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Tech NewsFacebookFacebook’s New Gehry Building Includes the World’s Least Functional Bike Bridge
In 2012, Frank Gehry and Mark Zuckerberg posed for a series of photos that sealed their intertwined fates: Gehry, arguably the world’s most famous architect, would design a new campus for Zuckerberg, arguably the world’s most powerful not-lizard person. Surely with all this money and talent coalescing like a hunk of molten aluminum, Facebook’s new … Continued
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Tech News
These One-Liners From the 1960s Are a Corny Time Capsule
Do you like jokes? I like jokes. Jokes are silly. But jokes aren’t just all yuck-em-ups and goof-a-lots. They can be great tools for history-lookers. History studiers? Historians. Jokes can give us a peek at how a particular group of people look at the world. Take, for instance, the people of the 1960s. Their jokes … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Satellite Photos Show Christo’s Floating Walkway As It’s Being Built
This past weekend, Bulgarian-American artist Christo unveiled his latest piece—a 1.8 mile floating walkway across an Italian lake. New satellite photos show how this ambitious work of art was put together. For the next two weeks, visitors will be able to walk just above the water from the village of Sulzano on the mainland to … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidMake These Salt-Cured Egg Yolks and Impress the Pants Off Your Foodie Friends
Salt preserves food, and we’ve using it in that capacity for thousands of years. But here’s a neat tip: meat and fish aren’t the only things you can keep from going rancid with salt curing. It also works with egg yolks. Your friends (the ones with reservations at Stone Barns anyway) are going to think … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsThese Transit Safety Videos Are So Gruesome They Just Might Work
What would convince transit riders to pay attention to an oncoming train instead of Instagram? Apparently, a graphic depiction of certain dismemberment. Some very disturbing safety videos have been created by LA’s Metro that might make you think twice about leaving your house. The five videos in the series feature people being dismembered, decapitated, impaled, … Continued
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Tech News
The Crazy Plan to Clean Up a Giant Island of Trash Might Actually Happen
An ambitious but controversial plan to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch moves closer to reality this week, with the deployment of an ocean plastic cleanup boom off the coast of the Netherlands in the North Sea. The 100-meter floating boom is a scaled-down version of a 100-kilometer long system that Dutch nonprofit The … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech NewsSploidWatch a Terrifyingly Fast 115 MPH Drone Race a Sports Car
Drone racing is exciting in its own right, but for spectators the sport still can’t quite match the horsepower and top speeds of auto racing—or can it? Nissan’s GT-R drone, designed and built by Tornado XBlades Racing, can hit a top speed of 115 miles per hour. It can accelerate from zero to sixty in … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidWhat Happened Before History?
Kurzgesagt goes deep into the history of the origin of humans in its latest animation explainer. And while it’s fun to see how far we’ve come, it’s almost more interesting to find out how little we know about the time before history. For instance, we know that there were at least six other kinds of … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech NewsSploid“Seven Nation Army” Is Vastly Improved by Mayo Farts
Jack White is divisive musician. Mayo is a divisive condiment. For some people it’s the only thing that ties a sandwich together, while for others it’s a boring, expensive quest to achieve some dated form of rock-and-roll authenticity that totally overshadows its musical talent. …Yup! What I’m trying to say is that they’re a tangy … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
Your Self-Driving Car Will Be Programmed to Kill You—Deal With It
A recent survey shows that people want self-driving cars to be programmed to minimize casualties during a crash, even if it causes the death of the rider. Trouble is, the same survey shows that people don’t actually want to ride in cars that are programmed this way. That’s obviously a problem—and we’re going to have … Continued
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Tech NewsFacebook
Facebook Offers Political Bias Training In Wake Of Trending Controversy
Facebook is adding political scenarios to its orientation training following concerns, first reported by Gizmodo, that workers were suppressing conservative topics in its Trending news section. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, announced the change during an interview with conservative leader Arthur Brooks, president of the prominent conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks … Continued
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Tech NewsWhy Columbus Just Won $140 Million to Become the Transportation City of the Future
Of the seven cities chosen as finalists for the US Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, Columbus, Ohio may have seemed like the underdog. (It was the only finalist that has no rail system whatsoever.) But today, USDOT announced Columbus as the winner of over $50 million in cash that will transform its transportation system … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidWho’s Hungry For Some Roach Cake?
NOPE (But it’s just chocolate cake) NOPE (There’s even Boston cream filling!) NOPE (Just a tiny little bite? Pretty please? It took Katherine Dey a long time to make…) NOPE NOPE NOPE [Laughing Squid] SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsGadgetsWearable Liquid Nitrogen Blasters Give You X-Men Powers Without the Mutation
For some reason every superpower has to come with a downside. The X-Men, for example, are rejected from society for being mutants. But why can’t it just be win-win? It turns out it can, you just need to be a mad scientist like Colin Furze, and build your superpowers yourself. In Furze’s latest series of … Continued
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Tech NewsBuilding a Windows 98 Gaming PC in 2016 Is a Pain in the Ass
1998 was such a good year for PC gaming. Half-Life, Grim Fandango, Baldur’s Gate, Star Craft, Rogue Squadron, and many, many more. Dang. Those looking to relive the glory days could easily run most of these games through a virtual machine, but YouTuber nine took it a step (or several) further and built a period-accurate … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
The New Instagram Feed Is Ruining My Life
Does anyone else feel like the natural order of the world has been flipped upside down? I do, and I know why. It’s because Instagram switched its feed from photos appearing in chronological order to photos being sorted by an algorithm. You may have noticed the change roll out in the past few days, and … Continued
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Tech News
Two Women Go ‘Blind’ After Checking Their Phones in Bed
Two poor souls suffered through MRIs, heart scans, and other medical tests to figure out what was causing them to go blind for up to 15 minutes at a time. After discovering that checking their phones in bed was to blame, one woman still couldn’t stop. Such is the power of technology. The women (ages … Continued
By Angela Chen -
Tech NewsAmazon
Amazon Busted Illegally Shipping Dangerous Chemicals Again
Amazon just racked up two more fines—amounting to a total of $130,000—from the FAA for improperly shipping dangerous chemicals. Turns out putting acid and flammable gas into a box and putting it on an airplane is not okay. The fines Amazon picked up this week stem from two events in 2014. In one instance, Amazon … Continued
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Tech News
Hundreds of Genes Spring Back to Life in the Days After Death
We assume that all biological processes come to an end when we die, but new research shows that many genes remain active for up to four days following clinical death. These zombie genes can’t bring a person back to life, but this discovery has serious implications for forensics and organ donor recipients. A pair of … Continued
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Tech News
Fiat Chrysler Starts Scheduling Jeep Fixes As Probe Continues into Yelchin Death
Fiat Chrysler will begin sending final notices to customers affected by the recall of 1.1 million vehicles with confusing gear shifters tomorrow, the company said Wednesday. The news comes on the heels of the death of Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin, who was crushed by his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, one of the models affected … Continued