn exactly what it took to keep us breathing? Human beings have had a notion that it takes more than just “air” to keep…

Scientists Discover an Entirely New Kind of Meteorite

At a pink limestone quarry in Sweden, finding meteorite is no big deal—workers have found 101 of them in the past 20 years. But a new space rock discovery has scientists scratching their heads. The meteorite is of a class that’s never before been seen, and it may hold a key to the explosion of…

A 3D Printer That Turns Coke Bottles Into Whatever You Can Imagine

Star Trek’s replicators were not only able to produce any food or products our far-off descendants wanted, they were also able to make it from any kind of waste products. It was the ultimate recycling scenario, one that the new Ekocycle Cube 3D Printer hopes to emulate by using a new filament made in part…

Change Your Android Phone’s Settings Based on Where You Are

While you’re waiting for Android L to come down the pipe, here’s a useful hack you can apply to your current Google-powered phone or tablet. You no doubt spend much of your day switching between locations, from home to work to the gym, and reconfiguring your device each time can be a chore. With the…

Pictures of a New Doctor Who Character Reveal the Return of an Old Foe!

James Gunn shoots down every possible Nova rumor for Guardians of the Galaxy and shares a photo of Yondu. The Star Trek 3 writers talk about how they hope to honor the 50th anniversary of the franchise. Mad Max is going to be dialogue-light. And Mark Ruffalo shares his thoughts about Planet Hulk. Spoilers now!…

An Up-Close Tour of the C-17 Globemaster, the Giant That Flies

With sinuous lines, flawless grey skin, and four powerful turbofan engines straight out of a contemporary sci-fi movie, the iconic C-17 Globemaster has a surprisingly spacious exterior, with a 170,858 pound maximum payload. Inside, it’s a total mess of cables, wires, pipes, and hundreds of gadgets that the average admirer can hardly see through. The…

New species discovered in world’s deepest cave

A completely new species of bug—a ground beetle named Duvalius abyssimus—was recently discovered by scientists exploring the subterranean fauna living up to 1.5 miles below the earth’s surface in the Krubera-Voronja caves, Russia. The new creature has adapted to a life without light in the world’s deepest cave system, with extended antennae and a body…

Monkeys Make The Same Bad Gambling Decisions That Humans Do

Humans have a remarkable ability to see patterns where none exist. In the hot-hand phenomenon we perceive streaks of wins or losses where the data, in truth, are random. New research shows that monkeys are subject to the same bias, which might suggest that the bias is evolutionarily adaptive, and maybe even rational. The moniker…

No, this isn’t a petrified bowl of spaghetti — it’s what the white matter in your brain looks like. The Franklin Institute 3D-printed this remarkably complex model for a new exhibit. Skeptics said it couldn’t be done, but the finished product accurately reflects the 2,000 strands of nerve cells found in the brain.

U.S. Courts Authorized the NSA to Spy on 193 Different Countries

We know that little is off-limits to the prying eyes of the NSA. But what is surprising is that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court gave it free reign to spy on virtually whoever it wished back in 2010. https://gizmodo.com/all-the-nsa-revelations-in-one-easy-to-read-chart-1598415452 A report from the Washington Post reveals that the FISA court certified a list of 193…

Samsung Labor Conditions Are Still Terrible

Samsung recently commissioned an independent inspection of 100 of its suppliers in China. Surprise: their working conditions are still dreadful. Mercifully, the report does at least report that there’s currently no child labor used in the factories that manufacture Samsung products. But the rest makes for depressing reading. https://gizmodo.com/samsung-denies-new-claims-of-underage-workers-in-its-su-5968732 Most of the factories fail to…

The Stories of Peter and Jane Have Taken a Weird And Existential Turn

Artist Jon Bentley took inspiration from the Peter and Jane readers to imagine a world far more complex and strange than the original books’ simple prose ever hinted at. Says Bentley: Like many people of my generation, I learned to read with Peter, Jane, Mummy, Daddy and Pat the dog. As I struggled with the…

How Far Could Legolas Really See?

In Lord of the Rings, Legolas claims to be able to count the exact number of horsemen five leagues away—that’s over 17 miles—even discerning their leader as very tall. But would that ever be possible? In this video, Minute Physics imagines the perfect pair of eyes to establish if physics could ever actually allow Leoglas…

A Short History of Every Man Who’s Ever Walked on the Moon

Forty-five years ago this month, a human being first set foot on the moon. Despite four and a half decades and amazing leaps in technology, to date only 11 other people have done this – and every one flew in an Apollo mission for the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA). Apollo 11 (July 20, 1969)…

David Cronenberg’s new short shows how powerful your mind can be (NSFW)

This is not a typical David Cronenberg film. You won’t find his classic exuberant makeup effects or visceral transformations. The Nest is just two characters having a conversation in a long point-of-view shot. It’s so good that I sat through the entire nine minutes without blinking. It completely twisted my mind. The film was commissioned…