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Tweaking the structure of graphene so that it matches patterns found in the eyes of moths could one day give us “smart wallpaper,” among a host of other useful technologies. Using a novel technique called “nano texturing,” scientists at the University of Surrey in England have successfully modified ultra-thin graphene sheets to create the most…
Jelle Bakker, who has a fondness for complex marble runs, made this epic 750-feet long sand track that descends some 125 feet from its start to its finish. The 12 marbles competing in this video take almost four-and-a-half minutes to complete the run, and you’ll be surprised to find yourself rooting for your favorite. Are…
360 video is often disappointing (although there are exceptions). Cinematography goes out the window. It’s a nightmare on desktop. But Corridor Digital managed to use its limitations in their favor. Here’s how I’d like to imagine this video was born: INT. OFFICE — AFTERNOON The CORRIDOR DIGITAL headquarters are hitting the usual lull around lunchtime,…
Earlier this month a Swiss freeskier named Nicolas Vuignier posted an amazing YouTube video featuring bullet-time footage of a run down a snow-covered mountain. More impressive than the video, though, is the simple rig Vuignier designed and built to capture that footage with just a single iPhone. The device, which Vuignier calls the Centriphone, took…
A row of dicks hanging from metal hooks could be the opening shot of a particularly gruesome horror movie, but its only one of the many eerie production stations in the RealDoll shop in San Marcos, California. Photographer Robert Benson traveled to Japan where he became interested in the spooky eroticism of sex doll factories.…
Before USB Type-C replaces every charging cord you have to wrangle, the LMcable promises to play nice with both iOS and Android devices at the same time. Its brilliantly engineered connector supports Lightning ports, and microUSB ports, at the same time, without the need for adapters. Usually when a charging and sync cable boasts support…
What’s in your spice cabinet right now? Some paprika, turmeric, and a little bit of cardamom, perhaps? How about salmonella? The FDA first started looking into the issue of salmonella in your spice cabinet back in 2013. After two years and more than 7,000 spice batches tested, the agency reported on Friday that spices are…
The French migrant camp near Calais, also known as The Jungle, is currently being torn down with the help of “several hundred” riot police, according to the Wall Street Journal. And sadly it looks like a scene from John Carpenter’s 1988 horror-dystopia film They Live. “We have started removing empty shelters in the southern part…
What will the Internet look like in 3016? Well, the Huffington Post will have a new name, the Galactic Security Administration will be the focus of conspiracy theorists, MindTube will tap videos right into your grey matter…and Reddit will look pretty much exactly the same. At least according to Reddit 3016, a daily-updating art project…
A former Pentagon official is warning that autonomous weapons would likely be uncontrollable in real-world situations thanks to design failures, hacking, and external manipulation. The answer, he says, is to always keep humans “in the loop.” The new report, titled “Autonomous Weapons and Operational Risk,” was written by Paul Scharre, a director at the Center…
How could anyone go two years without noticing something this huge? Well, humans have been around for 200,000. Bristle worms and their polychaete brothers have survived five mass extinctions. Many aquarists fill their tanks with live rock, i.e. chunks of coral that still harbor biological and bacterial matter. Bristle worms often piggyback on these corals,…
We all know robots are coming for our jobs, but smartphones could soon be carrying the career-slaying torch as well. A small convenience store in Sweden only has one employee—the smartphone in your pocket—and it’s always working, 24-7. According to the Associated Press, a small store in Viken, Sweden uses smartphones for everything, from unlocking…
Amazon has teamed up with Brita to bring e-commerce straight into your fridge: Their new, internet-connected pitcher automatically orders fresh Brita filters as soon as you need replacements. Amazon and Brita’s new pitcher is now available to buy online today, simultaneously hinting at both how lazy humans are becoming, as well as how pervasive the…
Last week, slingshot mad scientist Joerg Sprave showed the world how to weaponize a Nerf blaster using scalpel blades. But since that apparently wasn’t dangerous or terrifying enough, this week Joerg’s back with a follow-up tutorial that explains how to make the whole thing fully automatic. Joerg even upgrades the batteries powering the Nerf blaster’s…
Damn, hackers! Damn, trolls! Damn, the price of viral Internet fame! The Twitter account of Josh Holz—the teenage mastermind behind the massively viral and head-scratching “Damn Daniel” video—was apparently hacked over the weekend, and the attacker took the prized video down with them. Holz recovered control over the account early Monday morning but not before…
Blender is some impressive free, open-source animation software. It can be used to make some terrifying garbage if you don’t know what you’re doing. But some people are really, really good at it. Like a modern-day Prometheus, watch César Salcedo mold digital clay into the shape of Emmy-winning actor and sort of musician Bruce Willis’s…
I have only one piece of advice: Watch out for the spikes before sitting down when you are about to inspect radio telescope antenna. What you see in the photo above is the dish of one of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) antennas in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. Two engineers from the…
It’s been well over a year Microsoft first teased HoloLens, its new mixed reality headset that layers holograms over the real world. Starting today, developers can finally (!!!) preorder the futuristic augmented reality goggles. They’ll cost $3,000 and ship on March 30th. To reiterate, this is a developer edition, not intended for consumers. Devs who…
It’s not a great feeling when you frame a photo on your iPhone only to find out there’s not enough free storage space available to store it. IceCream is an iOS app that performs some under-the-hood trickery to give you more room for photos—thousands of them—without forcing you to delete any of your existing ones.…
To date Lego has released 15 different series of blind-bagged Minifigures for eager fans to grope before buying. But the collections featuring licensed characters like The Simpsons have easily been the most popular, so Lego’s newest series features characters from countless Disney properties. The image above was posted by a Eurobricks forum user who claims…
