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Always-eager astronauts Alexander Gerst and Reid Wiseman completed their first-ever spacewalks today, scrambling around the outside of the International Space Station. They completed their official objectives, but the beautiful part of today was their unadulterated happiness in their work. Top image: Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst check out their spacesuits in the Quest airlock in…
Calvin and Hobbes made a lot of mischief during their decade-long run—but just how much damage did they actually do? One intrepid superfan went through every single panel and tallied the total cost of their mayhem, from $2 cracked glass jars to $4,798.83 to fix a flooded home. Even though the Proceedings of the Natural…
The biggest sign that humanity has no chance of survival? That we’re all sheep with baa-d taste? That we should blast ourselves out of this planet and let dolphins take over as the dominant species? Transformers: Age of Extinction and how it made $245,430,526 at the box office. Honest Trailers shows how horrible the movie…
Right around this time every year, the world starts to make sense. It gets darker earlier and I get tired earlier, which means I get a better night of sleep. It turns out that I’m not just imagining things. When we go to bed is still determined by that impending darkness, even if our time…
This morning, I pulled up Spotify and searched TV on the Radio, and surprise! A new song from TV on the Radio. Nice little gift for us to receive this Tuesday. “Careful You” follows “Happy Idiot” as the second track off the band’s upcoming album, Seeds, its first since 2011. Both tracks are excellent. Seeds…
If you don’t count Pixar movies (and I don’t), the best Disney movie as far as I’m concerned is The Lion King. It’s not even close. But even though I’ve seen it so many times, there are many more fun facts that I had no idea about: like how Mufasa’s roar was made from a…
We’ve kept a close eye on the 27th ACM Symposium on INTER Software and Technology in Honolulu this week, given that it’s already produced dozens of fascinating prototypes. But this award-winning paper is perhaps the coolest we’ve seen: It lays out a new technique for printing cheap, simple touchscreen displays with conventional printers. It’s called…
Who doesn’t like a math pop quiz when driving down to the Mexican border? If you turn onto Interstate 19, which runs 63 miles (101 kilometers) from Tucson, Arizona, down to Mexico, the road signs suddenly change to metric units. Interstate 19 is a relic from a more optimistic era, when we believed all of…
Seamless is at once one of the greatest and most ruinous gifts ever bestowed upon man. Still, while the service has vastly simplified the process of acquiring both lunch and heart disease, there are still just a few too many options. Fortunately (?), Seamless Roulette has taken care of that. Probably best avoided by anyone…
Okay, fan made Groot paraphernalia – you are awesome, and we love you. But I think I might just love Griffon Ramsey’s Groot craft the most, because holy crap she took a hunk of wood and gracefully hacked at it with a chainsaw until it became Groot. Ramsey, an artist who primarily works through wood…
It only makes sense that a barbecue that looks like a jet engine fallen off a plane is called the Jet Grill, but—and some of you might be disappointed in this—it doesn’t cook your meats via some high-powered afterburner. The design and functionality is still clever, though, as it harnesses rising heat to keep your…
There can be many reasons why you’re not getting a good night’s sleep, and a sleep tracker can help ensure it’s not your bedroom to blame. But who wants to head to bed with a device strapped to your wrist, or hiding under your pillow? ResMed’s new S+ sits out of the way on your…
Google News & Weather, a new iOS app that provides (you guessed it) updates on news and weather, is now available. The app pulls stories from 65,000 publications, and has a dashboard-style layout. You can get local weather and news based on your phone’s location, and there are 60 different country settings. Only want tech…
Here’s some not-so-surprising news for you: federal prosecutors apparently think it’s perfectly fine to hack into American citizens’ computerswithout first obtaining a warrant. After all, that’s how they caught Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht’s trial is only a month away, and the nitty-gritty of exactly how he got brought down are emerging. Both sides…
Apple TV has long seemed like a natural fit as a hub for Apple’s smart home ambitions, even before those ambitions were codified in HomeKit. Today, we finally have a good look at exactly how that’s going to work in practice. AppleInsider details how the latest Apple TV Software beta, released earlier today, officially includes…
Meet One-Handed Keyboard, the first (obviously) one-handed keyboard for the iPhone 6 Plus. It will help you type a little bit easier, but the only thing is, it won’t make your big-ass phone any easier to balance in just one smallish hand. The concept is simple: The One-Handed Keyboard is a replacement keyboard that’s smaller…
I’m constantly shocked by how many people don’t know the basics of dressing for warmth in the outdoors. Even more people aren’t equipped with the basics for sleeping warmly on a cold night. It’s all simple and cheap, read this and make no more excuses. The need for this article is highlighted by most of…
In the past, companies like Facebook and Microsoft have released so-called transparency reports about the government surveillance requests they’ve received—but per government restrictions, the numbers have been relatively vague. Today, Twitter just filed a lawsuitto lift the restrictions on what they’re allowed to disclose. In other words, actual transparency. Twitter announced the decision in a…
My nostalgia for the Pirate theme is pretty strong. It was one of the first themes where I managed to collect the majority of all the first run items. I’m super glad to see its return, though it is going to make for an expensive year for me. Here are some great images of the…
You’d be forgiven for thinking that The Innovators, Walter Isaacson’s new book, is about innovators and the things they built, given that it’s right there in the title. But in truth, the book is an examination of who gets the credit for building our modern high-tech society. And for this, it’s one of the most…
