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Human wetware is astonishingly good at pattern recognition and interpreting complex, noisy data, but it’s also painfully buggy. Today, the internet came to a screeching halt debating a dress’s colour, but the same optical illusion is responsible for how uncertain we are about interpreting colours on Mars. When we send robotic explorers to Mars, we…
In what may be the biggest case of mass hysteria ever experienced in the history of the internet, everyone in the planet speculated tonight about what’s the color of a stupid dress. Some people even claimed it changed color.* Others looked for Photoshop analysis or scientific explanations. Here is the true color. The dress is…
Update: This was all a hoax. David O’Reilly and Kim Laughton curate a wonderful head innards shaking website, Hyper Real CG, that shows a collection of pictures that look completely real but are actually just hyper real 3D art made from CG. It’s really crazy how close to real life we can get with art.…
The crew over at Vsauce has set out to answer a very important and critical question: would car headlights work at the speed of light? Unsurprisingly, the answer is not simple, but in the process, you do learn a lot about general relativity and photons and other sciencey stuff. As Vsauce explains, you could never…
At some point this evening your flatmate or loved one probably ran headfirst into the room, iPad in tow, screaming about how YOU HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT COLOR THIS DRESS IS, and then subsequently disowning you when you said blue/black. What the fuck is going on? Here’s an educated guess. According to a few…
I don’t especially love pistachio. I don’t go crazy over tiramisu. Heck, I don’t always have the sweet tooth hankering normal humans have for dessert and yet after watching this pistachio tiramisu get made, I can’t help but feel as if my taste buds have all banded together demanding that I eat this right now.…
Doxxing, and the death threats and swatting that almost invariably follow, is one of the nastiest tools of internet trolls worldwide. Twitter is on the front lines of the online abuse problem, but thus far they’ve been fighting a fairly pathetic losing battle. The company’s latest update hopes to turn that around. Earlier today, Twitter…
I don’t know where this image originates from but it’s around the Internet right now and it shows a picture of a dress that is so very clearly white and gold to me but is black and blue to so many other people. It’s black and blue to Google Image Search. Photoshop’s eyedropper tool says…
Today the entire internet was riveted by a live llama chase in Arizona. All work ground to a halt while the world watched the furry creatures’ daring escape. This is hardly the first time the internet has had a collective breakdown. What’s the weirdest clusterfuck that got everyone talking? We need your help to remember.…
Your smartphone may be as powerful as a computer, but it’s also hobbled. You can only install apps on it from the walled garden of the official app store. Your options are limited to the small, vetted collection of “approved” apps as opposed to the unlimited options available for PCs. That’s where jailbreaking comes in.…
You probably haven’t heard of “cyclic volatile methylsiloxanes,” but you’ve almost certainly rubbed them into your skin. They’re widely used in lotions and cosmetics to create that smooth, satisfying feel. And now scientists are finding—to their surprise—these chemicals in remote parts of Antarctica. In 2009, a group of scientists took soil, plant, phytoplankton, and krill…
“He was wearing all cotton, which is the worst fabric for cold, wet weather. The weather just got the best of him,” reads an official statement by Alaska State Troopers about the death of a hiker there in 2005. This is how and why cotton can kill you. Hypothermia The Mayo Clinic definition reads: “Hypothermia…
You would need a microscope to be able to see all of the miniature components etched onto the single tiny microchip powering the clock in a digital watch. But you can see them all with the naked eye on artist Gislain Benoit’s The Clock, which is made from 1,916 hand-soldered components that end up weighing…
Last week, we put out a call for the best games for killing time with your little pocket computer, and you, the time-wasters of Kinja, delivered. Here are some of your favorites—plenty of fodder for anyone who wants to up their subway commute game beyond Threes (which, yes, is still extremely popular). This is by…
Think people going bald here in the 21st century have it tough? Just imagine what the folks of 100 years ago went through. Balding men were apparently so desperate for hair that they’d let a doctor near them with this terrifying machine. I was flipping through my collection of 1920s magazines when I came across…
There’s a never-ending debate when it comes to buying umbrellas: Do you spend a lot of money on an expensive one you’ll probably end up losing, or do you buy a cheap model that will most certainly break in a light breeze? Davek wants you to go the former route, and is now upgrading its…
I have a hard time caring about smartwatches. They sound neat, but most of them have tiny batteries that can barely last a couple days. Why can’t someone make a watch that both looks swanky and has a decent sized battery? Well, LG just did: it’s called the Watch Urbane LTE. https://gizmodo.com/the-best-smartwatch-for-every-wrist-1671271995 Yes, I know…
Hello fellow app enthusiasts. This week was a good one for smartphone app stores across the board. An automation juggernaut makes putting your digital life on autopilot even easier. Sending short video messages is now as easy as texting. Sending email is as easy as texting. Sending texts is as easy as texting! Just kidding…
When JJ Abrams re-envisioned Star Trek for the big screen, the classic sci-fi look of the show got a big revamp – including the U.S.S. Enterprise. But what would the first Enterprise seen in the Original Series look like in the shiny world of the JJverse? Nick Acosta whipped up some pictures to find out.…
Today, New York Councilman Daniel Dromm will reportedly introduce legislation that will force the NYPD to stop using typewriters. That’s right, the NYPD still has typewriters in all 77 precincts. It seems absurd that the New York Police Department still uses typewriters, despite, you know, computers. The New York Post reports that certain forms still…
