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Every week, we’re bombarded with images of dazzling terrains on Mars and Pluto, but there are still geologic wonders to be discovered right here on Earth. Case in point: a new study suggests there could be a canyon system more than twice as long as the Grand Canyon buried beneath an ice sheet in Antarctica.…
The most threatening letter of the alphabet is now the new name of Google’s quasi-secret moonshot lab: Google X is now just “X.” Hear that? That’s the sound of paranoid civilians boarding up windows and prepping drone-downing cannons. Re/code reports that Google’s arm for awesomely out-there inventions switched its name to just “X,” and debuted…
Who really lives in all those awful luxury skyscrapers going up all over the US? Increasingly: No one. Now the government is going after the shady, secret deals that are gobbling up the most expensive real estate in most big cities—and destroying the housing market. According to the New York Times, the Treasury Department will…
Researchers are working on a new kind of chemical sensor—one made of light and spiderwebs. This thin, yet ultra strong, material has two properties that make it ideal for this purpose: its ability to channel light and its reactivity. Put a laser at one end of a strand of undamaged spider’s silk and the beam…
Like any respectable eater of meat, I pretty much like every kind of barbecue that exists. There are few things that taste better than something cooked long and slow with smoke and over indirect heat. Texas style, Kansas City style, Carolina style, Korean barbecue, char siu, it’s all delicious. Ribs, brisket, pulled pork, burnt ends,…
When you strap on a VR headset, you’re immediately in awe of the new digital world that’s slowly manipulating your brain. The visuals sell the sensation, but sound is what makes it stick. Google’s taking strides towards making that sound more convincing. Today, Google Cardboard is upgrading its SDK with new tools for improved positional…
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously disappeared on March 8, 2014—nearly two years ago, if you can believe it. And while Australian researchers still haven’t found the plane, they recently discovered a shipwreck dating back to the 19th century. The Australians discovered an anomaly on the floor of the Indian Ocean back in December and deployed…
Here’s a photo of a US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker refueling an A-10 Thunderbolt II over the clouds. The perfect angle of the picture and the lovely nose art of the aircraft makes the fighter jet look like a flying shark machine that has a machine gun as its mouth and scars on its battered…
It’s a good day to be frustrated with something ridiculous your parents did, because Marieke Voorsluijs will help put it in perspective. Frustrated with her teenage son’s reluctance to cuddle, she created a knitted doppleganger of him that makes whatever stupid thing your parents did seem not so terrible. Marieke, who appears to be affiliated…
As far as third-party keyboards for iOS go, Swype is fantastic. It’s fast, it’s stable, and it knows all my little typing quirks. I’d never use anything else. And yet—I fucking hate it. Swype’s set of emojis are, for whatever reason, not compliant with Unicode’s latest set of emojis. Which means Swype does not offer…
Surprise! It’s dizzying as hell. That’s obviously to be expected since a washing machine spins and spins and spins but if you kind of squint just a little bit and flex your imagination a lot of bit, you can pretend that the washing machine is actually a portal opening capsule that’s revving itself up. It…
TomTom is gung-ho about getting good press for its new fitness wearable, the TomTom Spark Music GPS Fitness Watch. Fortunately for the company, members of the press are cool with publicizing the Spark if it means they might get something in return. Some journalists attending CES earlier this month received a pitch from TomTom offering…
Chromecast, Roku and Fire TV sticks are often hailed for their web streaming capabilities, letting you Netflix binge on the cheap. You can, however, easily stream local files from your computer to these HDMI-enabled dongles as well with the right apps installed—here’s how to get everything set up. Chromecast Your Chromecast is controlled by your…
Let’s get this out of the way first: Christoph Laimer’s 3D-printed watch (with tourbillon) is large, fairly inaccurate, and only runs for about 30 minutes. But it’s one small step for Swiss watchmakers hoping to make their masterful creations more affordable, and one giant leap for the 3D-printing industry. A few years ago Swatch came…
What’s the most powerful weapon in the sci-fi universe? How does a lightsaber in Star Wars compare to the energy sword of Halo? What about a Death Star vs Dr. Who’s reality bomb? And how do they match up with a real life nuclear bomb? Foundation Digital made this infographic for Fat Wallet detailing the…
Mumbai police have established 15 “no selfie” zones around the Indian city after an 18-year-old girl drowned last week while taking a picture of herself. The BBC reports that the sites—mainly tourist destinations, including Bandra Bandstand, Sion Fort, and Worli Fort—will be classed as “no selfie zones.” It’s not the first time Mumbai has outlawed…
Brace yourself for perhaps the cutest views ever to appear on Street View. Google has scaled down its hardware to capture Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland—the world’s largest model railway. Google worked with Ubilabs to build a series of miniature Street View vehicles, shown in these pictures, that could travel around the model landscape and capture the…
What happens if you try to combine 214 different subway networks—including 791 routes and 11,924 stations—into a single map? This beautiful tangle of color and lines is what. Created by New York-based ArtCodeData and Open Access, the map—called, aptly, The World Metro Map—includes subway systems from Istanbul to Seoul, New York to Moscow, Mexico to…
Jamming communications isn’t a new idea, but with battlefields becoming increasingly digital, it’s an evermore concerning threat. Now, though, DARPA has built a super-fast chip that will help create devices able to shrug off radio-frequency attacks. The Agency’s built a new analog-to-digital converter—a device that takes analog signals, such as communications being sent through the…
Don’t read this if you’re about to board an airplane. A new report by the Department of Transportation warns that US pilot training no longer helps airline pilots maintain the ability to fly commercial flights manually, because of the surfeit of autonomous technology inside the cockpit. The organization’s report explains that in cases where technical…
