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Google launched its new messaging app, Allo, today. It features artificially intelligent software that reads your conversations and serves up a short list of personalized features. And you know what? I don’t like this idea. Allo forces you to trade in the privacy and security you might gain from other messaging apps so that you…
Back in April, Mark Zuckerberg announced to the world that he is, in fact, God, and said he wanted to “[help] to cure all diseases by the end of this century.” Today, accompanied by Priscilla Chan, his wife and co-pilot on the God plane, Mark announced a $3 billion plan to cure disease. Zuck and…
Launched in the late 1970s, the two Voyager space probes were equipped with a golden record containing sounds and images of life on Earth. Intended for alien consumption, this record has never been made available to the public in its intended form. An exciting new Kickstarter is now seeking to overcome this egregious oversight. This…
It’s been ten years since the dystopian comedy Idiocracy came out. And to celebrate, there will be screenings at Alamo Drafthouse theaters all around the country. Director Mike Judge and actress Maya Rudolph will even be hosting a special screening and Q&A in Los Angeles on October 4th. But if you can’t make it, don’t…
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, even within the realm of professional chefs, is an absolute madman. Even his midnight snacks are more involved than most people’s date-night dinners. Behold his latest creation: Ribby McRibface. Ribby McRibface, unlike the standard McRib, is technically available any time. Yet a vast gulf lies between “available” and “realistically attainable.” Everything except…
For over forty years, archaeologists have longed to peek inside a badly damaged ancient scroll found on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Now an international team of scientists has managed to do so by virtually unrolling the scroll, revealing the text hidden deep within: the first few verses from the book of Leviticus.…
When an outbreak of food poisoning hits, we trace our culinary steps backwards in an attempt to untangle the cause, hopefully before it can hit again. But a new sensor could radically change all that. A new paper in ACS Infectious Diseases details a new technique that combines two existing food contamination detection methods into…
For some, winter means warm sweaters, skiing, and tropical travels. For others it means dry air, cracked skin, and uncomfortable sinuses. But instead of digging out the humidifier as the temperatures drop, you can instead build yourself this perfectly safe living room tornado machine that works using water mist. YouTube’s NightHawkInLight posted a detailed explainer…
Malaria is a horrifying disease. It explodes your cells and wears their skins as camouflage so it can more effectively burst more cells. The disease kills over a million people every year—but as Kurzgesagt explains, our best bet to eradicate malaria is by building a new mosquito. Mosquitos are excellent vehicles for disease. (They were…
Researchers in Poland have uncovered a time capsule, dating from 1934. But this isn’t some ordinary time capsule with the run of the mill items you might expect. Sure, it has newspapers, coins, and books—common items for any time capsule. But these items were buried by Nazis. The books inside? Two copies of Hitler’s Mein…
To maximize profit, tractor trailers need to stay on the road for as long as possible. So to show off the performance and reliability of its vehicles, truck-maker Scania had 14 of its vehicles, manned by 90 drivers working around the clock, circle an empty airport for 24 hours straight to create a gigantic real-time…
Researchers from Europe have developed a solar simulator that replicates the heat and light of the sun’s radiation—and then some. The system, with a luminous flux equivalent to over 20,000 suns, is being used to test various materials in extreme conditions. Developed in part by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne…
According to 126 Tesla customers, the Model S sedan P85D performance version can eat dirt, because its “insane mode” isn’t as insane as the company claims. Bloomberg reports that the customers, who live in Norway, have now filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s automotive company. They’re looking for “unspecified reimbursements” because they believe the car’s…
Nearly one-third of drugs in development ultimately fail during clinical trials because the side effects are just too severe. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a promising new AI tool that better predicts which drug candidates are likely to be too toxic—and it’s based on the Oakland A’s winning strategy, immortalized in the blockbuster…
Male widow spiders often end up as a tasty meal for their partners after sex, but new research shows that some males are employing a rather unsettling strategy to prevent this from happening, and it’s a little bit twisted. New research published in Biology Letters shows that a significant portion of male widow spiders copulate…
The dark web—the portion of the deep web only accessible through specific software—exists to serve the needs of hackers-for-hire, hitmen, internet drug kingpins, child pornographers, and their inevitable customers. That’s the public consensus. Then there’s the counter-narrative. In spite of them ne’er-do-wells, .onion sites are invaluable for whistleblowers, activists, and regular citizens sick of having…
Behind the clean and tidy interface sported by Google’s online office apps, there are all kinds of features and tools you might not yet have stumbled across—and some of them can seriously improve your productivity. Here are 18 of our favorite quick tricks that won’t take long to learn but which will come in handy…
The velvet ant (a.k.a. cow killer) has one of the most painful stings of any insect. And that’s just one of the ways they’re absolutely horrible little creatures. Many species of velvet ant start life as parasites attached the eggs of other insects, because if you’re going to be a jerk, 110 percent is the…
People use their phones for messaging more than almost anything else. That’s why companies like Apple, Facebook, and Snapchat are dumping truckloads into making it easier and more fun to send messages. In May at I/O, Google announced Allo, its latest foray into the brave new world of messaging. Now, the app is finally available…
Samsung is rolling out mass quantities of replacement Galaxy Note 7 devices to carrier stores. The company says it has shipped more than 500,000 new Note 7 devices to carrier and retail stores and customers can go in for an exchange starting today. Go do it! According to the CPSC recall announcement from last week,…
