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In a classic case of adding insult to injury, workers at the beleaguered Fukushima nuclear power plant have uncovered what appears to be an undetonated bomb dating back to the Second World War. As reported in The Mainichi, a Fukushima excavation worker uncovered the device while performing maintenance work on a parking lot located about…
As the world continues to freak out over that (now former) Google employee’s offensive memo, Google went and did something cool for once. It made a good Doodle. No, seriously, it’s true. To celebrate the 44th anniversary of the block party that (the story goes) started the hip hop movement, today’s Google Doodle is an…
The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were doomed from the start. Some daft optimists thought that maybe, just maybe, if we just believed in Brazil, the politicians would pull through on their promises that the games would lift the city up to a new level of prosperity. But a year later, the opposite…
On Friday, the UC3 Nautilus, a famous DIY submarine, sank off the coast of Denmark. Its owner, Peter Madsen, was later rescued and claimed he’d had technical difficulties. Copenhagen police now say that they’ve charged Madsen with killing a Swedish woman who was last seen with him on board the submarine. When the UC3 Nautilus…
A senior official for the Islamic State used phony eBay deals to funnel money to an operative living in the US, according to an unsealed FBI affidavit. The alleged US operative, Maryland-based Mohamed Elshinawy, was charged with attempting to support ISIS in December 2015. Federal agents believed he was selling computer printers on eBay as…
If you have to smash your head all the time, you’d hope that your body had some mechanism to prevent your brain from rattling out. Knock that noggin around enough, and eventually (on evolutionary scales, that is), you might end up looking, well, very silly. But scientists really wanted to understand how and why an…
Data visualization artist Neil Halloran has a knack for turning incomprehensibly large and complex data sets into content that’s both coherent and engrossing. In his latest project, the filmmaker uses his skills to convey the unthinkable: the total number of deaths caused by an all-out nuclear war. A couple of years ago, Halloran used animated…
President Trump doubled down on his inflammatory rhetoric about North Korea yesterday, saying that his now-infamous “fire and fury” line wasn’t tough enough. Well, as you might expect, the president has carried that reckless attitude into yet another day with his tweets this morning. The president spent the first hour or so of his day…
North Koreans, they’re just like us! By which I mean they love smartphone games about war. And according to North Korean state media, the people of that isolated country have three new war-themed smartphone games to choose from. First spotted in English-language media by NK News, the new games are titled Confrontation War, Guardian, and…
Despite sounding pretty screwed during its second-ever investor call on Thursday, Snapchat had a teeny nugget of good news to share. “Our dancing hot dog is likely the world’s very first augmented reality superstar,” said billionaire Snap CEO Evan Spiegel on a webcast with investors. The dancing dog has been seen more than 1.5 billion…
Google was reportedly scheduled to hold a company-wide town hall meeting Thursday evening to address the controversy surrounding the anti-diversity manifesto that went viral within the company. That meeting has now been canceled, Recode reports, because employees feared further online harassment after their names and Dory questions were leaked on alt-right sites online. Dory is…
Hot on the heels of reports that Uber-founder Travis Kalanick has been trying to sabotage the search for his replacement as CEO of the company, board member Benchmark Capital is suing him and Uber for fraud, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty. According to the suit, the investment firm wants Kalanick removed from…
According to a recently filed lawsuit, a married couple faced persistent, cruel, and grotesque abuse at an Amazon shipping facility, and human resources did nothing to help. The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two former employees who allege that they faced sexual harassment and discrimination during…
Researchers from MIT have developed a wireless, artificially intelligent sensor that can detect the various stages of sleep, including rapid eye movement—the sleep stage associated with dreaming. The non-invasive system could change the way clinicians diagnose sleep disorders and other health complications. Wi-Fi radio signals are extremely sensitive, and they’ve already been used to see…
Russia is a boogeyman once again, and the threat of nuclear war looms in the background of our daily lives, but it wouldn’t be a real reboot of the Cold War unless the US was having problems with Cuba. On Wednesday, officials confirmed that two Cuban diplomats were expelled from the US embassy following an…
As Russia transitions into an internet dystopia, it appears that Snapchat has been dragged right in. Today, Snapchat’s parent company Snap was registered as an “information distribution organizer.” And by July 1st, 2018, an amended law will require “information distribution organizers” to store months of user data, and make it available for the Russian law…
Motion control rigs capable of repeatedly recreating smooth, controlled camera movements usually cost tens of thousands of dollars, and they require trained operators to set up and use. But Edelkrone’s new SurfaceONE costs just $690 and apparently can be configured in just a few minutes using a smartphone app as a remote control. The rigs…
Conservators with Antarctic Heritage Trust have uncovered a perfectly preserved fruitcake that dates back to Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition, which began in 1910. Manufactured by the now defunct Huntley & Palmers biscuit company, the fruitcake was discovered in a long-abandoned hut at Cape Adare—an important landing site and base camp used by…
High school is that boring stepping stone in life between grade school (when you have recess twice a day) and college (where you can skip class without getting in trouble). But wouldn’t getting your diploma be far more enjoyable if the minimalist covers on your textbooks were turned into trippy animations you could stare at…
For the past couple weeks, government agencies have been warning citizens about potential traffic issues and the need for protective eyewear during the upcoming solar eclipse. But what if you want to be able to enjoy this rare phenomenon without being bothered by a Sasquatch? Or what if you’d like to hang with Bigfoot while…
