Latest

Rumor: Is there another major villain in Avengers: Age of Ultron?

Batman Vs. Superman’s new Batsuit is almost perfected, while there’s a hint about The Flash’s TV costume. A super-secret guest-star is rumored to be joining Matt Smith in his final moments as the Doctor. And is Age of Ultron adding yet another villain to its lineup? Spoilers now! Avengers: Age of Ultron Rumor has it…

12 Maps of America From Before We Knew What It Looked Like

The island of California. A huge triangle of land called Florida. A great ocean that cut down from the Arctic into the Midwest. As the New World came into focus beginning in the 17th century, explorers and cartographers struggled to measure a massive expanse of land that would take centuries to accurately map. Take the…

The World’s Smallest Laptop Adapter Saves You From Carrying a Brick

Laptops are supposed to be highly portable, right? But even with a built-in battery you’re never leaving home without its power adapter—and that’s usually a long cable with a hefty brick somewhere along its length. They’re hardly compact, but this laptop adapter from FINsix is. It looks like an elongated version of the tiny charger…

Reddit’s Earliest Days Were a NSFW Wonderland

Reddit’s come a long way since it first appeared online in 2006—but how has it changed over time? This visualization shows how the relative sizes of its subreddits have changed. Put together by Randal Olson from Michigan State University—whose viz of how subreddits overlap we saw last week—this chart plots “subreddit growth over time measured…

Science Proves That Rudolph’s Nose Really Does Glow

It might not be bright red, but Rudolph’s nose really does go glow. These thermal images of reindeer acquired by scientists show that Santa’s flying friends have incredibly warm noses. Because they live in cold climates, the noses of reindeer have adapted to have an increased blood to prevent them from freezing. In turn, that…

To address the problem that 80 percent of new contributions to Wikipedia are abandoned before they’re submitted, the online encyclopaedia now offers a drafting feature to help ease a little of the pressure.

How the Domino Effect Has Shaped History

When younger generations hear the word ‘dominoes,’ they usually associate it with the famous board game, while others–especially food lovers–might connect it with a delicious pizza. For those who are more politically aware, the word probably brings thoughts of the Cold War and the threat of the spread of communism. In addition, most economists today…

The Math Behind the NSA’s Email Hacks

We’re all outraged by the NSA’s invasions of privacy, sure—but we don’t perhaps understand exactly how it managed it. This video explains the maths behind the agency’s surveillance. Hacking into email and working through encryption schemes requires some interesting math, a lot of very large numbers, and a fair dollop of computer science savvy. In…

Samsung’s 2014 Smart TVs Will Be Controlled By Your Pointed Finger

Kinect may have been at it for years, but it’s taking most companies a fair old while to really get to grips with gesture control. Now, Samsung is planning to offer more fine-grained, finger-sensitive functionality in its 2014 smart TVs. https://gizmodo.com/leap-motion-controller-review-waiting-for-the-future-t-817895912 Its new hardware will support single-finger gestures, in contrast to this year’s rather granular…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Systematic Disease

If the eyes are a window to the soul, are cataracts their Venetian blinds?

One Prayer Bowl Ringing

The sound of one prayer bowl ringing is quite a bit more than the familiar lulling waveform when that ringing is sent through myriad processing routines. This is why while Jason Charney’s “Pratītya,” named for the Buddhist concept of “pratītyasamutpāda,” veers from its opening ring tone, that which follows — overtones, and cicada chatter, percussive…

Deafheaven: Dream House

In highschool, I took it upon myself to learn how to enjoy scream-y music. It started innocently(?) enough with slightly-abrasive-but-still-pretty-tame Linkin Park, and moved on to Refused and Underoath, and somehow, Cap’n Jazz. It was a lot of work, but tracks like Deafheaven’s Dream House make it all worth while. https://gizmodo.com/capn-jazz-take-on-me-5943711 For all the screamy-type…

The luminous migration of the Pynock Angel

Every year, Ricky would grump when his brother hauled him out of bed at dawn to watch the annual migration of the Pynock Angel, but whenever the morning light hit the creature’s rainbow skin, he felt lucky to witness the beaming halos that gave the Angel its name. A work in progress by Dave Melvin.…

This Tricycle Is Headed Across the South Pole

Right now three people are competing in a bike race from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole. The winner will be the first person to bike there ever. And 35-year-old Maria Leijerstam is attempting to trike there on a really weird/badass-looking tricycle. Leijerstam left the Novo Russian Airbase on December 17th on a…

A trainee Grim Reaper is no match for a wily prospector in this cartoon

If you want to thwart the Reaper, you better be prepared. And when Death (or rather Death’s agent-in-training) comes for the last denizen of a gold-rush town, he finds the prospector more than ready for a game of roadrunner and coyote. Jonas Martin Larsen, Øyvind Fiksdal, Eilef Sandnæs, Eskild Carlsen, and Yvonne Engbråten made Reaping…

Knives Aren’t Generally For Klutzes, But This One Kinda Is

It’s always better to have control of a knife you’re using, sure, but everyone makes mistakes. And you shouldn’t lose a perfectly good knife just because it sinks to the bottom of a lake or the shaft cracks on your tile floor. Is the solution bouncy knives? Sort of. Spanish design company Baladéo made the…

Parents recreate movie scenes with their baby and a lot of cardboard

Lilly and Leon have enlisted the aid of their baby Oscar, along with cardboard, paper bags, massive amounts of tape, and myriad other household objects for their Cardboard Box Office, in which they make homespun recreations of scenes from their favorite movies. Lilly and Leon look like they are having tons of fun in all…

Here’s What Marketing Could Look Like in 2014

Since 2014 is only a few days away, design aesthetics probably won’t be stunningly different come the new year. So that’s all the more reason to make some predictions! Let’s do this. 2013 was the year of learning that the word “skeuomorphic” was, you know, a word. And then learning what it meant. And then…

The Powerpuff Girls get a new look for their upcoming special

The Powerpuff Girls are returning to television in January for a new television special, but Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup won’t look quite like we remembered. This trailer shows us the new all-CG Powerpuff Girls. Sadly, Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken wasn’t involved in the production of the special, which airs Monday, January 20 at 7:30…

Why good bests evil in Middle Earth: Evil has a Vitamin D deficiency

Why is it that the plucky Hobbit Bilbo Baggins triumph again and again over the likes of Gollum, the goblins, spiders, and Smaug? A cheeky medical paper suggests that good characters have an advantage over evil ones in Tolkien’s world because good characters spend more time in the sun and absorb more Vitamin D. The…