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The Lego Discovery Center in Westchester County, New York, has unveiled a new masterpiece: a 110-pound, 4,873 brick, 12-foot-tall model of One World Trade Center. It’s spectacular. What better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than with an absolutely stunning replica of the building that represents the indomitable American spirit? In the image above,…
They say necessity is the mother of invention, but laziness has probably inspired many a wonderful creation too. After his roommate complained about having to hand wash all of his clothing, Pu Qingliang, a 21-year-old mechanical design and manufacturing student, put the skills he learned to good use by designing a collapsible, portable automatic washing…
When I was little, I found it very hard to get up in the morning. When my mum would come calling me for school, I would conjure up all sorts of imaginary solutions for how I could manage to sleep a little bit longer. My first totally absurd idea was building a remote-controlled bed that…
Lithium’s kind of a big deal. It powers everything from our gadgets to our cars—really our entire modern world. And that’s not changing any time soon; some analysts estimate that demand could grow up to 25% over the next several years. But how does one harness the power of a metal that bursts into flame…
Gigabyte has launched a new line of peripherals, and at first blush, we really really like the pricing- you can’t really argue with $10 for a gaming mouse. The Gigabyte GM-M6800 has dual lenses, and allows for smooth switching between 800 and 1600dpi. It also looks comfortable in the hand, with a design reminiscent of…
No one’s ever called the hammock industry out on false advertising, but the image of someone comfortable napping in a net suspended between two trees is a lie. Finding your way in and out of a sagging hammock is an ordeal equal to mounting Everest, and once you’re in, you’re swallowed up by netting that’s…
There’s nothing the new Samsung Apex can’t do. The smartphone lets you check your email, stream video, and it even sucks your dick. Seriously, smartphones these days are just full-service products. The Onion’s take on smartphone market one-upsmanship obviously takes things to an unhinged level. But at least Samsung wouldn’t be stepping on anybody’s patent.…
Every year, MoMA PS1 gives a young architect $100k to build an experimental party pavilion—read: a shading device for events—in the gravely courtyard of its Queens arm. This weekend, the museum unveiled this year’s space: A 38-foot-tall wall fabricated out of scraps from an Ithaca skateboard factory. MoMA’s Young Architects Program has been around for…
It’s summer, which means we can all stop complaining how cold it is and start complaining how hot it is. It also means beaches, swimsuits, and s’mores. Winner: Bird Catcher My grilfriend and I were strolling down a quiet beach on a perfect sunny day. That’s when we saw a bunch of birds on the…
Through modern eyes, most American cuisine in the 1950s may not seem like the most appetizing stuff. There was an abundance of strange meats, way too much jello, and hot dogs in just about everything (and vice versa). Sometimes the combination of the three made for a fascinatingly grotesque display. But while some of the…
Camera-equipped smartphones aren’t quite the perfect replacement for a digital camera just yet. They lack manual controls, use tiny sensors, and their simple lenses lack the ability to zoom. (And no, digital zoom doesn’t count.) But if you’ve already got yourself a powerful set of binoculars, this simple adapter will turn them into a powerful…
On the first anniversary of President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood regime, millions of Egyptians took to the streets, burned his political headquarters, showed both bravery and thuggery, and demanded new leadership. These eight stunning pictures from AFP/Getty Images tell the story so far.
Through the eyes of an adult, a bed is a spot to rest, a refuge for sleep, and a place to recharge before work the next day. But to a kid, a bed really only has one useful purpose: as a trampoline. And since jumping on the bed is rarely allowed, Snurk made this wonderful…
Swiss engineering grad Romain Testuz recently developed software that can transform any 3D object into a structurally sound Lego brick object. It solves an old challenge using graph theory, which determines the stability and structural weakness of the build—an impressive feat. As anyone who’s worked with Lego knows, builds are mostly trial and error, but…
Considering that basic projectors are fairly dated pieces of tech at this point, the number of people still putting them to ingenius, wildly creative use is almost baffling. And this recently released video from the band Travis is no exception. With nothing but their trusty projector and some likely hyperventilating, they were able to turn…
The search engine wars are many things: one-sided, enduring, non-violent. But like all good immutable conflicts, they can also be catty. Using the magic of autocomplete, we took a look at what the four major search engines (or, more accurately, their users/algorithms) really think of each other, based on autocompleted search results in a Chrome…
There’s finally a good reason not to feel complete and utter resentment towards the flight crew that made you fold and lock your seat tray up. Griffin’s Skyview is a universal hands-free adapter designed to hold everything from a Galaxy S4 to an iPad Mini using the locking mechanism of most tray tables as a…
Military technology doesn’t simply spring forth fully formed from a DARPA engineer’s head like some GI Athena. It requires extensive development cycles and field testing before it’s put on the front lines. At this year’s semi-annual Network Integration Evaluations (NIE) at the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, Army researchers put a trio of…
The early morning when the whole city is still sleeping and the sky is changing from black to pink to orange to blue is the best part of the day. For his short movie, Adrift, filmmaker Simon Christen spent two years getting up before the sun to capture a timelapse video of the fog rolling…
Microsoft researchers have discovered that a pair of PC viruses called Vobfus and Beebone are harder to squash when they work in tandem. Two heads are better than one, right? Vobfus and Beebone work by regularly downloading updates of each other. Vobfus, a worm virus that was first discovered in 2009, usually appears on a…
