The Leap Motion hacks just keep coming. The motion-controlled gadget still hasn't hit our shelves, but eager engineers are already hooking their developer kits up to all the electronics they own. Read More >>
Social media does funny things to some people. While most would sensibly avoid calling their bungling boss an idiot to their face, many don't think twice before venting their anger and frustration on Twitter. A new tool called FireMe! offers a tongue-in-cheek way of warning someone if they have gone too far. Read More >>
Featured comment by flynndean:
"You're doing Accountancy (a subject with an obvious practical application to a vocation - and which certainly doesn't fall under my 'shitty subject' l..." More »
ALMA has arrived, and she is enormous. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, was officially opened today in the high desert of the Chilean Andes. Guests including the president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, gathered to celebrate the the largest ground-based astronomical project in the world. Read More >>
The ordered lines of Jerome, Idaho (population: 10,000) start to disintegrate as you approach those parts of town that teeter on the edge of the Snake river canyon. Here the homes are "unregulated and unzoned", says photographer Michael Light, who took this shot from his own light aircraft. Read More >>
Featured comment by DoghouseReilly:
"("...pick them up and transplant them somewhere ... They do it all the time" They as in aliens. Aliens pick up and move the houses.)
...
Never ..." More »
Some briny deeps are brinier than others. The Atlantic Ocean has two huge "deserts" of extra-salty water, the result of little rainfall and lots of evaporation. Read More >>
Featured comment by jibberjabba:
"Quite! The setting of my pre-having-kids-holiday, and where I intend to go back to for my 10 year wedding anniversary. Only 5 and a bit years to go th..." More »
A man walks out of a restaurant into the night and sees street lights and brightly lit shop windows. He's so thrilled by the spectacle that he stands there for 10 minutes, just looking. The reason for his joy at such a mundane sight is the fact that he is normally totally blind. Read More >>
Seen it in the news? Now play it: a mobile-game programming system allows 3D depictions of news events to be introduced into the action. It's been developed by MultiPlay.io, a British start-up that says the technology could make gameplay more current and provide new ways for designers and coders to make cash - perhaps selling "news injection" rights to news agencies, TV stations or newspapers. Read More >>
Lab rats have a new companion, but it's not friendly. Researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, have developed a robotic rat called WR-3 whose job is to induce stress and depression in lab animals, creating models of psychological conditions on which new drugs can be tested. Read More >>
Featured comment by Ostrich:
"This sounds like classical conditioning: through negative reinforcement, they have conditioned a rat not to move. I am all for medical tests being don..." More »
You might think that a museum adding 2000 new exhibits would need to build a whole new wing. But the latest additions to London's Grant Museum of Zoology all fit into a space the size of a large wardrobe: they're vintage glass microscope slides, bearing specimens taken from everything from fleas to whales. Read More >>
This Latin inscription on this his curious beast identifies it as a "dragon as it was recovered in the hands of the engineer Cornelius Meyer". The picture comes from a 1696 book that Meyer wrote describing his construction projects, and an etching on the cover claims to show the dragon as it looked alive in 1691, stalking the marshes near Rome. Read More >>
When I was a Christmas postman, many years ago, some of the bored guys in the sorting office's loading bay liked to play a boisterous game of "catch" when parcels marked "video recorder" and "fragile" arrived. How they guffawed when one landed in the bottom of a skip with a sickening crunch, ruining somebody's Christmas. Read More >>
Featured comment by Longfellow:
"I'm lucky in terms of Royal Mail - I live about three minutes from the sorting office too!
It is good to have neighbours who can take parcels for y..." More »
Hubble has joined forces with two amateur astronomers to capture a monster, and it may be one of the most beautiful four-armed giants ever seen. Read More >>
Featured comment by Spazturtle:
""like any other spiral, including our own Milky Way"
In keeping with me making annoying comments today I think I will point out that we are a Barre..." More »
What is it about technology and Aussie rock band AC/DC? In July a computer hack led to the band's track Thunderstruck belting out at top volume in an Iranian nuclear power plant. Now AC/DC's signature hit Highway to Hell is riding on a laser beam that's being bounced off a drone in mid-flight. When the beam is reflected to a ground sensor, the full glory of the music is reconstructed without a cymbal crash out of place. Read More >>
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