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Could We Ever Power a Laptop By Recovering Energy From Typing?

Tip-tap-tip-tap-tippety-tap. We all spend our days bashing keys at our computer—so how much energy could we create if we could recover just a little of it? First, it’s worth noting that not all energy recovery systems work: some, like regenerative braking, do; Solar Freaking Roadways, not so much. But Randall Munroe of XKCD has run…

The Ornithologist Who Created Our Color Names

Over at the Smithsonian, Daniel Lewis has a fascinating article up about 19th Century color dictionaries, which were use by scientists to standardize descriptions. Color, Lewis notes, is very important for distinguishing species and subspecies of plants and animals. For 19th century naturalists trying to describe what they were seeing to each other, there were…

Why the Moon Looks Bigger on the Horizon

This is a question that has been debated for several thousand years. One popular myth, dating all the way back to Aristotle in the 4th century BC and which still endures somewhat today, is that it is simply a case of magnification caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. While a “magnification” effect is taking place, it…

Walmart is to sell the 16GB iPhone 5c for $30 and the 16GB iPhone 5s for $100, both with a two-year contract, from 9am today, local time.[Engadget]

YouTube Is Finally Serving Video at 60 Frames Per Second

YouTube is about to get smoother: Google has announced that its video site is getting support for videos running at 48-and-60 frames-per-second. Slick. To take advantage of those higher frame rates, video will need to be at 1080p resolution—and you’ll also have to watch videos at that definition to view 48 or 60 fps too.…

The Childlike Joy of Comics Rendered In Felt

This is the work of Jacopo Rosati, who works in felt collage. It feels a lot like the old felt shape toys children play with, but at a much higher level. Anyone else long for some felt and scissors? Rosati’s definitely a fan of comics, as he has a bunch of art along those lines.…

Chromecast Now Pairs With Phones Using Simple Ultrasonic Pulses

Google’s Chromecast picked up a slew of great new features the other day. But it’s also getting a new system for pairing devices which doesn’t rely on sharing a Wi-Fi network—instead, it uses ultrasound. And it’s more simple than it sounds. All you have to do to enable the feature is to allow Chromecast to…

New Senate Bill Could Help You Unlock Your Phone

The murky copyright situation surrounding phone unlocking could get a little bit clearer, thanks to the new and somewhat improved Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, a bipartisan bill in the Senate. As a refresher: the notion that phone unlocking might violate copyright law comes from an ill-conceived section of the Digital Millennium Copyright…

​Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Motorcycle Safety Gear

Capable of keeping you dry when it’s wet, cool when it’s hot, warm when it’s cold and alive in a crash, motorcycle safety gear is the most advanced apparel this side of a space suit. This guide is going to focus on street motorcycle gear and the kind worn on dual-sport and adventure bikes. Maybe…

Woman photoshopped to fit the definition of beauty in 25 countries

Here’s an amazing experiment to see the differences between feminine beauty “ideals” across different countries: 24-year-old radio journalist Esther Honig had her picture photoshopped by Photoshop artists from 25 different countries. She told them to “make her look beautiful” according to their country standards. Sometimes the changes were sweeping with skin lightening, new hairstyles, excessive…

Should Paint Ads Really Remind Us So Much of Highlander?

Pantone’s latest series of ads goes the minimalist route of matching iconic character colors to their paints. But, as much as I love Kermit, the tagline stuck out more than the image. “There can only be one” is one word swap away from being Highlander’s famous “There can be only one.” And then there’s the…

Create a Composition by Altering an Ongoing Loop

Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. This project was published in the evening, California time, on…

Doctor Who will not be at San Diego Comic-Con this year. Apparently, having a panel would interrupt the production schedule, which runs into August. Instead, the cast will embark on a world tour starting August 7th. [Nerdist]

This map shows where the most famous Marvel characters are from

Here’s a map of the world plotting out Marvel characters and there’s no surprise which state is best at pumping them out. Basically, if you want to be a successful superhero in the Marvel universe, you should probably find some way to be born in New York, or at the very least, be from some…

Pacific Rim 2 Is Coming In April 2017!

Praise Cthulhu — we are going to get “more Jaegers and more Kaiju, kicking each other’s butts” in 2017, according to this announcement from director Guillermo del Toro. Pacific Rim 2 has been greenlit for April 2017. Plus there’ll be an animated series and more comics. According to The Wrap, del Toro is co-writing the…

Rejected Edge Of Tomorrow Alien Designs Include Some Nightmare Fuel

Edge of Tomorrow had some pretty amazing visuals, including aliens who proved to be a formidable enemy. But in designing the aliens that would kill Tom Cruise over and over, the designers started out with some pretty wild — and creepy — ideas. We already shared some concept art by designer Kevin Jenkins, but now…

Lovely, Creepy Necklaces Made from Insects Caught in Amber

Etsy seller DinoDNAjewelry has created the ultimate necklace for Jurassic Park fans — or just amber fossil geeks. A gorgeous insect is suspended in glowing yellow amber, just waiting for you to extract some dinosaur DNA from its belly and do some mad science. No, these are not real Jurassic-era fossils (which — I think…

If You Want to Understand Cities in the 21st Century, Read This Essay

In 2008, a young model from rural Canada was brutally murdered in a Shanghai apartment building. The story of how her assailant was (maybe) caught, chronicled by journalist Mara Hvistendahl her engrossing essay And the City Swallowed Them, reveals how 21st century cities are changing the world. What seems like a cut-and-dried crime story becomes,…

The world’s largest gathering of snakes looks like a slithering sea

Imagine your worst nightmare. And then imagine your living room filled with thousands and thousands and thousands of snakes. That’s what it’s like at the Narcisse Snake Dens in Manitoba, Canada. It’s the largest concentration of snakes in the world. It basically looks like an ocean of snakes. National Geographic reports: Every year, thousands of…

The best way to peel a whole bucket of potatoes in seconds

Leo Morten Lund has a great trick to peel an entire two-pound sack of potatoes in less than a minute. All he needs is a drill, a round (clean) toilet brush head, a hose, and a bucket full of water. As the caption on Leo’s video says, better lazy than stupid. SPLOID is a new…