Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
NASA just announced that it’s given the Curiosity rover the power to fire its laser at targets of its choice. You fools, you’ve killed us all. The purpose of the laser is to zap rocks to analyze their chemical composition, and definitely not for the rover to slowly gain sentience and marshal a standing army…
Billy Mitchell takes video games very seriously. He’s been called one of the greatest arcade gamers ever, and there’s even a documentary about his insane high score in Donkey Kong called The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Even with his own full-length documentary film, Mitchell is still best-known for one thing: He was…
First reported by Droid Life and confirmed by Ars Technica, Verizon will be shutting off the data hose for unlimited data customers who use more than 100GB a month. Although this will only affect people who have been grandfathered into these plans, since Verizon hasn’t offered them for years, it’s the next step in a…
Seventy-one days from now, the Rosetta spacecraft will end its historic mission by crashing onto the surface of its target, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Mission planners have now selected the spacecraft’s final, mission-ending destination—and it’s a good one. As announced by the ESA earlier today, Rosetta will make its controlled impact on an area known as Ma’at,…
Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States of America. Those are the only three countries left in the world that don’t use the metric system. Ted-Ed traces the history of the metric system (thank you French Revolution) to show how important it is to have one universal measurement system for the world, what can happen when…
If you’ve got a hankering for some classic 16-bit arcade gaming, the internet is awash with tutorials on how to build your own machine that can emulate almost any game. But why waste your precious free time building, when for just $25 this tiny working arcade includes 300 titles that get you gaming right away?…
The United States wastes over 140 trillion calories of perfectly good food every year. A national survey just provided a comprehensive overview of the reasons we waste so much—and one of the most common ones is based on a total misconception. Researchers at Ohio State University wrapped up a survey about why Americans are wasting…
Hundreds of millions of years ago, a tiny green microbe joined forces with a fungus, and together they conquered the world. It’s a tale of two cross-kingdom organisms, one providing food and the one other shelter, and it’s been our touchstone example of symbiosis for 150 years. Trouble is, that story is nowhere near complete.…
Last month, rumors leaked that the creators of the 2006 film Idiocracy were teaming up with actor Terry Crews to make anti-Trump TV commercials. But now those rumors have been put to rest, and Crews has given us a hint about why. It seems that Mike Judge, the director of Idiocracy, might be afraid of…
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has partnered with Apple on a new clinical study on rheumatoid arthritis. The study relies on an iPhone app to collect data about arthritic symptoms from users as they go about their daily lives. That sounds great at first glance, but how well will it protect your privacy? The app was…
Volcanic super-eruptions are bad. Like really bad. Scientists warn of such a potentially civilization-ending catastrophe in our future, but as a new study shows, we’ll only have a year to prepare once the signs of an impending eruption become visible. A new microscopic analysis of quartz crystals taken from the site of a massive volcanic…
It’s easy to pinpoint certain things you love about a movie. I love Total Recall because of Arnold Schwarzenegger and scenes with exploding eyeballs. But in a great film, there is much more going on unconsciously that makes your brain love certain moments over others. Composition Camera walks through some of film’s most memorable scenes…
The human body wasn’t built to withstand the impact of colliding in an automobile with other objects at high speed. But that’s why artists and researchers in Australia have designed Graham, the monstrosity you see above. He represents the perfect human body—perfect for getting in a car crash, that is. Graham, the dozen-nippled art piece,…
This doesn’t mean you should stop being helpful or charitable to homeless people you encounter on the street—but if you see this guy, there’s something about him you should know. At a recent Maker Faire in Nantes, France, a man wearing worn clothing and pushing a shopping cart actually turned out to be a lifelike…
Here’s a tip: If you happen to find yourself at the helm of a gigantic illegal torrenting operation, don’t use an Apple email, and for the love of all that is holy do not use Facebook. Unfortunately for 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, he made this very mistake while allegedly operating Kickass Torrents, a popular source for…
Air hockey is Canada’s greatest pastime. Okay—that’s not exactly true, but who the hell doesn’t love a game of air hockey? The low-pitch buzzing of the table’s fan, the constant thwack of the puck bouncing off the boards, the excitement you get when you score: It all brings back some of my fondest memory at…
Despite their diminutive size, raptors were among the most terrifying dinosaurs to menace the Cretaceous Period. But as the discovery of a new dinosaur called Murusraptor shows, their plus-sized versions, aptly known as “megaraptors,” were considerably worse. This is a super-cool specimen from a very enigmatic family of big dinosaurs. The fossilized remains of this…
Artists David Bayo’s skills are all the more impressive when you lean it to get a closer look at his work. Instead of carefully applied brush strokes, he creates lifelike portraits by laying down dots, millions of them, in a painstaking process that required over 90 hours of work for this simple black and white…
Square Enix has a curious relationship with mobile gaming. It’s got games on both Android and iOS. They’re very good games. Some are even updates of some of the best games ever made. But they are ridiculously expensive games. Chrono Trigger, which is one of the most engaging RPGs ever pixellated, goes for $9.99. Final…
The heat is coming, and the corn is sweating. No, seriously. Corn sweat is a thing, and I’m not talking about what happens after you finish an entire box of corn puffs in one go. You might have heard meteorologists and reporters throwing around the term “corn sweat” when speaking of the abysmal heat wave…
