Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
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…
Five cities, including Cannes and Nice, have now banned women from wearing burkinis, full body bathing suits worn by some Muslim women. The deputy mayor of Nice, Rudy Salles, told the BBC the ban was “a necessity” after the terrorist attacks in Nice earlier this summer. On Tuesday, the Guardian published particularly disturbing photos of…
Getting banned from Twitter can be incredibly easy or hard as hell. Breitbart blogger Milo Yiannopolous, for instance, only got banned last month after years of encouraging his followers to harass people. He eventually messed with the wrong person when he incited a barrage of racist harassment against Leslie Jones. After Jones said she was…
On Wednesday, a tornado described by the National Weather Service as “large and extremely dangerous” tore through central Indiana, overturning cars and leveling a Starbucks store, Weather.com reports. Miraculously, no injuries have been reported. The tornado’s destruction was widely documented on social media. One video, provided to WTHR-TV by witness Brandon Mobley, appears to show…
None of us will probably ever make it to the red planet but if you want to get a feel for what Mars would sound like (or hear what it’s like from inside an airlock), saddle up with this video from Cody’s Lab. He drops a camera inside a vacuum chamber and then turns down…
If a new report is true, your iPhone 6 and 6 Plus might have an expiration date unrelated to failing batteries or outdated tech. Some users report that over time the touchscreen on these iPhone models becomes unresponsive, and that, eventually, a flickering gray bar will appear on the top of the screen. After that…
Good evening, friends. “the one where they solve mysteries” “a show on Cinemax” “internet jail” “x-rated anime” “the hottest new CBS show this fall” “a weird al cover of a bob seger song” “the next Fast & Furious film” “a dope Twin Peaks-ian Netflix series” “a mashup remix of Boogie Nights and Night at the…
In courtrooms across America, investors are making money through litigation financing. The process allows investors to cover the cost of a lawsuit in exchange for a share of the financial settlement. If this process sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because it’s similar to what billionaire Peter Thiel did when he secretly funded a lawsuit…
Here’s what we know. This appears to be an entire log of pork and beef bologna, at least judging by the casing coloration on the Boar’s Head website. (Pure beef is red on the outside.) By some estimates, a whole bologna weighs five to eight pounds. Therefore this entire sandwich, if you can call it…
8Bitdo, the company behind those Bluetooth SNES and NES controllers that let you play classic 8 and 16-bit games without annoying wires, is teasing this gorgeous wooden retro desktop arcade on its Facebook page, and at the Gamescom convention currently underway in Cologne, Germany. We’ve reached out to 8Bitdo for more information, but they’re not…
Fun fact: Jason Statham has kicked more people than he has punched people in his movies. I’m glad that information occupies a part of my brain, and I’m so glad that I can share that with you so that it’ll take up a wrinkle in your brain now too. Burger Fiction shows all the kicks…
MOM! DAD! Why don’t you understand me? Why don’t you get my internet tendencies? Why don’t you instinctively know that all I want to do with my time is snap flower-crown selfies and stan Zayn on Tumblr? Why can’t you just let me be me? According to a new survey from the National Cyber Security…
Aluminum started as one of the world’s most expensive materials because it was difficult to refine—even though it made up 8 percent of the world’s crust. But eventually aluminum became one of the cheapest materials after methods of mass producing it were invented in the 1880s. It went from $1200 per kilogram down to a…
With the lights on, John V. Muntean’s Lego creations look like something a five-year-old would build. “Look, mommy, it’s a horse!” But turn the lights off, shine a spotlight on these creations, and suddenly their real raison d’être is revealed; intricate shadow designs that change as each mass of Lego bricks is turned. This one…
The potential for millions of YouTube views either gives people superhuman abilities, superhuman courage, or superhuman stupidity. One of those three might explain why Flaviu Cernescu climbed to the top of this 840-feet tall abandoned chimney, hopped onto a unicycle, and rode around what appears to be a crumbling structure. Do we have to remind…
Campari—the bright red liquor best known as the start of the negroni—is delicious. But what the hell is it, exactly? The few people who know have kept the recipe a secret for well over a century. That didn’t stop master bartender Hiroyasu Kayama from trying to make his own. Although the company website hints that…
In what’s being hailed as one of the biggest astronomical discoveries of the century, scientists with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) today confirmed the discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri—our nearest neighboring star. Details of the team’s discovery were just published in Nature. Rumors of a possible Earth-like exoplanet…
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is just as pissed off about the iPhone 7‘s reported lack of a headphone jack as you are. Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, Woz said that “if [the iPhone 7] is missing the 3.5mm earphone jack, that’s going to tick off a lot of people.” “I would not use Bluetooth,”…
People use Twitter for different reasons. Celebrities use it to self-promote, teens use it to talk about Selena Gomez, and I use it to share my own dumb thoughts with the world. New York Times tech reporter Vindu Goel, however, often uses it to interact with brands—specifically, to yell at them when he’s displeased. Now,…
