Tech News

“When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction—like space travel—the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.” — Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and author of The Physics of Star Trek You can read the entire interview over…

Insane closeup video of the crazy Russian human torch

OK, this stupidly risky stunt seems even more idiotic and suicidal when you watch it up close and from his point of view. That snow mound didn’t seem soft at all. Just look at the painful face of his idiot when he walks away. According to local media, the teenager declared to the police that…

The Nation’s Most Unequal City Isn’t NYC or San Francisco

Thanks to battles over nightmarish rent-controlled apartments and privatized public transit, cities like New York and San Francisco have reputations as deeply unequal places. Yet a new report revealing the true least equal cities in the U.S. might surprise you. http://valleywag.gawker.com/google-goons-now-guarding-private-buses-1503005762 The Brookings Institute recently analyzed census data not by the biggest or lowest incomes—but…

Hipster Beard Transplants Are All the Rage These Days

Everybody’s heard of hair plugs, but did you realize you could get a full beard transplant? A growing number of men in New York and elsewhere are catching on. It’s apparently becoming a very popular thing to do, especially in hipster-packed neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick. DNA Info recently spoke to a few plastic surgeons…

Leaked Image of Super Tiny Samsung Mirrorless Camera Is Kind of Crazy

Some folks at NXRumors have dug up an image of what is purportedly a new mirrorless camera from Samsung. It’s incredibly small looking, and selfie-ready! According to the image of what looks like a marketing presentation slide, the new camera is called the NX Mini, and features a 20 megapixel one-inch sensor, just like the…

Tour the Opulent, Evacuated McMansions of Ukraine’s Fallen Leaders

Earlier this week, surreal images emerged of Ukrainian protesters storming the palace of President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the capital city after violent unrest. Now, protesters have made their way into another mansion, the home of attorney general Victor P. Pshonka. No ostriches, as were found on Yanukovych’s estate, but there are Fabergé eggs! The…

First new Godzilla trailer is a giganormous festival of destruction

Here’s the first official main trailer for Godzilla, and man oh man is it a thriller. Buckle your seatbelts for some epic destruction. With soundscapes that evoke sci-fi greats like Pacific Rim and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Bryan Cranston’s borderline-madman narration giving us a hint of the plotline, this two-and-a-half minute peek shows that…

VSCO just released Film Pack 05, a new collection of film presets for Adobe Lightroom. Check out the 12 new films for your analog nostalgic pleasure!

How Can Houston Preserve Its Aging Astrodome?

Imagine a football stadium that was so technologically game-changing that it became the model for all future sporting venues ever built. Until it was suddenly abandoned 15 years ago. As part of our series Preservation Battle, we look at significant buildings on the brink of demise—where you’ve been able to find Houston’s Astrodome for quite…

This Is What I See Every Time You Tell Me How Cool Oculus Rift Is

Virtual reality sure is cute. And, yes, I do mean that in the most condescending way possible. Look, I understand just how cool the Oculus Rift may seem to my tech nerd brothers and sisters. And I shouldn’t judge something before I’ve tried it. But every time someone tells me how awesome this cutting-edge virtual…

$25 Bluetooth Speaker, 50% off Otterboxes, HP Chromebook 11 [Deals]

Featuring an adorable design, 10 hour battery, and fantastic Amazon reviews, Anker’s Bluetooth speaker will only set you back $25 today. For that price, you could probably put one in every room of your house. Anker Portable Bluetooth 4.0 Speaker | $25 With Coupon Code ASPEAKER Short of keeping your phone in a hyperbaric chamber,…

The Fix for Apple’s Scary OS X Security Flaw Is Here

Apple has prepared a fix for the scary OS X security flaw that lets somebody with “privileged access” to your network connection get at information you think is secure. It’s in the App Store now. Here’s what you need to know about the fix. https://gizmodo.com/why-apples-huge-security-flaw-is-so-scary-1529041062 An Apple spokesperson has confirmed that the 10.9.2 update addresses…

What It’s Like to Watch Ghostbusters for the First Time

When Harold Ramis passed yesterday, we—like most of you—shared our favorite memories and moments from his works, our own way of memorializing a great man we’d never met. It didn’t take long to uncover the fact that while Groundhog Day is one of my favorite movies, I had a shameful secret. I’ve never seen Ghostbusters.…

The ugliest animal in the world has to be this wolf eel

Wolf eels are pretty ugly in general, but this one—this one is the one that the rest of the wolf eels make fun of in school. I’ve seen baboons’ butts that are more attractive than this guy. Look at the complete photo by Chris Wilson and try not to puke all over this thing. Actually,…

This is a GIF of America’s Very First Film

Before Charlie Chaplin, before Tinseltown, before even the advent of “talkies,” American cinematic history began with “Monkeyshines.” This 56-second clip of a lab assistant horsing around in the Edison Labs was captured around 1890 by pioneering filmmaking duo and Kinetoscope developers, William Heise and William K. L. Dickson. It is believed to be the first-ever…

A Seamless Jacket Made From a Single Piece of Origami-Folded Fabric

Seams can be your biggest enemy when you’re trying to design a jacket that’s both lightweight and wind/waterproof. So The North Face engineered its new Fuse Uno jacket to assemble from a single piece of fabric like a complex origami model, reducing the number of seams that need to be stitched and sealed. However, in…

The Mobile App Driving Venezuela’s Anti-Government Protests

Zello is a walkie-talkie app made by a small company based in Austin, Texas—but if you’ve heard of it, it’s probably because you’ve been following the news in Venezuela or Ukraine. Some of its biggest users are protesters taking to the streets. The app’s creators hadn’t planned on getting involved in political revolutions, so you…

App-pocalypse Now

I’m getting pretty sick of being nagged to install your damn apps. XKCD helpfully translates: Yeah, there are smart app banners, which are marginally less annoying, but it’s amazing how quickly we went from “Cool! Phone apps that finally don’t suck!” to this sad, eye rolling, oh-great-of-course-you-have-an-app-too state of affairs. Four years, give or take…

This stunning image of a crowded, multi-layered library is not the work of M.C. Escher. It’s actually the National Library of China in Beijing, as featured in Travel 365. The library looks big because it is big: the fifth largest in the world, in fact, with over 24 million items in 1.8 million square feet.…

This Washing Machine Cleans Clothes With Plastic Beads Instead of Water

While today’s high-efficiency washing machines use far less water than their predecessors, they still consume between 10 and 24 gallons of water per load—and as much as 9,000 gallons per US household per year. That’s a lot of water just for cleaning clothes, especially with the growing drought conditions throughout the American West. But Xeros’…