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Surprise! Kim Dotcom’s New Mega-Site Looks Like a P2P Client

Oh Kim Dotcom, will your exploits never cease? He’s in court battling extradition to the United States, and simultaneously developing a new product that’s probably going to piss off the copyright holders who are coming after him for Megaupload. Genius! Now Dotcom has taken to Twitter to show off some screenshots of the forthcoming Mega-branded…

This Is the Mythical Animal Actually Found By North Korean Archeologists

The world got it all wrong, so you can all stop laughing now. The North Korean archeologists didn’t find a magic unicorn lair belonging to an ancient king in Pyongyang. Don’t be stupid! No, they actually found the lair of the animal you are seeing above. https://gizmodo.com/north-korean-archeologists-discover-ancient-unicorn-lai-5964719 Seriously, that’s what they say they found. The…

You Could Borrow Some Bedbugs on a Visit to the Local Library

Libraries. They’re bastions of knowledge, a playground for lovers of literature. That’s not all, though. A library can also be a breeding ground for legions of bedbugs. You escape into a novel, and an insect infestation escapes into your home. Over the past few years, cases of bedbugs in library books have becoming more and…

Operation Payback hacker was convicted in London yesterday. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

Why do your pupils get larger when you’re on drugs?

Normally, our pupils dilate in response to changing light; as it gets darker, our pupils get larger. But they expand in size for other reasons as well, including when we’re sexually aroused and when we’re performing complex cognitive tasks. But it’s also known that certain medications — including illicit drugs — can cause pupils to…

It’s Best Not To Imagine the Awful Ways This Virtual Water Could Be Used

A Japanese company called Solidray who specializes in virtual reality systems has developed a clever way to simulate flowing water using both visual and tactile feedback. And while the technology is neat, the practical applications that come to mind are a little unsettling. To interact with the VR character a user wears a set of…

The 10 Most Unlikely Things That Were Influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien

The author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings casts a massive, sweeping shadow over fantasy literature and entertainment. But J.R.R. Tolkien’s influence spreads much further than that. Everywhere you look, you can see Tolkien’s legacy: in science, in art, in language. Here are 10 fairly unlikely things that have been influenced or…

Add Lego to Your Photos, Get Huge Lego Sets for Free with Lego’s Happy Holiplay Contest

I really love this Lego Happy Holiplay contest because 1) enhancing photos with Lego brick seems like a great idea to me and 2) the winners get a big Lego prize every day. And I mean really big, including the four-foot long Executor Star Destroyer, the gigantic Imperial Space Shuttle or the truly awesome (and…

Gifts for the DSLR-Slinging Photo Artiste

‘Tis the season for getting up in your relatives’ grills with your giant camera and making them hate you for taking pictures while they are still in pajamas. Yep, the DSLR-slinger has a lot to look forward to around the holidays. A big part of the fun is the long list of gift possibilities. Here…

First ever image from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug shows one terrified burglar

Okay, you’ve seen the first look at Legolas and Bard the Bowman from future Hobbit movies, but now it’s time to go INSIDE the Lonely Mountain. Behold the first ever image from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Why are they releasing it this early? No idea, but we cannot wait for the Smaug showdown.…

Set your hands on fire and make floating balloons of death

You know a science demonstration is going to be good when it contains the line, “Ask an assistant to light your hands for you.” I can’t tell you how much I wish I had access to a classroom chemistry lab right now. And chemistry students? Ask your teachers to do this for you to test…

Friendly reminder that the Messages Beta for Lion ends on the 14th. Upgrade to Mountain Lion. Or not. Your choice.

Are we at the start of a new golden age of superhero TV shows?

Eight episodes in, Arrow is officially a mega-hit, at least by The CW’s standards. And not only that, but Arrow is actually… pretty decent. The Christopher Nolan-inspired “gritty” superhero soap opera manages to be addictive fun, blending some solid action with the kind of relationship drama that makes Vampire Diaries our crack. So we have…

How to Save Face When You Make Social Media Mistakes

Last week, inspired by the DROID RAZR MAXX HD by Motorola — whose 32 hours of battery life, brilliant 4.7″ HD display and 4G LTE speed make it the phone of choice for the constantly connected, I asked you to submit your social media messes so I could use my PR girl powers to help…

All the Space Helmets In (ALMOST) Every Movie Ever

This video by Keith Melton is monumental: every space helmet in every movie ever, put together for our collective space nerdgasm. It’s a pleasure to watch them all, even more so because of the amazing soundtrack: a perfect David Bowie’s Space Oddity and The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby mashup. [Keith Melton via Geektyrant via Pewpewpew]

Brace yourself for some buttery goodness, 4.1 Jellybean is rolling out now for the RAZR HD and RAZR MAXX HD. [Ubergizmo]

Harvard team makes Legos out of DNA

A team of researchers from Harvard’s Wyss Institute have created self-assembling 3D nanobricks out of DNA — essentially inventing a nanoscale version of Lego — that can be used to build thousands of different objects. What the research team has done is create a very short DNA “brick” of a single strand with 32 nucleotides,…

How To Dominate Your Ugly Xmas Sweater Party (With Technology)

Holiday parties are fun, full of boozy eggnog and good cheer, but there’s too much ugly sweater one-upsmanship. The winner is inevitably whoever found the ugliest old thing at the Salvation Army. Nuts to that. Blow everyone’s mind with this high-tech solution. Our NASA engineer pal Mark Rober is at it again. Remember his interactive…

Why US Air Corps servicemen were allowed to wear such badass bomber jackets in WWII

In honor of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, Lisa Hix of Collectors Weekly has put together a fascinating and sobering article that both commemorates and explains why members of the US Army Air Corp were allowed to customize their bomber jackets to such outlandish and extreme degrees. The Army, not known for its lax uniform standards,…

The War on Superman’s Underpants

There might not be a real War on Christmas, but I’m pretty sure there’s a real War on Superman’s Underpants. It might not be sexy enough to get all that sweet Fox News coverage, but the traditional red underpants that the comics Superman has worn outside of his blue tights for most of the last…