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It’s weirdly enjoyable to see a giant block of steel get squished and shaped into a giant roll of steel by giant machines. Seeing the hot flakes fall off, seeing a square slowly get squeezed into a circle, it’s something I can watch for a very long time. These steel rolls were made by the…
Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign must love dumb friends. In addition to releasing an app that rewards people for turning over their friends’ personal information, the campaign is leaning on a data analytics company that has paid people $1 for access to their Facebook data and their friends’ data. Cambridge Analytica builds “psychographic profiles” for the…
The three largest airlines in the country—American, Delta, and United—put hoverboards on the no-fly list this week. The decision came after multiple reports of the gadgets bursting into flames without warning. Obviously, spontaneous combustion and planes do not mix. In addition to the Big Three, both JetBlue and British Airways have banned people from bringing…
You might put your podcasts on a faster speed to get through them more quickly, and you can do the same on any YouTube video—the feature is built right into the platform. Get through tutorials, video podcasts, long talks, and other content in double-quick time so you can move on to something more interesting. It’s…
A team of researchers from MIT has developed an artificial intelligence system that can fool human judges into thinking it’s a person when it comes to drawing unfamiliar letter-like characters. You can think of the experiment, detailed in the new issue of Science, as a kind of visual Turing Test. The software and a human…
Fight fire with fire, so they say. Clearly Tokyo officials have been listening to that advice, because their police force is launching a fleet of net-carrying drones that will locate and capture other rogue drones being flown by members of the public. The BBC reports that the new squad of police drones will be used…
Your urine may be of more use kept about your person. At least, that’s what a team of researchers from the University of the West of England think, because they’ve made a pair of socks that use the liquid to generate electricity. The new sock contains a network of integrated tubes that can hold up…
You need a large room to strip and reassemble an airplane—especially when it’s the biggest one in your fleet. In this panoramic photo you can see a half assembled Lockheed C-5M Super Galaxy during a major inspection at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. All C-5 aircraft in the U.S. Air Force inventory undergo an…
This strange sight is part of a new Royal Navy aircraft carrier–without the actual carrier part–as it makes its way along the hazy River Clyde on its journey from BAE Systems’ shipyard in Glasgow to Rosyth. The 750-tonne steel superstructure will control aircraft operations on HMS Prince of Wales, the UK’s next large warship, which…
Despite pulling another all-nighter, world leaders have been unable to reach a firm consensus over their climate negotiations in Paris. It’s now expected that an agreement won’t be signed before Saturday. The French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who’s chairing the talks, says that “things are moving in the right direction,” according to the BBC, and…
Yahoo has added a new feature to its Mail app that allows you to integrate your entire Gmail account into the webmail service — even enabling you to search and find attachments. The feature doesn’t just drag recent messages to your Yahoo inbox. Instead, it accesses your entire Gmail archive. That means you can search…
In a Reddit AMA, Android and Chrome UX director Glen Murphy has explained that his team is working on some ways to make Android more productive — including split-screen multi-tasking. Taking to Reddit, Murphy explained that Google is working on the feature that’s appeared on Windows tablets since 2012 and finally made it to iOS…
Google Wallet in its newly revamped form is meant to be a way to send money to other people without difficulty or thought or regret. To make the process easier, you now just need someone’s phone number to get the cash flowing. The process should be much the same as it is with the current…
Killing Them Safely is a documentary taking issue with the ‘less than lethal’ part of Taser’s stun guns. It’s been critically acclaimed by the New York Times and Hollywood Reporter, but Taser’s employees have not-so-anonymously been taking to the internet to pan the movie. The film’s directors have published a series of tweets alleging to…
DJI squarely owns the prosumer end of the drone market with its insanely popular Phantom and Inspire quadrotors. Presumably, the addition of thermal-imaging capabilities to its higher-end drones is meant to lock down that market, not make it easier to hunt and kill humans. Presumably. DJI has partenered up with thermal-imaging manufacturer FLIR to produce…
Auto-balancing skateboards, incorrectly but widely known as hoverboards, are this year’s must-have novelty toys for people bored of their selfie sticks. But it would seem they also have use for shoplifters who can’t be bothered to walk. London’s Metropolitan Police published a videoof a young male shoplifting a case of Lucozade energy drink from a…
The Zano drone Kickstarter campaign folded back in November, taking $3.5 million in pledges and a decent share of Kickstarter’s reputation with it. To try and clear the air, Kickstarter has hired freelance journalist Mark Harris to do some digging. The Zano was meant to be a palm-sized ‘intelligent’ drone that would handle basic photography…
The historic Paris climate talks have reached their eleventh hour, and world leaders are scrambling to put the finishing—but very important—touches on the accord that could save our planet from apocalyptic climate change. A draft of the global agreement to limit humanity’s carbon emissions was released earlier today, but there are still a lot of…
If you want to be remotely healthy, don’t eat junk food. It’s that simple. Because it’s really not worth it (oh but it is, sometimes) when you try to burn off all those bad calories you just ate. Think about the exercise! Think about the weights! Think about the cardio! Think about all that when…
It’s called foreshadowing! But also in today’s super plot sensitive culture and measly minute time limit on not knowing what happened on what movie or TV show, it’s also effectively a spoiler. Luckily, some filmmakers can hide those spoilers in plain sight and we’re none the wiser. So many movies basically tell us what they’re…
