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Rumor has it Google will unveil a new in-car Android interface at I/O next week. Dubbed Google Auto Link, the setup would let drivers control their Android phones via the car’s built-in controls and display screen, not unlike Apple’s CarPlay. [Auto News]

Deals: Chromebox, Cheap Rokus, SanDisk Storage, Video Game Preorders

Amazingly, the humble ASUS Chromebox is Amazon’s #1 selling desktop computer, and it’s currently available at its lowest price ever. [ASUS Chromebox, $170] After years of speculation, Amazon has unveiled its fabled Fire Phone to the world, and you can preorder yours right now. For a limited time, it even comes bundled with a year…

Color-Changing Suit Shows Injuries That Paralyzed Athletes Can’t Feel

Paraplegic athletes push their bodies to the absolute limit—and sometimes beyond. When an athlete injures a body part he or she can’t feel, that can lead to some very dangerous situations. Now, a design team at Imperial College London has an ingenious solution: an athletic suit that uses off-the-shelf pressure sensing film to show where…

Elon Musk “Hopeful” First People Can Be Taken To Mars in 10-12 Years

The CEO of SpaceX says humans could visit Mars as soon as 2024. Musk is a hot topic in the media these days. He recently unveiled a manned version of his successful Dragon spacecraft. He’s talking about retrieving the first stage of his Falcon 9 rocket, a feat that has never been accomplished. Last night…

This is the oldest known depiction of circumcision being performed. It’s a colorful restoration of a bas-relief found in an Egyptian tomb built for Ankhmabor in Sakkara, Egypt and dating back to around 2400 B.C.E.

Ink and Slide: Hands On With Adobe’s New iPad Drawing Tools (Updated)

Last year, Adobe took its first foray into the hardware world with two cutely named digital drawing devices, projects Mighty and Napoleon. The software giant is now ready to launch the fully-formed duo under new monikers. Meet Ink and Slide. They’re (mostly) pretty great. The idea behind Ink and Slide is to give designers a…

Ask Dothraki’s Creator About Inventing Languages For Game Of Thrones!

David Peterson is a linguist and the creator of the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones. He’s here today to answer our questions about creating new languages, the role of learning languages in Game of Thrones, and how to make small talk in Dothraki. In addition to his work creating languages of HBO’s Game of…

Yelp Now Lets You Message Your Grievances Directly to Businesses

In a move that will probably backfire instantly thanks to the always lovely denizens of the internet, Yelp is now allowing you to send messages directly to business owners. All of your questions, comments, and trolls can now directly filter into the inbox of the restaurant or plumber or day care you would like to…

Teaching Creationism As Science Now Banned In All UK Public Schools

In what’s being heralded as a secular triumph, the UK government has banned the teaching of creationism as science in all existing and future academies and free schools. The new clauses, which arrived with very little fanfare last week, state that the… …requirement for every academy and free school to provide a broad and balanced…

We Are Out Of Ideas: Felix The Cat Returns

Felix the Cat has been bought by Dreamworks Animation. And who can blame them, cats are so hot right now. Variety is reporting that Dreamworks has nabbed the rights to old-timey cartoon Felix the Cat. The announcement took place at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, which means this is just a purchase announcement and…

This Absurd Tilt-Wing Whirly Bird Actually Flew

While it may have looked like someone slapped wings on a VH-71 Kestrel and flew like an ungainly Osprey, this experimental plane helped to pave the way for today’s tilt wing aircraft. https://gizmodo.com/the-13-billion-presidential-helicopters-we-scrapped-an-978480541 The Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) XC-142 experimental aircraft was originally developed as both a replacement to the US military’s aging fleet of Sikorsky HR2S…

The “Natural” Label On Your Food Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

A new survey by Consumer Reports shows that over 59% of Americans are looking for a “natural” label when shopping for their food. The problem? The label doesn’t mean much of anything. The findings were the result of a survey of the food-buying habits of over 1,000 people, the majority of whom said that they…

World’s northernmost big city is a brutal mosaic of color and pollution

Welcome to Norilsk, Russia. With 175,365 citizens, it’s the northernmost big city in the world. The architecture is brutal, it’s highly polluted, and it’s freezing cold all year round. Yet its geometric and colorful shapes make it an oddly pleasing sight—at least as captured from the air by photographer Slava Stepanov. Norilsk has polar days…

Photoshop Mix: Desktop-Lite Photo Editing Lands on the iPad

Three new iPad-only creative apps are here from Adobe today. There are two drafting and sketching apps that are partnered with some neat hardware, and a robust photo editing app called Photoshop Mix, which borrows some of the tools and workflow from its desktop big brother. The first two apps, Line and Sketch, are two…

The Best New Feature in Photoshop CC

Adobe is announcing new release of Photoshop CC today, and with it comes one particularly cool feature: the ability to automatically select the out-of-focus areas of an image. The new tool is great for compositing or applying adjustments to only the sharp areas of your photo. It works in tandem with the existing Refine Edge…

The Math Formula That Determines Whether You Love Or Hate Adaptations

Greetings, mail parasites. Sorry if I’m in a bad mood, it’s just been a tough week here in the vague post-apocalypse. Food is scare, the cannibal mutants aren’t, and I just remembered it’s been 38 years since I last saw a Game of Thrones book. NO SPOILERS PAST BOOK 9, A SOCIETY OF PSYCHOPATHS, PLEASE.…

The Guy Who Coined Net Neutrality Is Running for Office

This week, Columbia law professor Tim Wu announced that he’s running for lieutenant governor of New York. Wu is the guy who invented the term net neutrality. And regardless of which state you call home, this is exciting news. Wu is a lot like you and me. He doesn’t want to allow fast lanes on…

Porcelain fighters come to life when you crash them against the floor

This cool series of photos taken by the German artist Martin Klimas shows fighting porcelain figurines crashing against the floor, their pictures taken at the exact moment of impact, which turns them into living manga-like vignettes of extreme motion and violence. From a height of three meters, porcelain figurines are dropped on the ground, and…

The Best Hacks From the Fan Site Ikea Doesn’t Want You To See

Ikea biffed by going after IkeaHackers, the fan site that shares all kinds of new uses and smart mods for the Swedish superstore’s affordable furniture—seriously, you can’t buy this kind of devotion. Until founder Jules Yap sets up shop under a new name, let’s have a look at a few of the projects that make…

The Earth is a Weird and Wonderful Place

It’s easy to forget neglect the wonder of our planet in the bustle of the every-day, until you stop to really think about the terrific forces at play to shape the world around us. Here’s my quicklinks from around the web on amazing (and terrifying) things about our planet. NASA has a satellite photo gallery…