How Global Warming Lined the Streets of Omaha with Fountains of Flame
I’ve waited years to write the perfect apocalyptic global warming headline, and this might be as close as I ever get. Yesterday, a massive sewer fire swept through, or, really, underneath Omaha,...
View ArticleThe Fine Art of Selling Drone Diplomas
(via) When it comes to drones, the old line that manned jobs are succumbing to robot creep simply does not hold water--for now, at least. In the run-up to what some are anticipating to be untold...
View ArticleApps Like Vine, Not More Megapixels, Will Sell the Next Generation of Cameras
Image: Ariel Zambelich/Wired We’re at the point of peak specs. It goes for all gadgets; people eschewing laptops for tablets suggests that, for many, simply having bigger hard drives and faster...
View ArticleGandhi's First TV Interview, Now on YouTube, Preserves a Portrait of the...
Mahatma Gandhi, on film, for the first time, in 1931. This was the era of the Salt March, of major turmoil and civil disobedience, of strained diplomatic negotiations between England and India. You'd...
View ArticleOn the Hunt for Aliens in the Valley of the UFOs
I once saw a UFO. It was a fairly standard experience. The craft was cigar shaped, silver, and it slid silently across a clear blue sky. No abduction, no lost time, no probes. The sighting occurred at...
View ArticleWatch Dune Rats Smoke Heroic Amounts of Marijuana in Under Three Minutes
I listen to maybe four bands, which explains why I don't know too much about Dune Rats other than that they're Australian, which is cool I guess, and that their latest single is elegantly entitled...
View ArticleBolivia Passed a Smart Law to Protect the Amazon, But It Probably Won't Work
Image via Sam Beebe/Flickr The Amazon is still hurting, but recent months have seen renewed efforts to save what's left of the incredible rainforest. Brazil says deforestation is way down, and is...
View ArticlePretty Soon Drones Will Be Able to See Inside Your Bedroom
Do you ever feel like someone is watching you? A shadow over your shoulder, the sound of a footstep that's not yours, a camera craning down from the corner of a building, silhouettes smoking...
View ArticleI'm Sick of Waiting for Space Travel to Happen
This article originally ran on VICE.com. So here's my plan. People are all excited right now about the new homes that are due to be sent up and tested on the International Space Station. Rather than...
View ArticleNorth Korea's Prison Camps Are Now on Google Maps
It's been nearly a decade since Shin Dong-hyuk, an ex-prisoner of North Korea's Camp 14, crawled over the electrocuted body of a friend lying dead on a fence, a boundary he was born inside of and...
View ArticleBangladesh Youth Protest Exorbitant Internet Fees With Millions of...
In Bangladesh, at any given time, some 70% of total cellphone network traffic is comprised of intentionally missed calls. As in other developing nations, especially in South Asia and Africa, savvy...
View ArticleWho Really Owns Your Cell Phone?
That hunk of metal, glass, and silicon in your pocket, you probably think you own it don't you? After all, you went to the Apple Store or Verizon Store or whatever and forked over a significant sum of...
View ArticleOrangutans Are Royally Screwed
Image: Rob Webster/WWF Orangutans, those beautiful, bed-building primates, have been in trouble for awhile now. As drone-equipped ecologists have found, orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo have seen...
View ArticleCats Kill 25 Billion Animals a Year in the U.S., So We Need to Euthanize...
(just not this one) Yes, cats. Housecats and ex-housecats and feral cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds a year, and between 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals. That stacks up to nearly 25 billion...
View ArticleWhy New York Doesn't Need 'Don't Honk' Signs
Honk away, New Yorkers. It's still illegal, but it's official: No one really cares. Image via Epic Self Calling them a “lost cause,” New York City officials have decided to remove all the city’s...
View ArticleRobots Will Save Us from Our Shitty Jobs
Robots are stealing our jobs. That was the dismal conclusion of a three-part series by the Associated Press on the rise of automation that is killing the middle class. Across every developed country...
View ArticleFree Wi-Fi: The Movement to Give Away Your Internet for the Sake of Humanity
Search your possible wireless connections now--provided you're nowhere near a cafe or a fast food restaurant hotspot--and chances are you'll find a range of tantalizing options: a "Welcome to the...
View ArticleSouth Korea Launched Its First Satellite: The New Space Race Is Heating Up
As yet another cloud of rocket exhaust clears in the East, it looks like we've got another space race on our hands. South Korea has successfully launched a satellite payload into orbit, which follows...
View ArticleTo Drone Proof a City
Habitat 67, Montreal (via) Foucault may not be rolling endlessly in his grave quite yet, but the day could be close. Just look at DARPA's latest aerial spy venture, the titanically-named ARGUS, a...
View ArticleSingapore Seized Nearly Two Tons of African Ivory
Image via the AVA's release Customs officials in Singapore announced today that they'd seized around $2 million worth of ivory, in what is the largest bust in the country since 2002. How much ivory is...
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