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Fitness trackers aren’t what they used to be. The fad gadget you strap to your wrist has seen a precipitous fall in the last year. Pebble closed its doors after releasing a solid fitness tracker, and Fitbit has struggled (though we liked its new Fitbit Alta HR). There’s also the fact that fitness trackers, while…
You’d think that putting dinosaurs in any movie would be blockbuster gold, but while Jurassic Park was a massive hit, its sequels aren’t remembered as fondly. Instead of rehashing the same ideas from the original, the sequels should have just put a talented parkour runner in a crappy T-rex costume. We could watch Jurassic Parkour…
When a suspicious looking box labeled “two pair shoes” arrived in Australia from Northern Europe recently, the Australian Border Force sent it through an x-ray. They didn’t find shoes, of course. Instead, the box contained a terrifying assortment of venomous snakes, spiders, and scorpions—as if the country needed more of those. The box included everything…
Imagine a biosensing contact lens that can tell when your blood sugar is getting too low, or if there’s something wrong with one of your organs. By leveraging the power of ultra-thin transistor technology, researchers from Oregon State University have taken us a step closer to achieving that goal. A research team led by Oregon…
We know that the FBI has had a hard time finding tech talent and the current administration has so far shown little interest in hiring technology experts, but we didn’t expect this. New federal court documents show that the FBI has been actively coordinating with members of Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” to hunt for child…
These are weird times we live in and it’s tough to keep our heads on straight. An unnerving news cycle is building up around North Korea’s aggressive demonstrations of its military power. Today, the New York Times reported that the economically hobbled dictatorship may have accidentally shown off its capability to convert an atom bomb…
Nikon is, ostensibly, a remarkable company. Sure, it had to lay off quite a few people last year, and back in February, it cancelled a hotly anticipated line of cameras. But Nikon’s a tech-based company that’s managed to innovate and survive a hundred years. Nikon started as an optics company and has endured as one,…
Do you like the thought of peeping on your own big, hairy bear wearing a black collar from the comfort of your own home? Well, Yosemite National Park may be making your dreams come true. No, the park hasn’t created some leather daddy adoration society, as wonderful as that may sound. Instead, the park is…
A tick sucks some monkey blood. A monkey’s grooming partner picks the tick off. The tick lands in some sap. The whole thing fossilizes. Scientists discover the cells inside the tick in the amber. They turn the blood cells into monkey clones and you’ve essentially got some sort of Jurassic Park in real life. That…
Folks, the moment we’ve all been waiting for is finally official: Verizon is going to combine Yahoo (huh?) and AOL (what?) into one useless conglomerate called “Oath.” Holy shit! Oath? What a wacky name. A tweet this afternoon from the AOL CEO Tim Armstrong appeared to confirm earlier rumblings that the dusty internet companies will…
Remember the day after the inauguration? Okay, we were hungover, too, but do you remember how Trump might have violated federal records-keeping laws by illegally deleting his tweets while in office? Turns out, the National Archives also heard about that and took action. David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, recently replied to a letter from…
Getting your fake ID snatched at 3am from a curmudgeonly bouncer is an embarrassing rite of passage too many of us have had to endure. Even if it’s followed by a cathartic cry over a dollar slice of pizza, the experience is a distinctly humiliating one. But the good news is, there’s hope for the…
It’s been a tough few weeks for Google. Several companies have pulled their ads from its network after various news outlets revealed that those ads have appeared on extremist, racist, or otherwise offensive videos. But never fear. A Google executive says the problem is, actually, small. And not just very small, in fact. Not even…
It’s been almost two years since Google liquefied our brains with its Deep Dream neural network and the nightmare-inducing images the technology created. But now, a team from the University of California, Berkeley is sort of doing the opposite—emphasis on “sort of.” The Berkeley team built a new type of deep learning software, dubbed CycleGAN,…
April Fools is over so you can believe me when I say: Scientists are trying to see if maple syrup can be used to help fight antibiotic resistance. Sweet. Around two million Americans each year suffer from bacterial diseases resistant to antibiotics, and 23,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Partially…
The discovery of mutilated and burnt human bones in an English grave pit supports the theory that medieval villagers thought the dead could rise from their graves, spreading disease and attacking the living. A new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science shows the extent to which medieval Englanders sought to prevent a zombie…
Maintaining social media accounts while staying as anonymous as possible isn’t easy—just ask the Director of the FBI—but you can put your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other accounts into a locked-down, private mode to evade detection. When your social media accounts are locked down people can’t see what’s inside without your permission. This is great…
Hands-on experiments can make studying chemistry slightly more enjoyable, but the bulk of the learning usually comes from a massive and boring textbook. Maybe the world would have more aspiring chemists if classes were instead taught using these microscopic videos of chemical reactions happening right before your eyes. The Beauty of Science created Precipitation3, a…
Jared Kushner has a lot on his plate right now. As a senior advisor (and son-in-law) to President Trump, Kushner is heading the new White House Office of American Innovation, engaging in diplomatic talks with China, and is even visiting Iraq right now. But that last fact was thrown into question overnight as Reuters retracted…
Rentberry has been operating in test cities and angering affordable housing advocates since 2016. But with its new expansion into 1,000 cities in the United States, the rental bidding website is about to piss off a lot more people. https://gizmodo.com/only-three-us-cities-have-good-jobs-housing-and-cultu-1781562314 Alex Lubinksy, founder of Rentberry, seems to be pursuing an image that’s closer to Uber’s…
