If you told me this image was a frame capture from the next Call of Duty game for Xbox One, I could almost believe you. Ish. Thanks to the digital camera and postprocessing work, its unrealistic perfection, dramatic illumination and striking mix of colours make the photo look like a computer render. But still, real-time graphic engines need more firepower to get to this level of perfection. Maybe this will happen in the next next generation. Read More >>

Think twice before stomping the lights out of the next cockroach you come across—you're going to want them to return the favour 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 all. Because, apparently, they're developing the ability to outsmart our attempts at poisoning them dead. Read More >>

The Ring Nebula is a common image in astronomy, but new images from Hubble reveal something rather strange inside the cloud of swirling gas. Read More >>

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. Read More >>

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 addicts that are slowly eaten away and destroyed by Flour beetle larvae—or mealworms. Read More >>

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. Read More >>

A sixth-form 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 theatre, and now a fully functional one-man submarine that can dive as deep as thirty feet. It kind of puts your baking soda volcano to shame. Read More >>

The Big Lebowski's The Dude? White Russians. Silence of the Lambs' Hannibal Lecter? Chianti. This awesome cocktail chart maps the drinks of choice for characters in classic books and movies. Read More >>

Halo-maker Bungie has released a bizarre new trailer for its forthcoming open-world shooter Destiny, which combines a live-action narration with your usual generic space marine action. Read More >>

In this week's random off-topic 'Ask the Audience', we have a question from Stuart Henderson: he (and his liver) are dying to know what the best drinking game is? Given that we're allegedly a nation of pissed-up students and alcoholic middle-class problem drinkers, this one should be easy. Read More >>

The BBC's Digital Media Initiative was meant to modernise the way the BBC worked, produced content, and used and shared video and audio. Unfortunately, despite being labelled as "critical" to the BBC's future, it simply wasted money and ended in failure. And a £98m-of-licence-fee-payers-money failure at that. Read More >>

So, the PS4 and the Xbox One are real and happening and almost certainly definitely coming to the UK sometime this year. In the meantime, let's turn our attentions to Nintendo for a few seconds. Read More >>

At long last. Microsoft's giant tablet-shaped gamble has come to our sunny shores. With Windows 8 being new to many people, and the Surface needing a helluva lot of tweaking to fulfil its (buttloads of) potential, we thought we'd put together a guide to spare you the pain of working it out for yourself. Read More >>

An 86-year-old lady has been warned not to provide her usual cheese to a Gloucestershire cheese-rolling event, after police told her she'd be the one held responsible should anyone hurt themselves during the traditional event. Read More >>

Chrome 28 beta for Android has just hit Google Play bringing with it built-in Google Translate among other things. But what it really shows is where Google's awesome mobile browser is going. Chrome on your phone and Chrome on the desktop are headed for a collision, and it'll be awesome for all your phones and tablets. Read More >>