Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
A few years ago, divers discovered an apparent underwater “lost city” off the coast of Zakynthos in Greece. New research reveals that the site, which was thought to be the ruins of a long-forgotten civilization that perished when tsunamis hit the shore, is in actuality a geological formation—and a bizarre one at that. Looking at…
Few of us spend time reading through license agreements or tweaking default options during app installations, so it’s all too easy to end up sharing more personal data than you really want to. Here are the key settings you need to be aware of on iOS to protect your data and exactly how to use…
Government-sponsored hackers are using a clever trick to attack critical infrastructure like nuclear power plants, dams, and oil refineries. According to Eric Knapp, chief cybersecurity engineer at Honeywell, one third of malware found in critical infrastructure came from USB drives plugged in by users. Instead of trying to hack the actual infrastructure, which has beefed…
Each Game of Thrones episode generates its fair share of internet chatter. This new Twitter #interactive visualization takes this tremendous amount of information and translates it into something surprisingly meaningful. At first blush, this data visualization looks a bit intimidating, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. The first step is to pick an episode among the…
Twitter and Yahoo executives recently met to discuss a possible merger but, by all accounts, the meeting was pretty lopsided. Sources told the New York Post that Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer was there, but Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey didn’t even show up. Twitter dropped out of the bidding process shortly thereafter. The idea “isn’t…
Desperate to play Super Mario Maker but can’t bring yourself to buying a Wii U for just a single game? Based on the success of Nintendo’s latest console, you’re not alone. There’s a cheaper solution, though, with this set of Super Mario Bros fridge magnets. Why cover your fridge with snippets of terrible beatnik poetry…
Microsoft won’t build its own self-driving car, but wants to make the operating system that runs in one and lead the move to turn the car into an office. Peggy Johnson, Microsoft’s executive vice president of business development, said at the Converge conference that the software giant (unlike Google and Apple) isn’t interested in developing…
The retailer arms race continues as Walmart becomes the latest company to jump on the drone bandwagon. But unlike nemesis Amazon and other companies testing delivery drones, Walmart will use drones to catalog warehouse inventory and potentially replace people who manually scan labels. So add “warehouse workers” to “delivery drivers” in the list of people…
Math is basically magic. So it’s no surprise that a clever use of the Fibonacci numbers—a series of numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.) where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers—and a super-slick shuffling method can combine for a card trick that makes it impossibly easy to guess the number…
We rarely stop to think of just how many people the world’s airlines transport on any given day, never mind form a mental picture of that activity. Now there’s a nifty animated visualization of how all those different airports around the globe are connected—a total of 3,200 airports and 60,000 routes in all. It’s the…
If you have some free time, watch this 20 minute dive into why Stanley Kubrick was such a master filmmaker. If you don’t have some free time, make some. Channel Criswell’s look into the cinematic experience of Stanley Kubrick is so well done and so well researched that it’s absolutely worth checking out. Kubrick paid…
There’s no reason I need to make charcoal—I don’t normally use it for anything, and if I did, bags of it are so easy to buy. But I find the whole process of exhausting wood sticks into little brittle black pieces so much fun that I’m going to start inventing reasons to use charcoal in…
It’s that time of year where the checkout line is a confusing myriad of treats, and magazines maligning you for said treats. From the dudely “fitness” magazines to the lady-aimed “lifestyle” guides they’re all telling you to get that bod ready for the beach. But it’s not just the media telling you to move your…
Remember that annoying bastard of a dinosaur from Jurassic Park that sprayed his face open and spewed out poison at people? Yeah, that damn Dilophosaur terrified me as a kid. Actually, I’m still scared of it. So if I saw this frilled-neck lizard chasing me down like this, I’d totally lose it. This little lizard…
Here’s some chillingly beautiful shots showing what it’s like to cave dive the ‘El Toh’ cave in Yucatan, Mexico. It’s a completely different world down there. When you’re inside the cave with water all around you, it looks a lot like being in an underworld you’re not supposed to see. Some parts are haunting and…
Clickholeis The Onion’spiss-take on digital media. It just uploaded this video titled Beautiful: Israelis and Palestinians Join The Same Google Doc. That music. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
An Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) investigation just revealed an awfully Orwellian fact: the FBI is working with government researchers to develop advanced tattoo recognition technology. This would allow law enforcement to sort and identify people based on their tattoos to determine “affiliation to gangs, sub-cultures, religious or ritualistic beliefs, or political ideology.” This is unnerving…
We’ve already covered the best PS4 tips and tricks , and now it’s time to turn our attention to the Xbox One. We’ve scoured the web for the best controller shortcuts, media streaming tricks, and other tips that will help you get the most out of your machine. Here are 10 tricks to turn you…
Last month, a group of scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs gathered in secret to discuss the possibility of creating a synthetic human genome from scratch. Details of the plan have finally been made public, and it’s as ambitious as it sounds. But critics say they founders of the new project are avoiding the tough ethical questions.…
It can’t compete with GoPro’s offerings when it comes to image quality, but what the Polaroid Cube action cam can do one thing well. The tiny form factor makes it easier to stick wherever you need to capture your extreme activities—or a night of bar crawling with this new shot glass accessory. Available now for…