Tech News

Can Cities Save Insect Life?

Flitting from plant to plant, from flower to flower, bees and other insect pollinators play an essential role in crop pollination and the human food supply. But they’re struggling: intensive agriculture and climate change have taken a heavy toll on their populations. Might our cities be the perfect haven for these pollinators? Amid the brick…

Why Does Cell Signal Always Suck When You Need It Most?

Whether you’re stranded up a mountain, running late for a meeting or trying to get your broken landline fixed, it’s virtually always the same: whenever you need cell signal, you have none. Whereas when you’re getting spam calls, being alerted to chores by your partner or simply being chased by your mother for not calling…

Google has added some extra sites to the News section of its search listings, including—brace yourself—Reddit! We though we’d seen more kittens in the news recently.

Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida install one of the most important assemblies into its new Orion spacecraft: the launch abort system. Orion will carry astronauts to parts of the Solar System not yet explored by humans—like Mars. [NASA]

DOJ: It Was OK For a DEA Agent to Impersonate This Woman on Facebook

An overlooked Justice Department court filing explains that a federal agent had the right to commandeer a woman’s identity, set up a fake Facebook account using her details and even post provocative photographs of her found on a seized phone. Buzzfeed reports that a Drug Enforcement Administration agent stole the identity of Sondra Arquiett, who…

These Robots Are Fighting Ebola in Texas

As the more paranoid among us freak out and reach for the hazmat suits, America is fighting the Ebola threat the only way it knows how: hundreds of thousands of dollars of robots, natch. A ‘germ-zapping’ robot developed in San Antonio is reportedly deployed in Dallas, where doctors are treating the first Ebola patient in…

Post-apocalyptical space shuttle and other great art by Yuri Shwedoff

I love the perfect surfaces and old school style of Russian artist Yuri Shwedoff’s illustrations. I wish I could buy the original of the one above, titled White Castle. Or any of the images below. His alternate fan movie posters for Rambo (yes, Rambo), Guardians of the Galaxy or Fight Club are so good. Yuri…

These Clever Mud Hut Designs Rethink Cheap Rural Living

Mud huts are normally associated with the most basic level of just-scraping-by living: utilitarian, cheap, but hardly the height of design (or even comfort). The Nka Foundation wondered what would happen if the mud hut was modernised: same basic materials, same low cost, but 21st century techniques. The result was a competition for young grads…

The history of all religions explained in one fascinating graphic

I spent some of my college years studying with the Jesuits, which inevitably led to theology classes and the fascinating history of religion. That class is summarized in this new version of a great graphic by Simon E. Davies,a complex tree of myths and traditions continuously evolving into remakes. Even while the dates are approximate—many…

Nexus X ‘Shamu’ Reportedly Benchmarked Being Quite Fast

By this stage, we’ve got a pretty good ideaof what Google’s Nexus 6 will look like, and what fancy silicon innards it’ll be packing. And, according to the latest round of supposed leaked benchmarks, those innards can walk the walk. The folks at PhoneArena noticed that a certain ‘motorola shamu’ has shown up in the…

Chainsaw artist transforms a log into Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy

This is fun. Griffon Ramsey, an artist who works with wood and uses a chainsaw, carved and sculpted a real life Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy from an Eastern Red Cedar tree log. She creates a pretty lifelike version of everyone’s favorite tree person but I kind of wish she made a 20-feet tall…

So Far iOS 8 Is Apple’s Least Successful Update in Years

One of Apple’s favorite sticks to poke Android with has always been the sluggish upgrade rate of new versions of Google’s OS. While Apple’s still got the ‘droid handily beat in that respect, it looks like Apple might have a growing problem on its hands with iOS 8 adoption. As measured by Apple’s own metrics,…

How the addictive magic material known as bubble wrap is made

You can have your graphene or your insane non-flammable fabricor some NASA space material, magic material to me will always be bubble wrap. It’s catnip for humans with souls and the process to make it is pretty fascinating. It starts with resin that is vacuumed out and heated to create a film and used to…

Insane car crash somehow barely avoids hitting a group of bystanders

The first time I saw this video of a car crash during the Jolly Rally Valle d’Aosta 2014, I thought it was a scene from Final Destination. The second time I saw it, I thought it was some amateur fake. I’ve watched it multiple times now and I’m still not sure how the out of…

The Eiffel Tower Is The Latest Landmark To Get A Glass Floor

One great way to get adventurous folks amped up about scaling landmarks is to make the act of being way-the-heck-up-high even freakier. The Eiffel Tower is the latest to get a stomach-flipping glass floor 187 feet above the teensy little people on the pavement below. In order to mark the Parisian attraction’s 125th anniversary, Moatti…

Samsung’s issued a warning that it’s Q3 profits are kinda crummy — actually, they’re down 60 per cent on the same quarter last year, which is downright crap. Samsung’s blaming a lower average selling price for devices for the fall in profits, reflecting that the continuing success of iPhones, coupled with the glut of good,…

This Award-Winning Architecture Photo Looks Straight Out of Sci-Fi

The focus with architecture is most often on the design of the building itself, but with most of us not able to jet around the world looking at pretty buildings, it’s photographs that build the vast majority of our impressions of design. That’s the (underappreciated) genre represented by the Arcaid Awards, which recognize the Architectural…

Every single couch gag from 25 years of The Simpsons at the same time

If you ever wondered what all 25 years of The Simpsons couch gags looks like if they were all played at the same time, well, here you go. This video plays the intro from all 554 episodes from 26 seasons (even that bizarre one we just saw) and I kind of wish I could zoom…

Don’t Call It Sony: This Is VAIO’s New Prototype Tablet PC

Remember when Sony decided to sell off its entire PC businessin one fell swoop? It looks like that wasn’t the end of the company’s iconic VAIO designs. Today at Adobe’s MAX design conference, the new VAIO Corporation showed off a brand new tablet computer aimed directly at pros. It’s a beefy machine with a 12.3-inch…

It’s the Perfect Time to Re-Watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

When we learned last week that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s sequel would debut on Netflix, I spent an evening curled up re-watching the original. And as someone who professed to hating it as a crotchety 1o-year-old (more on that later), I have to say I’ve changed my mind. Here’s the thing you should know: I…