Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Many of Trump’s supporters live in a colorful and exciting universe not burdened by the confines of reality. Among their favorite hobbies is inventing conspiracies about their chosen candidate’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and until last night we had every reason to think Trump supporters would believe just about anything. To wit: Earlier this month, rumors…
Elon Musk, innovation bad boy and guy who recently blew up Mark Zuckerberg’s expensive satellite, is always late. Today, he was 25 minutes late to his own event about colonizing Mars. Nice going, asshole! This isn’t the fist time the rich electric car guy has been late, as a quick review of Twitter demonstrates. And…
Working for the US Department of Homeland Security can be stressful. But no matter how difficult your job is, looking at porn is usually frowned upon during work hours. So when a US border patrol agent was recently busted for watching porn at work, he got into trouble. But he had an interesting defense. He…
DJI’s new foldable drone, the Mavic Pro, looks incredible. The announcement comes about one week after the GoPro Karma, another foldable drone, was announced. So how do the two flexy drones stack up against each other? It depends who is flying and under what conditions. On basic specs, the DJI Mavic Pro seems to have…
Forget Captain Sully, if you’re ever unfortunate enough to have something go wrong with your plane mid-flight, you might want Mark Penell in the cockpit instead. When the propeller fell off his Rans S-10 kit plane—apparently propellers can do that—Penell did not freak out. Instead, the pilot calmly brought the craft in for a near-perfect…
A new reproductive technique in which a baby is produced with the genetic material from three distinct parents has yielded its first human. As reported in New Scientist, the baby was born five months ago in Mexico with the help of US researchers. The three-parent reproductive technique, known as mitochondrial donation or pronuclear transfer, is…
Looking for a new and unique way to share your Instagram shots with the world? A company called Color.Works now offers a unique alternative to simply having your digital photos printed: it will instead turn them into elaborate mosaics hand-assembled from thousands of colored crayons. Given each crayon represents a single pixel, and crayons are…
New research shows that as many as 700,000 microscopic fibers are released into the environment each time we do the laundry. It’s a problem with no easy solution in sight. For years, scientists and environmentalists have wondered—and worried—if the simple act of washing our clothes might be triggering the release of microscopic plastic particles. A…
Losing someone is painful and world shattering and can almost feel impossible to endure. There’s no real way to prepare yourself and there’s no quick way to get over it but the fact is, everyone is going to have to deal with it at some point in their life. This video from CineFix is ostensibly…
DJI has owned the American drone market for a while, and for a dang good reason. DJI makes fantastic drones with some of the most advanced features on the market. With a little practice anyone can fly one and pull off the kind of photos and videos you used to need a film crew and…
If you live on this planet, chances are the air you’re breathing is not great, Bob. According to a new report from the World Health Organization, a full 92 percent of the population lives in areas that don’t meet the organization’s air quality standards. And while air pollution affects every region, some are worse off…
Leveraging the same auto-follow ProPILOT technology that allows its vehicles to autonomously navigate traffic, Nissan has created a bunch of self-driving chairs that promise to make it a lot easier the next time you’re forced to wait in line. Waiting in line has mostly become a thing of the past thanks to the internet, but…
I really love this new video from Cody’s Lab about flushing liquid mercury down a toilet because it just gets more and more ridiculous as it goes on. The video first starts by trying to flush a bottle cap full of mercury. That goes down a little too easily. So he adds an entire bottle’s…
Autonomous vehicle technology is still in its infancy, which means that most self-driving vehicles still have a way for humans to take over when needed. But as Komatsu demonstrates with a design for a new autonomous dump truck, in some cases there are real advantages to eliminating humans altogether. In a massive strip mine, where…
Guy Sims Fitch had a lot to say about the world economy in the 1950s and 60s. He wrote articles in newspapers around the globe as an authoritative voice on economic issues during the Cold War. Fitch was a big believer in private American investment and advocated for it as a liberating force internationally. But…
Ever imagine a movie scene where Gene Kelly is singing in the rain while Neo and Agent Smith fight and Spider-Man does his upside down kiss with Mary Jane? What about if Tony Leung from The Grandmaster, Jet Li from Lethal Weapon 4, T-Rex from Jurassic Park, and replicant Roy Batty from Blade Runner all…
Researchers working in Africa have uncovered 3.8 million-year-old protein fragments encased in an ostrich eggshell. These biological building blocks are millions of years older than the oldest DNA ever found, highlighting the possibility of recovering ancient proteins from extinct animals—and even the remains of early humans. The new study, published in eLife, represents an important…
MacOS Sierra is here and available for everyone —well, at least anyone who owns a Mac made in the last six years. If you’re wondering what’s new in Apple’s latest software update, and want to head straight to the fresh goodies after you download it, we’ve rounded up nearly everything new you can do in…
Earlier this year, WhatsApp betrayed its longstanding commitment to privacy when it announced that it would share user data with its parent company Facebook for the purpose of selling ads. Today, a German regulator announced it is putting the brakes on Facebook’s plan. From The New York Times: The city of Hamburg’s data protection commissioner…
Austrian stuntman Josef Toedtling holds three Guinness World Records that few people would even dare think about challenging. His specialty is being set on fire, and his most impressive record-setting feat saw his entire body engulfed in flames for a full five minutes and forty-one seconds. Toedtling uses multiple layers of fire-proof clothing and slathers…