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Just one short month ago, it looks like Amazon’s drone delivery dreams were dashed. But today, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted the company an “experimental airworthiness certificate.” Does this mean your Amazon Prime will come from the sky now? Not even close. https://gizmodo.com/all-the-dreamy-drone-businesses-the-faas-proposed-rules-1686127921 Basically, all the FAA is letting Amazon do is research and…
Just when you thought the net neutrality debate had died down, a band of content providers now want special treatment. The Wall Street Journal reports that HBO, Sony, and Showtime are asking internet service providers to be treated as “managed” services. In other words, they want dedicated bandwidth for their video content. Now’s a good…
So far as awful ways to die go, being attacked by a rabid animal then dying a slow, painful death must rank near the top. And exactly that happens to 55,000 people every year. Here’s how you (or your dog) can get rabies, what it does to your body as it kills you and what…
It only took three episodes for CSI:Cyber to tackle The Way We Ride-Share Now and it does NOT disappoint. The basic plot of “Killer En Route” is actually well within the realm of possibility, considering that Uber rapists and Uber kidnappers are objectively real things. I haven’t seen a headline rip this ***fresh*** since I…
Sometimes it feels like the internet is 90 percent inspirational quotes. Albert Einstein, Gandhi, and Walt Disney are all popular sources for bite-sized nuggets of inspiration. But sometimes the quotes attributed to these people are just wrong. Like these quotes from Disney — a man who didn’t actually say, “If you can dream it, you…
Remember Magic Leap, the elusive Google-funded company promising to make virtual objects look like they exist in the real world? The one whose technology we’ve never actually seen? The secretive startup just released this incredible video filled with robots, retro rayguns, and a holodeck-like user interface. Oh, and the company claims this is a real…
Encryption is the process of encoding a message, and today we have incredibly sophisticated software and algorithms that make our encrypted messages almost impossible to decode. But how does it work? These art projects answer that question by exploring how encryption has become part of daily lives. Once the domain of spies and engineers, encryption…
I’ve never really enjoyed seltzer but that’s probably because I’ve never had good seltzer, only the barely fizzy water they sell in plastic bottles at the market. This short about Gomberg Seltzer Works shows how real seltzer is made with siphon machines and how the glass bottle is crucial to maintaining the carbonated deliciousness. There…
If you need more than ten fingers to count the number of times you’ve burned yourself while trying to light a candle at the bottom of a tall glass container, the Illume ArcLighter will probably seem like the greatest invention since the wheel. Instead of a flame, it produces a glowing electric arc that can…
You see them everywhere: On highway signs, plane tickets, and even humblebraggy Twitter updates. Some are obvious and some make no sense. But what do these three-letter airport codes really mean? The sleek new site Airport Codes lets you bounce from airport to airport exploring the codes and their origins. Here are some of the…
Biodegradeable plastic, now often found in plastic bags and bottles, contains additives that are supposed to get microbes to break down tough plastic faster. But a new study from Michigan State University finds that some of these additives may actually doing, well, jackshit. Aside from generally sounding virtuous (thanks, greenwashing!), “biodegradeable plastic” is a bit…
Selling a big urban idea isn’t easy. More than ever, architects rely on jaw-dropping images to convince their clients to spend millions on their projects. And to do it, they fill their fantastical renderings with people—people who have a story all their own. These denizens of the designed future are the subject of Designing People,…
Spring is in the air, and you’re possibly feeling joyously spontaneous, looking over at your winter cuddle buddy that things got unexpectedly heavy with. Maybe it’s time to spend the rest of my life with this person! If you’re going to get down on one knee and propose marriage to the love of your life,…
Some people claim it’s impossible to define what art is, but those people clearly haven’t seen Flickr user Legohaulic’s elaborate Lego cube that contains a twisting, turning ball maze on the inside. It’s almost like a real-life version of an Escher sketch, and it equally deserves time in an art gallery. Inside the CUB3, as…
It’s been a big week for apps, as is usually the case during SXSW—though arguably the biggest news came from Nintendo announcing its long-awaited entry into smartphone gaming. But there were lots of new great apps there worth talking about it. Here are some of our favorites. Multiplatform Fradio If Meerkat is live streaming for…
Sure, it’s not as ginormous as Hot Toys’ Quarter-scale efforts, and he might be more expensive than the similarly-sized Black Series version — but Kaiyodo’s newest Star Wars toy is maybe the most poseable toy of everyone’s favourite Bounty Hunter we’ve ever had. The 5th entry in their Star Wars Revoltech range depicts Boba as…
Lucky Peach shows us a behind the counter look at what is probably the best pizza place in Rome (and maybe Italy? the world?): Pizzarium. Consistently placed on top ten lists, it’s famous for its pizza al taglio, which is pizza by the slice. Chef Gabriele Bonci gives us a rundown on how he makes…
The NSA is willing to go frighteningly far for your secrets, but at least one hardware manufacturer is willing to go further. A Cisco executive just said his company will ship its networking equipment to vacant addresses to avoid NSA interception. Clever idea. The NSA was caught putting backdoors in Cisco electronics last year, and…
Ever wonder how many people are browsing government websites right this second? Me neither. But once you see the data, it’s kind of fascinating. The live information on analytics.usa.gov comes from a Google Analytics account for a whole bunch of different federal agencies (over 1,300 domains), though not all of them. The IP addresses are…
It’s completely unnecessary and like two steps away from being a joke but making a book by hand is a pretty impressive feat. There’s so many unseen things you have to do! Like cutting the pages right, sewing them together, silkscreening for color, glueing everything perfectly and so on. I’m not sure the end product…
