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Amazon announced a new service today that will let the tech giant right inside your front door. The service, Amazon Key, is for Prime members, and comes with a kit that includes the company’s Cloud Cam security camera and a compatible smart lock. Here’s how it works: Once Amazon authorizes a delivery, the company will…
It’s a good thing Halloween only happens once a year, because cleaning out a pumpkin and carving a fun design (that’s hopefully better than your neighbor’s) can be pretty tedious. With that in mind, you’ll realize just how much work went into this stop-motion animation that was carved into countless pumpkins. Crunch the numbers, and a…
Bloomberg just published an enlightening update on the never-ending saga of iPhone X delays. The report claims that Apple “quietly told suppliers they could reduce the accuracy of the [iPhone X] face-recognition technology to make it easier to manufacture.” We don’t yet know how much worse it will be, but the claim that Apple is…
As part of a series of special reports that could have come with a co-byline from Quentin Tarantino, Reuters has confirmed that it bought two human heads and part of a spine while investigating “body brokers,” America’s largely unregulated vendors of human parts. According to the news agency, reporter Brian Grow was able to buy…
The prizes, the lights, the sounds, and a quick-talking barker make it hard to resist playing carnival games, but is every game a fool’s bet? In his latest video, Mark Rober, an ex-NASA JPL engineer, breaks down the science of what makes some of these games so challenging, and others near impossible to win. For…
Standing in line at the pizza place, you’ve got a couple of minutes to kill, so you stare down at your phone, and fire up. Rather than browsing through a long list of inane tweets or matching jewel colors up against each other, you can actually be using that time productively. 1) Learn something new…
When I give the dating app LoveFlutter my Twitter handle, it rewards me with a 28-axis breakdown of my personality: I’m an analytic Type A who’s unsettlingly sex-focused and neurotic (99th percentile). On the sidebar where my “Personality Snapshot” is broken down in further detail, a section called “Chat-Up Advice” advises, “Do your best to…
Between flying cars and three-wheeled cars, the period between World War I and World War II had some interesting ideas for the future of automobiles. But this one may have been the weirdest. Who needs wheels when you’ve got giantic rolling spheres? The September 1935 issue of Popular Science included the illustration above, showing off…
Saudi Arabia—a key U.S. ally in the Middle East which also happens to be an armed-to-the-teeth absolute monarchy with a record of massive human rights abuses—is planning on moving forward with a $500 billion plan for a “new city state that would also straddle Jordan and Egypt in the kingdom’s northwest,” Arab News reported. The…
In response to increased scrutiny over Russia-bought ads that targeted Americans during the 2016 election, Twitter has announced new measures to increase transparency around ads purchased on its service. The company says it will now disclose the total cost of all ad campaigns and share who purchased them. Information will also be made available to…
A new ransomware attack dubbed “Bad Rabbit” is sweeping Russia and Ukraine, among other Eastern European countries, according to several reports. It’s too early to tell how far reaching the event will be, or at this time who has been hit thus far, but a series of reports concerning attacks on Ukrainian transportation and infrastructure…
After filing a lawsuit against the US government last year, Microsoft announced yesterday that it is dropping the suit challenging the gag orders which frequently accompany warrants used to pry user data from tech companies. The gag orders prevent Microsoft and other companies from alerting users when the companies receive government requests for their data,…
The common understanding of diabetes mellitus includes two types: type one and type two. But there’s a third type that’s been around for a while you may not have even heard of—and some doctors think it’s being misdiagnosed. Type 3c diabetes, or “Diabetes of the Exocrine Pancreas,” is a third type caused by pancreatic damage.…
Someone in the House of Representatives (or spoofing a congressional IP address) is having a lot of fun making troll-ish edits on Wikipedia again, according to the Twitter bot @congress-edits, which tracks edits to the site made by IP addresses associated with Congress. And this time they’re sending hidden messages. As first reported by Buzzfeed…
Security researchers have uncovered numerous exploits in popular dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and OK Cupid. Using exploits ranging from simple to complex, researchers at the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab say they could access users’ location data, their real names and login info, their message history, and even see which profiles they’ve viewed. As the researchers…
How often do you actually get flowers and need a vase to put them in? On your birthday, maybe? When a family member passes? So why bother storing a rarely-used fancy vase when this clever 3D-printable plastic widget turns a party balloon into a decent place to keep a few flowers alive? Designed by Evan…
The Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 investigation has been reopened with the help of a private firm. Its incomplete story has refused to offer closure to the families of its 239 victims and has sparked conspiracy theories. But scientists have continued investigating the impact since it occurred three and a half years ago. It’s inspired one…
A re-analysis of a 50,000 year old Neanderthal skull shows that, in addition to enduring multiple injuries and debilitations, this male individual was also profoundly deaf. Yet he lived well into his 40s, which is quite old by Paleolithic standards. It’s an achievement that could have only been possible with the help of others, according…
At first glance the computer on your desk might look a lot like last year’s model or the model your colleague has, but looks can be deceptive—if you want to really rate your laptop and find its place in the power and performance stakes, that’s where benchmarks come in. Long revered by gamers as a…
Meteorologists can predict, with some degree of accuracy, whether or not it’s going to rain tomorrow. But determining the exact severity of an approaching storm isn’t quite as easy. So in order to capture the amazing timelapse sequences in his new film, Monsoon IV, Mike Olbinski had to drive nearly 13,000 miles across the southern…
