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Behold, The Smartest Hotplate Ever Invented

We’re elbow-deep in the internet of things, and our home appliances, gawd love ’em, are just going to keep getting smarter. In an effort to streamline the cramped kitchens of bachelor/ette pads everywhere, Frog Design, in collaboration with GE, came up with a concept for the most intelligent damn hotplate you’ve ever seen. EcoSwitch is…

Who Needs an Axe When This Wood Stove Swallows Tree Trunks Whole?

You’ve already gone to all the trouble of felling a tree and cleaning off the branches. Who wants to spend even more time hacking it into useable chunks of firewood? That inconvenience is clearly what inspired designers Michiel Martens and Roel de Boer to create the Spruce Stove, a wood burning heater that swallows trees…

The scientific way to make alcohol disappear

No, not that way. That’ll come later. For now, you can get some (purified) ethanol and some water, and do a quick experiment that involves one of those thing disappearing into the other. All you need is some water, and some ethanol, a cup measure and a glass or two to mix them in. First…

6 Chemical Reaction GIFs That Will Make You a Smarter Person

Remember how much fun your high school chemistry class was? Neither do we. But that may be because there weren’t enough explosions. Well, nowadays, the internet can fix that problem in a jiffy—or rather, a gif. Capturing extreme chemical reactions in animated gifs is the best way to experience the magic of chemistry outside of…

Jennifer Lawrence Debunks the Craziest Star Wars Rumor of All!

There are a ton of Doctor Who photos, and the Jessica Jones TV series has a showrunner. Independence Day 2 gets a new release date, and next year will see two Hercules films. New versions of Ghost and Tales from the Darkside are coming to TV. Plus, a toy line gives a glimpse of Captain…

Rolls-Royce Is Going to 3D Print Its Airplane Engine Parts

Everyone loves talking about 3D printing, but now it’s really hitting the big time: Rolls-Royce has decided that it’s going to use the technology to help make its airplane engines. While the company has been mulling the idea of using 3D printing for a few years now, it’s finally decided that the technology has come…

Watch Conan Get Hilariously Heckled By YouTube Commenters

Conan—or ConeBone69 to his YouTube buddies—is pretty pleased by the fact that you need to use your real name to comment on YouTube videos now. Cue his audience heckling with outbursts straight off of the YouTube comments section. This is gold. CAPS! Periods! LOLs! Spam! Racism! Haters hating! It’s absolutely hilarious. Just watch it, you’ll…

Why DRM in Cars Is Going to Drive Everyone Mad

Forget extra cup holders or power windows: the new Renault Zoe comes with a “feature” that absolutely nobody wants. Instead of selling consumers a complete car that they can use, repair, and upgrade as they see fit, Renault has opted to lock purchasers into a rental contract with a battery manufacturer and enforce that contract…

How Fast Things Travel Compared to the Speed of Light

Sometimes it’s hard to put things like the speed of light into perspective: it’s a number so large that it’s tough to make sense of. Which is why this visualization, which compares the speed of things you can (kinda) more easily visualize, is massively helpful. With arc length representing speed, Usain Bolt barely registers, while…

If the Color Pink Doesn’t Scientifically Exist, Why Can We See It?

Absent from the visible spectrum and neither a wave nor a particle, the color pink is, for many, a scientific enigma: how can a shade that doesn’t even appear in the rainbow exist? The answer lies in color theory. The Primary Colors: RGB Unlike art production (see below), when it comes to eyesight (and video…

Watson Is Going To Be Open For Public Use on the Cloud

Watson was always going to be more than just a successful game show contestant. Now, the computer is about to take on anything and everything, as it opens itself up to the public on the cloud. https://gizmodo.com/supercomputer-genius-watson-is-headed-for-the-cloud-5945782 IBM has announced that its supercomputer will be opened up to developers in 2014, using a new, open…

Intel Is Opening Its Own Pop-Up Stores For the Holidays

Seizing on the success of Apple and the, err, attempts of Samsung and Microsoft, Intel is jumping on the physical store bandwagon: it’s opening a number of pop-up stores this month. The first will open on November 23rd in New York City’s NoLita area, though it remains unclear where the rest will be. Oooh, the…

Mozilla Doesn’t Plan to Launch the Firefox Phone in the US

Bad news if you’ve had your heart set on a Mozilla phone ever since they announced the Firefox handsets: the company has admitted that it has no plans to launch the device in the US. https://gizmodo.com/meet-the-zte-open-the-first-official-firefox-os-phone-5986525 Speaking to CNET, Mozilla exec Mitchell Baker explained that the decision to ignore the US is so that it…

In the shade of the Möbius strip bridge

Soon, the planned community of the Meixi Lake District in Changsha, China will be graced by a bridge modeled after the legendary mathematical concept of the Möbius strip. The Mobius strip is a surface with only one side, often modeled by twisting a long, rectangular piece of paper and attaching both its ends. Image by…

A secret room behind a bookshelf is cool until a stranger lives inside

This sounds like a start to a horror movie, an A-plus-plus-plus internet hoax or one of the scariest things you can find in your home. A user on Imgur was horsing around in one of the rooms in his house when his little brother ran into a bookshelf. Turns out, the bookshelf could open up.…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: The Fairlady Project

That time a swarm of sentient inter-dimensional goo blobs warped to Earth (wormhole, obviously) and were so impressed by the scenery that they Voltroned themselves into a CryNet Nanosuit. https://kotaku.com/the-real-life-science-behind-crysis-nanosuit-5985111

What NASA Astronaut Rick Mastracchio sees when he bench presses—with air cylinders to provide resistance—on the ISS. Yeah, we’d work out with a view like that too.

Meet the man who has set nearly 400 Guinness World Records

If you ever found yourself in an herbal induced state of clarity and wondered if you could set a Guinness World Record in something ridiculous, the answer is you probably can. But then Ashrita Furman would probably break your record. Who? Ashrita Furman. He’s perhaps the greatest winner, maybe one of the greatest non-professional athlete…

This hilarious parody of Gravity set in IKEA is spot on

Space is beautiful. Space is terrifying. IKEA is mostly just terrifying, especially when you get lost. Director Daniel Hubbard hilariously spoofed Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity by setting it inside the expansive world of IKEA. At over 346,000 square feet and absolutely no sense of direction, it sure feels endless. The parody trailer nails the IKEA shopping…

Comment of the Day: Peak Geek Edition

Today, we whispered our secret hatreds of beloved films into the unknowing winds, assembled a super-team of the worst mentors ever to hand down a piece of terrible advice, and predicted when the geek-bubble would come crashing down on all of our heads (wait for it, wait for it, and…) In Morning Spoilers, commenter Daniel…