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Ever wonder how bowling lanes stay so shiny and clean? You can thank the unfortunately named Kegel Kustodian. It looks like a big goofy suitcase, but the Kegel is pretty smart. It cleans and oils the wood then backs up and finds the next lane, all on its own. For the enterprising bowling alley owner,…
Among the many portable gadgets that the smartphone has killed off—digital camera, PDA, sat nav—is the MP3 player. Phones are now very competent jukeboxes with some great apps, but are you putting up with an average-quality listening experience when you don’t need to? Here are four ways to change that. 1) Check your music app…
Creating the types of 3D holograms that are used to authenticate products or currency usually requires very expensive, very complex printers. That’s what makes them so hard to counterfeit. But a team of researchers from MIT have created a new kind of 3D hologram that can be printed on the inkjet printer you probably already…
Hong Kong bitcoin exchange Bitfinex reported yesterday that hackers had stolen 119,756 bitcoin, which is worth as much as $72 million dollars (with some reports going even higher). News of the hack sent bitcoin tumbling 23 percent, with its current value hovering around $556. Bitfinex confirmed that no other digital currency except bitcoin was targeted…
Rio’s water is vile—full of raw sewage and dead bodies—and later this week, humanity’s top athletes will plunge into this hellish stew for a jolly ol’ international sporting competition. At this point, it’s too late for Brazil to properly clean up Rio’s befouled waterways for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Leaving spectators and athletes alike…
Emirates Airlines flight EK521 from Thiruvananthapuram, India crash landed at Dubai International Airport earlier today, the BBC reports. Amateur video shows the landing gear of the Boeing 777 did not deploy before the nose erupted in flames. The cause of the crash has not yet been established. EK521 had 282 passengers from 20 countries and…
We all have secrets—don’t tell my mom I smoke weed!—but sometimes it’s important to share no matter what. According to a report from Reuters, however, it appears that even though the FBI suspected the Russian government was behind the attacks last fall, it took months for agents to let the DNC know. One of the…
I didn’t want to like Instagram stories, not one bit. I think it’s not very nice of Instagram—which, if you don’t remember, is owned by Facebook—to basically rip off the concept of a smaller competing app for its own benefit. Instagram has 300 million daily active users, while Snapchat has half that. Still, here I…
The Backyard Scientist outfitted a liquid nitrogen canister with a release valve that basically turns liquid nitrogen into a freezing squirt gun death weapon (the pressure makes the liquid nitrogen shoot out pretty strong). He pitted it up against a flame thrower to see how long it would take for the liquid nitrogen shooter to…
Using liquid nitrogen inside a thermos with a tube sticking out of it, YouTube’s TheBackyardScientist created a crude home-made freeze ray. To see what it was really capable of, and to answer a question that has been puzzling comic book fans for years, he then blasted it at a flamethrower to see which simulated superpower…
As the globe warms, we are apparently close to reaching that sweet spot between all the ice melting and the world ending. Scientists in France and Italy have started the Protecting Ice Memory project to preserve the valuable information stored in the slowly-disappearing mountain glaciers. 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner and climatologist Jean Jouzel gave…
Here’s a compilation of crazy runs, jumps, and parkour tricks from Oleg Cricket, a daredevil who was either born without fear or recently made into some sort of superhero. Hell, maybe even both. You can see him sprint and jump off the side of skyscrapers, flip and twirl over gaps between buildings onto the roof…
Which empire was the biggest throughout history? Which had the most people? Which had the biggest contiguous empire? The map below details all the most powerful empires from history and shows the area each empire covered, the amount of people they had under their rule, the year they reached their political height, the period of…
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all millennials* are lazy fucks, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Likes, Listicles, and the pursuit of Intercourse. Well, not anymore, haters! Despite their reputation as vagrants who can’t stop fucking long enough to land themselves a job,…
While mere mortals like you and I are trying to comprehend what the hell is going on here, this guy is racking up bonkers combos on what one can only hope is this game’s highest difficulty setting. His player name is ～ё～, and he’s on the fast track to carpal tunnel syndrome. For what it’s…
Movies are just movies, right? They can be frivolous entertainment, for sure. But they’re also serious business—both in terms of money and the way that they influence how we see the world. People fighting the Cold War knew this. That’s why we remember Senator Joe McCarthy and the infamous Hollywood blacklist. And that’s why VHS…
For years China’s been toying with the idea of building a massive bus that straddles multiple lanes of cars to move commuters without creating a traffic mess. To date, it’s only existed as fancy computer renders and animations. But starting today a real-life version starts testing in Qinhuangdao, China. The first working version of the…
Previously, if you wanted Microsoft’s future face machine, also known as a Hololens, you had to sign up through a developer application process. Now, Microsoft is just selling them to anyone who wants one for the low-low-low price of $3000. This isn’t a new headset mind you. It’s still the same collection of glass, plastic,…
Expelliarmus. Avada Kedavra. Expecto Patronum. Crucio. If you’re a Harry Potter fan (and the entire world is), you ought to know what those famous spells do. If you don’t, watch this awesome supercut from Davide Rapp that alphabetizes all the spells used in the Harry Potter movies and then shows you the scenes in which…
These stop motion short animations show what it’s like to turn paper into things like penne with meatballs or a bowl of ramen or a banana split. They’re so damn clever and fun that it hurts my cheeks when I watch them. The creativity reminds me of the great work that stop-motion artist PES does,…
