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Think twice before stomping the lights out of the next cockroach you come across—you’re going to want them to return the favor after the takeover. Thanks to new research on this most vexatious blight of mankind, we can now say more or less definitively that the despised cockroach will, in fact, come to rule us…
Quad-copters have become a popular choice for aerial surveillance tasks, in both the public and private sectors, thanks to their portability and ease of use. Problem is, their diminutive nature also limits where and when they can fly—high winds can knock them clear out of the air. The new SkyRanger sUAS, however, is powerful enough…
Espresso is a mysterious drink. Not many people really know what it really is, how it’s made, or even what it should taste like. We’ve all been lured into a haze of misunderstanding and misinformation by the likes of Starbucks, Nespresso, Krups, and countless other brands looking to make espresso easy and cheap. Don’t take…
In an attempt to illustrate the harmful effects of using crack cocaine, Talent, a Brazilian ad agency, created a series of posters featuring images of people living with addictions that are slowly eaten away and destroyed by Flour beetle larvae—or mealworms. The posters were actually made of thin sheets of dough instead of paper, to…
Dominic Wilcox has a knack for the absurd. He’s designed gold-plated luxury skipping stones, anti-theft bike stickers, and a post-it note tattoo for hand-written notes. His latest design, though, is both absurd and incredibly useful: a conversion system that makes it possible to screw old sound systems into light sockets. Wilcox calls them Sound Bulbs,…
A high school sub usually means your teacher’s sick and you get a free period to screw around. But for one student, its meaning is a little more literal. Eighteen-year-old Justin Beckerman could be considered the reincarnation of Thomas Edison. In his brief life, Justin’s created a remote controlled cleaning machine, a helmet home theater,…
Beer is a staple of Americana, so it’s only suitable that the buildings where it’s brewed are often classic examples of American architecture. Even though some breweries eventually fall into disrepair, either because the brewer shuts down or because it moves, many of those have been given second lives as loft apartments, hotels, restaurants, and…
From Sunday, Best Buy is knocking $50 off the price off the price of iPhones for four weeks. The deal applies to the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 on two-year contracts with Verizon, AT&T or Sprint. So, if you’ve been umm-ing and ahh-ing, now might be the time to stump up some cash.…
A Homeland Security intelligence bulletin has warned that it could be “impossible” to stop 3D-printed guns from being made. Astute, guys. Very, very astute.
This is a clever little concept design by New York-based Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects: a perfectly normal chair with a tiny little table top, that turns a functional piece of furniture into something rather more sociable. Designed to be thrown together to create informal groupings, the backs of these chairs can be butted together to create a…
Intel has just made one very, very big claim: it reckons that its new Haswell chip will boost the battery life of laptops by a staggering 50 percent. Intel’s Architecture Group VP Rani Borkar is on the record as saying that laptops powered by Haswell will squeeze 50 percent more runtime out of a battery,…
Speaking last night, Digg CEO Andrew McLaughlin explained that Digg’s Reader won’t be a standalone app, and will allow you to sort and rank content, unlike a normal RSS reader.
Google is apparently facing a fresh antitrust probe from the Federal Trade Commission to find out if it’s been abusing its dominance in display-advertising to illegally curb competition. Naughty.
Every so often when the Moon is especially ginormous or we can see Venus or Mars from Earth, humans collectively freaks out. So cool three exclamation points, we scream. Look how big with thirty i’s, we yell. And it’s warranted! Seeing things that don’t belong in the sky pop up, well, in the sky is…
Between ads for action figures, micromachines, and sugar-laden cereals, there used to be a time when Saturday morning commercials were just as riveting as the cartoons they interrupted—especially for gullible 8-year-olds. And though the ads themselves no longer deliver that overwhelming sense of excitement and grandeur, Neosignal‘s newest track adopts the same flashy, hyperactive style…
Please be true, please be true, please be true. After Google announced that it would be selling a pure Android version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 on Google Play, the entire world screamed joys of Hallelujah Halle Berry. An awesome phone running completely stock Android has always been the dream. Now, HTC might be making…
If you think you’re looking at color palettes of different shades of brownish gray, you’re not exactly wrong. I’m sure people would love to paint their bathroom Roman Rotunda Slate or some made up name like that. But it’s not that simple. You’re actually looking at the seasons—spring, summer, fall and winter—and you just don’t…
Apparently, Google wants to start a bidding war with Facebook over who gets to buy Waze. That sounds like a lot of fun, actually. Who’s got more billions? [Bloomberg]
According to the WSJ, Iran has hacked US oil, gas and power companies. The hackers were able to gain access to control-system software “that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines”. Basically, the hackers are far enough inside that people are starting to get worried. US officials say that these break ins from…
Gamers seem to hate the Xbox One. If you wade into a comments section or ask a man-on-the-street at your local Mountain Dew distributer, you’ll hear a variety of reasons why the Xbox One is not for gamers—why it’s a horrible misstep, presumed dead on arrival. Some of these criticisms will ring a little truer…
