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Tech NewsHow the Nintendo Zapper Light Gun Actually Works
It’s an age-old question: what exactly was going on when you laid waste to cartoon ducks with the Nintendo Zapper? The 8-Bit Guy is here to exhaustively explain exactly how this beautiful little accessory worked its magic. The answer is actually fairly simple. Obviously, the CRT monitor is a big dumb box that doesn’t provide … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsAmazing Plan to Save Rare Pig Breed From Extinction: Eat Them
A Maine farm owner believes that the only way to ensure a rare breed of pig survives is to get people interested in eating them. Susan Frank—whose farm is home to dozens of the country’s remaining 500 registered purebred mulefoot hogs—has received $50,000 from the US Department of Agriculture to help save the rare pig. … Continued
By Eve Peyser -
Tech NewsApple
San Francisco Restaurant: What If iPad Was Plate?
A San Francisco restaurant with three Michelin stars has discovered an incredible new iPad hack—it can also be a plate. Quince, one of the tech empire’s most prestigious restaurants, serves a dish called “A Dog in Search of Gold” that includes white truffle croquettes placed atop of an iPad playing a video of dogs hunting … Continued
By Eve Peyser -
Tech News
NASA’s Favorite Photos of 2016 Will Remind You There’s Still Good in This World
The new year is likely to be a tough one for NASA. There’s a decidedly anti-science administration coming into power. Trump has already vowed to cut the Earth science division in order to kill climate change research and it’s unclear if he even knows that we’ve been to the moon. For now, we can look … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsThe Mannequin Challenge in Microgravity Puts All the Others to Shame
The crew of the International Space Station has taken the ubiquitous Mannequin Challenge as far as it can go—260 miles above Earth’s surface. Astronaut Thomas Pesquet shared the video of the ISS crew doing their best to maintain perfectly motionless form while floating in microgravity on Thursday. It takes an enormous amount of discipline to … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsFacebook
Facebook Celebrates New Year’s Eve in the Saddest Way
As 2016 comes to a close, many people will countdown the seconds until midnight with friends and family. For some it will be a party, for others, it will be a burial—but they’ll have their loved ones close to experience it together. But many people will be alone, and Facebook has just the thing to … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsSploidDance Away to This Compilation of People Dancing in Movies from the ’90s
There’s no better way to forget a bad year than a bit of amnesia but since you can’t just order that up these days, the next best thing is to probably dance your butt off to memories of better times. And since there’s no time that people these days like to pretend were the best … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech NewsSploidI’m Totally Getting Hypnotized By This Turning Machine
Instead of watching the ball drop this New Year’s Eve, might I suggest an alternative plan that’ll probably be much more fun (if you’re in the right mind space): watch this turning machine shape a metal rod into a funky wave. Just watch it for the rest of 2016. Maybe watch it for all of … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech NewsSploidFinnish Man Crushes Toilet Paper Into World’s Shittiest Skateboard
If you want to make a skateboard on the cheap, all you need is 20 rolls of toilet paper and a hydraulic press. A word of warning though, it probably won’t be very good. Simply bundle all the toilet paper together, crush it into board like shape using heavy machinery, and voilá! Skateboard achieved. [H/T … Continued
By Eve Peyser -
Tech News
The World’s Largest Legal Ivory Market Is Shutting Down
In what is being hailed a major victory for elephant conservation, China announced today that it will ban all commercial ivory trading by the end of 2017. Domestic ivory markets are contributing to the rapid demise of Africa’s elephant population, which has shrunk by a third over the past seven years, according to a recent … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech NewsGiant 15-Foot-Wide RC Plane Weighs Less Than a Pound
Looking more like the tiny single-prop planes that amateur pilots fly, this massive replica of an Airbus A-320 airliner is actually a remote control plane with a wingspan of almost 16 feet. What’s more impressive is that it weighs less than a pound and flies slow enough that it can be piloted indoors. Created by … Continued
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Tech NewsHow Scientists Are Trying to Keep Genetic Engineering From Ruining the World
This week, researchers at UCSF announced they’d uncovered a key to making their genetically-engineered creations a lot less likely to accidentally destroy the world: a way to turn-off modifications made with the powerful gene-editing technique CRISPR. Think of it like a kill-switch for genetic engineering. CRISPR is often billed as the tool that turned genetic … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidJust How Big Can a Tsunami Get?
Tsunamis are very probably the scariest natural disaster out there because they ravage everything in their path. But learning about how big they can get makes tsunamis even scarier. It’s just ridiculous. It’s like skyscraper big, man. You see, the tsunami disasters we know like the 2011 Japan tsunami are classified as just “regular” tsunamis. … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
In Terrible Yet Rhythmic News, Another State Banned Banning Plastic Bags
This week, Michigan became the fourth state to place a ban on banning plastic bags. The new bill, signed into law Wednesday by Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, bans any bills “regulating the use, disposition, or sale of, prohibiting or restricting, or imposing any fee, charge, or tax on certain containers,” including plastic bags, bottles, etc. … Continued
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Tech News
Don’t Eat Food Prepared by a Celebrity Chef on TV
If you’ve ever watched my Guy, Guy Fieri on television, you’d know that the best part is watching him manhandle meat, greasing up his gloveless Guy-paws with the grubbiest gristle. Well, a team of scientists think maybe these celeb chefs need to be a better influence when it comes to food safety. In a recent … Continued
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Tech News
That ‘Fake Plastic Rice’ in Nigeria Was Actually Something Much More Depressing
Last week, Nigerian officials seized over 100 bags of what was claimed to be plastic rice. Lab tests have since shown the product isn’t fake, as Gizmodo and other outlets reported. But it is badly contaminated rice that’s unsafe for human consumption. The incident is casting light on the sorry state of the economy and … Continued
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Tech News
Trump Bans Drones, Selfie Sticks, and Guns From His Inauguration Because Apparently He Hates Freedom
Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th! And if you plan to attend the festivities in Washington DC you should be aware of some ground rules. Rule number one: No explosives. The transition team has drawn up a list of banned items. For instance, you can’t bring … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsFacebookWhy Trolls Won in 2016
A decade is all it took, more or less, for the internet to become unmanageable. In that time, a handful of online communities went through unprecedented expansion, scaling the experimental, self-organizing colonies of the Web 1.0 era into sprawling, corporatized digital city-states like Facebook and Twitter that grew out of Web 2.0. The warning signs … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsYou Can Build a Working Nerf Blaster Using Lego
Proving once again that the only toy any kid really needs is a giant box of Lego, YouTube’s Astonishing Studios has managed to recreate a working version of the classic Nerf Maverick REV-6 blaster using nothing but plastic bricks and a metal spring for power. The Lego blaster even accepts and fires standard Nerf suction … Continued
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Tech NewsLame Airline Fires Pilot Just Because He Was Totally Drunk
We all do stupid things when we’re drunk—like call our exes or buy something we don’t need on eBay. But a pilot for an Indonesian airline was just fired for doing something with the potential for much deadlier consequences. He tried to fly a plane while drunk off his ass. And he nearly succeeded. The … Continued
By Matt Novak