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After dropping hints at a recent event that the Google parent company Alphabet might be building its own urban-scale laboratory, Sidewalk Labs reportedly has about 100 urban experts who are working on the plan, which is named “Project Sidewalk.” CEO Dan Doctoroff will be presenting the idea for the city to Alphabet CEO Larry Page…
Do you remember the Green Destiny sword from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I didn’t. But that damascus steel blade finished with jade is so damn gorgeous and stunningly detailed that after seeing the guys at Baltimore Knife and Sword make it, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it again. The whole build process is so…
This weekend Johnny Depp and his wife Amber Heard posted a bizarre apology video to Australia for not declaring their dogs when they brought them into the country. They were in violation of biosecurity laws and faced prison time. But this isn’t the first time that the land down under has been hostile to American…
Do you know how wasteful coffee pods are? Well, Keurig does, and the company just made a big announcement: “100-percent of K-Cup®pods will be recyclable by 2020.” Only four more years of senseless waste! Coffee pods are a bad idea. I’ve gone on this rant before, and I stand by every word I wrote way…
Unless you’ve somehow found a way to earn a living by torrenting and hoarding movies and TV shows, you probably don’t need LaCie’s new 12big Thunderbolt 3 storage solution. On the other hand, if you’re capturing and editing 4K video all day long, you’ll undoubtedly want the 96 TB behemoth. Standing as tall and proud…
Here’s how a traditional wooden lacrosse stick gets made. You get to see how it’s done from the search for the right type of hickory tree to the splitting of the wood in halves and quarters and eighths to the steaming and bending and knitting and everything in between, it’s actually a humble process to…
So, the grand experiment that is Tidal continues to be a rousing success. A Kanye West fan is now suing the artist and the service for using what he alleges are deceptive marketing practices to trick people into using Tidal. Justin Baker-Rhett is that fan—probably ex-fan now—and he’s claiming that he only signed up for…
Cancer cells have a terrifying-yet-ingenious way of passing through even the smallest blood vessels to spread throughout the human body, according to a new study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital. Figuring out how to prevent them from doing so may help slow down the spread of this killer disease. Cancer spreads throughout the body—a…
Droughts are hitting us harder, and they’re only going to keep on coming. But how do you know if your trees can make it through a severe drought? Now there’s a way to find out before the drought hits. Obviously, some species of trees need more (or less) water than others. But scientists didn’t know…
How the dinosaurs went extinct is a contentious topic of endless scientific debate. Were they killed by a giant asteroid, a rash of volcanic eruptions, or some deadly combination of the two? Or, perhaps, we’ve been thinking about the problem all wrong. Here’s a different take. It wasn’t just cataclysmic events that did in the…
If you slap the term “natural” on your skincare product, companies can instantly sell more of it at a higher price. But the term “natural” has no official definition in the United States. And many people are shocked to learn that humans can be allergic to “natural” skincare products. These people are idiots. According to…
Siri just announced (I can’t believe I just wrote those three words) that Apple’s WWDC conference, a week-long look into the software Apple’s building for 2016 and beyond, will begin on June 13. What do we expect? OS X might be called MacOS (again). iOS 10 will likely be in attendance. We might also see…
The great Niño of 2015 is finally on its way out. But before it goes, it has one final present to leave us: a giant cache of creepy coral bones littering the ocean floor, like a tiny seafaring graveyard. We’ll miss you too, Niño. Biologists Julia Baum of the University of Victoria and Kim Cobb…
Between the two huge chunks of concrete in the moody dusk photo above is the world largest jet engine, which was recently assembled by General Electric engineers. It’s the first working prototype of the GE9X turbofan engine, which GE is putting through the paces at the company’s test range near Peebles, Ohio. You might be…
Africa is one of the last great holdouts for charismatic megafauna. But as the human population continues to grow and industrialize, lions, zebras, and elephants are being edged out of existence. A harrowing new series by photographer Nick Brandt makes this transformation visceral. In Inherit the Dust, Brandt juxtaposes the factories and urban wastelands spreading…
“Your friends are all dead” isn’t something anyone wants to hear. In this video, the cartoony world of Valve’s free-to-play team-based shooter is brought into the real world with the help of Nerf guns, slick choreography, and a little computer magic. VFX company CorridorDigital pits a hopelessly outmatched Red team against a hoard of Blues.…
We expect the Earth to always be this beautiful blue marble but at some angles and at some times, it glows differently. Like if you just looked at the glorious Aurora Borealis from space, the planet would have this eery alien green glow to it. This stunning footage from NASA of both the Aurora Borealis…
Gmail is all about labels and search, not folders—and alongside the custom labels you can name and color yourself, there are several hidden ones built into Gmail to help keep your messages organized and prioritized. Here are the ones you need to know about, and how you can use them. The basics Want to see…
So this is what collecting action figures has come to? Apparently some Star Wars aficionados aren’t content with 3.75 or even 12-inch figures in their collection. They demand something grander and even more elite, which is why a life-size Boba Fett action figure can now be had for just shy of $8,500. Standing over 78-inches…
Japan and Ecuador were rocked by major earthquakes over the weekend, prompting speculation that the two seismic events were somehow related. Here’s why that’s extremely unlikely. On Saturday, April 16, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Kumamoto City in Japan’s Kyushu Region. Just hours later, a powerful 7.8 magnitude quake hit Ecuador, about 17 miles (27…
