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Inside the Mesmerising Robotic Factory Where Teslas Are Born

It can’t be easy to build a car, but the factory where Teslas are born makes it looks like a piece of cake. The folks over at Wired took a look behind the scenes to watch rolls of aluminum transform into fully functional electric cars, and it’s a sight to behold. Even though the process…

Amazing Spider-Man 2 will have 5,000 villains

The Amazing Spider-Man sequel is apparently going to have more villains than extras. There’s Jamie Foxx as Electro and Paul Giamatti as the Rhino — but that’s not all. Spoilers ahead… Dane De Haan (Chronicle) is playing Harry Osborn in the film, and he’s been rumored for a while to become the Green Goblin towards…

Before Jetpacks, We Were Promised Butterfly Wings

The jetpack would emerge in popular American science fiction of the 1920s, and later become cemented into the popular imagination after World War II. But the idea of single-flyer personal transportation tech didn’t start with the jetpack. In the late 19th century, people were obsessed with flight. And they imagined a future where strapping a…

Is it realistic to think that the future will be like Star Trek?

In the Star Trek universe, humans no longer make war on each other and don’t use money. Poverty has been eradicated and so have sexism, racism, and various other -isms. Science fiction often predicts the future accurately, but do you think humanity could ever really achieve that level of enlightenment? Starfleet’s most impressive ship, the…

8 Photos Of Wet, Wet Water Fights

My mother always told me, if you’re going to pick a fight, do it in water. Winner: Hatted Hurricane 5D Marklll ISO 200 f5/6 1/400 100mm This was one of the most fun challenges I have participated in. This weekend at my annual back yard tent party I brought up the shooting challenge with my…

NeverWet Review: The Magical, Water-Repelling Spray Is Kind of Amazing

Over the past month or so, the internet’s been drooling over a promotional video for Rust-Oleum’s magical new liquid-repelling treatment. And rightly so! According to the promotional video, no matter the type of liquid, sauce, or lurid emulsion, all offending gunk immediately slides away from treated objects. But that’s the promotional video. Surely it can’t…

Lego Is Making Two New Minecraft Sets

The official Lego Minecraft set has been such an amazing success that Lego and Swedish game developer Mojang have decided to expand the line with two new official sets: the Village and the Nether. The Village (pictured above) “fans can create and customize their own Minecraft village with Lego bricks.” It seems to be an…

DC’s head executive puts Sandman at the “top” of their movie list

Diane Nelson is the President of DC Comics, so outside of Warner Bros., she is the most influential person on the planet in terms of getting DC characters onto a movie screen. And her first choice? Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Of course, this is not an announcement of a Sandman movie. The Hollywood Reporter (page 2)…

68 Plans For London’s Hilariously Misguided Response to the Eiffel Tower

In 1889, Paris unveiled the magnificent Eiffel Tower. It was a worldwide sensation. London, meanwhile, was green with envy. Not about to be outdone, city officials announced a competition for a grand monument of its own, and revealed 68 of the entries in a showcase catalog. Most of these designs are pretty bonkers, and thanks…

Tumblr’s Big Security Fail Was Absurdly Stupid

Tumblr just fessed up to a frankly embarrassing security flaw that exposed millions of users’ passwords. Actually, “embarrassing” might be an understatement in the broader spectrum of screw ups a company like Tumblr could make. “Astonishingly stupid” works, too. The nature of the breach itself is relatively simple. For an unknown amount of time, Tumblr…

What if Ned Stark and Tony Stark were brothers?

One is the warden of the North, the Lord of Winterfell, and the incorruptible Hand of the King. The other is a genius playboy inventor, armored superhero and leader of the Avengers. But what if the beloved heroes from Game of Thrones and Iron Man were brothers? It might look kind of like this. (Note:…

Design the Perfect Shade With Crayola’s Make Your Own Marker Kit

Remember when you were a kid and you’d bug your parents for bigger and bigger marker sets so you could get exactly the shades you wanted? It turns out that’s not an issue for today’s kids. As long as they can convince their parents to cough up $25 (although $40 at Amazon) for Crayola’s miniature…

Is Under the Dome doomed to make a series of stunt episodes?

The plot of this Monday’s episode of Under the Dome was exactly what I was worried would happen. Instead of developing our characters, or getting down to the fascinating mystery at hand, we got a stunt story that could be summed up as “a thing happened — UNDER A DOME!” Spoilers ahead. One of the…

Official Ender’s Game Recruitment Video: Give Us Your Children

Ender’s Game is unrolling its big Comic-Con marketing campaign with an International Fleet Battle School Recruitment Ad. Watch as Harrison Ford asks for you to enlist in his space war against an army of bugs. And check out a smattering of new footage from the film. All you gotta do to enlist (and find out…

Watch 450 Pounds of Dynamite Take Down a Power Plant

Out with the old, in with the new. Earlier this week in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the Florida Power & Light Co. demolished one of its power plants with 450 pounds of dynamite to make way for a cleaner and more eco-friendly plant that’s slated to open in 2016. The Port Everglades plant had been in…

Grand St.: Your One Stop Shop For Weird and Awesome Gadgets

There have been countless invite-only sites for booze, fashion and other esoteric desirables for a long time. Before today Grand St. was an invite-only destination for heavily curated but quirkier gadgets, and starting today the site is open to everyone. Every week Grand St. releases four to five new gadgets and offers them until they’re…

The Basics of Home Canning and Pickling

Winter is coming and you’d better be prepared. The delectably sweet fruits and vegetables in season right now will be shriveled husks rotting in your crisper drawer by the time the snows come. That is, unless you preserve or pickle them. Here’s how to put the fruits of your home garden’s labors into delicious stasis.…

The Government Uses License Plate Scanners to Track Your Every Move

Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars law…

BitTorrent’s personal cloud service, Sync, just moved into beta today. And now, it even has its own Android app. If you need some online space the NSA can’t get at, go check it out. It’s free!

Citizen science project identifies species by their calls

A new automated system is helping to monitor the world’s biodiversity by recording the sounds of nature and uploading them to the web in real time. Anyone can listen to the tracks, and approved users can help train the software to automatically identify species in the recordings. Researchers hope to eventually transform the project into…