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Have you seen this screenshot from an old episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy? It shows Nye with the caption, “Gender is determined by your chromosomes.” Alt-right social media users have been posting it because Nye recently said that gender is on a spectrum. But the old image is completely fake. The screenshot has…
With its Creators Update for Windows 10, Microsoft promised that users would have the option to postpone future updates for a limited period of time and many rejoiced. But now that the update has started rolling out, it’s become apparent that there are still some stability issues and performing a manual installation isn’t recommended right…
“It sounds impossible but it’s closer than you may realize,” Facebook’s Regina Dugan recently told audience members at the F8 developer conference. Dugan was referring to the social network’s plans to read users’ thoughts. Just in time to inject some practical considerations into that terrifying scenario, researchers have proposed four new human rights to protect…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love Juicero. I love this dumb, insanely over-engineered, $400 juice squeezing machine that works marginally better than using your own hands. And it turns out I may share that passion with the nation’s First Daughter, Ivanka Trump. As pointed out by several Twitter users, in…
DJI, the world’s largest consumer drone manufacturer, has a problem. ISIS, the terrorist organization, has been turning off-the-shelf drones into flying bombs and making headlines in the process. So what’s DJI doing about this? The company very quietly created no-fly zones over large parts of Iraq and Syria. Some are suggesting that the no-fly zones…
The potential for 3D printing to revolutionize manufacturing is astounding—if the technology can overcome a few limitations. Researchers at MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab have come up with a novel way to both speed up the 3D printing process, and free it from the restrictions imposed by gravity. 3D printing involves slowly building up an object using…
Advertisers have found ways to bombard us with promotions no matter what we’re doing: watching TV, checking social media, and even when streaming music. But the future of advertising could be even more invasive when the next public event you attend is full of flying video drones projecting inescapable video everywhere you look. NTT Docomo,…
Mark Rober, who we last saw engineering a dart board that guaranteed a bullseye with every throw, has just built what every car-loving kid always dreamed of: an epic Hot Wheels track that has tiny vehicles racing between floors, through swimming pools, and jumping over giant explosions. Ecto-1, Back to the Future’s time-traveling DeLorean, Knight…
The agonizing wait is finally over. Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his plan to dismantle net neutrality. During a speech in Washington, DC at the conservative nonprofit Freedomworks, Pai outlined his plan to roll back the 2015 Open Internet Order. The order established the principles of the open internet in law, reclassifying internet service…
If the brain is just a bunch of wires and circuits, it stands to reason that those components can simply be re-wired in order to create a better, smarter us. At least, that’s the theory behind a new project from the military’s secretive DARPA research branch announced on Wednesday, which aims to enhance human cognitive…
Have you seen this dog? If you’ve been on Reddit lately, where this video by Japanese good boy enthusiast Hirofumi Kawano has been making the rounds, there’s a good chance you have. What a sweetie! Unfortunately for anyone hoping to adopt one of their own, Kawano failed to include the pup’s breed in his video.…
Chris Sacca, the amateur Hank Williams Jr. impersonator best known for his early investments in Twitter and Uber, published 1,700 words on Wednesday to say what he could have said in just one tweet: he’s retiring. “It’s hard to leave all this behind right when things are going so well. I’m good at what I…
In a study that’s already attracting considerable controversy, a research team says it has found evidence of human habitation along the southern coast of California dating back an astounding 130,000 years. That’s ten times older than most estimates, and a complete upending of what we thought we knew about how and when humans first arrived…
Aimlessly browsing the internet is sort of like taking a pediegg to your callouses without soaking them first. Stuff definitely happens, but it sure as hell ain’t pleasant. Every once in a while, however, something extraordinary rises above the web’s feculent froth. A good idea is churned out by the internet machine and we all…
There are two great reasons to follow this tutorial which teaches you how to turn 15 wooden popsicle sticks into your own set of wearable Wolverine claws: 1) You get to run around pretending to be Wolverine, popping balloons and being awesome. 2) You have a great reason to eat 15 popsicles. You’ll also need…
Martin Friedman, the head of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, died last May at the age of 90. At the time, I requested Friedman’s FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and that 93-page file was delivered to me yesterday. While there’s nothing scandalous in it, reading the file made me…
Amazon has a new Echo and this time, it has a camera built-in to tell you how ugly, or hot, your outfit looks. Dubbed the Echo Look, this forthcoming $200 device has a depth-sensing camera that can take full-length photos and videos using just your voice. If you’re like me, and your small Brooklyn apartment…
It’s really easy to mess up a film project about the Holocaust. The wrong tone, the wrong direction, and it can all go horribly awry. Add cutting-edge technology operated by unskilled hands to a topic as devastating as survivor testimony, and you could have a disaster. Fortunately, the VR film The Last Goodbye, which debuted…
Twitter announced its Q1 2017 earnings on Wednesday, and good news, everyone: The company isn’t performing as poorly as it was last quarter! Now, make no mistake. Twitter still made less money than it did a year ago—its revenue declined eight percent year over year. But because of, uh, a lack of investor confidence, it…
Disasters aren’t funny. But sometimes they’re kinda silly. Such is the case in Lebedyan, a town in southern Russia, where a roof collapse at the local Lebedyansky beverage factory, owned by PepsiCo, lead to a flash flood of fruit juice. Two people were injured in the roof collapse (not funny). The town does seem amused…
