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Man Flying to Europe with Helium Balloons Gives Up After Just 350 Miles

Well, that was quick. Balloon-loving daredevil Jonathan Trappe was supposed to float all the way to Europe under 370 helium-filled balloons in three to six days, but he gave up after only 12 hours citing technical difficulties. He hadn’t even made it out of North America. Late Thursday night, Trappe posted a vague message to…

This video demonstrates that some low speed limits are dumb

Fact: the faster your drive, the shorter your reaction time is, the less probability to avoid an accident. Fact: the faster you drive, the more kinetic energy, the less probability of surviving an impact. Fact: some low speed limits are dumb—but not as dumb as people who drive recklessly around Manhattan. https://gizmodo.com/police-arrests-man-who-broke-the-drive-around-manhattan-1263160070 https://jalopnik.com/this-is-the-best-takedown-of-the-speed-kills-myth-you-1302382244

Last Days on Mars trailer spills some blood on the red planet

From the director who brought us the beloved short “Blinky TM” comes The Last Days on Mars, a film about the first manned mission to Mars, and what goes wrong on the big, red planet. Check out the new blood-splattered trailer. https://gizmodo.com/the-full-short-for-blinky-the-bloodthirsty-pet-robot-5783831 Last Days on Mars will premiere in the UK on September (no word…

James Cameron loves the hell out of the CG Captain Harlock movie

James Cameron knows movies in general, and he knows 3D CG movies in specific. So if James Cameron likes your 3D CG film, you’ve probably done something special. If he calls your movie “majestic” and “epic in every sense,” then you’re Shinji Aramaki, and the movie Cameron is praising is Captain Harlock. Yes, the acclaimed…

Google Street View Driver Rams 2 Buses, 1 Truck in Failed Hit-and-Run

It’s not a good year to be a Google Street View driver—or rather, in this case, to be anywhere in the vicinity of one. In Bogor, Indonesia, one ill-fated Google Street View car got itself into a bit of trouble when the driver’s failed attempt at a hit-and-run involved him ramming into two large public…

The unlucky beasts that were too close to NASA’s rocket launches

Despite the fact that all NASA’s launch sites are natural paradises thanks to the agency’s conservationists efforts, sometimes accidents happen when frogs, bats, pelicans or turkey vultures cross the path of rockets as they soar into space. Here are some sad examples. Of course, there were other lucky ones who survive. In fact, the norm…

What Would a City Based On Your Foursquare Data Look Like?

Most cities evolved based on centuries of complex economic and cultural forces. But what would it look like if that process were reversed? That’s the concept behind Generating Utopia, a program that turns a user’s location-based data into a sprawling, Rio de Janeiro-style cityscape. German interaction designer Stefan Wagner wrote the script, which he describes…

Watch How a Man Turns Guns into Musical Instruments

Artist Pedro Reyes takes confiscated weapons and turns them into fully mechanized instruments in an ongoing project called Destroy. Here’s a look at how. We saw the remains of 6,700 guns turned into an entire orchestra that played John Lennon’s “Imagine” last winter. Now Reyes is back again with eight new instruments, and a look…

Relativity goes underwater with Supplee’s Paradox

Too often relativity is confined to space ships and interplanetary travel. It’s time to dive and see what weird ideas relativity can bring to us from beneath the sea. Jim Supplee first thought up a novel spin on the weirdness of relativity when he was a graduate student, and came back to it years later…

A map of our solar system that puts it into proper perspective

Now that the Voyager 1 space probe has officially left the solar system, it would be nice to know where it is, exactly, in the large scheme of things. This crafty map will help. https://observationdeck.kinja.com/this-time-its-official-voyager-1-has-left-the-solar-1302056512 Given the vast distances involved, it’s impossible to create a scale map of the solar system and the immediate interstellar…

9 Massive Refugee Camps That Are Home to Nearly 1.5 Million People

While the Arab Spring and its resulting political upheavals have firmly held the world’s attention over the past two years, the Middle East’s conflicts are, sadly, far from the only ones going on. Wars in North, West, and East Africa have displaced millions of people and killed untold more. Those lucky enough to escape with…

Ben Affleck’s Batman will be “tired, and kind of weary and seasoned”

That’s what the Warner Bros. CEO says about the new Caped Crusader, at any rate. Hugh Jackman says Days of Future Past could be the end of the line for his Wolverine. Scarlett Johannson talks Captain America 2 while Kat Dennings talks up Thor 2. Ronald D. Moore’s new show Outlander casts two major roles.…

Facebook Is Testing an Auto-Play Video Function to Save Your Clicks

Facebook’s announced a plan to change the way videos work on its news feeds, with clips soon to start automatically playing should you linger on them while scrolling past. Think of the incredibly minor amounts of inconvenience that’ll avoid. Much like video sharing starlet Vine, the clips will begin playing in a muted fashion, so…

The Audio Cassette Is 50 Years Old Today

The humble cassette tape, beloved of 80s music lovers, may now be defunct—but it’s hardly surprising given that the once-revolutionary medium turns 50 today. The natural descendant of the 8-track—which used similar magnetic tape but housed it in a much bigger, bulkier frame—the audio cassette was the brainchild of engineers at Philips. It’s precise birthday…

Mount McKinley Has Shrunk By 83 Feet

North America’s highest peak, Mount McKinley, has shrunk by 83 feet according to new data acquired by US geographers. The Alaskan mountain was last officially measured in 1952 and found to stand 20,320ft tall, but the new official figure means it now measures just 20,237ft. The measurement—recorded in 2012 but now published—was taken using Interferometric…

Is There Anything More Irritating Than Animated Galleries?

Animated galleries are the blinking text of modern websites: they offend our eyes, but they’re all over the internet. Please, please, please make it stop. Please. [XKCD]

Saturn Looks Simply Stunning From Cassini

Saturn’s never looked more majestic than in this beautiful high-resolution image captured recently by Cassini. Snapped using the satellite’s wide-angle camera on June 15, the picture shows the planet from 657,000 miles away and 17 degrees above the ringplane. Each pixel represents about 37 miles. But forget the technical detail: it just looks beautiful. [NASA]…

You Can Pre-Order the iPhone 5C Right Now

iPhone 5C pre-orders just went live and if you want to brighten up your life with some colorful plastic and if you want to avoid waiting in a silly line, you can head over to Apple.com to get your new iPhone. The carriers are all taking pre-orders too (along with others), so hopefully you have…

A gold-colored HTC One part has come to light in China. The start of a new trend, perhaps?

The NSA Disguises Itself as Google to Spy

It’s come to light that the NSA has impersonated Google—and possibly other big websites—in order to intercept, store, and read supposedly secure online communications. Mother Jones reports that the agency managed this by using “man-in-the-middle (MITM)” attacks, which are often used by high-class hackers. PowerPoint slides made public by a Brazilian news channel also suggest…