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Nothing is more closely associated with “upcycling” than the lowly, splintery shipping pallet. You can get them for next to nothing and turn them into sweet boxes, benches, light stands, or put the wood towards hundreds, nay, thousands of other projects. Here’s how to pull one apart without ending up in the ER. Jim Ether’s…
If you’ve ever found your fingers unintentionally bonded together after using an especially strong glue, you’ll appreciate the latest innovation from researchers at the Max Planck Institute. They’ve succeeded in creating an adhesive that can be turned on and off as needed—perfect for wannabe Martha Stewarts who suck at crafts. The glue the researchers created…
How does radar not detect a B-2 stealth bomber? How can an aircraft with a 172-foot wingspan register as small as just a large bird, if anything at all? The Northrop B-2 Spirit escapes radar by being specifically designed to reflect radio waves away from the source so it’d never be detected. But the stealth…
For a minute, try to forget the hype you hear about self-driving cars and think about the single-occupant, human-driven vehicle like this: A very inefficient way to use expensive city land. Not only do extra-wide roads take up a lot of space, there’s far too much property allocated to parking—about 20 percent of the land…
Garden gnomes were never exactly a trendy addition to any home, but if you must fill your garden with tiny ceramic characters, at least go with this 17-inch-tall R2-D2 statue instead of a bunch of creepy trolls. Available from ThinkGeek for $70, you’re going to want to try to find some way to prevent the…
Leafcutter ants get their name because they use their incredibly sharp jaws to slice through leaves. Pretty straightforward stuff. Unfortunately for humans, those jaws can cut through other things, like fingers. So the host of Brave Wilderness decided to find out how much damage one could do in just 60 seconds. It doesn’t take long…
Chromebooks have surpassed sales of Mac laptops in the United States for the first time ever. And that doesn’t surprise me. Because roughly a year ago I made the same switch. Formerly a lifelong Mac user, I bought my first PC ever in the form of a Chromebook. And I’m never looking back. Driven by…
Researchers working in Africa are the first to observe monkeys preying on bats. The unusual behavior, which may have something to do with loss of habitat, could explain how dangerous diseases such as Ebola spread among species—and eventually to humans. African Cercopithecus monkeys are “opportunistic” omnivores, which means they’ll eat just about anything. In addition…
You probably can’t get away with watching movies at your desk all day at work. But since most websites are still totally acceptable, warm up your scrolling finger, and go to town on this incredible fan tribute that sees the entire original Star Wars: A New Hope turned into one long scrollable schematic. The site’s…
Bees are dying at an incredible rate, and we’re all screwed because of it. But instead of thinking about all that doom and gloom, why not take a look at these photos of a massive swarm stuck to some poor woman’s car and thank your lucky stars it wasn’t yours. The BBC reports that a…
Dependable rumors suggest that the MacBook Pro is about to get major revamp. According to a new report from Ming-Chi Kuo at KGI Securities, Apple will release a dramatic redesign of the MacBook Pro in the fourth quarter. “Dramatic” might be too small a word, actually. Kuo says that the new model with have a…
If you’ve ever stumbled across a creation that looked too unsafe to ever be attempted—be it a thermite cannon or a flying hoverbike—you’re probably looking at the handiwork of Colin Furze. This time he’s built a flamethrowing electric guitar with a built-in smoke machine turning whoever’s playing into the ultimate rock star. It’s reminiscent of…
Salt. It shows up in our idioms about as often as our food. Even the word salary is derived from salarium, the term for a Roman soldier’s earned ration of salt. But one of the most ridiculous lies perpetuated about this humble mineral is that in ye olden days, salt was more valuable than gold…
Windows 10 has officially been with us for close to a year now, but even if you’ve spent a lot of time with the OS since its launch, you may not have found everything it has to offer. Here are five of our favorite hidden features that we’ve discovered over the course of the last…
Maybe you saw the Tony Hawk of surfing upload this video of a perfect man-made wave back in December. According to Bloomberg, Kelly Slater is trying to sell flawless artificial barrels to the world for somewhere between $2 and $20 million a pop, which is a bargain considering the R&D that went into making something…
Nuclear experts say this famous photo of an apparent mushroom cloud rising above the city of Hiroshima is not what it appears to be. The towering plume is actually billowing smoke rising up from the raging firestorms that followed the explosion. This photo has been misidentified as a mushroom cloud for decades. The Pulitzer Prize…
Twitter just announced that @mentions, pictures, and quoted tweets won’t count towards the 140-character limit, meaning twitter users can now fit more vitriolic garbage and faux-intellectualism into a single tweet. Twitter says the change will roll out in a few months. As social media becomes clogged with gifs and pictures, Twitter needed to give its…
If your car’s scratched and dented bumpers reveal a long history of you accidentally backing into things, you don’t necessarily need to buy a new vehicle just to get a fancy collision warning system. If you have a smartphone, and can use a screwdriver, you can easily install this license plate cover that serves as…
Smartwatches leave a lot to be desired, but Pebble usually brings refreshingly different ideas to the wearable conversation. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve always been such big fans. Pebble continually done wrist notifications and battery life very well. Now, it’s adding a third: fitness. Today, Pebble is launching a new Kickstarter for the…
What appears to be an iPhone 6 prototype popped up yesterday on eBay, and the current bid has already reached $7,100. [See updates below.] The seller, who describes the phone as “vintage,” said they bought it from a friend. It appears to be missing an FCC logo, serial number, and IMEI number: The seller added:…
