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If you’ve ever had a bee land in your beer, you’ll know they can’t swim. If it were one of Harvard’s Robobees, however, it would be a different matter altogether. The Robobee isn’t a new creation, but it has just picked up a new skill: using the same motion that it uses to fly in…
When it comes to image filters, these day’s it often a case of choosing between Instagram’s Hudson or Hefe. But in reality those filters are combination of several, simpler effects — and this video explains how they work. If you used Photoshop before the era of Instagram, you’ll have at least read the names of…
In the semiconductor industry, size matters — and people are worried that it won’t be able make transistors any smaller. But a team of IBM scientists has now published research showing how carbon nanotubes could help. The size problem is a simple one: continue shrinking down the circuity required by transistors, and the electrical resistance…
Welcome to this week’s Reading List, where you’ll find the best science and technology stories on the internet assembled in one delightful package. This week, we’ll ponder the place books have in our lives, explore urban history, see without realizing it, and remember the birth of online music streaming. We’ll probably never have the same…
San Francisco’s tech workers may be looking for a new ride to work if their shuttle bus drivers go on strike over contract negotiations. At a meeting yesterday in San Leandro, leaders of the Teamsters Local 853 advised members to be prepared for a strike if there’s no progress on the contract proposal that the…
There are all kinds of different ways to use Wolfram Alpha, and it’s often a better idea to load up the computational knowledge engine rather than your search portal of choice. Here are 16 of the most useful queries that Wolfram Alpha can handle but leave Google stumped. 1. Work out probabilities Enter “24 coin…
Scientists have just uncovered one of the largest tsunami events in the geologic record, and naturally, it started with an epic splash. 73,000 years ago, the eastern flank of Cape Verde’s Fogo volcano collapsed into the sea, kicking up an 800-foot wave. Think about that for a sec. That’s two thirds the height of the…
Going to Pluto was incredible, but as we continue to soak in the glorious images, NASA’s already trying to figure out which celestial target to hit next. The space agency revealed five finalist concepts this week, including missions that would take us to Jupiter’s asteroids and the surface of Venus. I’ve been pondering NASA’s choices…
Edward Snowden may have garnered himself 1.3 million followers during his first week on Twitter, but even instant celebrities make rookie mistakes. Snowden’s? Forgetting to turn off email notifications. 47 GB of follow, favorite, retweet and DM emails later, we’re pretty sure he learned his lesson. [Engadget]
With viral memes and hashtags sweeping the internet on the daily, language is evolving faster than conventional dictionaries can keep up. You may have been “procrastatweeting” about the “popepocalypse” last week, but the stalwart publishers of the Oxford English won’t give your neologisms official recognition for years to come, if ever. Heck, they didn’t even…
Were Apple’s co-founders robbed at gunpoint outside a pizza parlor? That, at least, is what Steve Wozniak told Jimmy Fallon and Seth Rogen during a game of “True Confessions” on Friday’s episode of The Tonight Show. Fallon, an expert interrogator, managed to extract a lot of details about the incident during the one-minute question and…
Remember a few weeks back, when Elon Musk explained how we ought to nuke Mars to warm it up? Well, the billionaire was really just speaking off the cuff, and so during a SolarCity launch event in Times Square yesterday, he decided he ought to clarify. The founder of SpaceX doesn’t want to nuke the…
I don’t envy the food or bathroom situation on the International Space Station, but every time a major storm hits, I have to admit I’m a wee bit jealous. Astronauts have prime seats for watching Earth’s most epic natural disasters unfold, and they don’t have to deal with any of the cleanup! In the early…
First off, there were lots of new phones to play with this week. We reviewed the iPhone 6s and played with two new-and-improved Nexus phones while livebloggin’ from Google’s event. We were also at Tesla covering the big reveal of the Model X, and debuted the Indefinitely Wild video series with an explainer on how…
Night biking is one of my favorite activities. But you know what’s even more fun? Not getting hit by careless drivers who fail to remember that bikers, too, sometimes have somewhere to be after dark. You’ve gotta have good lights, but taillights are passé. It’s time to step up your game. It’s time for Revolights.…
An iPhone, a 5 yen coin, and a drop of water. That’s all Japanese designer Dan Tomimatsu needed to create his haunting surrealistic short film, O (eau), shot entirely through a makeshift “water lens.” Well, that and the right inspiration, found in the work of a poet who calls himself “fukudapero.” The water lens is…
Are you ready for sea turtle swimsuit diapers? Okay! You’ve probably never thought about it, but collecting sea turtle poop in brisk ocean currents is ridiculously hard. Scientists, clever nutcases that they are, came up with a runway-worthy solution, and it’s making us die of cute over here. Owen Coffee, a biology PhD student at…
Are you the type of person who Googles for GIFs? Then you’re going to love this new Chrome Extension. Built by Gihub user peeinears, the “Google GIFs Chrome Extension” is pretty muchexactly what it sounds like. The invisible little application will animate the GIFs in your search results. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of…
Quentin Tarantino has a foot fetish. We know this, already. He also loves to show it off in his movies. We can now see this in this wonderful edit by Pablo Fernandez Eyre that stitched together scenes that involve feet in all his movies. It’s really, really great and uncomfortable and fun at the same…
Be careful out there this this weekend, folks. There’s a storm a comin’. My favorite meme of the week has been Joaquin Phoenix’s face plastered across weather maps, as well as other mashups of the actor with the hurricane that shares his name. (via fb) Where I am it’s looking like the storm is going…
