Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Beautiful. You see them glow blue one second and then they turn invisible the next. You’re never sure if these Sapphirina copepods are real until you see them light up like a stunning firefly but for the ocean. And then they disappear just quick enough to make you question what you just saw. The Sapphirina…
What are you doing to me? Let me sniff it. What is this giant metal spider? Let me sniff it again. Is that a squirrel over there? Wait… I trust you because I love you but I’m not sure what this… ohhh myyy goddd that feels so good. Keep it there. Keep it going. Everything…
A professional photographer’s job doesn’t end after they snap their photograph, hell, in some ways that’s when their job starts. In this image, The Today Show reveals what a photographer sees in his photo and what he needs to fix. And boy there is a lot that needs fixin’. A seemingly normal photograph of the…
Yes, this is a super-charged chandelier constructed with 60 plain old, garden-variety pickles as bulbs. It crackles. It spits. It smells like burnt vinegar—and it uses enough power to illuminate a city block. The experiment is the latest by Bompas & Parr, the gastronomic geniuses who made fireworks you could taste, vaporized gin, and a…
If you leave aside the fact that The Muppets are shilling for the world’s crappiest brand of tea, this TV commercial in which everyone in New York gets replaced by Animal from the Muppets is absolutely brilliant. Because the truth is, my friends, that everyone eventually turns into Animal in this city. “Out of my…
To get a super-detailed X-ray view inside a cell—right down to the individual molecules—scientists dunk the cell they’re looking at in preservative chemicals. That not only kills the cell, it changes its internal structure ever so slightly, meaning researchers aren’t getting an exact look at the cell’s natural state. Now, scientists at Germany’s DESY Research…
Thousands of people have probably glossed over the decorative little clock on PayPal’s Political Campaigns page without a second thought. But if you look closely, you’ll see the watermark that proves this e-commerce giant really isn’t so different from you and me—because apparently, PayPal hates paying for stock photos, too. From what we’ve been able…
Do you know where time comes from? Well, for all intents and purposes, it comes from one of the wings of the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the nation’s primary atomic clock (and Joe Biden) live. Joe Biden is not the time master, however. The time master is actually Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, Chief Scientist for USNO’s…
As animal food will have been wholly abandoned before the end of this century, the debris of the kitchen will be much more manageable than at present. — January 11, 1914 Anaconda Standard newspaper in Montana
Do you ever feel like lights don’t move enough? That’s a serious question! After all, humans are constantly in motion—so wouldn’t it make sense for our lights to follow? Thibaut Sld certainly thinks so. The Canadian designer’s latest project aims to be the ultimate interactive lighting system. It involves wand-shaped fixtures made of cast polyurethane…
Yesterday, when Bryan Seely showed me his various Google Maps exploits, he showed me more than just dick jokes and fake businesses. Using these tricks, Seely was also able to set up a system that could surreptitiously record phone calls to the FBI and Secret Service. And he actually did it. https://gizmodo.com/its-ridiculously-easy-to-troll-google-maps-with-fake-l-1531646581 The premise is…
Tossing a bag of popcorn in the microwave is much easier than dragging out the hot air popper, except that you have to watch it like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t burn. Alternatively, you can swap out your dated microwave for this new model from Whirlpool that actually listens to the popcorn as…
Confirmed: Dark chocolate is good for your heart. Really good. What’s better, scientists have discovered that people who eat 70 grams of chocolate every day increase their vascular health dramatically by “restoring flexibility to arteries and preventing white cells from sticking to the walls of blood vessels.” The research published in the March 2014 issue…
Even after the gold fever died down, gold itself was in the air in San Francisco—as long as you knew where to look. That place would be in the San Francisco Mint. In a majestic granite and sandstone building downtown, bullion was turned into gold coins—as well as lots and lots of gold dust. A…
Backyard lighting is as much about decoration as it is about safety, allowing you to enjoy your artificial oasis at night without the risk of accidentally stepping on a hidden rake. But why run lights to every corner of your yard when you can just mount a decorative Japanese lantern to a quadruped and simply…
At St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, a massive new terminal designed by London-based Grimshaw Architects is nearing completion after almost three years and a billion dollars’ worth of work. The terminal’s 54-foot spans are carefully tilted to keep deep snow from accumulating on the roof. [Architect’s Journal]
Re/code reports the claims of industry sources who say Amazon is in talks to create a streaming music service that it would bundle with Prime subscriptions. The report makes a lot of sense, and if true, it would make Amazon Prime and even better deal than it already is. Think how amazing that would be!…
By now most of us probably solely rely on our smartphones to wake us in the morning, but with their screens off it’s not easy to quickly glance at the time in the middle of the night. So keeping an alarm clock on your bedside table isn’t a completely antiquated idea, particularly if it’s able…
This is Big Bird, a Great White pelican who lost his flock after a storm hit Lake Tanganyika. Injured, unable to feed himself, he desperately landed at the beach of the Greystoke Mahale Camp in Tanzania, where he recovered and learned to fly again. Here’s his story, according to camp owners. It was nearly 4…
The line between celebrity worship and cannibalism thinned ever so slightly this week. Meet BiteLabs.org, a website purportedly dedicated to growing artisanal meat from celebrity tissue samples. Because we could all use a little more Vitamin Bieber. Set up more like an art project than a legitimate (and presumably delicious) commercial enterprise, the site seems…
