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Meet the Aerion AS2. It’s the first supersonic private jet in the world and it just got a 20-unit order from Flexjet, a private air company. It’s going to change the way some people (rich people!) fly because it can hit speeds of Mach 1.5 thus shaving down the hours needed to travel across the…
Last night we got to see a totally badass (and perhaps more than a little foolhardy) Stormtrooper go toe-to-toe with Finn in The Force Awakens’ latest TV spot. Suitably impressed by his slick baton moves? You’ll soon be able to own one as part of Bandai’s fantastic Star Wars figuarts range. It’s not the first…
April 10, 1990: This is what happens when you unfurl a massive parachute in the world’s largest wind tunnel. The Pioneer Aerospace Parafoil, also known as the Advanced Recovery System II, was tested at the 80×120 Foot Tunnel at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View California. The facility is approximately 24 meters by 36…
The ground is flat, the board is moving, and yet she’s in complete control the entire time she’s dancing on the slithering longboard. It’s such a trippy thing to see because the dancer, Hyo Joo Ko, and the board seem to be moving independent of each other, even though they’re moving in concert. So your…
Next week is Thanksgiving, so this week’s apps include a few that will be fun or useful for groups–whether you’re delayed at the airport or sitting around the table after dinner. Two apps in particular fit this idea: FotoSwipe and #FaceParty. There’s another that takes the “giving” part of of the holiday very seriously called…
On June 17, 1939, Eugen Weidmann—a slick, handsome 31-year-old German—became the last person to be publicly executed via guillotine in France. His journey toward being a trivia-question answer started with a kidnapping gone awry, and spiraled into a deadly crime spree that spanned half of 1937. But the abduction, and subsequent killing, of Jean de…
The winners of Royal Society Publishing’s inaugural photography competition have been announced, and they’re extraordinary. These inspiring nature photos, chosen from over a thousand entries, were judged by a team consisting of Royal Society Publishing scientists, editors, and photographers. The award celebrates “the power of photography to communicate science.” We now present to you the…
With a billion or so users to its name, Chrome has been a huge success story for Google since its introduction in 2008. Right from the start, the browser aimed to be as lightweight and user-friendly as possible, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some advanced features hidden away behind the scenes—and with that in…
You shouldn’t do this. Burning up dried leaves is dangerous and not exactly great for your health and also pollutes the air. So yeah, don’t try this at home. Instead, just watch this video of a guy lighting a huge line of dry leaves doused in gasoline on fire and watch it instantly create this…
Imagine putting this thing on a ring. You’re looking at the biggest diamond to be found in the last 100 years, which was discovered in a mine in north-central Botswana. Lucara Diamond, the company that controls the mine in question, reports that the stone weighs in at a frankly staggering 1,111 carats. That’s 7.8 ounces…
“We took the space-age technology behind noise-cancelling headphones,” this spoof ad explains, “and added our own patented algorithms to filter out unwanted thoughts and conclusions.” [We The Internet]
Samsung has revealed details of a new camera sensor technology that it refers to as BRITECELL. The sensor promises better low-light performance, while also providing much slimmer sensors. Sam Mobile reports that the new sensors use smaller 1-micron pixels that manage to persevere the same light sensitivity as pixels that measure 1.12 microns. The resulting…
Last week, it was suggested that a research group from Carnegie Mellon University had been paid $1 million by the FBI to hack Tor. Now, CMU has issued a statement denying that money changed hands—but seems to suggest it was forced to hand over data to the authorities. In the statement, the University highlights that…
Skype’s Android app now lets you save video messages forever if you’re particularly attached to them.
Fancy toilets are not a thing that have really caught on in North America. Being blasted in the ass with scented water is not seen as a core component of the American Dream, but as the NYT reports with some cutting-edge journalism, fancy toilets are slowly invading our shores. The Times’s piece mostly looks at…
Most Kickstarter projects come through in the end, but every now and again, something fails in spectacular fashion and reminds us that crowdfunding is not all it’s cracked up to be. Back in January, the Torquing Group raised $3.4 million for a handheld drone called the Zano. For around $250, you’d get an “ultra-portable, personal…
Not only did Tinder cofounder and CEO Sean Rad comes off as extremely dumb in a recent interview, he may have violated the Security & Exchange Commission’s quiet period for Tinder’s imminent IPO. What’s the word for that? After an interview was published today in the Evening Standard where, among other things, Rad confuses the…
You could use the public data released by the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission to reveal critical insights about urban transit trends. Or you could use it to conduct a completely serious investigation on the plausibility of one of the transportation scenarios in Die Hard: With a Vengeance. To be fair, developer Todd…
It would appear that a 99-year-old cloth-making company in Japan is looking to enter the food business in an unusual way. Instead of only churning out towels and bedding, it’ll start using fiber from trees to cook up a gluten-free, slurp-able snack. Osaka-based Omikenshi Co. employs the same technology it uses for creating textiles to…
Angel Le and his six-year-old son Brandon were visiting a memorial in Paris when a reporter for Le Petit Journal stopped to ask a few questions. The resulting clip was shared more than 11 million times on Facebook, generated a tearful stream of tweets, and millions of views from around the world. It’s not hard…
