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The NSA responded today to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ letter asking if the agency spies on members of the U.S. Congress and other elected officials. Its response says the NSA treats Congress the same as regular citizens. Which seems like a roundabout way of saying “yes.” Here’s the exact wording of the statement, courtesy The…
Hyundai just announced the newest thing for Google Glass owners: the 2015 Genesis sedan. It’s got 333 horsepower, seats five, and thanks to Blue Link cloud connectivity, you’ll be able to lock, unlock or start the car from your face computer. It seems like Hyundai may be the first automaker to bring Glass connectivity to…
Crawling inside a dead tauntaun to keep warm. Smashing an AT-ST with logs. Swinging to safety while clutching a princess. The Star Wars series included tons of great scenes that made the realists of the world wonder, “can that really work?” Fortunately, the Mythbusters team is here to put them to the test, tonight at…
Have you heard? A huge winter storm plopped its ass on the East Coast this week, and another is trudging through the south and midwest. Snow and frigid temps have people semi-voluntarily holed up inside. Is that you? Are you using electrons and glowing screens to fend off the cold? Does that work? A lot…
Baby, it’s positively frigid outside. Whether you’re snowed in by a humongous storm or just being lazy out of solidarity, we’ve got the week’s best tech reads to occupy your time and ward off cabin fever. Kira Peikoff tested three consumer-market DNA tests using her own genes, with striking—and varying—results. [The New York Times] Mat…
Kottke found this horrifying six second video by Paglo,a Vine user from Cholula, in Mexico. It looks like a bunch of hairs, some ridiculous abandoned mustache on a plastic container, but wait until he touches it with his finger and try no to recoil and/or scream with what happens next: The caption means: “Super pubic…
Welcome to the first weekend of 2014! If you’re still hungover from ringing in the new year (you animal), we’ve got the science behind hangovers and a bunch of ways to cure them, along with creepy sea creatures, an unsettling Snapchat hack, and how Daft Punk may have stolen a trademark sample. What a year!…
On January 4, 2004, the first of two identical robotic exploratory rovers, NASA’s Spirit, snapped this stunning 360 degree image of its surroundings, moments after setting down on Mars. In the years to follow, both Spirit and its sister Opportunity helped revolutionize our understanding of the Red Planet. Spirit beat its sister to the surface…
There’s no better time than the new year to start afresh, and today, we ask you to turn your attention not within but without. More specifically, it’s your Twitter and Facebook friends we need to talk about. That’s right—it’s time to trim the fat. You’ve been racking up social media accounts for years now, and…
There’s a digital gold rush sweeping the globe as investors try to cash in on Bitcoin, the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency. Getting involved yourself is easier—and riskier—than you think. As with any exchange or speculative market, trading in Bitcoin is a risky venture that could cost you real money—and lots of it. So the most important…
This would be roughly the week of December 30 through January 5. 5 Years Ago (2008): My top-of-2008 list included commercial albums (among them Unitxt by Alva Noto and The Elephant in the Room: 3 Commissions by Mira Calix), free downloads (among them Wobbly’s massive birdsong megamix and computer-addled metal by Drumcorps), and “key processes”…
YouTube’s lunarmodule5, a treasure trove of jaw-dropping space videos, takes us onboard Apollo 13 to relive the harrowing hour when the doomed moon mission turned into a quest for survival. No Hollywood movie could ever muster the real-life drama and tension of this moment. You’ve got to put on headphones to fully appreciate this. In…
Unless you’re obsessively organized, or love the iconic aesthetics of the old-school manual models, it’s really hard to muster much excitement for a labelmaker. But somehow Epson has managed to create the perfect tiny printer for the smartphone age. For the casual user it’s finally an easy way to bring a little bit of order…
This film written and directed by Yann Pineill is a palindromic investigation of memory and emotion. That is, the second verse is same as the first—but backwards. It’s not going to make any sense to start, but stick with it. Once you hit the flip, everything up to that point starts making sense.
Hey look, it’s an actor looking at some computer code in a movie. He must be really smart! He must be a computer hacker! He must be able to take over the world with just his keyboard! Not quite. The code used in movies is usually nothing but some mumbo jumbo on WordPress or Wikipedia.…
Conventional incandescent bulbs are increasingly illuminati non-grata in the US, but there was once a time when they played a vital role in not just lighting American homes, but also protecting the country itself from alien invasion. Thank goodness Mr. Magoo was there to act as spokesman for the human race because if there’s anyone…
The Eastern seaboard is getting some serious snow, and even though we live here in 2014—the future—we’re still reduced to shoveling. Ugh. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
What you are about to watch is beer getting weird. Before California-based brewery Sierra Nevada bottles Bigfoot, its classic barleywine-style ale, the wort goes through a six-day fermentation process that sees a whopping 24,000 gallons of liquid appear to bake like bread, roil like a contaminated foam party in Ibiza, and overflow like a sentient…
Gorilla Glass, Corning’s enormously sturdy scratch- and crack-resistant touchscreen glass, is pretty impressive, found on billions of devices worldwide. Now, the glass maker has announced a novel manufacturing technique to make 3D shapes out of Gorilla Glass. The ability to make 3D shaped glass (which is different from flexible glass) comes at an important time,…
A regular old skateboard isn’t fun enough for you? What about nine skateboards attached to each other to form a complete circle skateboard? It’s the goofiest way to move on wheels since your chance of falling off is infinitely more likely and well, just look at the damn thing. Skateboarder Mark Gonzales and the Krooked…
