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Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who received the world’s first partial face transplant with a new nose, chin and mouth, has passed away. Dinoire suffered catastrophic injuries to her face in May 2005 after her Labrador attacked her while she was sleeping. Less than a year later, she received a partial face transplant—the world’s first and…
We eat fish and throw away the scales. But now researchers have figured out a reason those fish scales might be worth saving. A new paper out in Applied Physics Letters today details a method for transforming fish scales into an energy harvester. Researchers processed the raw scales to make them flexible and then attached…
Mobile apps are great when you’re away from your desk, but there are times when you might just want a full keyboard, gigantic screen, and comfortable chair while you fiddle with your apps. If that’s the case, you might be surprised to learn that many of your favorite apps can run on a laptop or…
Every once in a while a video comes along that changes the way you think about yourself, about the world, and about everything you thought you believed. Such was the case with this video of the band Dancing Noodle making electronic dance music using just rubber chickens, a table, and a paper cup. Were this…
Racing your Hot Wheels cars usually requires a good imagination, a makeshift track, and a lot of DIY sound effects. But with the new Hot Wheels AI race system, you can finally race your friends, or a computer opponent, on a real track, without needing a smartphone—or a license. You can think of the Hot…
Finding 116 excavators to demolish an aging 24-year-old overpass in just one night is all but impossible—unless you live in China. In the city of Nanchang, contractors assembled an army of construction equipment to tear down the main part of this overpass in just one night, with the entire job requiring only a 56-hour disruption…
The talented pilots at Drones.nc had a whale-watching experience they’ll never forget. Not only did three massive humpback whales circle the boat they were on, they were also able to capture the experience from a DJI Inspire drone flying overhead recording glorious 4K footage. If you’ve ever thought about one day going on a whale-watching…
ITT Technical Institute is officially closing all of its campuses following federal sanctions imposed against the company. The for-profit college announced the changes in a statement: “It is with profound regret that we must report that ITT Educational Services, Inc. will discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently after approximately 50…
If anything reminds the plan-less of how fundamentally alone they are in the world, it’s the long weekends of our country’s lesser holidays. Labor Day can be the most melancholic of them all; not only do you get an extra day off to be alone with yourself, but it signifies the transition from summer to…
Hordes of lionfish have been roaming the Atlantic for several decades now, and their voracious appetite—and lack of natural predators—has seriously upset the ecological balance of those waters. Now there’s a new foundation devoted to building robots to hunt them down—a Terminator for lionfish. The prototypes under development are technically cousins to robotic vacuum cleaners,…
This weekend’s New York Times op-ed about the ageism people over 50 face in the workplace includes a charming anecdote via JK Scheinberg, the esteemed Apple engineer who got Mac OS running on Intel processors. A little restless after retiring in 2008, at 54, he figured he’d be a great fit for a position at…
Before I happened upon this video, I would’ve assumed that a crab would devour its meal haphazardly, primitively. Apologies for misjudging. Turns out crustaceans, much like stars, are just like us! Or at least they enjoy their food with the endearing precociousness of a human toddler. Luckily, the crab owners of the world have blessed…
It’s not always easy to stay one step ahead of the vanishing storage space on your smartphone, and suddenly finding yourself without any available room can prevent you from snapping new pictures, syncing playlists and more. Here are the easiest and quickest ways to get some breathing room again. We’re not intending this to be…
Sometimes, all a man has in this world is his name, but according to Intel, antivirus pioneer and living cautionary tale John McAfee doesn’t even have that. Back in May, MGT Capital Investments announced that McAfee was joining the company as Chief Financial Officer, briefly sending MGT stock skyrocketing from 36 cents to $5.38 a…
As you probably already know, the World Scrabble Championship 2016 final took place on Saturday. Brett Smitheram, a 37-year-old east Londoner took home the grand prize of €7,000, which is equivalent to about $7,815 USD. The 176-point word that led to his victory? Braconid, meaning “any of numerous wasps of the family Braconidae, the larvae…
You know who deserves to get free things? Poor people. But in the twisted capitalist dystopia we live in, rich people are often the beneficiaries of the sweetest free goods. The latest instance of injustice? Kendall Jenner—whose net worth is reportedly around $10 million—has just received a year of free rides on Lyft, after her…
On Saturday, Russian officials announced that atheist vlogger Ruslan Sokolovsky has been detained for two months for “inciting hatred” and “insulting religious feelings” after posting a video of himself playing Pokémon Go inside a historic cathedral. He reportedly faces up to five years in jail if convicted. https://kotaku.com/russian-officials-think-pokemon-go-is-evil-1784546111 In July, state-owned news channel Russia-24 warned…
Good news for the undeserving people of Twitter.com: Leslie Jones has, again, returned to bless us with her tweets. The Ghostbusters actress has had quite a saga with the social media platform. In July, she briefly quit after Breitbart tech blogger Milo Yiannopolous got his alt-right army of Twitter monsters to inundate her with racist…
Until Hermine blew through the Florida Panhandle and up into Georgia, Florida had experienced a pleasant, hurricane-free few years. In fact, as The Weather Channel noted, Florida went nearly eleven years without a single hurricane making landfall. The last hurricane to set foot in Florida was Hurricane Wilma, a Category 3 storm that made landfall…
Facebook wasn’t the only one who saw millions of its dollars go up in smoke when a SpaceX rocket exploded on a Cape Canaveral launch pad last Thursday. Facebook was actually making use of a satellite operated by Spacecom, an Israeli-based satellite operator, in it’s attempt to expand internet use on the entire continent of…
