Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
This poop-powered flamethrower is like the old high school trick of using farts to light fireballs, only on a much more epic scale. The key to creating 30-foot flames from poop, apparently, is grinding the poop into a super fine powder with a blender. Nick Klein, the guy from Arizona who made this DIY rig,…
Some blessed Chicago improv fan has posted a full recording of Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch’s two-woman show Dratch & Fey. It ran from 1999-2000 at Chicago’s Second City and New York’s UCB just before the women got famous on SNL. The crackly VHS upload is definitely low quality, but the show holds up. If…
Do smartphone-wielding citizens of the world need an excuse to snap more selfies? Absolutely not! And yet, against all odds, there is something undeniably charming about Imoji, an app that allows you to turn your face—or anything you’ve got a photo of—into a little textable you-moji. It’s super easy to use: Sign up; choose a…
If you want your busking business to start raking in some serious small change, your act will need to stand apart from the rest of the jam bands and drum circles crowding the subway platform. Take a page from this guy’s unique dance routine, bash your head into a wall a few times, and watch…
If you purchased anything from Ikea back in the 1980s, you’ll probably be horrified to learn about some of the company’s business practices from that time. Because back in 2012, Ikea admitted that it had used East German prisoners as slave labor to make some of the company’s products. From the November 16, 2012 New…
We live in a world of physical computing. Solids and silicon store all our tweets, texts, and selfies, but what if the traditional ways of computing underwent a phase change? Researchers from the University of Michigan and New York University demonstrated how plastic nanoparticles, deposited in a liquid, can form a one-bit cluster—the essential building…
We’ve heard rumors that Google was in the market to buy Twitch—the game-streaming behemoth that’s up there with YouTube—for a cool billion dollars, and now VentureBeat is reporting the deal’s gone through. If this is true, Google just took the pretty much the only other streaming service that was even close to being in league…
Last week, the Comcast call heard ’round the world struck a major chord with nearly everyone. We’ve all had that maddening phone call with a sales rep who just won’t quit. What you might not realize is that as we’re slamming our heads against our phones, they are too. It’s not they won’t stop, but…
Today, scientists report the discovery of an incredibly common new virus that lives inside human gut bacteria. It’s called crAssphage (more on the name later!), and it’s about six times more abundant than all other known bacterial viruses put together. How did we miss it for so long? The oversight might seem especially strange considering…
The exact reason why people feel the need to adorn their lawns and gardens with ceramic gnomes may never be known, but maybe it’s a not-so-secret way to show their allegiance towards a race of tiny human-like fantasy creatures? If that’s the case, why not instead display your loyalties for something a little more based…
Just because the sun has set doesn’t mean your action-packed antics are over for the day. So an Aussie company called Knog has created the Qudos, a high-intensity camera light that sits next to your GoPro, and other popular action cams, pumping out up to 400 lumens of brightness so you don’t miss a single…
Remember when Microsoft said it was doing a Halo TV series? Nuts, right? Well now, even though Xbox Entertainment has been shuttered, live-action Halo lives on, and this is the first look. https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-is-already-quitting-the-movie-and-tv-business-1606728584 This is Nightfall, a series produced by Ridley Scott and not the one with Spielberg and Xbox Entertainment involvement, though that one…
For much of the year, I live out of my pickup truck in Northern Alberta. I do it for work, but you could live in a truck as a way to explore the world or just save money on rent. Here’s how. Think of your truck as the ultimate mobile home. Giving you the ability…
Trolling is fun, until you get caught. And that’s exactly what just happened to someone in Washington, who got a Congressional IP address banned for trolling Wikipedia. It all started when the Twitter account @CongressEdits started tracking (and tweeting) the anonymous edits Congressional IPs were making to Wikipedia. It seems that someone (a staffer no…
According to a report from Recode, Mark Zuckerberg met with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to discuss putting an Uber integration within Facebook’s Messenger app. Someday soon we could order a car in between sending our Facebook friends weird cat stickers. Facebook has recently been making a push towards mobile payments and expanding to e-commerce, and…
This is the first underwater launch of the BrahMos, the world’s fastest cruise missile in operation capable of flying at Mach 3.0. I just like to see it pausing and changing direction in mid-air, like a scene from Robotech. The BrahMos is one of the reasons why aircraft carriers are obsolete. The Indo-Russian supersonic aircraft…
Got the Syfy Sync app for iPhone/iPad and some Hue bulbs? Faboo! Tune into Syfy next Wednesday to watch Sharknado and Sharknado 2: The Sharkening The Second One as never before. The broadcasts will include a special audio cue track that translates on-screen action into ambient lighting effects for more immersive chainsaw-on-shark carnage. “With a…
Over the course of six weeks during the height of the Cold War, almost three million Soviets visited an exhibition that celebrated America. American kitchens, American art, American cars, and most especially American capitalism. The American National Exhibition in Moscow was a full-court press to convince the Soviet people of American superiority. It was supposed…
On this dry July day, news about the drought that’s engulfed most of the western United States continues to get worse. But how do we know how extensive the current megadrought is? We actually can measure from the sky, but not in the way you think. First, let’s recap this week’s bad news. The U.S.…
Apple’s iWatch is a wonderful amazing revolutionary product that does not exist. But it feels like it’s just around the corner, doesn’t it? Like it’s hiding in plain sight. Which is why it’s hilarious to watch Jimmy Kimmel dupe people into thinking a dummy Casio is Apple’s rumored smartwatch. Some of these poor credulous people…