Tech News

Coal No Longer US’s Most Popular Electricity Source For First Time Ever

For the first time ever, coal has been unseated as America’s largest source of fuel to generate electricity. As of April 2015, natural gas is now number 1. A report from SNL Energy shows that 31 percent of America’s electricity was now coming from natural gas. That’s up from just 22 percent in 2010. But…

Someone Finally Resurrected the Commodore Brand for Something Useful

Various entrepreneurs have tried to bring back the legendary Commodore computer brand for years, all of them inevitably ending up bankrupt. Now a couple of Italian designers think they’ve got the silver bullet solution to tapping into 80s nostalgia: a smartphone. It’s too bad they decided to make it look so boring. The soon-to-be-released Commodore…

Stand Out in the Corporate World With This Geeky Tetris Watch

Following up on its Pac-Man and Space Invaders watches, Romain Jerome has just revealed a stylish new timepiece that manages to incorporate Tetris elements without looking like something you got for free with a video game pre-order. But with just 84 pieces being produced, the Tetris-DNA watch is simply not something you’re going to find…

A Motorized Automatic Umbrella Is the Best Kind of Overkill

Your umbrella might pop open at the push of a button, but does it close all the way too? You probably need to grab its soaking wet canopy to retract it all the way, which is why the completely automatic HAZ smart umbrella doesn’t actually seem that ridiculous, does it? But wet hands isn’t the…

The Science so far on Pluto’s Broken Heart in Latest Enhanced-Color Pics

This is Pluto in Charon in real color, but exaggerated to emphasize the compositional differences. The image was taken by the New Horizons probe early in the morning of July 13, 2015 before its historic flyby. At 3:38 am ET on July 13, 2015, the New Horizons probe used three color filters on its Ralph…

Video: Deep fried brain and bone marrow is a deliciously killer combo

Hamburger and fries. Spaghetti and meatballs. And brain and bone marrow… I guess? Our friend Anna Péter, from the Hungarian food blog Malackaraj, shows us how she makes deep fried brain and bone marrow and because the universal rule across all types of cooking is that deep frying things and adding bone marrow is always…

The World’s First Figure-8 Ferris Wheel Hangs 430 Feet In the Air 

If Las Vegas has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t open a new casino without some kind of gimmick. Be it a fancy exclusive restaurant, an amazing waterworks show, or the world’s first ferris wheel shaped like a figure-8 that also happens to be perched 430 feet above the city of Cotai in Macau.…

There’s a new version of Adobe Flash that Mozilla’s Firefox web browser isn’t blocking by default. It’s version 18.0.0.209, and you can get it right here. [Adobe]

How Much Rain Would End the Drought?

What’s the best way to get people to stop watering their lawns? Why aren’t we investing in desalination? Will we ever get used to the idea of drinking our own (recycled) pee? And most importantly, when will this drought be over? You had a lot of questions about water, so we turned to two experts…

6 Hyperactive Hyperlapses

Hyperlapse is the best invention in photography since the Walden filter. And here are 6 videos, filmed by you, that prove it. Winner: Fast Fireworks I actually use Hyperlapse for timelapses quite a bit. I have an old iPhone 5 in a Lifeproof that’s basically made it an extra GoPro, sans fish eye. On Friday…

What It’s Like To Be Attacked By An Attack Dog

Meet Fritz. He’s a 125lbs Belgian Malinois employed as a Military Working Dog by the Air Force. They figured it’d be a good idea to get him to attack me so I could write you an article about it. Let’s see how that goes. My girlfriend and I have been living on a United States…

This Transforming Lego Optimus Prime Must Be Bending the Laws of Physics

Half of me wants to believe that this amazing Lego version of Optimus Prime (the Michael Bay movie version) that can actually transform into a robot is legit. But the other half of me is having a hard time believing that Ralph Savelsberg didn’t just hire Industrial Light & Magic to help fake these photos…

We Cannot Allow This Awful Idea for Airport Design to Become Real

Airports and cities don’t get along for a few specific reasons—namely, air pollution, noise pollution, and plain old risk. As such, some designers think that a future of increased urban density could be an opportunity to mix things up. This concept for a new airport in downtown Stockholm is simply mixed up. An architecture graduate…

Comcast’s Fancy Cable Box Now Doubles As a Streaming Game Console

The rumors were true: Two of the most hated companies in America have teamed up to stream games to your cable box. If you pay for Comcast’s fancy X1 service, you could soon be playing titles like Plants vs. Zombies, Real Racing 2 and NBA Jam on your TV without so much as a disc…

Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Talk About The Importance of Reaching Pluto

Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t classify Pluto as a planet. But he thinks it’s pretty damn important that we got there. We were at a special “Breakfast at Pluto” event bright and early this morning at the American Museum of Natural History. Co-hosted by Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson (known for the new Cosmos series…

America Used to Give Out Weird Participation Awards for Nuclear Tests

Remember when you were a kid and you got a “participation award” for just showing up to your soccer games? Well, the US government had a similar certificate that it’d hand out. As you can imagine, it was for something a bit more serious: Nuclear tests during the Cold War. That’s right, if you were…

Watch Tom Cruise actually hang off a side of a plane in wild movie stunt

Tom Cruise is a certified crazy person but his movies are almost always enjoyable probably because of said craziness. He obsesses over doing his own stunts and this hanging off a flying plane in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation might be one of his most impressive feats yet. I mean, dude is really outside the damn…

Google Is Reopening Map Maker and Wants You to Police It for Pranks

Google’s Map Maker feature is coming back after getting shut down for too many prank entries. But now, Google will no longer deal with joke edits to Maps—the company is washing its pee-stained hands of moderation, shifting most of that responsibility to the Map Maker community. Google temporarily kiboshed Map Maker, which lets people add…

A New 3D Printing Support Filament Easily Dissolves Away in Water

When 3D printing a particularly complex object, you often need to incorporate additional support structures into its design, given how the layer by layer additive process works. And with 3D systems new water soluble filament, those unwanted support structures can easily be dissolved away with a little H2O. Removing support structures usually involves some very…

Venereal Disease and Self-Experimentation Should Not Go Together

Early scientists were not at all shy about experimenting on themselves. Isaac Newton stuck a needle into his own eye socket. Robert Hooke shoved his arm into a vacuum chamber. And in the first episode of Sacrificed from Fusion, we learn what 18th century physician John Hunter thought was an effective way to investigate gonorrhea…