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Why optimistic science fiction is dead

Greetings from the post-apocalypse, folks! I apologize if my responses are short this week, but I’m writing them on the run. A bunch of mohawked Australian assholes on motorcycles have suddenly shown up, and they want to play Road Warrior while I’m on a goddamned horse. I want to know how the hell they got…

Just in time for Super Bowl madness, Verizon has launched voice, 3G, and 4G LTE wireless service in 35 New York City subway stations, all on the west side of Manhattan. This is good news for the broader effort to end the era of the subway cell phone blackout.

Keurig 2.0 Brews the 30oz Serving You Really Want

A Keurig is great when you want a single, solitary cup of coffee, but how many caffeine fiends do you know who stop after the first cup? Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ newest Keurig finally acknowledges the serving size most of us are used to, with a machine that brews a 30 ounce carafe. Keurig 2.0…

How Good Data Makes Transit Feel More Efficient—Even When It’s Not

I tried a little experiment the other day—and I’m not sure why I hadn’t tried it before. Before I walked to the bus stop to go downtown, I checked the real-time arrivals for my stop. It turned out the bus wasn’t coming for another 11 minutes, so I did the dishes first and only then…

Scientists Use Acid to Turn Blood Cells into Stem Cells in 30 Minutes

This is a game changer, folks. Whereas mining stem cells has been either an ethical quandary or a months-long affair, scientist can now turn any old blood cells into stem cells in just 30 minutes—by dipping them in acid. That’s right. Take blood cells, add acid, get stem cells. It’s as simple as it sounds.…

Help Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus Find a Gaming PC For His Kid

Suggestions? He’s deciding between Razer and Alienware:

Mexico’s axolotl ‘water monster’ may be extinct in the wild

The iconic axolotl — a salamander-like creature capable of extraordinary regenerative abilities — has disappeared from its only known natural habitat in Mexico’s few remaining lakes. These aquatic creatures are basically salamanders that never grew up. Also known as ‘water monsters,’ they’re a neotenal species whose adult members never lose their gills, allowing them to…

Giant boulder destroys building in Italy, another one misses by inches

Capricious Mother Nature destroyed a building with a giant boulder in northern Italy, with an even bigger boulder missing a three-story farm house by a just few inches, stopping right at its main entrance. According to Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, the landslide happened in the village of Ronci Termeno, in South Tyrol. The…

Belkin’s Entire Line of WeMo Switches is on Sale Today on Amazon

Belkin’s set of automated WeMo switches is one of the simplest ways to dip your toes into home automation, and today you can pick up some rare discounts on the entire lineup from Amazon. We’ve seen small deals on these items from time to time, but never all at once, so this is a great…

What does a show owe its fans?

How much influence should fans have on the direction of a show? And what happens when the plans of the writers and the desires of the fans conflict? The influence of fans on a beloved series isn’t new — Arthur Conan Doyle famously brought a dead Sherlock back to life under pressure from fans, and…

This Floating Sonar Pod Turns Your Smartphone Into a Fish Finder

If fishing for you is more about pulling the most catches out of a lake—instead of simply using your wits to outsmart nature—then the more gear the better. And while fish finders have been around for decades, the FishHunter is the first to turn your smartphone into a window to what lies below the water’s…

Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles don’t look bad at all

Thank goodness, it turns out that dreadful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume was simply a terrible copy of a much better design. But wait until you see Shredder! Spoilers ahead. Comic Book Movies has a bunch of unverified images from the new TMNT set, which have revealed a whole new super-jacked set of Turtles. We’re…

Sony’s QX Lens Cameras Gets a Funny Tablet Mount

Sony’s QX100 and QX10 “lens cameras” are a weird experiment in trying to build a consumer imaging technology built around smartphones, such that it might replace the dying point-and-shoot. And it might even be working! https://gizmodo.com/sony-qx100-glorious-photos-painful-package-1404930987 According to Sony, it’s moving units of the QX cameras, so the company just added a new larger mount…

Reinventing the Printer With Rewriteable Paper and Water for Ink

For office workers concerned about cutting costs and environmental impacts, clicking the print button triggers an ongoing internal debate. Many people find reading words on a printed page to be a hard habit to break when the only alternative is reading them on glowing screen. But given that up to 40 percent of office documents…

Richard Meier and Partners just unveiled plans for a 40-story mixed-use tower that will become one of Mexico City’s tallest buildings. The luxury development will be a rare tower project for the architect—now 80—whom The New York Times reported was turning his focus back home, to New Jersey, just last week. [Archinect]

NASA Sued for Failing to Analyze ‘Alien Life’

When NASA concluded that a “doughnut-sized” object that appeared mysteriously before its Opportunity rover on Mars was actually an errant rock, it left some people dissatisfied: A lawsuit brought against the Agency alleges NASA not only failed to adequately investigate the object, but that it is biological in nature. https://gizmodo.com/this-mysterious-rock-just-appeared-in-front-of-our-rove-1503489334 The suit has been filed…

Rumor: Does a Star Wars book character connect Rebels to Episode VII?

Chris Pratt confirms he’s in Jurassic World. There’s a new casting rumor for The Fantastic Four’s Ben Grimm. And set photos show off Peter Capaldi’s new Doctor Who costume. Plus, is Captain America: The Winter Soldier so good that Marvel’s already trying to lock the directors in for the sequel? Spoilers now! Star Wars Here’s…

23 of the Biggest Machines Ever Moved On Wheels

The fact that humans can build big, complicated machines is commonplace. But the fact that we can build these massive machines and then move them, sometimes across the planet? That’s not so common. While most machines can be assembled and disassembled in situ, every so often there’s a huge part of a mechanism—or sometimes the…

The Woman Who Survived the Titanic, Britannic, and Olympic Disasters

Today I Found Out about Violet Jessop, “Miss Unsinkable,” the woman who survived the sinking of the sister ships the Titanic and the Britannic, and was also aboard the third of the trio of Olympic class vessels, the Olympic, when it had a major accident. Violet Jessop enjoyed incredible “luck” from a young age. Born…

This Leech Can Survive For 24 Hours in Liquid Nitrogen

You’re looking at Ozobranchus jantseanus, a little leech found in East Asia. It doesn’t look much, but it has a very special skill indeed: it can survive for up to 24 hours immersed in liquid nitrogen. In case you were wondering, that’s -321°F, or -196°C, which is way, way below the temperature most creatures can…