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Within the past decade we’ve seen technologies that had been promised for years finally become mainstream successes. The smartphone? Yep! The tablet computer? You betcha! Ebooks? They now account for nearly a quarter of book sales. But we’re still waiting on plenty of other technologies that were dreamed up by the generations that preceded us.…
Sorry, guys. Not buying it.
Forget the finding the next instant classic, great American novel, or literary tour de force—we need to get humanity’s greatest writers and intellectuals (sit down, Nic Cage) together to work putting stories behind these incredible faux book covers. Like, now. Tyler Adam Smith, a Masters of Branding student New York’s School of Visual Arts, began…
This is the disgustingly tacky wedding scenario built by Facebook billionaire Sean Parker and his apparently tasteless bride. He spent $4.5 million on this Tolkienesque abortion after ignoring California Coastal Commission’s prohibition to build in the forest, seriously damaging it in the process. http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-full-damage-of-facebook-billionaire-sean-parkers-f-511236497
It turns out that Michael Graves-designed teapot with its unsettling resemblance to Hitler might not have been the only Nazi-related product in J.C. Penney stores. As Conan O’Brien discovered on his show the other night, the teapot is apparently just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the department store intentionally, or unintentionally,…
Haswell, Intel’s newest line of processors, is currently rolling out into consumer computers, and Haswell-equipped laptops are already price competitive with older models. For example, this 14-inch Lenovo gaming laptop packing a quad-core Core i7-4700MQ is on sale for $720. https://gizmodo.com/the-kickass-processors-that-will-power-your-next-comput-510668761 Haswell promises a bunch of improvements to Ivy Bridge, the most important being improved…
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was vicious. Crops were ravaged, dust clouds darkened the sky, and thousands fled the Great Plains to look for work elsewhere. But one meteorologist in France had an idea that very much appealed to the parched farmers and ranchers of yesteryear — enormous weather-manipulation towers that would dwarf the…
Warner Bros. latest attempt at resurrecting the Superman franchise, Man of Steel, will be released on June 14th and today the last official trailer has made its way to the Internet. You should watch it. It’s sponsored by Nokia and has more new footage of Zach Snyder’s hopefully-not-an-abomination-like-the-last-one, including what looks like Krypton and a…
You know that terrible feeling in your gut when you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have? Well imagine having a Roomba small enough to swallow, one that could clean up that mess inside you. That’s not exactly what DARPA had in mind when it funded the creation of this penny-sized vacuum, although it certainly should have…
Two-year-old kid Luca Albanese died in Piacenza, Italy, after his dad left him locked inside his car for eight hours. The car interior reached temperatures of 140F (60C). The dad claims he forgot to drop him off at school.
For as ear-piercing as ambulance sirens are, you’d think they’d be better alert systems. Truth is: they’re shockingly ineffective. Drivers register the sound only at close proximity and at very low speeds. Guessing from which direction the ambulance will appear is always tricky, too—especially when the new Daft Punk is turned up really loud. In…
Like when trying to choose a ripe melon at the grocery store, there are countless questionable ways to determine how much propane is left in your barbecue’s tank. But if you don’t want to drag a bathroom scale out to your deck, try Truma’s LevelChecker which uses an ultrasonic signal to determine how full, or…
Fungus is, almost universally, not a good thing to have in your walls or personal belongings. And normally, selling certain strains could lead to federal charges. But a company called Ecovative is violating both of those rules, creating packaging and building materials from fungus—and they’re being lauded as visionaries for it. Ecovative was founded by…
3D-printing useful widgets and dohickeys is great and all, but sometimes you just want to mess around. And what could be better for that than good, old-fashioned Play-Doh? What was once a ThinkGeek April Fool’s prank is now a reality from another company altogether: Meet the 3D PlayDoh printer. https://gizmodo.com/5-genius-april-fools-products-we-hope-become-real-5993121 Hyrel 3D, maker of 3D…
America’s powerful car dealership lobby continues to block Tesla’s plans for direct-to-consumer purchase of automobiles. It’s starting to get to Elon Musk, the electric car company’s CEO. Musk is nearly driven to tears in this video. https://jalopnik.com/change-the-anti-tesla-law-argues-long-time-texas-car-485851184 [Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images.]
Firefighters are brave. But they’re humans and they get hurt. So scientists at the University of California at San Diego have created a Segway-like robot that uses thermal imaging to help people fight fires better. Think of these agile robots as scouts fitted with all kinds of fire-stomping tech. They have a pair of RGB…
Next week, it’s very likely we’ll see a fresh round of MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs. They’ll be a little faster, and maybe a little prettier. But it’s unlikely that any new addition to Apple’s laptops will be as awesome as MagSafe. Seven years after Apple made the best laptop charger on the planet, no…
Even people who swear that gay marriage will somehow cause the collapse of society realize it’s “inevitable,” a new Pew study says. With 72% of Americans acknowledging the change in marriage reality, 42% of those questioned still say it’s wrong.
George R. R. Martin appeared on Conan last night to enjoy the pain and horror of Game of Thrones viewers, after home video of their shocked reactions became a YouTube hit. The bloody wedding scene has also led to child-safe GIF versions and alternate endings. http://gawker.com/george-rr-martin-reacts-to-people-reacting-to-game-of-t-511614463
While we figure out what exactly the NSA is doing with Verizon customer’s phone records, a supposed AT&T employee explains to TPM how his/her/its employer collects call records. https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-is-collecting-phone-records-of-millions-of-amer-511565570 Verizon’s network is a little different than ours, despite this, they can probably see most of the same data we can. I can pull call records…
