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You know what’s weird? Typing on your phone. We use two thumbs to peck out words on a keyboard designed for ten fingers—a keyboard designed to be slow. You know what’s weirder? Smartphone keyboards designed to trump our flawed typing standard. Here are 12 of them. You probably don’t know it, but there are loads…
A new brain implant doesn’t restore sight in blind rats, but it does something a whole lot weirder: give the rat the extra sense of geomagnetism. It could one day be a new way to navigate for blind people–or heck, even healthy people hankering for a sixth sense. In the study published in Current Biology,…
These wildly inventive dishes from clever Instagram user Chef Jacques La Merde (translation: Jack Shit) repurpose junk food you’d find in the cupboard of college kids feeding themselves for the first time into perfectly plated, “tweezered everything” dishes that wouldn’t look out of place at three Michelin star restaurants. So instead of purees and molecular…
The most complex and important parts of our city are below our feet. If things go right, we never even notice the thick layer cake of cables, pipes, insulation, and refuse that are packed right under the pavement. But in London yesterday and today, the city got a smokey reminder. Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images As…
When I called up the Columbia scientist whose mouse experiments inspired two biohackers to squirt chemicals in their eyesto induce “night vision,” I expected, at best, cautious optimism. I did not expect him to tell me that, oh yeah, once, in his younger days, he hooked himself up to an IV and tried it, too.…
This week had no dearth of great apps to download, which are the best kind of weeks. We got a new one from Facebook of arguable usefulness (as is tradition), job hunting gets app-ified, and the live streaming craze comes to Windows Phone. There’s lots to get through. Let’s get to it. Multiplatform Infinit Need…
I love the mystery of Robert Burn’s underground tunnel photography. They look like portals into another world, entrances to alien homes and haunting, unused gateways leftover from a different time. But they’re just photographs of tunnels in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that have been perfectly lit and captured to heighten the supernatural aspect. Here is a collection…
Plush toys are usually meant to offer a cute-ish interpretation of character, but these Age of Ultron plushies end up looking really strange — all thanks to the addition of a nose to (most of) their faces. Gaze into the cold, nosed faces of the Avengers! These “Bleacher Creatures” versions of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are…
Maybe you’re not the religious type. Maybe you hate hard boiled eggs. Even still, for this week’s Shooting Challenge, I think we can all agree that Easter eggs are a very important message to nature that it got things wrong, and eggs really should come in fuchsia and teal. The Challenge Take a photograph of…
According to futurists of the 20th century, food of the future was supposed to be calorie-dense, inexpensive, and ready in a flash. And in many ways that future has arrived. But we’re still waiting on one high-tech food prediction from the 1980s: The rehydrated pizza of the film Back to the Future: Part II. The…
Do you see Albert Einstein or Marilyn Monroe? If you see Einstein, that means your vision is good! If you see Marilyn Monroe, your eyes need some help. In the GIF above, you should see both as it zooms in. When the image is further away and smaller, you’ll see Marilyn. As it comes closer,…
It’s not only digital criminals who like to secretly infect people’s computers with invasive malware. In fact, the FBI likes malware so much, it created its own special brand. We don’t know much about it, but now that the US Department of Justice is pushing for policy changes that’llallow the FBI to install spyware on…
What a fascinating view. I don’t pretend to know what triggers a bird’s decision to take flight or what makes an entire flock want to take off all at once but man, is it cool to see. This video shows three recordings of starlings taking off from a power line: in real time, at half…
Any news of improvements to America’s creaky internet infrastructure is usually good news, but don’t get too excited about Comcast’s new 2 Gigabit-per-second internet service. For the time being, not many people are actually going to be able to access the fiber network. Comcast’s so-called “Gigabit Pro” is exactly what it sounds like: gigabit speed…
There are lots of easy-to-use apps that allow you to generate 3D models of physical objects using just your smartphone’s camera. But when it comes to calculating the exact size of an object, those same apps are actually pretty inaccurate. They don’t have to be, though, because researchers at Carnegie Mellon have found a way…
Hyperlapses aren’t anything new these days, even your phone can do them. But back in 1995, no one knew what the hell a hyperlapse was (the term was coined in 2012) so imagine the collective mind melting and freakout that happened when this video was shown off in 1995. It was shot on a 16mm…
Another day, another tidbit about the secretive design process that led to the creation of Apple Watch: This morning, Wired’s David Pierce describes the inner workings of the product teams that designed it. The story is full of anecdotes. For example, Apple’s design team says the Watch was an attempt to “fix a problem it…
The alien from, well, Alien is an iconic sci-fi horror monster, a wonderfully scary creation. But when you chibi-fi it, some of that creepiness is replaced by gosh-darned cuteness — which in turn adds a whole other layer of weirdness. How can something be so cute and so creepy? The latest in Herocross’s “Hybrid Metal…
You may have heard of CyanogenMod and admired it from afar, but now’s the time to seize the day and get it installed on your Android phone. For those new to flashing phones, there are official apps for your mobile and for Windows to help you along, and we’ve explained everything you need to know…
Google braces for trouble in Europe, HTC launches a cheaper version of last year’s M8, and an internet icon returns to answer some email. This is all the news and rumors you missed yesterday, and it’s all on BitStream. Strong Bad is an internet icon, and I will fight anyone who says different. Arguably one…
