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Last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller finally admitted that the Bureau uses drones to carry out surveillance on Americans (say hi!). Meanwhile, the tweens next door are probably spying on you too, watching you pick your nose using a $300 drone they bought on Amazon. UAV use in America—and public anxiety over it—is exploding. And…
Temperatures could hit 129 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend in California’s deserts, the National Weather Service warns, while Phoenix should see 118 and Las Vegas will reach 117—heat levels rarely seen even in the scorching Southwestern U.S. A persistent high-pressure system over the hot deserts has cut off the usual cooling from the Pacific Ocean. Palm…
The first space hotel is now in the works, and the first Virgin Galactic tourists will soon ride SpaceShipOne into low-earth orbit. But how will people pay for stuff in space? Change will just float away. “PayPal Galactic” is here.
In 1935, an inventor from Indiana devised a new way to build what he believed was the motel of the future. If William E. Urschel had had his way, tourists around the world would all be relaxing in these concrete golf-ball-looking structures by now. It’s a good thing he didn’t get his way. Comparing his…
Despite all the iPads and Internet porn, America’s school kids are just as dumb as their parents—high school test scores have been flat for 40 years, even though today’s kids spent their entire grade-school years being pointlessly tested.
Are you ready to play everybody’s not-so-favorite guilt game: what was I doing at that age? Ann Makosinski, a tenth grader from Victoria, British Columbia, has created a simple LED flashlight powered by body heat. So instead of having to recharge it or swap in a fresh pair of AAs every so often, you literally…
America is delighting to the current New Yorker cover, which shows Sesame Street same-sex roommates Bert and Ernie in a tender moment during the big gay marriage news from the Supreme Court.
The Chupa Chups packaging is uncanny—you could spot the swirly, colorful wrapper from a mile away, and you’d instantly know it was the most famous Spanish lollipop in the world. David Airey, an Ireland-based graphic designer, put together this illustration that shows the evolution of the Chupa Chups logo since it first arrived on the…
And here we thought the only privacy risk with having a Wi-Fi network at home was someone figuring out our password. Researchers at MIT felt that a stranger having access to your wireless network wasn’t scary enough, so they developed a way for someone to use Wi-Fi signals as a sort of x-ray vision to…
After her husband—advertiser Charles Saatchi—violently choked her in public, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson is apparently moving out the family’s home in Chelsea, London. Men were photographed carrying “boxes labeled ‘Nigella,’ large covered paintings and several kitchenware items” into a large truck. Photo by Getty Images
This is no lumbering Staten Island Ferry. This is the Francisco, a wave-piercing catamaran loaded with modified jet engines set to blast commuters across the River Plate at 58 knots, faster than any other ship in the world. Australia’s Incat shipyard built the 1516 ton-displacement Francisco, named after Pope Francis, on behalf of the Buquebus…
If you wear headphones, your pocket is too full. It’s already got your phone in it, and then, to keep it from flopping useless against your thigh all day, you’ve stuffed the remainder of your overlong headphone cable in there as well, maybe rolled up neatly or wrapped around the phone, but most likely just…
Perpetual motion machines. Like the philosopher’s stone, they don’t and will never work. Unless you are in the internet, watching this neat collection of looping animated GIFs for all eternity. Question: do looping GIFs move when you are not looking at them?
2013 is not finished yet and it already is one of the greatest years in gaming history, says Kotaku’s editor Stephen Totilo. It is! The list of games he and his readers have compiled is truly staggering in both quantity and quality.
Building a tower out of Lincoln Logs is one thing. Building a real life, 30-foot high funeral pyre out of actual firewood is a little bit more complicated. With a bit of finesse and a lot of patience, artist Tadashi Kawamata managed to pull off the latter. No smoking in the vicinity, please. Built as…
Even in a time where everything from our phones to our watches could easily serve up a classic game of Space Invaders, there’s still something appealing about this miniature keychain version. It actually plays more like a cross between Space Invaders and Whac-A-Mole, but instead of bludgeoning rodents you’re taking out blinking alien invaders that…
Pininfarina: you may know it as the high-end Italian firm that designs fast, expensive cars like Ferraris. Now, for the first time, its designers are branching out into residential design with a condominium in Singapore. And it looks like the cars they design. Many architects have designed cars, including Frank Gehry, Bucky Fuller, and Le…
Rice, potatoes, ramen noodles, bananas and peppers. If you have these five ingredients in your pantry—says Lifehacker—you will be able to cook a lot of combinations for cheap and keep you well fed. Plus some spices, of course. Good tips for the cooking impaired.
Continuing with Hollywood’s spiraling dive into remake hell, Paramount Pictures says they will reboot Terminator in 2015, James Cameron’s 80s science fiction classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger—who will be back for this trilogy rehash. Photos by Getty Images
The motion-controlled, hover-hands future isn’t quite here yet, but we’ve used a Leap Motion and we can tell you first hand that it’s damned awesome. But what’s inside that little box of magic? A developer at SparkFun electronics dove inside to find out. The guts are surprisingly modest. https://gizmodo.com/leap-motion-controller-hands-on-the-future-is-magic-530869578 Inside the tiny box’s brushed-aluminum shell…
