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Facebook’s trending news module is making headlines again, and this time it’s for propping up 9/11 truther nonsense as “news.” Instead of simply removing the offending article, however, the platform has now dropped the trending topic—broadly titled “September 11th Anniversary”—altogether. As multiple people noted on Twitter today, the top story in the “September 11th Anniversary”…
While Hillary “Delete Your Account” Clinton might have a nuanced, albeit cringeworthy, understanding of how to utilize social media, the same cannot be said for her husband Bill. The New York Times reports that at a public appearance earlier this week in North Carolina, the former president speculated about the reasons no one likes him…
Drought and bark beetle infestations have not been kind to western forests in recent years. California alone has an estimated 66 million dead trees speckling its landscapes and waiting to become wildfire fuel. To prevent that from happening and help us kick our coal habit at the same time, a pair of scientists has put…
If you own a GM vehicle from 2014-2017, listen up: General Motors is recalling nearly 4.3 million vehicles worldwide after discovering a software defect that prevents air bags from deploying during a crash. The software bug may also prevent the seat belts from locking properly. The flaw has already been linked to one death and…
If you were looking for a USB stick that “instantly and permanently [disables] unprotected hardware,” you’re in luck. You can now purchase one for a little more than fifty bucks! According to ZDNet, “when the USB Kill stick is plugged in, it rapidly charges its capacitors from the USB power supply, and then discharges—all in…
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission just released an official statement about the exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7. The CPSC is urging all Galaxy Note 7 owners to stop using their devices. More importantly, the commission also said that it is working with Samsung to “formally announce an official recall of the Galaxy Note 7.”…
Watching ATLAS evolve and master new skills is as fascinating as watching a child develop. Except the humanoid robot, seen here in the lab at Florida’s Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, is gaining new capabilities faster than any human should be comfortable with. It seems like just yesterday that ATLAS was stumbling over a…
Wikileaks withheld a batch of emails showing a $2.2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a Russian government-owned bank, according to a Daily Dot report. If true, the report will likely have a lasting negative impact on Wikileaks’ credibility. The report alleges that the transparency organization betrayed its own core values of “pristine leaking,”…
Most drones aren’t particularly scary. Aside from maybe gashing you open if they crash into you, there’s not much harm they can do. Until you add a pair of articulated arms with claws on the end, which turns drones into some kind of giant cyborg eagle ready to snatch babies and the elderly right off…
New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln shows that a widely-used class of nicotine-based insecticides is causing queen bees to lay substantially fewer eggs than normal. This particular class of insecticides—the most popular in the world—has also been linked to colony collapse disorder, a mysterious phenomenon in which the majority of worker bees suddenly abandon…
You probably recognize Nick Ut’s infamous 1972 photograph of charred Vietnamese children running away from the site of a napalm incidienary bomb detonated by the South Vietnamese Air Force in Trang Bang. Earlier this week, however, Facebook effectively banned the Pulitzer-winning photograph from its own site. Now the site is backtracking as quickly as it…
Secretly gloating over the misfortunes of others (a.k.a. schadenfreude) might not be the most noble of human traits, but it’s certainly universal—so much so, that it was memorably immortalized in the hit musical Avenue Q. Neuroscientists may have just identified the brain cells associated with that feeling. Discovering these so-called “schadenfreude neurons” was serendipitous—a side…
In January, the Federal Communications Commission unveiled an ambitious proposal that would free consumers from their annoying, clunky and expensive set-top boxes. The FCC has since revised their proposal at the behest of cable companies, but the core principal, that cable companies should make it so third party devices can provide its content, remains the…
Ever since NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain underground facility became fully operational in 1966, it’s been America’s command and control center for the nuclear apocalypse. But photos from inside the top secret bunker, even historical ones, are incredibly rare. Yesterday the folks over at Memory Hole 2 helped make them a bit less rare by uploading some…
We may have lost our beloved headphone jack, but it’s human nature to find an iota of hope in even the worst tragedies. Thanks to a host of different technological innovations and the beautiful creativity of the human brain, we can express those small, but mighty sentiments of hope using the power of memes. As…
The more propellers and motors you add to a drone, the more weight it can lift. Freefly Systems’ Alta 8, designed to carry heavy video equipment, has eight rotors making it strong enough to tow a surfer on a wakeboard. Say hello to the new sport of dronesurfing where waves aren’t necessary. Is this even…
Actual lab tests have revealed that the commonly-cited five-second rule doesn’t hold up. And yet, they still can’t stop me from eating this piece of floor candy! Who’s in charge now, Science? The five-second rule—which says that you can still happily snack on fallen food as long as you scoop it back up within five…
Many DUI offenders revert back to drunk driving once their car breathalyzers have been removed, making these gadgets useless from a rehabilitative perspective. But a new pilot project shows that these devices, when used in conjunction with rehab, are effective in preventing future DUIs. A car breathalyzer, more formally known as an alcohol ignition interlock…
In the grand tradition of the tech elite announcing things on Medium, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz—briefly portrayed in The Social Network by actor Joseph Mazzallo—penned a post titled “Compelled to Act” to let the world know he will donate $20 million to help defeat Donald Trump. Moskovitz emphasized that while he and his wife have…
When Mike Sannikov was designing an arcade game controller and needed to test which brand of buttons would work best, he didn’t just read some online reviews—he bought a small sampling of buttons and used them to build this gorgeous music sequencer as a test bed. Few of us have the skills to even imagine…
