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A Cheap HTC One on Sprint Is Your Deal of the Day

The HTC One Google Edition running stock Android that Google announced earlier today is pretty cool, but it’s still a $600 contract-free phone, and most people opt for a carrier-subsidized handset. If you like HTC Sense and you’re eligible for a Sprint upgrade, you can get the HTC One for $80 with a new contract.…

This Watch’s Floating Second Hand Is a Mesmerizing Reason To Go Analog

There are countless reasons to wear a digital watch: they don’t need winding, they keep incredibly accurate time, and include a host of functions. And even good reasons not to wear a watch at all: smartphones. But watchmaker Maurice LaCroix makes a good case for still considering an analog timepiece with its Masterpiece Seconde Mysterieuse…

Could a notorious party drug be the next psychiatric breakthrough?

MDMA is a drug that’s typically associated with youth culture and dance parties — but it’s increasingly attracting the attention of psychologists and cognitive therapists. Also known as ecstasy, the drug has shown effectiveness in treating a number of mood disorders. But are the potential health risks worth it? Since its introduction less than 50…

How Google Is Finally Fixing Android’s Deepest Flaw

You might not have noticed, but in the last two weeks Google has fixed the thing you hate most about Android. The biggest news out of this year’s I/O Googlepalooza didn’t have anything to do with Jelly Bean or Google Glass. It wasn’t a killer app or a self-driving car. It was, in fact, the…

Kinky people have better mental health than everyone else

People who engage in kinky sexual practices involving such things as bondage and sadomasochism may actually be more mentally healthy than those who don’t, according to a new study. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to break out those whips and handcuffs. BDSM is an umbrella term that mainly bridges bondage and discipline…

Fan TV Is a Hot Set-Top-Box Organized Around Content Instead of Apps

A few years back we told you about Fanhattan, an iPad app, which, a bit like a TV guide, helps you find out which service—say Hulu or Netflix—has the content you want to watch. Genius! Now the company is porting that experience to a set-top-box called Fan TV that helps you sift through madness with…

How Yesterday’s Feminists Invented the Food of the Future

These days, foodie messiahs like Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan preach the gospel of whole foods and get quite a lot of ink and airtime for their ideas about a more healthy way of eating. But the most progressive idea in food from a hundred years ago would likely shock the slow fooders of today:…

A Full Scale Lego T-800 Terminator Sent Back In Time To Blow Our Minds

We wholeheartedly approve of this recent trend of perfect 1:1 scale Lego creations. First, it was the Lego X-Wing which tipped the scales as the largest Lego creation ever assembled. And now it’s this smaller—though no less fantastic—full scale Lego T-800 Terminator model built by Martin Latta. https://gizmodo.com/this-incredible-full-scale-lego-x-wing-is-the-largest-m-509484787 All-in-all the endoskeleton gobbled up some 15,000…

7 Bad Storytelling Habits That We All Learned from Superhero Comics

Today’s escapist storytellers share a rich legacy, from classic TV to great SF novels. But most of us also guzzled superhero comics during our formative years. And the writing of Stan Lee, John Byrne and countless others shaped us, in good ways and bad. Here are seven story pitfalls we picked up from classic superhero…

Can China Really Build the World’s Tallest Building in 90 Days?

The race to build the world’s tallest building has taken on an urgent tone these past few years. Like the mountaineers of the 1930s, or the astronauts of the 1960s, the developers struggling to out-build each other are also struggling to articulate something deeper—something that smacks of national (or maybe economic) pride. But a Chinese…

This is the world’s earliest bird

Remember Archaeopteryx — that bird-like creature many consider to be the earliest ever? Yeah, well, it just got trumped by this guy: Meet Aurornis xui, a newly discovered species of dinosaur that could be the earliest known member of the bird family tree. Called Aurora for short, it’s name means “daybreak” or “dawn” — and…

This New Music Video Recycles Soviet Space Imagery Quite Well

Hungarian etno-funk (or what) group called Kerekes Band published the music video above a few days ago. I do not want to comment on the music (mix of traditional Hungarian instruments and rather simple dance basics, just not my cup of tea), but the visual is fine enough and you should give it a chance…

Did everyone 3,000 years ago have a voice in their head?

Today, plenty of us talk to ourselves, but relatively few of us hear voices. According to one psychologist, as little as 3,000 years ago it was the other way around. Find out about the bicameral mind, and why once upon a time everyone might have been hearing voices. In 1976, Julian Jaynes came out with…

Can Humans Really Feel Hot and Cold?

If you compare the feeling of touching a piece of metal versus a piece of paper, the metal will always seem cooler, even if both objects are actually the same temperature. So what gives? It turns out that what we’re really feeling as cold when we touch something is actually an object’s increased ability to…

Southwest’s New Fare Search Is Perfect If You Don’t Have a Destination

Southwest is going to have you itching to pack your bags today. It just rolled out a brand new flight search, and it’s insanely easy to use, whether you know your destination or not. Know where you’re going? Type in the exact city, and it will show the fare on a map. Have an idea…

Gorgeous circuitboard animals guaranteed to melt your face

Everyone, these are electro animals. They are the work of French graphic designer and illustrator YOAZ. They will 100% turn your eyes, ears, nose and mouth into a hot gooey puddle of face-stuff. Buffalos, gorillas, big cats, owls, bears; the list of intricately detailed circuit board beasties in YOAZ’s kaleidoscopic menagerie goes on and on.…

Though already accessible via web on iOS, Google Play All Access should officially be hitting iOS in less than a month.

How to Turn Burning Gas Into a Lamp Without Blowing Yourself Up

If you were a coal miner in the early 1800s, the light you used was an openflame oil lamp—even though mines were sometimes filled with “fire-damp,” a volatile mixiture of air and methane gas. Explosions were inevitable, and at times, threw bodies from mine shafts like grapeshot from a cannon. Humphry Davy became a national…

HTC One Google Edition Brings Stock Android to the Best Android Phone

On Stage at the D11 conference, Google’s Android chief Sundar Pichai confirmed rumors that an HTC One Google Edition running vanilla Android will be available on June 26th for $600. That means the best Android phone in the world will be available unlocked and without the often clunky HTCSense skin. Heck yeah. https://gizmodo.com/htc-one-review-the-beauty-is-a-beast-updated-5990716 Today’s announcement…

The World’s Newest Artificial Heart Is Half Cow, Half Machine

Using cow parts to save ailing human hearts isn’t anything new—you could even be sitting next to one of our more bovine brethren right now and think nothing of it. But the newest cow-to-heart integration takes a bit of a deeper dive into science fiction land. Soon, a French medical company will begin testing a…