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Chomp! Snatch! Snap! Attack. Here is a wonderful collection of killer animals from BBC Earth Unplugged showing the animals’ unique attacking methods attacking in slow motion. You’ll see owls and crocs and chameleons and praying mantises and others go through their specialty in all its detail. I think the chameleon is my favorite and the…
Oh, wow. Aerodynamics research has never looked as pretty as it does with this new variation of an old technique for imaging supersonic shockwaves. Image of a supersonic T-38C using a new technique of background-oriented Schlieren imaging backlit by celestial objects. Image credit: NASA Supersonic shockwaves are invisible to the naked eye, but we can…
Instagram announced huge growth numbers that show more than 100 million people have joined the app in the last nine months. Twitter? Not so much. In a post, the Facebook-owned Instagram celebrates the 400 million active user milestone and points out that 75% of their community live outside the U.S. It also highlights big names…
Making and bending and shaping crystal into what you want it to be looks like so much fun. The piping hot crystal (which is made from a mixture of silica sand, lead, potash and other ingredients) is heavier and more sparkling than glass and glows this vibrant hue that doesn’t look like it’s from this…
Everyone has heard of the daring Amelia Earhart, but her British piloting peer Sheila Scott did her part to bust boundaries for ladies in aeronautics. Along with her numerous speed records and first flights, Scott helped NASA prove it could use satellites to track the location of airplanes. In November 1929, all 117 female pilots…
Can 45 layers of bulletproof glass—45 layers that combine to make a 16-inch thick bullet stopping wall, mind you—survive against a RPG-7 rocket launcher? The idea is to find out if it’s possible to use bulletproof glass to armor a tank against anti-tank weapons such as a RPG. Crash Zone did the test and though…
The buses that shuttle San Francisco tech workers to and from their Silicon Valley jobs each day have been blamed for displacing longtime residents. In a heartbreaking twist, the drivers of those buses are paid so little that they, too, have been priced out of San Francisco–and some of them must live in their cars.…
Celebrities promote stuff on Instagram all the time, from waist trainers to skinny teas to DIY teeth whitening systems. Products rarely look good, but with Amber Rose’s recent plugs for a sketchy background check website, we’ve reached a dismal new rung of vacuous shilling. Rose is a prolific Instagram hawker, and right now, she’s mostly…
Eating a bag of chips? Delicious right! Great snack. But what you’re really eating are all these weird powders and difficult to pronounce additives and manufactured colors and sticky glue goop. This photo series for the book Ingredients by Dwight Eschliman and Steve Ettlinger reveals what’s inside your favorite foods and displays them each in…
Working with its recently acquired Oculus VR division, Facebook will soon bring short, immersive, 360-degree videos to your News Feed. That lets you look in any direction within an image, as though you were really there. It’s Facebook’s first project with Oculus to bring VR-like technology to the main service. How will it work? Simply…
The Office of Personnel Management hack keeps getting worse. We already know over 21.5 million federal employees had their personal information hijacked from the OPM’s servers. And now the government agency admits that 5.6 million federal employees had their fingerprints stolen. Wired confirmed that OPM’s tally for compromised fingerprints is a lot higher than previously…
With enough ingenuity, nearly anything is possible. Engineers on NASA’s Orion crew module have found ways to cut down the number of main weld-points from 33 to just 7 in the latest prototype, dramatically reducing mass by the equivalent of several astronauts. Engineers practiced on a full-scale barrel piece in August before starting manufacture on…
“It looks like a watch!” my wife proclaimed, when I showed her the Pebble Time Round. She wasn’t stating the obvious. She meant that out of all the smartwatches she’d ever seen, it’s the first one that looks like something she would wear. In case you’re not familiar, Pebble is the tiny company that put…
Field Guide’s mission is to help you get more out of your technology, whether that’s tips for your favorite apps, round-ups of the best tools for a particular task or in-depth guides to achieving a particular goal. From stretching out battery life to kid-proofing an iPad, we’ve covered a lot of ground over the last…
Glextor is an Android app manager that gives you full control over the way apps appear on your device: split them into categories and folders, highlight your favorites, find important apps quickly, tailor the app drawer interface and more. There are both free and paid-for versions of the app to choose from. The premium edition…
The Chinese government’s replacement for Windows is called NeoKylin, and it looks very familiar based on a hands-on from Quartz–which reports today that the OS is already running on more than 40 percent of commercial units sold in the country by Dell. Quartz fired up the latest “community version” of NeoKylin 6.0, which isn’t necessarily…
In July, the Boy Scouts of America finally decided to allow gay adult leaders, heralding a burgeoning age of sexual equality. 40 years ago, something similar happened when they forced the Mormon Church to accept black kids into leadership roles in its scout troops. African Americans In The Church Of Latter Day Saints The brief…
After the NPR podcast Serial became a massive breakout hit, everyone wondered what story it would tackle next. Now we have an answer. The Hollywood Reporter says it has confirmed previous reports that Serial season two will focus on Bowe Bergdahl, the American army sergeant accused of desertion in Afghanistan. Bergdahl was subsequently captured and…
This year has seen artificial neural networks hit the big time, with Google’s Deep Dream program introducing millions of people to the concept for the very first time. But if you’re still not completely clear on, uh, how the hell they even work–fear not. Natalie Hammel and Lorraine Yurshansky are two Google employees who have…
Imagine having a magical device that can duplicate any organic life you put into it. You could have an army of adorable pets, a mountain of your favorite veggies, man, you could even erase hunger from the face of the Earth with it. Unfortunately, such a device only exists in this short film and even…
