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An enterprising 16-year-old in Kansas recently 3D-printed at prosthetic hand for his 9-year-old family friend, giving the young tyke the use of fingers for the first time in his life. And he did it all at the local county library. Mason Wilde, the teenager with the 3D printing skills, first became interested in making the…
Electronics retailer Newegg just launched Newegg Premier, an Amazon Prime-like subscription service that offers free expedited shipping, free returns, and exclusive deals—all for $50 a year. [Newegg Premier via Ars Technica]
Pininfarina is known for turning Ferraris and other exotic cars into even more impressive works of art, so it’s a safe assumption that its new 4.EVER Pininfarina Cambiano writing instrument is going to cost a small fortune when available. But with an inkless design that never needs a new cartridge, it could eventually pay for…
Here’s a map that shows you all the best places to get your coffee fix in New York, based on the subway line. How convenient! We could sit here and argue all day on how the map doesn’t list all the different branches of the same shops, or that it leaves out all the great…
This fan-made “Sherlock” Lego set may soon be a reality! Having achieved 10,000 votes on Cuusoo, the LEGO Group will now provide an official response. Based on the BBC drama “Sherlock”, starring the dreamy Benedict Cumberbatch (swoon!) this Lego set, designed by Flailx recreates 221 B Baker Street. As shown the set contains 370 pieces.…
Your garden-variety multiplex probably resembles a concrete box with interiors sporting giant movie ads and sterile seating areas. But there are still a number of surviving theaters that show off the glamour and scope of cinema in its heyday. Photographer Franck Bohbot’s recent series documents just that. Bohbot’s beautiful medium format images portray the ornate,…
Writing is many things: a job, a hobby, a personal imperative, an act, an art, a gigantic pain in the ass. But is it a science? The Periodic Table of Storytelling breaks down narrative elements into a familiar form—though one that liberal artsy folks probably haven’t thought about since high school. Here’s how it works.…
The Oculus Rift is already great when you’re just sitting down, but it’s easy to imagine an awesome future where you walk around with it on. A holodeck on your face. Well, that future’s already here. Meet the Inversion VR system from Zero Latency. Unlike a holodeck, you can’t just walk in though. To get…
Watching this gigantic cargo ship passing right under your feet is mighty impressive—like watching Darth Vader’s Imperial Star Destroyer zooming by in the opening scene of Star Wars, but from the top. However, despite the impressive display, the 93496-ton S-Class cargo ship Arnold Maersk is not the largest cargo ship in the world. She is…
Technologically speaking, smaller is virtually always better. So it’s perhaps no surprise that scientists have developed the first ever single-molecule LED. But why is it potentially such a big deal? A team from the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of Materials in Strasbourg, France, has developed the new device. Formed from a single polythiophene wire…
For graphic designers, playing cards are a playground: The simple constraints of four suits and thirteen different cards accommodate tons of creativity without overcomplicating things. And there’s an amazing number of interesting decks out there. But which ones to buy? How will you impress your design enthusiast friends at the weekly poker game? Do prettier…
From a distance, this bike looks like a stealthy cycle in plain black. Get a little closer, though, and you’ll realize that it is, in fact, covered in luxurious crocodile skin. A concept in “reclaiming mass produced and generic objects by re-issuing them as individual and unique pieces,” it was put together by Paris-based Watch…
New documents leaked by Edward Snowden and obtained by NBC News suggest that the UK’s spy agency, GCHQ, launched a DDoS attack on the hacker collectives Anonymous and LulzSec. A presentation allegedly from a 2012 NSA conference points out that GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack…
From robots to mind-reading, new programming languages to advanced communication systems, DARPA has fingers in many, many pies. And now, it’s making all its open source code available by publishing the DARPA Open Catalog. The new website aggregates the source code—and some other data—from all the public DARPA-funded projects. Right now, that includes 60 different…
Most maps these days tell us how bad the weather is or how climate change is ruining our neighbourhood. So this one, which shows how many pleasant days per year areas of the US get, is a refreshing change. Of course, defining what counts as a “pleasant” day isn’t easy, but Kelly Norton, who made…
We all take for granted the fact that glass is transparent. But stop and think about it for a second: how can something so bulky and solid be so easy to see through? In fact, it might be better to ask not why glass is transparent, but why other materials not transparent—which is exactly what…
Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files, has been busy producing a new show called The After for Amazon Studios. The first trailer has landed—but it doesn’t really reveal a huge amount about what we can all expect. Entertainment Weekly debuted the first clip from Carter’s project. Depicting a panicked crowd in downtown Los Angeles—clearly…
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a…
Garage Band, Pro Tools, Logic, sequencers on tablets and phones—anyone can create music these days with zero programming knowledge. But Diode Milliampere shows you how it was done with MS-DOS. Yes, that command line inputting, C-drive accessing MS-DOS from 30 years ago. It turned out pretty well! Diode writes on his Soundcloud page (where you…
Mixing elements of Gothic horror and Film Noir with a healthy dose of face-melting psychedelics, Conduit will have you questioning your faith in a higher power and your own ability to sleep tonight.
