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Here Is Your Self-Driving Car! But Do You Want It?

So long, jetpacks! Our self-driving car has arrived. Burkhard Bilger has a rundown of the fascinating build-up to the self-driving car and its future in the New Yorker — and in this case the future is now. Now, the question is, are we really ready to start using it? “Of the 10 million accidents that…

Considerate iPhone Thief Returns Handwritten List of Stolen Contacts

What really sucks about losing your phone—besides losing the phone—is that you also lose a whole bunch of your data. But to help ease that pain, a iPhone thief in China copied down a list of all his victim’s contacts (by hand!) and returned it to its rightful owner. All 1,000 of them. According to…

Camera buggy takes the cutest photos of lion cubs I’ve ever seen

Nikon ambassador Chris McLennan and engineer Carl Hansen have created a small remote controlled four-wheel drive rover to roam the savanna and capture photos of curious lions, like the cute pride above. It’s pretty neat. Watch it in action here. The Car L—as they call it—has a buggy frame and, on top of it, a…

​The Governor starts Woodbury 2.0 on The Walking Dead

The Governor’s journey to, uh, standing in front of the prison looking at Rick and Carl is complete, and his emotional journey takes him pretty much back to where we left him. I still have no idea why this needed two episodes. So we ended The Governor Side-Story Parte the Firste with the Guv holding…

First ever material to conduct electricity with 100-percent efficiency

From time to time, researchers find something that brings us closer to the future in a big way. The creation of stanene—the world’s first material to conducts electricity with 100-percent efficiency—is one of them. https://gizmodo.com/move-over-graphene-the-wonder-conductor-of-the-future-1471032563

Four-Winged Flying Robot Drifts on Breezes Like an Airborne Jellyfish

It seems logical that if you’re designing a flying robot, you might borrow a few ideas from Mother Nature’s airborne repertoire. But researchers at NYU instead too their inspiration from under the sea for this unusual robotic craft that flies through the air the same way a jellyfish moves through the ocean. A set of…

Heathrow Airport Needs Tightrope Walkers Just to Change Its Lightbulbs

Heathrow’s Terminal Five was designed to be a soaring, light-filled tribute to the wonders of flight. Five years into its life, though, 60 percent of its lightbulbs are burned out—because there’s been no safe or cost-effective way to change them. Now, officials say they’ve found a solution: Acrobats. According to The Telegraph, Heathrow officials began…

Newly presented evidence shows that early humans interbred with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and now, shockingly, a fourth undocumented hominid species. The paleoarchaeologists who made the discovery are now saying that ancient Eurasia was a “Lord of the Rings-type world,” a landmass containing many hominid populations. As to the identity of the new species, scientists haven’t the…

Make some bions this week

What are bions? According to Wilhelm Reich they are the elementary material of life — the half-way point between living and nonliving things. According to others, they don’t exist. But if they did, you could make them. Wilhelm Reich had a long and varied career, if not a celebrated one. During his time, he worked…

Stone-Tipped Spears Pre-date the Human Race

Spears feel very much like a human weapon of war—so it’s surprising to find out that, in fact, the stone-tipped projectiles pre-date our species by a bewildering 85,000 years. A team of archaeologists from University of California at Berkeley have uncovered remains of the oldest known stone-tipped throwing spears, and their analysis suggests they’re 280,000…

When will we see more of Peter Capaldi’s costume on Doctor Who?

And does an audition video reveal a returning Doctor Who villain? Jessica Lange explains why she’s leaving American Horror Story. And Arrow might be laying the foundations for yet another major DC character. Plus, True Blood’s casting a love interest for a character you thought might be dead. Spoilers now! Guardians of the Galaxy Here’s…

6 New Mega-Airports That Will Compete For the Title of World’s Busiest

In October, Dubai’s massive new airport—World Central Airport Dubai—cleared its first commercial flight. It’s expected to become the world’s busiest airport, but, with plenty of other contenders quickly taking shape in Asia and the Middle East, it’s going to have some stiff competition. Welcome to the mega-airport boom. For the next few days, you’re going…

Move Over Graphene: The Wonder Conductor of the Future May Be Stanene

When it comes to super materials, graphene seems to get all the attention. But a team of researchers has developed Stanene: a single layer of tin atoms that could just be the world’s first material to conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at the temperatures that computers work at. https://gizmodo.com/scientists-are-creating-a-graphene-condom-1468331355 Scientists from the SLAC National…

Sony’s Play For Elderly Tech Fans: A Wearable Smart Wig?

Sony’s engineers have filed a patent for a new form of wearable tech, only this one differs from the watches and glasses currently doing the rounds. Sony’s come up with the idea of a smart wig, with embedded rumble tech to tap the wearer on the scalp when they get a message. Sony’s patent is…

Watch All 37,000 of Herschel’s Scientific Observations in One Go

From its launch in 2009, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory was a busy little satellite. Over its lifetime it made over 37, 000 scientific observations—and this video shows them all, condensed into less than one minute. Created by Pedro Gómez-Alvarez in the Herschel Science Centre Community Support Group, the animation runs from the…

HTC has just announced a gold-colored version of the One. This one won’t set you back $4,400—it costs the same as the standard silver model—but it still looks pretty blingin’.

This Disaster Housing Is Made From Upcycled Relief Water Bottles

When natural disasters hit, one of the first relief supplies to arrive is clean, bottled drinking water. But soon the empty bottles could be put to good use, too—in the form of this new style of disaster housing. The design, by Home2O at the New York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture and Design, uses…

Eric Schmidt has written perhaps the cheesiest guide for switching from iPhone to Android. An example: “Be sure to use Chrome, not Safari; it’s safer and better in so many ways. And it’s free.”

Samsung’s Galaxy Grand 2: A Monster Phone With Limp Specs

You’re looking at the monstrous Samsung Galaxy Grand 2. With a screen that measures 5.25 inches on the diagonal, it’s got plenty of display real estate—but not, perhaps, quite the guts to support it. Firstly, despite the huge screen, it only packs 800 x 480 pixels—that’s just 178 ppi. Elsewhere, there’s 8GB of storage, a…

Newly discovered species will make you want to run screaming in terror

Behold the latest goddamn species discovered on Earth! The big male seems to be ready to rip apart your two arms while grabbing your thighs with those lower hooks. You wouldn’t be able to scream because he’d be cracking your head with those jaws to eat your brains. Fortunately, fellow humans, these beasts are tiny.…