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At least 80 people died in the catastrophic fire at Grenfell Tower in June. There were many questions after the blaze was extinguished, and it was discovered that among numerous safety hazards, a particularly combustible form of cladding was used on the facade of the building in order to cut costs. Panicked landlords have begun…
On Sunday, animal lovers around the globe expressed their condolences for Julius, the baby giraffe that was born at the Maryland Zoo in June. In a statement, the zoo said that he was never able to learn how to nurse properly. https://gizmodo.com/giraffes-are-headed-toward-extinction-1789823168 Julius was born to first-time mother Kesi on June 15th and he needed…
Game of Thrones’ latest season premiers tonight on HBO and you know what that means. HBO Go will crash, you won’t get to watch it tonight, and your Twitter feed will just be pictures of Cersei that are captioned “RIP.” Twitter has offered a reminder about its mute function as well some key terms to…
Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, listed his top worries for the future of his creation earlier this year. One of his biggest concerns is the increasingly dense terms of service agreements that companies ask users to sign. Now, a public WiFi company has demonstrated just how dangerous those complicated agreements can…
You might be tempted to think this is just a cool experiment, but don’t be surprised when Mark Zuckerberg rips it off and it’s suddenly packaged with Instagram. According to his website, this is the first app that Dan Monaghan has ever made. Float0 is an app that utilizes the new AR toolkit for iOS…
A man in east London was expecting a package from Amazon but the special delivery on his driveway was not what he’d ordered. After finding a bag filled with poop and Amazon calling cards, a quick check of CCTV cameras indicated that a delivery driver for the e-commerce giant was responsible. https://gizmodo.com/whole-foods-employees-must-be-shitting-their-pants-righ-1796274910 The home owner,…
Much like the universally true advice to “never tweet,” it’s probably a good idea to just avoid internet language and memes when you’re working in a professional capacity. Two well-intentioned researchers learned that the hard way recently when they didn’t do enough research on the term “derpy.” In April of 2016, Angela Willey and Banu…
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been threatening to pass a law to effectively end the use of secure encryption in Australia for a while now. On Friday, he made his intentions more concrete and said that legislation mandating a government back door of some type will be introduced before the end of the year.…
There are thousands of photo apps to download in the App Store. Some are great and some are terrible. But it seems apps that’ll make your photos look like a 3-year-old took them are sometimes the most popular. There’s been a rise in photo apps that make your photos look crappy, only because the filters…
Snorting chocolate to get high lives alongside “Beezing,” butt chugging, and blumpkins as things that everyone talks about but few people take seriously. Despite being around for a while, chocolate snorting has once again resurfaced in the news, thanks to a company called “Legal Lean” selling “Coko Loko,” a product that promises to simultaneously deliver…
Scientists trying to unlock the secrets of our universe’s origin need to look no further than the photography studio of Thomas Blanchard and Oilhack. By mixing nothing more than paints, oil, and soap, the artists manage to create colorful miniature universes full of strange, tiny alien worlds. Their latest video, Emerald, makes you wonder if…
You already know that texting and driving is against the law, but for a few years now cities across the US have considered making texting while crossing the street illegal. Honolulu is one of those cities. Honolulu’s City Council passed a bill Wednesday that makes it illegal for pedestrians to use their phones while they’re…
Drop a lit match in water, and it will immediately be extinguished. But model rocket engines, made mostly of potassium nitrate, sulphur, and charcoal, will burn all the way through even when completely submerged. As this high-speed footage reveals, to test a rocket engine’s apathy to H2O, you’ll want to find something stronger than a…
The premise behind Yes or No Genomics is simple: Genetic disease is typically caused by a variation in at least one of the many thousands of genes in the human genome, so knowing whether your DNA code contains variants could suggest whether your health is at risk. And for just $199, the scientists at Yes…
Earlier this year, the White House requested written comments from US voters about the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. And now the American public has spoken, saying (among other things), “you are evil. pray there is no hell.” On Thursday, the Trump…
Sadly, a flatbed truck dumping 7,500 lbs of live hagfish onto a highway in Oregon will not be the weirdest story of 2017. It will not even be close. Still, the situation warrants some kind of scientific explanation, since it’s not every day that the mucus of a living fossil destroys a Prius. WKRG reports…
Earlier this week, a remarkable scene played out at Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area. An orphaned leopard cub, desperate for a meal, approached a lioness who happened to be lactating. It’s a rare—and extremely precious—example of cross-species nursing in the wild. A guest staying at the Ngorongoro Conservation Area snapped these photos and shared them with…
On Wednesday Singapore-based bikesharing startup oBike dropped off 400 autolocking, smartphone-connected bicycles onto the sidewalks of London. Two days later, and, uh, things aren’t going so hot. As Trusted Reviews editor Michael Passingham tweeted this morning, one London city district has already hit several of Obike’s bikes with big yellow warning tags for causing “unnecessary…
Watching first-person footage of racing drones makes it seem like the tiny craft fly somewhere close to the speed of light. In reality, due to the limits of their human pilots, they top at around 80 miles per hour. That’s incredibly fast, but the Drone Racing League managed to double that with a new world…
Researchers in Europe have created a soft artificial heart that mimics the real thing. It’s still not ready for prime time, but the approach, in which the developers used silicone and 3D-printing, could revolutionize the way patients with heart disease are treated. Patients with severe cardiovascular problems are typically hooked up to blood pumps while they…
