Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
You don’t even have to think that hard to know that the International Space Station is a truly incredible thing that humans have done. Good job us (or people much smarter than us). It’s an amazing feat of engineering, it’s an example of what can be done when different countries work together with one goal,…
Marvel is still pumping out some really good and really fun movies but there’s definitely a little fatigue when it comes to juggling all these superheroes to set up all these storylines to connect all these worlds. A movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron was absolutely, totally good! But it tries to do too much…
Everybody’s buzzing about Twitter’s reported plan to ditch the 140-character limit. Then there are the other details that involve omitting mentions and links from the character count. These are dreadful ideas that will perplex Twitter users more than Twitter already does. The news comes from Re/Code who cited anonymous sources “familiar with the company’s plans”…
Peanut butter and jelly is as perfect a combination as there can be in sandwich form. A hamburger is the most delicious thing you can have between two buns. Is it possible that combining two perfectly delicious food things can actually backfire and be awful? I want to find out by eating this PB &…
Everybody is so excited because NASA has confirmed that there is water on Mars. Really, no kidding, it is flowing right now somewhere on the Red Planet. The hilarious internet reacted to this important scientific news immediately, flooding Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, VK, Sina Weibo, and so on with witty images, memes, and commentaries. So clever!…
Jellyfish don’t have a brain or a heart or blood and can’t see or hear and yet they’ve managed to stick around in our oceans for 600 million years and have survived five mass extinctions. These drifting blobs are awesome and especially awesome to look at. Deep Look examines why. Deep Look writes a bit…
A lot of researchers are thinking about how to genetically engineer crops and food animals to help them withstand post-climate change heat and parched conditions. But what about genetically engineering humans to slow our constant carbon contributions? In 2012 a philosopher named Matthew Liao co-authored a paper that proposed altering human biology to combat climate…
As predicted, today Google unleashed not one but two Chromecast devices. They’re both impressive, and they’re both still just $35. I just spent a little time with both of them and here are my impressions. The new Chromecast is a funny little puck with a built-in HDMI cable. This is a good thing, as it…
Hormone surges at puberty trigger a lot of physical changes in both men and women, morphing child-bodies into adult forms. Genitals, hips, and muscle mass change, obviously–but so do faces. A new study suggests those facial changes are primed to happen by the presence of testosterone in utero. Andrew Whitehouse and colleagues at the University…
I have long been a fan of Google’s Pixel line of Chromebooks, but today at the Google Nexus event I saw the Pixel C and finally fell in love. But unfortunately, this machine isn’t as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. Let’s start with the good things. At 10.2 inches, the…
Where the Chrysler Building stands, there may have been gray wolves and hoary bats. Chinatown was home to a long tidal creek and salty marsh. A Lenape trail wound through the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. This was Manhattan in 1609, on the brink of European settlement, the year Henry Hudson sailed into New York…
The original Nexus 5 was has remained one of my favorite phones since its launch. It just fit in my hand so perfectly, and it was fast as hell. Still, it was crippled by truly terrible battery life, and when longer-lasting phones came along I couldn’t help but switch. Today, finally the Nexus 5 gets…
Google’s next generation of Nexus, the hardware it uses as the premium example of how great just plain old Android can be, is now out in the smartphone wild—but it enters that world filled with some stiff competition. In many ways, the LG Nexus 5X and Huawei Nexus 6P feels like a return to sanity.…
“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” Cyclone’s CEO Harry Schoell said in a press release in 2009. What could make the CEO of an alternative energy company issue such an insane statement? Well, Cyclone had a contract with DARPA for a…
If you were a kid between the release of the first Star Wars movie—in 1977—and today, you’ve probably played with as many awesome Star Wars toys, action figures, vehicles, aircraft, LEGO sets, plush toys, anything as possible. This great short film about being a kid will instantly bring you back all those childhood memories and…
Pokémon’s huge reach means that in Japan, it appears everywhere—plastered over trains, on food, on clothes, and in all sorts of toys and plushies and whatnot. That’s not the crazy part. That part is this new line of official toys, which literally is a collection of the severed rear ends of a variety of Pokémon.…
Hands-down, one of the coolest features of the new iPhone 6s and 6s plus is 3D Touch, that subtle touch mechanism that lets you quickly access common tasks fast as hell. Here are our 10 favorite shortcuts so far. Instagram: Why yes, I do in fact want to post the sunset pic I just snapped…
Sunday night’s sky was a rare treat, wasn’t it? We won’t even see another lunar eclipse until 2018. But in the meantime, we have a lot of fantastic photos, taken by you, of the blood super moon. Middle-Of-Nowhere We live in the Middle-Of-Nowhere, Colorado. We often have some beautiful night skies to stare at. But…
Google brought us the Pixel Chromebook back in 2013, and now, it looks like Android 6.0 Marshmallow will be co-opting the name. And it all starts with a new tablet called the Pixel C. The new tab has all the Pixel aesthetics you’re familiar with: aluminum design, no exposed screws—just good looking. But its best…
Yesterday, NASA reignited our hopes of finding alien life when it announced the first direct evidence of liquid water on Mars. But before we start indulging in fantasies of space crabs and reptilian beings, we ought to remember that Mars is a frigid world with a thin atmosphere. And that raises an obvious question: What…
