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Two reports out this week paint an alarming future for Earth’s oceans. The first one, published by the Wold Economic Forum, finds that by 2050, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight. The second, which appears in Nature Communications, reveals that our nets have raked in far more fish over the past…
Due to FAA regulations, drone are limited in size and power in the United States. But apparently not in Norway, which is now the home of a new record-setting superdrone called the Megakopter that recently snagged a Guinness World Record for hoisting just shy of 134.5 pounds. Designed and built by students at the University…
Anthropologists working in Kenya have uncovered the remains of a group of prehistoric foragers who were ruthlessly massacred about 10,000 years ago. It’s considered the earliest example of organized violence among nomadic hunter-gatherers, a rare find that’s offering an unprecedented glimpse into what life—and death—was like for prehistoric foragers. Archaeological evidence of warfare is abundant…
The New York City subway works, most of the time. It’s not the flashiest and it’s not the cleanest and it’s not always on time and it can get too crowded during rush hour but you can get all over the city for $2.75. Not the worst deal! It’s also just part of the fabric…
Leica cameras have a reputation for their gorgeous optics and the kinds of prices only the Trump-set can afford. Their durability, however, has never been notable. If anything, Leica cameras are considered downright delicate compared to other cameras. The new Leica X-U might not change Leica’s reputation as a the purveyor of cameras for rich…
The Liquid Glass Thinking Putty that Vat19 sells makes for a great desktop toy for those times when you don’t feel like working. But as the folks at VAT19 discovered, the putty also makes for a terrible substitute for water when it comes to bathing. The ridiculous experiment involved filling a bathtub with 500 pounds…
Writing music, like writing anything else, is a process. Where full studio recording sessions are like meticulously edited novels, smartphone recordings are more akin to rough sketches—a quick and easy way to capture your melodic musings. On iPhone, Voice Memos was the default first-party option for capturing audio—music or otherwise. Until today. Now Apple is…
Assuming you can say two digits a second and have evolved beyond the need for food, sleep, or a social life, the largest prime number ever discovered would take you more than four months to even say. So you’ll forgive the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search project, the impressive minds behind the discovery, if they…
You know what the logical thing to do when you build a perfect CG model of the human body? Make this silly video of those bodies falling on top of each other in an invisible column. Even better, make the colors totally weird and let the physics take over so that they fall on top…
Coming as a surprise to no one who’s seen the original Star Wars trilogy, yesterday the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall for a Darth Vader infant bodysuit that poses a potential choking hazard. Obviously. But the risk posed to infants has nothing to do with the Force or Vader being in a bad…
There’s a moment in this video after the molten copper is poured on top of the raw steak and after there’s been a little time for the copper to cool down and after the steak has cooked a little bit that it looks like the metal has completely engulfed the steak and casted a metal…
The US Air Force already has a drone-pilot shortage, but that’s not the only problem with its fleet of unmanned aircraft: Its drones keep falling out of the sky. The Washington Post obtained accident investigation documents that reveal the extent of the Air Force’s drone woes. The Reaper, which is the favored drone for airstrikes,…
The next time you’re driving along the coast and admiring the waves, don’t feel bad about not packing a surfboard. The WaveWrecker wetsuit can be kept tucked away in a corner of your trunk at all times, and when the waves are ideal, it turns your body into its own surfboard. The WaveWrecker’s creator, Nick…
Night skiing and night boarding usually require some sort of light, but what if that light was a torch attached to the ski or snowboard? Then you’d get this fiery visual of a man on fire shredding the slopes. The white of the snowy mountain gets replaced with this hellish red and it looks more…
The search for extraterrestrial life is the ultimate hybrid of creativity and science, the quest to discover something we can’t even describe yet. Jill Tarter embodies that creativity in her work with the SETI Institute, and is the subject of a special video released today. WeTransfer’s Creative Class is an online series highlighting creative people…
If you like Chrome but don’t think it loads web pages fast enough, you might be in luck. Google has now readied a new compression algorithm for the browser which will squeeze web pages down by as much as 25 percent more than it does right now. The new algorithm, called Brotli, is designed to…
A bug that’s been present in Linux for almost three years can be used by hackers to gain almost total control over a device, say security researchers. It could affect tens of millions of PCs and servers, as well as 66 percent of all Android phones and tablets. Perception Point reports that the newly discovered…
The ratings company Nielsen has been keeping tabs on what you say about TV while using Twitter for a while. Now, though, it plans to mine what you have to say on Facebook, too. Keeping track of Twitter was easy, of course, because most accounts are entirely public. Facebook is a lot more tricky though,…
Self-driving cars might be all the rage these days, but what about the poor computer-piloted drones? Well, while no-one’s been looking, they’ve been perfecting the aerial version of the patented Italian Job getaway. A team of researchers at the German Aerospace Center were looking for a way to lighten the payload of a solar-powered UAV,…
Never mind the nuclear rumblings, arbitrary executions, and incessant famines: North Korea is Best Korea, because North Korea has invented hangover-free booze! According to state-run newspaper The Pyongyang Times, Koryo Liquor is an alcoholic beverage made from ginseng and glutinous rice. The paper describes it as “suave and causes no hangover,” qualities which have won…
