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Rick finally meets someone crazier than he is in the best Walking Dead episode ever

Last week I mentioned that The Walking Dead is a deeply flawed show. I stand by that — I enjoy the show, but it’s despite lack of characterization and ridiculously straightforward dialogue (let me put it this way; I’m hard-pressed to think of a more popular show whose characters audiences merely tolerate, not enjoy). I…

Incredible algorithm reveals invisible motion in everyday video

Researchers at MIT working at “the intersection of vision and graphics” have created a computer program that offers its users a stunning new way of looking at the world. The intriguing technique, which uses an algorithm that can amplify both movement and color, can be used to monitor everthing from breathing in a sleeping infant,…

Sonos Playbar Review: Everything Wireless Should Be This Easy

Sound bars don’t immediately benefit from Wi-Fi connectivity the way music systems do, because you usually use them with your TV, and your TV isn’t something you need to put in your pocket and walk around with. But that doesn’t mean that Sonos’ wireless music features don’t benefit from its first sound bar. Just the…

Got a Galaxy Note II? Ne’er-do-wells can use this trick to peek past your lockscreen for a second, but not much else.

An Even Better Oreo Separating Machine Blasts Hot Creme In Your Mouth

The world thought it had seen it all when physicist David Neevel’s Oreo-separating machine was revealed. But, Nabisco’s Cookie vs. Creme campaign is inspiring inventors from all over the country to come up with their own machines. Including Barry Kudrowitz and Bill Fienup, a pair of toy scientists from Minnesota who created a convenient auto-feeding…

This d20 engagement ring is a critical hit

When Babelglyph wanted to propose to her girlfriend, she decided to celebrate their mutual love of Dungeons & Dragons and craft what is almost assuredly the first d20-themed engagement ring ever made. The result is the Ring of Matrimonial Awesomeness you see above, created by a professional jeweler from Babelglyph’s designs. You’ll note that the…

Rethinking the New Yahoo Homepage

When was the last time you ever checked out Yahoo.com? It’s been a while, right? I’m sure by now you’ve at least typed that url in once to check out the new homepage design. How long did you stay and check it out? Probably not long at all. You see, Yahoo! needs to do a…

Are popular scientists becoming modern day preachers?

There’s a really grumbly post over at The Guardian by Eliane Glaser in which she complains about all the flowery and hyperbolic language being used by so many high profile scientists today. But more than that, Glaser is claiming that these popularizers of science, many of whom are avowed atheists, are using the tropes of…

How soon will we learn Doctor Who‘s greatest secret? Plus the Latest X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy Casting News!

Shane Black ponders whether Iron Man 3 is the end of an era. Ed Harris discusses his role in the post-apocalyptic train movie Snowpiercer. Greg Nicotero reveals how The Walking Dead will evolve in season four. Plus interviews with the stars of Oz the Great and Powerful and Once Upon a Time! Spoilers from here…

This Is Not a Painting

This beautiful orange swirl looks like it could be an oil painting—but it is in fact a low pressure system currently floating above the Southern Ocean, just west of Australia. The image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra Satellite just yesterday. The orange hues are actually false color—MODIS detects…

No, the iWatch Isn’t Definitely Coming This Year

There are headlines this morning, in abundance, that an Apple iWatch will be coming in 2013. They are declarative. They are definitive. They are wrong. The iWatch might be coming this year, or might come in 2015, or it might not come at all. And nothing in this Bloomberg report changes that. Here’s what Bloomberg…

This Bluetooth Controller Is Fluent in Wii, Wii U, and Android

When you tire of all the fancy motion controls and just want to enjoy some classic button-mashing gameplay on your Wii or Wii U, consider this wireless controller—particularly if you’re an Android gamer too. In addition to playing well with Nintendo’s hardware, this gamepad also cozies up to your smartphone or tablet. The $40 controller…

Good news, iMac buyers: Apple has ironed out supply issues, so they’re now shipping in 1–3 days rather than 2-3 weeks.

What the Out-of-Office Reply Really Means

We’ve all experienced it: you send an important email, expecting to wait at least hours for a reply, but immediately get a response. Uh-oh. It’s the out-of-office reply, a complex and coded message which essentially says “screw you”. Jorge Cham’s annotated email rams that point home. My personal favorite is the mention of the sender…

Supposed Galaxy S4 Spec List Suggests Eight-Core Processor

Someone who claims to be in possession of a Galaxy S4 prototype decided it would be fun to benchmark it, giving us a look at how the phone might, possibly, perform and what might be inside Samsung’s next Android flagship. The Antutu benchmark test reports that the S4 is powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 5410…

Microsoft Might Owe Denmark More Than $1 Billion in Unpaid Tax

A new report by Denmark’s national broadcasting corporation, DR, suggests that Microsoft owes the country over $1 billion in unpaid tax. The report claims that Ballmer and co owe the Danish Treasury a total of 5.8 billion kroner, a hangover from the 2002 acquisition of Danish financial software company Navision. The OS giant sold rights…

How Word Processors Changed The Novel

Back in the 60s, novelists hired personal assistants to type and retype chapter drafts for their books, dozens of times over. When a technician at IBM heard about it in 1968, he decided to see if the word processor he’d been working on might help. Slate has a wonderful feature about how novelist Len Deighton…

Now You Can Get Your Favorite Mountain 3D Printed

If you want a permanent reminder of an amazing hike, ski trip, or whatever else, here’s a good idea: a new website called The Terrainator lets you select your favourite geographical features and get ’em 3D printed. Dan Wilson, the man behind the project, explains how it came about: I’ve had the good fortune to…

The Asus Transformer Pad is the first non-Nexus device to get an Android 4.2 update… today!

Watch a Man Disappear Before Your Eyes

Chinese artist Liu Bolin does a wonderful job of hiding himself in all kinds of locations, but this video reveals exactly how he does it. A time-lapse taken at this year’s TED conference, it shows Bolin on stage, being painted in-situ. The artist explains: “For the talk, I stood up on stage with my outfit…