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Today, the National Park Service celebrates its 100th birthday. The agency is in charge of some of the most majestic natural landscapes in America—landscapes visited by millions upon millions of people each year. You know who looks like he fuckin’ loves these parks? Alfonso Ribeiro. While searching through Getty’s cache of photos of Yellowstone National…
WhatsApp betrayed its longstanding commitment to privacy today, when it announced plans to start sharing data with Facebook. But what data, exactly, will WhatsApp share with Facebook? The company won’t say. Here’s what Facebook initially told us WhatsApp will collect in addition to phone numbers: Type of operating system Screen resolution Mobile carrier A device…
NSO Group, a company that sells hacking services to governments so they can spy on journalists and dissidents, exploited gaping security holes in iPhone software, according to a report byLookout Security and Citizen Lab. But don’t worry: Apple just pushed a fix. The New York Times reports: The NSO Group’s software can read text messages…
In our post-meme culture, context is the enemy of humor, and so, the enemy of the meme. Sometimes, it’s up to the shitposters to preserve the meme’s endangered absurdism. People have been juxtaposing meme tropes for ages (not just in the wake of Harambe, as some people think), but the great boon to internet nonsense…
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange promised to leak “thousands” of documents from the Clinton campaign on Wednesday during an interview with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly. He also said the documents would be “significant” in the context of the presidential election. Assange vowed to publish the data before the November election because he believes “people have the…
Sarah Jessica Parker has cut ties with Mylan, the company that makes EpiPen, after it was criticized for raising the price of the life-saving allergy product by 400 percent. Parker announced her decision this morning on Instagram. “I’m left disappointed, saddened and deeply concerned by Mylan’s actions,” Parker wrote on Instagram. “I do not condone…
In an effort to promote the 2016 Paralympics, Vogue Brazil decided to launch a photo campaign highlighting Renato Leite and Bruna Alexandre, two Brazilian Paralympic athletes. But instead of, you know, just putting them in the campaign, the magazine used two able-bodied models—actors Cleo Pires and Paulo Vilhena—and photoshopped them to look like Leite and…
Using a super-absorbing chemical compound called sodium polyacrylate, you can turn boring old H2O into a magical blob-like substance. There’s a lot of fun you can have with these water beads, including deep frying them, but watching them turn invisible when submerged is easily the best trick. Self-billed chemist and science enthusiast Andres Tretiakov posted…
Here’s an excellent re-imagination of two of the most famous depictions of artificial intelligence in film, HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Samantha from Her. Tillmann Ohm stitched together the actual dialogue from the films to construct a new conversation between the two. It flows rather well. Of course, HAL is still a…
Apple is reportedly working on its own Snapchat clone. It would join companies like Twitter and Facebook who are furiously trying to copy the features that have made the image and video sharing app popular with younger users. Young people are important, sure, but where Apple is uniquely positioned to succeed is in building a…
Pandora is trying valiantly to stay afloat in a sea filled with competitors like Spotify and Apple Music, and now the company has tapped music legend Questlove to help rescue it from the murky depths of irrelevance. Following the news the platform is trying to add an on-demand streaming component, the New York Times reports…
Uber is losing money faster than any technology company ever, and it’s largely because of an essential component to the company’s operations: the drivers. Bloomberg reports Uber lost $1.27 billion in the first half of this year, which is unprecedented, even for a tech company. By comparison, Amazon reported losses of $1.4 billion in 2000…
By now, there’s a Guinness World Record for just about any random accomplishment you can think of, including “most functional gadgets on a cos-play suit” which is currently held by Ireland’s Julian Checkley who managed to cram 23 different contraptions into his impressive Batsuit. His costume isn’t quite as impressive as Batman’s actual getup, but…
It was going to happen soon enough: WhatsApp will now start sharing user data with the company that owns it, Facebook. Facebook, of course, will use this data to sell more ads. However, the company won’t be looking at your messages. Facebook couldn’t look even if it wanted to since WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted…
Yesterday, a massive 6.1 magnitude earthquake rocked central Italy. It was followed by nearly 200 aftershocks, devastating whole towns and burying residents under rubble. Over 4,000 rescuers have been dispatched and the death toll has jumped to 247, the BBC reports. Entire towns have been leveled, with Amatrice, Accumoli, and Pescara del Tronto suffering the…
Time-lapse footage has the power to turn mundane things into the most fascinating video you’ve ever seen. Aside from making sure you don’t step in it, you’d probably barely notice ice cream melting on the sidewalk. But when the hours long process is sped up so it takes just a few seconds, you’re left with…
Is late-August too early to start planning a Halloween party that’s still over two months away? Obviously not. If anything it gives you plenty of time to order magical props and decor like this animated spellbook with a moving quill that appears to magically write spells all on its own. The real magic behind this…
Pro tip to cyclists: sailing through the air horizontally while gripping your handlebars for dear life is the most efficient way downhill. While this is 100 percent an ad for a fixie bike company, it appears to be both real, dangerous, and hugely effective. Just look at how this daredevil pulls ahead of everyone else!…
You don’t need a million dollar Steinway piano to put on a captivating musical performance. You don’t even need a real piano, as Sami Elu proves, by hacking together recycled instruments, materials you’d find at a hardware store, and a bunch of unused chopsticks. Does his Frankenstein’s monster instrument sound like anything you’ve ever heard…
For decades, tin foil fashionistas have attributed a number of sinister happenings to the atmospheric research program known as HAARP, including hurricanes, earthquakes and even the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia. After this week, however, it will be a lot harder to entertain those claims: On Saturday, the supposed weather-altering secret weapon is holding…
