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Unicode 9.0, which will be out June 21, is one of the most highly anticipated releases in emoji history. Finally you will avail yourself of the need to type out the letters for avocado, bacon, selfie, face palm, and pregnant. But last month, one controversial emoji was removed from the lineup: Rifle. Surely the debut…
A tag, a plastic bin, a metal chassis, and a six mile trek from the moment you check your bag at the counter until it gets on the plane. That’s pretty much all there is too it. Well, of course there are a lot of scanners shooting off to match up your luggage tag to…
Apple introduced iOS 10 this week during WWDC. While Apple suggested most people wait for the public beta when it is available in July, we decided to ignore that entirely and downloaded the developer preview. As you might expect, iOS 10 is currently full of glitches and lagginess, and some features just straight up don’t…
In news that offers hope that human civilization won’t end up drowning in soda bottles and plastic wrap, Chinese chemists have developed a remarkably efficient method for converting polyethylene into liquid fuel. If it proves scaleable, it could make a real dent in global plastic pollution. Polyethylene is the most common plastic on Earth. Worldwide,…
Pixar’s Finding Dory is out today, and it’s pretty damn good. Burger Fiction took the opportunity to look back at the history of the beloved animation studio’s groundbreaking work from 1984 to the present. Represented chronologically are the films that put Pixar on the map (Toy Story), as well as the shorts most of us…
Anyone who’s used Waze is familiar with the navigation app’s insistence on making left turns on busy streets where there’s no signal to stop traffic. Waze actually has a name for these types of situations: “difficult intersections.” And a new feature will become the default setting on the app to help drivers avoid them—something Waze…
At WWDC, Apple showed off a crazy new version of Messages. Feeling pressure from other messaging services like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and Google’s new Allo, Apple has completely reimagined its app for the youths. In just the few days we’ve spent with iOS 10’s developer preview, we’ve found more than a dozen new features just…
Jacob Appelbaum has been banned from Chaos Computer Club events following numerous allegations that he sexually assaulted women and acted inappropriately at hacker events. Appelbaum regularly spoke at CCC events like Chaos Communication Congress and Chaos Communication Camp. Applebaum stepped down from his development role at the Tor project, which builds anonymity software, following internal…
Good news alien hunters! A Kickstarter to fund a year-long investigation into KIC 8462852—the star voted most likely to harbor an advanced alien civilization—just got funded. Alien megastructure or not, we may finally get to the bottom of this bewildering, flickering star. This crowdfunding campaign was set up in May by Yale astronomer Tabby Boyajian,…
Last year, NASA casually announced its intention to disrupt the aviation industry by sticking fully electric commercial passenger planes in the sky in 20 years. In a small step toward that goal, space agency director Charles Bolden has just announced plans for the X-57, the first all-electric addition to the famous X-plane series. The single-seater…
This Japanese-made, remote-controlled tank got tech nerds all excited in 1931. But it wasn’t just because they saw a new toy. Tech-minded folk of the early 1930s also saw a utopian solution to war. A solution where, ideally, fewer humans would have to die. Ideas about remote-controlled warfare have been around for over a century.…
In the latest chapter of bad news for Apple in China, Beijing is trying to halt the sale of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The Beijing Intellectual Property Office just ruled that because the devices infringe on the patent rights of the 100C, a phone made by Shenzhen Baili that almost no one has…
Last Friday, Joanne Barnaby went mushroom picking in a forest near Fort Smith in the Canadian Northwest Territories. It was an inauspicious beginning to what would end up being a 12-hour ordeal, one involving a desperate wolf, swarms of mosquitoes, an unwitting bear cub—and a can of beer. Barnaby, along with her dog, Joey, and…
Next week, a federal advisory committee is set to review a proposal to use CRISPR—the cheap, powerful and buzzy gene-editing tool—on human patients for the first time. The Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, a panel that works with the National Institutes of Health, will examine a proposed cancer treatment experiment that uses CRISPR/Cas9 technology, according to…
Residents of Sao Paolo, Brazil, should be proud that their megacity is the only one that uses biofuel for cars. Or maybe not, considering that a lot of this environmental good is undone because everyone loves pizza too much. A new study published in Atmospheric Environment claims that Sao Paolo’s environment is still being destroyed…
Google is your portal to everything out there on the World Wide Web…but also your portal to more and more of your personal stuff, from the location of your phone to the location of your Amazon delivery. If you’re signed into the Google search page, and you use other Google services, here are nine search…
After spending a year going through pro-ISIS groups on social media, researchers have come up with an algorithm they think might predict attacks. If only it were that easy. Researchers analyzed pro-ISIS posts and groups on VKontakte, the so-called Russian Facebook. They chose VKontakte partly because its members are diverse, including Chechen members that ISIS…
Legal weed is happening, and Microsoft wants in on some of the money generated by those clouds of smoke. The famously stodgy company is partnering with a weed startup and becoming the first big corporation that’ll touch the weed business with a 10-foot pole. Let’s be real: The software itself, made in partnership with an…
Most people have a modest two-octave vocal range when they sing, but some rare talents can manage five octaves or more. Think the late great, Freddie Mercury of Queen, or Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose, although composer-singer Tim Storms holds the Guinness World Record for the largest vocal range: a whopping 10 octaves. It’s all…
Forgive me, but I think it’s plausible that these two guys are actually the first mutants in the world, because the way they move so easily around this Chinese pole makes it seem like they have magnetic superpowers or access to an invisible wall. They can flip, slide, stop, walk on nothing, and do things…
