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North Korea has long been known to plunge into darkness overnight, choosing not to light even its city streets. Now it’s justified its love of the deep, black night. In an editorial in North Korea’s main (state-run) newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, the darkness—seen in contrast to South Korea in the image above—is explained with reference…
It’s the classic fan question: Who would win in a fight? Whether Batman versus Superman (Batman only if he had kryptonite gauntlets) or The Hulk versus Hulk Hogan (Gamma rays trumps a horseshoe mustache), fictional fights are favorite pastime of mine. Hopefully, you’ve already heard the amazingly excellent news that BattleBots will be returning to…
The biggest news on the internet last week was about the internet itself, specifically FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s announcement that he will be proposing that broadband be reclassified under Title II, allowing everyone equal, unbiased access to the internet. In November, President Obama called on the FCC to support net neutrality by exercising the Title…
It all started with a small, tucked away sentence in Samsung’s SmartTV security policy. The head-scratching string of words was pointed out by a Redditor on Thursday and has since sent websites and experts in debate over smart TV privacy, with opinions ranging from “so what” to quoted text from 1984. Before we get too…
Welcome to Reading List, your one-stop shop for the great tech reads around the web. All these well-crafted long reads touch on password security, the dark web, internet television, NASA experiments, and humanity’s continued (and fruitful) research with psychedelics. Need I say more? Just in case I do need to say more, here’s a brief…
After hanging out in storage for over a decade, the Deep Space Climate Observatory is finally being launched to monitor solar storms. The satellite is getting into space on the back of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which means we’re also counting down to another historic barge landing attempt! Updates: Sunday scrubbed by radar tracking…
I shouldn’t have to say it, but I’m going to anyways — do not try to jump off a building while on fire. Now that the customary “don’t be an idiot” PSA is out of the way, this video is insane. A Russian stuntman jumped 30 meters (about 100 feet) off a building while on…
Clippy was an idea ahead of its time—just horribly executed. The overly friendly paper clip has since become an endless joke that even Microsoft rips on every once in awhile. But as Cortana’s conquest across Windows 10 and the new Spartan browser continues, it seems the popular voice assistant will also be coming to Office.…
Arguably the best thing about the original Star Wars trilogy are the puppets. As George Lucas was not yet visually unleashed by CGI, these films had to work within technical limitations to create the bold and ambitious scenes that the scrips demanded. And no puppet (except, maybe Yoda) was as memorable or complex as Jabba…
The way we consume television changed with the introduction of online streaming. Before, maybe a favorite show would run a marathon now and then, and there was always a chance you’d turn off the TV because”nothing good was on.” Now, with almost any series on demand whenever you want, psychologists are becoming increasingly concerned. The…
‘Where’s Waldo’ used to be a simple pasttime for toddlers, a beacon of innocence and simplicity in a sea of iPads. But no more. Now it is just another problem to be disrupted along the path to endless efficiency. Allegedly snowed in last weekend (a likely story), computer science researcher Randal S. Olson decided to…
Photographing backcountry skiing isn’t the easiest of jobs — mess up the shot, and you’ve got a lot of hiking to do again (not to mention the wasted powder). But it also has its benefits, like skiing endless laps of perfect snow. This GoPro video details a day in the life of Christoph Oberschneider, a…
These are the contents of a mysterious white bag found hidden in Neil Armstrong’s closet: Weird looking lamps, wrenches, utility brackets, sights, and a film camera that later was identified as the one that captured the famous Apollo 11’s descent on the Moon’s surface. Nobody knew about it, including his widow. According to NASA, Carol…
Yes, it’s true: after somehow clinging on for the last few years, RadioShack is finally, officially bankrupt. But that doesn’t mean that every single store will be vanishing — far from it, in fact. There’s now a list of all the stores that will be going in the next few months. RadioShack has around 5,000…
That the NYPD has a crack Social Media Squad stalking your every move is old news, but a recent Freedom of Information request sheds new light on exactly how the cops use their Facebooking powers. The answer? They’re on the lookout for terrorists, cop killers, and um, loud parties. Back in December, MuckRock requested the…
The northern reaches of Ontario are home to stark, beautiful landscapes. Snow, ice, water, and rock create a dynamic and mesmerizing texture. The confluence of the Mattagami River (top right) and Missinaibi River (bottom right) flow into the Moose River (left) in northern Ontario, captured by European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespol on January 11,…
Up until today, my plan for the robot takeover had been to flee to northern Canada, where deep snow and grizzly bears would keep me safe from Skynet. But not any more, because some smartass decided to teach the droids to ski. Great work, guys. This stellar piece of robotics hails from the University of…
‘Rational expectations‘ is a term commonly thrown around by economists trying to work out why people do stuff. It’s based on the idea that individuals weigh up the pros and cons of a certain action, and use that to make a decision. It’s one of the fundamental underpinnings of a free market economic model, but…
The fight for emoji diversity is one with a long and storied history, but it looks like victory might be on the horizon: in the latest version of OS X, Apple is giving you more choice than just white emoji or racist emoji. In case you’re not up to speed on the battle for #emojidiversity,…
The internet has obviously changed our virtual lives beyond recognition — heck, no-one had ‘virtual lives’ before the internet — but it’s also had a marked, if more subtle impact on our physical surroundings. Ingrid Burrington’s project ‘Networks of New York’ is an attempt to decode some of the internet infrastructure hiding in plain sight…
