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Pele, the volcano goddess of Hawaii, has very definite ideas on traffic patterns. When she says a road is closed, nothing we puny humans do or say is going to change her mind. During our discussion on the gently impending doom in Hawaii, landscape anthropologist Elizabeth Angell wrote in with photographs of last time the…
Snapchat recently announced that it was getting ads, and it’s followed through on that promise, with the first paid-for ephemeral advertisements landing this weekend. However, I’m not so sure that Snapchat’s made good on its promise for its ads to be ‘non-creepy’, since horror film Ouija was the first subject. The ads slotted in among…
Brad Pitt’s new WWII tank thriller Fury seems to be taking cinemas by storm this week. But before chisel-jawed tank commanders with unfeasibly good hair did the Second World War, there was A Bridge Too Far, an unsurpassed epic that represents the absolute best of the foolish-British-people-getting-slaughtered war-film genre. https://gizmodo.com/how-the-cast-of-fury-trained-for-the-most-realistic-wwi-1647708935 Deciding on the best World…
Since discovering yesterday that there’s a homeopathic vaccine for Ebola that involves using an actual sample of the virus, I’ve been re-listening to Tim Minchin’s incredible nine-minute song/beat poem Storm, one of the best and most concise refutations of bad hippie science that you’re ever likely to witness. Storm is nominally the tale of a…
We’re all used to hearing about women, or rather, the lack of, in the technology industry. But as NPR’s Planet Money, points out, things weren’t always that way: back at the dawn of the IT age, women were a major player in the computer science field. The question is: what happened in 1984? According to…
If, like me, you’re a little OCD, the thought of a carpet with a giant kink in it is the kind of thing that keeps you awake late at night, sweaty-palmed and slightly nervous. That’s why I’m not entirely sure if I could live with this carpet-kink sofa, even if it is a clever piece…
After a very brief stint at number one in the app store, Blackberry’s much-vaunted BBM messaging service — previously hailed as the saviour of the entire company — is now languishing in 462nd place on the App Store. But never fear! Because Blackberry is going to turn its fortunes around, by Snapchattifying its messaging service.…
TeeFury has a Lego and Science themed T-Shirt available for purchase on their site until the end of day for just $11. Featuring the greats, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Sagan and Tyson with the classic space logo in the back, this tee is just cute.
Hot Toys have done a lot of Wolverine figures in the past – but none have come so close to capturing the perpetual scowl of Hugh Jackman’s take on Alberta’s finest like this new one has. The figure, based on Wolverine’s ‘future’ mutant uniform from X-Men: Days of Future Past was revealed yesterday, and ever,…
For most of us, Siri or Google Now (or Cortana, if you swing that way) is a minor help at best, a first-world solution to the first-world problem of not being able to text and drive. But as Judith Newman illustrates today in a heartfelt and heartwarming piece in the New York Times, Apple’s digital…
Some folks would have you believe that, without an Internet connection, your spiffy new Chromebook only slightly less useful than the box it came in, but that’s simply not true. They may not be able to match a MacBook’s performance, but these lightweight laptops are far from helpless when the connectivity runs dry. Here’s most…
A reminder: this weekend, Steam is making ten games free-to-play, including big-name titles like XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Grid 2. The cutoff is 4PM Eastern tomorrow — but if you get your teeth stuck into something and need to finish it off, pretty much all the titles are also on 75 percent off. [Steamvia The…
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones or quadcopters as you’d prefer to call them, have certainly taken off in the last few years, which is great, if you love taking cool movies (or terrorizing your neighbour’s dog). But it’s created a headache for the FAA, who have moved to regulate the infant industry, and make low-flying…
It’s taken a few years, but Flickr has finally got its act together and launched an official iPad app, only four years after Apple unleashed its first tablet on the world. The app does more or less what you’d expect a Flickr app to do — show you photos of stuff! — but it does…
Sailor Venus makes her grand début on Sailor Moon Crystal! Unfortunately, everyone is so amazed by Minako’s amazing amazingness that they kinda forgot to bring a plot with them this week. But at least we have all of the Sailor Senshi together, at last. Seriously, I’m pretty sure this entire episode could be recapped by…
This is the Pieter Schelte, which is now the largest ship sailing the seas, surpassing even the Maersk Triple-E*. Built by Daewoo in Korea, this catamaran is so huge that it can lift entire oil platforms off their base, pick up the base itself, and then transport it all to port—which is exactly what it’s…
It’s been a rollercoaster day for Google fans: first, the new Nexus Player and Nexus 9 pre-orders went live on the Play Store; but just a couple of hours later, Google’s set-top box was pulled, apparently because of its lack of FCC certification. As Android Police points out, the Nexus Player’s page on the Play…
It’s not Interstellar but now I want to see it just the same: Ambition is the sci-fi film that nobody seems to be reporting about even while its main actor is arguably the best character in Game of Thrones—Littlefinger himself—and its director was already nominated for an Academy Award in 2002. [Updated] It looks good—and…
Having recalled its Force fitness tracker earlier this year, Fitbit has said that it’s not going to do the same for the Flex — despite some user reports of the same skin rash problems as dogged the Force. Rather, future Flex units will ship with a warning that the product contains nickel, a common allergen.…
Those awesome madmen at Photonicinduction got a regular toaster and plugged it into one of their giant power supplies to drastically push the voltage and watts up and see if they could make a toast in just 10 seconds. Mission accomplished. I wish I had this at breakfast time every morning. SPLOID is a new…
