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During last week’s spacewalk aboard the ISS, astronaut Luca Parmitano suffered a slight—but terrifying—wardrobe malfunction: his helmet began filling with water. Today, astronaut Chris Cassidy shows us the suit in question and guides us through exactly how it failed. https://gizmodo.com/nasa-aborts-spacewalk-after-waters-found-in-astronauts-799319024 According to Cassidy, roughly a half liter of water had leaked into his ventilation system,…
Sometimes, good oral hygiene just isn’t enough to keep your mouth full of pearly whites perfectly intact. That’s where science comes in (we’d hope). But the newest foray into fabricating teeth for when our bodies no longer can might be better left in the lab—or lavatory, as the case may be. Because scientists are now…
Poncho is now sending out afternoon updates for both weather and commuter info. Update your preferences, people!
A new research paper published in Nature Geocience claims “it’s likely impossible for human activity to induce a runaway greenhouse effect,” which is what turned Venus into a lifeless toxic hell. That would require “burning 10 times more” our fossil fuel reserves. The sun, however, will do it sooner than we thought. Of course, the…
Some of our greatest inventors have looked to nature for inspiration. So it’s no coincidence that the earliest known designs for what would eventually become the modern airplane were all based on birds. Or why we may one day have nearly indestructible armor inspired by seahorses. This type of design, called biomimicry, is what’s driving…
Camping used to be all about getting away from the clutter of our increasingly connected lives. But then electronic devices became “mobile”, which it turns out means “magnetically attracted to our thumbs,” and solar charging was a necessity. Now Eddie Bauer (the company) is making a tent with a built in solar charger, and Eddie…
One of these Walter Whites—the main character from the popular Breaking Bad series coming to its end this August—is real. The other one is computer generated. Can you tell who is who? I honestly can’t. https://kotaku.com/breaking-bad-images-so-good-youll-think-theyre-photos-956530496
So, this stinks. Instagram is now deleting all images uploaded through the popular Windows Phone 8 app Instance—even though there still isn’t an official Instagram app for WP8. Images are being deleted a short time—just seconds, often—after being uploaded using the third-party site. One Giz staffer who uses Instance as his primary Instagram app even…
In the 1860s, the California mining boomtown of Bodie was alive with nouveau-riche miners, stagecoach holdups, opium dens, and prostitutes-turned-doctors. Less than sixty years later, Bodie was a ghost town with a population you could count on your hand—the ruins of which are explored in this amazing video filmed via quadrocopter. These days, Bodie is…
Fancy yourself the next Neutra, Meier or Lautner? Then you need the new Lego Architecture Studio. It’s the perfect toolkit for any aspiring architect and designer. It’s a completely free-building Lego experience. And it totally rocks. The toolkit is designed to encourage you to build unique architectural creations, using over 1,200 monochromatic white bricks, plates,…
For those too young to remember, there was a time when carnival shooting galleries used actual .22 rifles. At some point in the latter half of the 1900s game makers switched to pellet or BB guns and then everything went electronic. Nowadays the shooting galleries you see at arcades and carnivals use light to trigger…
That’s what this promotional video for HelloFlo says. The company—which allows women to subscribe and get tampons, pads and free candy delivered right on time for their periods—wants to be “like a monthly Santa for vaginas.” Photo by Shutterstock https://jezebel.com/tiny-tampon-queen-stars-in-best-menstrual-marketing-eve-952689744
BGR is reporting that the next batch of Amazon Kindle Fires will run a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor clocked “at about” 2GHz. It’s hard to believe that Amazon would go with Qualcomm’s top chipset on a tablet that’s supposed to compete as a cheaper alternative to the iPad. Extreme overkill, much? On the other hand,…
You’re probably going to want to sit down for this one. And hold your loved ones near if you’ve got them, because it’s time to wake up from our slumber of lies—apparently Jurassic Park is, in fact, not scientifically accurate. All because of one little, mistyped mosquito. For the uninitiated (i.e. those presumably raised in…
Android fragmentation has been a point of contention for many, many years. And the latest report from OpenSignal, the world’s largest source of crowdsourced coverage information, suggests that it’s only gotten worse over the last year. Based on the number of and types of devices around the world that have downloaded its app, OpenSignal believes…
Google’s television wonder-dongle Chromecast has been making big waves since the day it came out, but as of right now its app catalog consists of YouTube, Netflix and Google Play (and mirroring through your Chrome browser). But plenty of others are in the works. https://gizmodo.com/google-chromecast-review-a-little-dongle-with-big-pote-898743646 As of today, Vimeo and Redbox Instant have confirmed support…
To mark the 100th anniversary of Chevy’s logo this year, the car company has created this graphic charting the evolution of the iconic bowtie. But did you know that the origins of the slanted cross are vague at best? Chevy co-founder William C. Durant introduced the logo in 1913, and subsequently slapped the first ones…
Apple has just ushered a patent through the US Patent and Trademark Office for a new phone camera system—which uses three separate sensors to create higher-resolution images with more color accuracy. The new camera design—while unlikely to see the light of day any time soon—uses one sensor for luminance and a further two for chrominance.…
On Wednesday there’s an enormous animation art auction in L.A. that includes some gorgeous pop culture history. It will include original animation cels from Fleischer Studios, concept art from Disney legend Mary Blair, and an original production drawing from Winsor McCay’s classic 1914 film Gertie the Dinosaur. There’s even some 1970s and 1980s Jetsons art…
Ebooks are convenient and all, but there’s nothing quite like an awesome, physical book cover to really get you stoked to dive into a old-school tome. The words inside are important, but there’s something to be said for a really nice piece of shelf-candy too. Every year, the Design Observer and the American Institute of…
