Back in 2010 when Tom Scott presented a nightmare version of a flash mob gone wrong, it was greeted with rueful awareness that events could coalesce to a dangerous point. The message, that oversharing through social media can have real life consequences, is still being shouted from websites. [yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyMdOT8YJgY’] In one of the more […]
You probably want to file this under “Solution in Search of a Problem” — Nokia has patented the bright idea for alert ink. The idea is to use ferromagnetic ink to create a tattoo that “pairs with your phone” and vibrates when you get an alert. For those not into body art, there’s also the […]
This week, President Obama’s campaign staff opened a Pinterest account. So far, the eight boards up feature typical Pinterest fare,with a political twist: Obama-themed cupcakes, clothing, someone’s decorated fingernails. The “Pet Lovers for Obama” board, featuring adorable animals (another Pinterest must), may or may not be a dig at Mitt Romney, who strapped the family […]
Netflix announces one more solution to the complaint that “there’s nothing intelligent to watch on TV” with the addition of streaming TEDTalks. The TED conferences are private events organized by the nonprofit organization Sapling Foundation. Entry fees are as high as $7,500 to attend. TED conferences started in 1984 to bring together people from three […]
David Choe is a homeless artist who chose stock options instead of $60,000 from Facebook and now has a payout of about $200 million coming his way. The sum makes Choe’s work the second most expensive piece of artwork in history, right after a Cezanne. The problem with this thrilling rags-to-riches story is that it […]
Social media is the first entity to offer life after death and have some tangible proof to back it up. From battles over who controls an individual’s social media accounts after they die to a selection of applications and websites that grant the user a few posthumous last words or even allow them to regularly […]
First of all, I won’t apologize for the pun in the title. Secondly, it seems my first male contraceptive article stirred up a lot of controversy about the hypothetical anti-HIV properties of RISUG (shared from a journal named, appropriately, Medical Hypotheses). After speaking with the makers of the U.S. version, they mentioned that although this […]
British researcher Mark Gasson became the first person to infect himself with a computer virus and spread the infection to a machine, in the name of science. To be fair, this isn’t a case of human flesh actually contracting a virus made of software code. The Senior Research Fellow at the University of Reading pulled […]
Pro-ana. If you’ve never heard of this term before, then you, sir or madam, are a lucky person. Ana is short for Anorexia. Yes, that’s right, there actually exists people in this world who promote and push a horrific, potentially deadly eating disorder. Back in 2004, the popular web comic “Something Positive” stirred the hornet’s […]
Harry Potter — the series Americans, Brits, and the world alike have been enamored with for the past 14 years — is finally available in ebook form on J.K Rowling’s own Pottermore website. At times, it seemed as if the Harry Potter books were as much in the past as the wizards and witches in […]
