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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has come out with an open letter extolling the virtues of net neutrality because, well duh. Also mentioned is how much Netflix really didn’t want to sign a deal with the devil Comcast, but if everyone’s favorite merger in process goes through, there might not be much of a choice going…
“In 2000 the younger readers of this article, who will then be in their seventies, will probably be inhabiting a world in which the old are provided with opportunities for using their experience and remaining strength in ways satisfactory to themselves, and valuable to the community.” — Aldous Huxley in the January 1950 issue of…
Minority Report references are old hat in the tech world. In fact, it’s often a great way to describe technology that, as the cliche goes, “sounds like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel,” yet is destined to remain a fiction. But this futuristic facial-recognition security system is the exception. It exists, and it’s…
Continuing our inadvertent Snøhetta theme today, the Norwegian architecture firm has also proposed this fuselage-like metro station for downtown Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The outer skin of the building—a long tube enclosing a station on the city’s Metro-C line—would be surfaced with ceramic tiles “developed in cooperation with local artists.” This joins other large-scale rail projects…
These prints—by graphic artist Bedelgeuse—are weird and magical and beautiful and I want them on my walls. The technical term for this style of art is up for debate—is it collage or illustration?—but you definitely can file these prints under “can’t stop looking.” They’re also pretty affordable if you happen to be looking for some…
CNN has suggested that a black hole might have swallowed up the missing flight 370. Anyone want to get a head-start on debunking this in the comments before I tackle it tomorrow? This is too delightfully hilarious to not share the joy, and I’d so love this to be our first collaborative story on the…
Not only is styrofoam great for all your packing needs, it also makes for an incredibly effective and lightweight insulator. It’s just too bad the chemicals and processes needed to make it aren’t as earth-friendly as they could be. So researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have successfully created an alternative made from our most popular…
Imagine you’re walking around, enjoying the early spring sunshine, and looking for a Wi-Fi network. You hear a whirring sound above you, look up, and there’s a drone, just chilling. Did that drone just take your picture? Nah. It just stole all the precious passwords from your smartphone. This is a real—however somewhat distant—possibility. We…
The pink glow you see above is coming from the world’s smallest plasma transistor, an unfathomably miniscule device 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. It’s not just tiny, it’s tough, and theoretically able to withstand brutal environments. And it could massively change consumer electronics. Fabricated by Professor Massood Tabib-Azar and doctoral…
Scott Robertson is one of my favorite concept designers of all time, a true master (both figuratively and literally). Anyone who loves science fiction and space and cars and mechs and any kind of awesome vehicle should own at least Blast and Drive. Here’s a tiny sample of his extraordinary work. Scott Robertson is a…
With the nation focused on World War II, Americans of the early 1940s understood that they’d have to wait until peacetime for all their shiny new futuristic gadgets to arrive—including the TVs of the future, shown above in illustrations from the Emerson Radio and Phonograph Corporation. If you can believe it, these were the big…
Say you’re a member of a search and rescue team. You get an alert that a kid is missing somewhere out there in your waterways, but the record-setting drought this year has left your rivers and streams impossibly shallow. Whatever. As long as you have four inches of water, you’re golden. The ReconCraft Riverine Shallow…
If you have ever been to San Francisco, then some part of you—or some former part of you—has almost certainly passed through the city’s Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant. But, considering how utterly vital it is to the city, the wastewater plant is also very much invisible, tucked away in a neighborhood no tourist would have…
To celebrate Holi, the Indian festival of colour, check out this colourful radar image! The bright rainbows are areas of dynamic changes, while dull greys are stable and steady. The European Space Agency (ESA) Envisat satellite took radar images of the Earth. In this composite, each colour from a different orbital pass to highlight changes…
Still bummed about Ashton Kutcher’s I-kinda-look-like-the-guy big screen portrayal of Steve Jobs? Well hang tight, as Hollywood’s cinematic Bat-Signal for a Real Actor has been answered. Christian Bale is being rumored to take on the role in the upcoming, Aaron Sorkin-penned, project. It’s still early days for the film, but David Fincher is in talks…
Living in the desert is no piece of cake. So to imagine a glittering city in the desert is to imagine something awesome and fantastical—and maybe a touch of crazy. Like architect Stephane Malka’s, “The Green Machine,” a mobile city on caterpillar treads that farms the desert as it walks. A Walking City is not…
It’s easy to forget on the slopes, but your speed depends on the thin film of water created by your snowboard (or skis). So it follows that more heat below your feet would mean more speed, right? Signal Snowboards’s Dave Lee just built a heated snow board to find out. In the video above, Lee…
We’ve followed the $10.8 billion East Side Access project, which will extend the Long Island Railroad from Queens to Grand Central, all year. But now that the tunnels have been blasted, new machines are arriving—and they’re just as cool as the tunnel borers. This month, crews are working on turning empty rock caverns into actual…
Need a quick reminder as to why war should be avoided at all costs? Spend an hour in the driver’s seat of a Syrian Army T-72 tank column as it spews destruction through Syria’s Darayya warzone. Then watch the rebels destroying the tanks. Warning: Although you can’t see the bodies, fighters on both sides are…
Good news, security lovers! Google just announced that Gmail will be all encrypted all the time. More specifically, every single email you send or receive will use an encrypted HTTPS connection, regardless of which device you’re using and which network. Even public Wi-Fi is okay. This is an incremental improvement. While Gmail has offered HTTPS…
