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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…
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the hugely popular sci-fi franchise Star Trek—arguably one of the profoundly influential fictional series of the last century. It’s also the 500th anniversary of Sir Thomas More’s classic work, Utopia, offering his vision of an ideal society. For Manu Saadia, that’s a fitting coincidence: “The world of Star…
The neat thing about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is that you can submit FOIA requests for FOIA requests. Why is this useful? It means that you can learn about documents that government agencies don’t want you to see—even if all you learn about them is the name of the document. Stick with me…
The precise origin of our canine companions is mired in controversy. But a new study suggests that dogs emerged from not one but two different populations of ancient wolves. What’s more, this dual domestication happened on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. Dogs first appeared about 15,000 years ago, long before the advent of agriculture,…
Around 4am this morning, people near Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona were treated to a loud boom and flash of blinding light as some sort of space junk intersected with Earth’s atmosphere. The AP reported that the possible meteor or meteorites may have landed by the nearby town of Cibecue. The event is not believed to…
I need to get out of this fucking city. Los Angeles is just too damn expensive. I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore. The only thing worth doing that’s free is the library. Oh, that and playing air guitar at Whole Foods. Sorry, it’s 365-Foods or whatever it’s fucking called. You didn’t hear? That…
This week, General Mills announced a voluntary recall of 10 million pounds of its flour over possible E. coli contamination. Now, the FDA has traced the outbreak back to its source: a single factory in Kansas City. The CDC had been looking into the mysterious 38-case E. coli outbreak, which had spread across 20 states,…
As anyone who has whistled through a blade of grass can tell you, a simple wind instrument can be made of just about anything. But Rulof Maker took “anything” to its logical conclusion by creating this bird whistle from the casing of a dried Italian sausage. In this simple project, the sausage casing and a…
Google’s driverless cars are tiny, compact, and have what can only be described as “car face” with headlights that look like eyes and a sensor that looks like a nose. Generally speaking, they’re pretty cute, which makes Google’s latest experiment—teaching them to honk—all the more amusing. The effort is laid out in Google’s May self-driving…
Just because you’ve completely shunned ebooks and e-readers for classic paper tomes, that doesn’t mean you can’t let a little technology improve your reading experience. Kyouei Design’s Bookmark Light will not only save your page, it will also save your eyes, turning into an ultra-compact reading light. Available from Designboom’s online shop for just $16,…
In contrast to the fancy, expensive, and much-delayed VR headsets out there, Google Cardboard is refreshingly simple. So simple in fact, that the entire thing can be made from food with no loss of quality, as proven by Make. Technically cardboard is already edible. It just doesn’t taste very good. Instead Caleb Kraft built all…
For the past four months, researchers working at the Postojna Cave in Slovenia have been waiting for a batch of eggs laid by an iconic salamander to hatch. The first two hatchlings have finally emerged, exciting the scientific community and captivating the entire country. This story began at the end of January 2016 when a…
First Elon Musk wanted to nuke Mars, and now he thinks he knows how democracy there should work. Even though we’re not really that close to colonizing the Red Planet, the SpaceX founder has some rather utopian ideas for how a government should work on Mars. Speaking at the Code Conference, Musk said he’s in…
It’s finally happened: There are more people snapping than there are tweeting. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Snapchat has 150 million daily active users, compared to Twitter’s less than 140 million users. Ouch. At a time when Twitter is struggling to convince advertisers that its service will make them money, Snapchat is raking…
The makers of the FoldiMate realize that the worst part of doing laundry is having to fold all your clothes once they come out of the washer and dryer. A third machine that does all that for you could revolutionize chores as we know it, but the FoldiMate might not be the answer to our…
Given how much time Elon Musk spends trying to save the world, it’s almost surprising that he thinks we’re all just living in someone’s video game anyway. Or, it would be if he wasn’t well-known for his dramatic predictions and if he hadn’t also added that there’s a chance we’ll become pets to superintelligent AI…
Amid growing accusations of racism, Airbnb has permanently banned a North Carolina host who cancelled a black guest’s reservation and called her racist slurs. The ban is Airbnb’s attempt to do damage control at a time when social-media campaigns, personal accounts, and even a Harvard research paper claim that the site is a hotbed of…
In its escalating fight against fake product reviews, Amazon has for the first timestarted suing its own sellers instead of just going after other websites that promise to write five-star recommendations for cash. It’s another sign that the internet giant is increasingly serious about eliminating incentives for fake reviews that erode trust, even if it…
At the Code conference this evening, Elon Musk joined Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher onstage to talk about his varied and eclectic pursuits. And when the talk turned to autonomous vehicles, Musk was sure to share his opinions on what he perceives to be Tesla’s biggest competition. Nope, not Google. Musk doesn’t consider Google’s self-driving…
The toughest thing about getting up in the morning (other than getting up in the morning) is realizing all the things you have to do to make yourself decent to society. I’m not talking about just brushing your teeth, shaving, or showering. I’m talking about having to open your eyes and walk around and move…
