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Stop. Breathe. Bask in the blissful relaxation of sunset in Queen Valley. Feel better? Good. A setting sun backlights the branching joshua trees, stunted desert scrub, and rounded hills in Joshua Tree National Park in California. It’s a welcome moment of pure tranquility in the bustle of holiday chaos. Top image: Sunset at Queen Valley,…
I’m totally getting hypnotized watching this machine spin around and around as it crushes aluminum can after aluminum can. The colors of the soda, the constant spin of the wheel, the methodical movement of the arm, it all makes for such a satisfying video to watch. I think people would absolutely recycle more if they…
By popular demand, our topic is your most terrible colleagues, and we’re also opening this one up for anyone to tell us about their encounters with the IT department. As our ongoing series demonstrates, IT is a profession wrought with perils: difficult work situations, frustrating phone calls, the hazards that come with being employed by…
There’s a lot of music out there—services such as Spotify boast more than 30 million tracks—with new songs and albums dropping every week. So how do you cut through the noise? Here are six places you can find new music to suit your tastes, based on what you’re already interested in. YouTube This is a…
There’s a basic test used to identify bodily secretions at crime scenes. It’s not the only test, but it is useful in primary investigations—unless you spill a lot of commercial flour around. Your mouth is perpetually full of amylase, which isn’t a bad thing. Amylase is an enzyme that attacks starch, breaking it down into…
I bought my beloved television half a decade ago, a (then) impressively thin 32-inch Samsung for around $500. Today, you can buy a 50-inch 4K TV for $500. The real question is: Should you buy a 4K TV at all? This is the year that 4K TVs aren’t so much an exotic offering from a…
Over a decade ago, Nicholas Merrill received a National Security Letter from the FBI asking him to turn over a customer’s data. Merrill, who owned a company called Calyx Internet Access, refused to give it up. Instead, he fought a national security gag order for 11 years. After winning a suit against FBI Director James…
In two weeks, you’ll be able to listen to Apple Music on Sonos’s great wireless music system. Both companies have teamed up for a public beta starting December 15th. The full rollout will happen in early 2016. Apple Music has attracted millions of subscribers since its launch last summer and constituted a major service hole…
The advent of 3D printing completely revolutionized the prototyping stage of designing a new product. But while turnaround times for revisions or changes are now much faster with a 3D printer, they can be even faster if the printer fixes flawed prototypes instead of reprinting them from scratch. Researchers from the Hasso-Plattner-Institut’s Human Computer Interaction…
It doesn’t take much effort to bust open a Master Lock. All you need to do is apply a little bit of pressure on one end and then add a few taps at the other side in a specific spot and pop, the thing opens pretty easily. Shockingly so! In fact, you don’t even really…
America woke up from its turkey hangover just in time to see Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson explain a new prototype for Amazon’s fabled Prime Air drone delivery service. The garish, package-pooping aircraft looks futuristic, but it’s probably not going to bring you new shoes anytime soon. It can’t. It’s just marketing. We’ve said it before,…
Given humans can’t fly (on our own) it’s no surprise that we’re utterly captivated by first-person videos of objects in flight. Strapping a stabilized camera to a spinning boomerang is no exception, but it turns out the sounds of it slicing through the air are even more amazing. Before you watch this latest video from…
The winners of the 2015 FASEB BioArt Image and Video Competition have been announced, and they’re amazing. Chosen from a diverse cross-section of biology, they feature everything from the proteins that make up the Ebola virus through to roundworms feasting on bacteria. Here’s the best, most beautful science photos the year had to offer. This…
Singapore, like almost every other industrialized country, is home to railroads that once formed the bedrock of its modern economy. Nowadays? Not so much. The railroad in question is the Keretapi Tanah Melayu line, a Colonial-era railroad that was built in 1903 to move produce, rubber, and tin across the country, according to the government.…
Apps misbehaving? Phone acting sluggish? If you’re experiencing any kind of problem with your iPhone, then emptying out the device’s RAM can often do wonders. It effectively ditches everything the phone was trying to juggle in its memory at once. Restarting your iPhone is one way of doing this, but there is a quicker option.…
The latest Google Doodle celebrates Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 141st birthday with scenes from the life of her most famous creation, Anne of Green Gables. One shows Anne Shirley taste a cake and promptly turn green. Given the chemistry of the time, that may be more sinister than we imagine. We’ve talked before about the poison-heavy…
When it comes to Nerf warfare, accuracy always takes a backseat to firepower. Your ability to nail a target with a single shot means nothing when they can return fire with a massive onslaught of foam ammunition. And that’s exactly why this Nerf Rival Zeus upgrade is so utterly brilliant. Using some clear plastic tubing…
We’ve all had flying toys that don’t actually fly. From little tin planes to hulking Millennium Falcon replicas, it’s fun to imagine if the toy worked like the real thing. Well, one anonymous quadcopter enthusiast didn’t imagine with his new Hasbro First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter. He made it fly. A mysterious tinkerer that…
Back in July, Oscar Mayer teased us with an RC off-road version of its iconic Weinermobile that looked impossibly fun to drive. It was unfortunately a one-off creation that few got to play with, so to make up for that tease, Oscar Mayer has created an even smaller RC version you can finally buy. Let…
Some of the best inventions actually started out as accidents, and such is the case with the world’s first “Chia Pet” pen. Its creators were trying to create an eco-friendly alternative to printer ink using algae, but ended up creating invisible ink that magically appears after a few days exposure to sunlight. The folks at…
