Tech News

This Hypnotic Video of a Snake Race Tells Us Something About Physics

In this video, snakes are forced to slither between two boards. The boards are placed successively closer together until the poor snake is wriggling. But this isn’t about annoying a snake—it’s about physics. Take a frail beam, a straw or a piece of wood, put one finger on each end, and compress the thing. You’ll…

Tech News Esther Inglis-Arkell

SpaceX Wants to Land a Rocket at Cape Canaveral

Perhaps feeling a bit put out that Blue Origin stole its re-usable rocket thunder, commercial spaceflight company SpaceX is setting aside the whole landing a rocket on an ocean drone thing. Instead, for its next attempt to bring a Falcon 9 booster safely back to Earth from the great beyond, SpaceX wants to go whole…

Tech News Maddie Stone

It Took 55 Miles of Sewing Thread To Create This Complete Spectrum of Visible Color

How do you sew up a seam that hangs 20 feet above your head? You develop your own, industrial-sized needle–like the artist Gabriel Dawe did to finish this installation. “I use an extension pole with a tool I developed that works as a giant needle,” Dawe explains in an interviewabout his piece at the Smithsonian’s…

Tech News Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

Here’s What That Choking Blanket of Smog Over China Looks Like From Space

A thick and dangerous blanket of smog is currently enveloping Beijing and parts of Eastern China, forcing authorities to issue an “orange” alert—the second highest level of a four-tiered pollution scale. Here’s what it looks like from space. The timing couldn’t be worse for China, as the COP21 Climate Change conference starts this week. The…

Tech News George Dvorsky

Stunning video captures rocket separation in space like never before

Wow. This is truly spectacular. Here’s footage from UP Aerospace, which captured a multistage rocket separating in space like we’ve never seen before. You can see it release and then separate from each other in stunning fashion. We’ve slowed down the stage where the rocket separates and it’s just so cool. Seeing that moment happen…

Sploid Casey Chan

These Surreal Images Show the Gathering Storm of Climate Change

Climate change is often described as an ominous storm gathering in the distance. A stunning new series of surreal photographs makes that metaphor literal by juxtaposing people going about their daily lives against a swirling backdrop of storm cells. “Surreal Stormchasing Portraits” is a new series by conservation photographer Benjamin Wong, a.k.a. Von Wong. The…

Tech News Jennifer Ouellette

Mark Zuckerberg Celebrates Birth of First Born Child by Giving Away (Almost) All of His Facebook Shares (Eventually)

In a Facebook post addressed to his recently born first child, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg subtly made two major announcements. One, his wife Priscilla gave birth to a baby girl named Max (short for Maxima). Two, Mark and Priscilla will give away 99-percent of their Facebook shares within their lifetimes. The money will go to…

Social Media Adam Clark Estes

There’s Skin Bacteria in Cemetery Soil—Here’s Why

Did you know that, according to Polish law, graves can be reused after 20 years, provided nobody objects and the burial fee has not been paid? After reading this scientific paper on soil contaminants around cemeteries, you will. You may also have more of an appreciation for the fact that cemeteries have their own ecological…

Tech News Esther Inglis-Arkell

Bloodiest Christmas Massacres #1: The Lawson Family Slaughter

This time of year, nothing goes better with too much eggnog than grim tales of murder. (That’s how we roll at True Crime, anyway.) The first in our series takes place in 1929, on a farm outside Germanton, North Carolina—where on Christmas Day, Charlie Lawson murdered his family before taking his own life. It was…

Tech News Cheryl Eddy

Video: Every vehicle in the original Star Wars trilogy to scale

One of our favorite artists, Scott Park, illustrated the spaceships and vehicles in the original Star Wars trilogy to scale and it’s just so good. You get to see how a Stomtrooper compares in size to a Tauntaun to an X-34 Landspeeder to a TIE Fighter to the Millennium Falcon to the Death Star and…

Sploid Casey Chan

The Horrifying Vtech Hack Let Someone Download Thousands of Photos of Children [Update]

The latest details about a recent security breach at a kids’ toy company are in, and they are disturbing. A couple weeks ago, hackers successfully broke into the servers of connected toy maker Vtech and stole the personal information of nearly 5 million parents and over 200,000 nearly 6.4 million kids. What we didn’t know…

Privacy & Security Adam Clark Estes

SEC Finally Charges Shady Cryptocurrency Company for Running a Ponzi Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged controversial cryptocurrency entrepreneur Josh Garza and two of his companies, GAW Miner and ZenMiner, with running a Ponzi scheme to defraud people. The SEC announced charges today, accusing Garza of using unfamiliar jargon to trick people into buying into a fraud: “As alleged in our complaint, Garza and his…

Tech News Kate Knibbs

The Fascinating Reason Multi-Planet Star Systems Might Harbor Life

Living on Earth, without a single other habitable world in eyeshot, can sometimes feel pretty lonely. But our isolation may be the cosmic exception. In fact, it’s possible that throughout the galaxy, life-bearing worlds usually come in pairs. It sounds pretty far-fetched—we haven’t found a single other habitable planet, and now we’re talking two?—but an…

Tech News Maddie Stone

Motorola’s Fitness-Focused Moto 360 Sport Is Coming in January

The second generation of the Moto 360 smartwatch made some big improvements over its predecessor when it was released a few months back, chief among them having a design that was actually watch-like. Now, a fitness-focused version of that watch, the Moto 360 Sport, is finally coming in January. The Sport’s main departures from the…

Tech News Darren Orf

Margaret Sanger Once Spoke to the KKK, But This Photo of the Speech Is Very Fake

There’s a meme going around in conservative social media circles showing Margaret Sanger speaking at a KKK rally. The photo is fake. But… the reproductive rights activist really did address a meeting of KKK members in 1926. The photoshopped image was created in 2006 as part of a contest from an anti-Sanger blog. Sanger was…

Tech News Matt Novak

Margaret Atwood: The War Against Climate Change Is Our Battle For Middle Earth

When I was asked to do a piece for Gizmodo and io9, I confess I went a bit silly. I had the idea of describing a Lord of the Rings parallel universe, using the climactic scene in which the Dark Tower tumbles down, the Nazguls perish, the Ring is destroyed, the good guys win, and…

Tech News Margaret Atwood

How World War I Spy Catchers Popularized UV Lamps

Today ultraviolet lamps are used during lackluster raves. But they have an impressive history: They were first regularly used during World War I to secretly monitor spies. Up until World War I, the fact that some lamps emitted ultraviolet rays was a major problem. UV rays were wasted energy. The lamp was emitting light in…

Tech News Esther Inglis-Arkell

Use the New Find My Device Tool to Track Your Windows 10 Laptop

Microsoft has finally got around to adding a Find My Device feature to Windows 10. As you might expect, it lets you identify where your laptop is, should it get lost or stolen. The new feature is part of the major update for Windows 10 rolled out earlier this month, and here’s how to activate…

Gadgets David Nield

Video: The spectacular colors of fall make it the most beautiful season

Fall is the best season because it has a great holiday and crispy weather and better clothes and good food and families getting together and oh, duh: the gorgeous colors all around. It’s just so stunning and there’s really no other way to put it. If you don’t have true seasons where you live or…

Sploid Casey Chan

Mount Fuji Is Hidden Inside this Elaborate 360-Degree Pop-up Book

Unless they’re enrolling at MIT before the age of five, you won’t find a single kid who doesn’t prefer pop-up books over boring two-dimensional tomes. And Yusuke Oono’s elaborate pop-ups that open to reveal detailed 360-degree scenes are sure to be even more popular on book report day. Available over on Amazon Japan for around…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

This Hypnotic Video of a Snake Race Tells Us Something About Physics

SpaceX Wants to Land a Rocket at Cape Canaveral

It Took 55 Miles of Sewing Thread To Create This Complete Spectrum of Visible Color

Here’s What That Choking Blanket of Smog Over China Looks Like From Space

Stunning video captures rocket separation in space like never before

These Surreal Images Show the Gathering Storm of Climate Change

Mark Zuckerberg Celebrates Birth of First Born Child by Giving Away (Almost) All of His Facebook Shares (Eventually)

There’s Skin Bacteria in Cemetery Soil—Here’s Why

Bloodiest Christmas Massacres #1: The Lawson Family Slaughter

Video: Every vehicle in the original Star Wars trilogy to scale

The Horrifying Vtech Hack Let Someone Download Thousands of Photos of Children [Update]

SEC Finally Charges Shady Cryptocurrency Company for Running a Ponzi Scheme

The Fascinating Reason Multi-Planet Star Systems Might Harbor Life

Motorola’s Fitness-Focused Moto 360 Sport Is Coming in January

Margaret Sanger Once Spoke to the KKK, But This Photo of the Speech Is Very Fake

Margaret Atwood: The War Against Climate Change Is Our Battle For Middle Earth

How World War I Spy Catchers Popularized UV Lamps

Use the New Find My Device Tool to Track Your Windows 10 Laptop

Video: The spectacular colors of fall make it the most beautiful season

Mount Fuji Is Hidden Inside this Elaborate 360-Degree Pop-up Book

National Film and Sound Archive of Australia Adds ‘Succulent Chinese Meal’ Guy

Feds Sniffing Around Polymarket After Suspicious Bets

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Don’t Get Too Attached to Any AI App

‘Paradise’ Writer Teases What’s Coming in Season 3 After That Huge Twist

Trump’s New White House App Is Mildly Concerning and Weird for a Lot of Reasons

Bloodsucking Ticks Can Survive Inside Your Home Longer Than You Might Think

The Best New Toys of March 2026

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

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