Amazon may have big plans to fill the urban air with drones, but many amateurs have already beaten the company to the punch. This month, my colleague Signe Brewster showed off some beautiful footage of her DJI Phantom 2 Vision quadcopter’s flight around San Francisco, and hundreds of other Americans are using drones for photography, farming or just plain <sic> fan.

Want to fly a … Read More → "So you want to fly drones? Here’s what the law says"

Rasberry or Tawny crazy ants have invaded the Southern United States from Brazil, and they’re coming for you and everything you’ve ever loved. There’s no stopping these ants, which travel in hordes of millions, and are invading homes so quickly that no one knows how to stop them. Spoiler alert: this is how the world will end.

There are plenty of terrifying tidbits in Jon Mooallem‘ … Read More → "Huge swarms of “crazy ants” are taking over the Southern US."

Photographed using a 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera with an 80-millimeter Zeiss lens, and credited to all three Apollo 17 astronauts (Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt), this rare image of a fully-illuminated Earth has become one of the world’s most recognizable photographs. No human has since traveled far enough into space to see such a full view of earth, though similar shots have since been taken by unmanned spacecraft.
via Read More → "On this day in 1972, the Apollo 17 crew snapped the photograph later dubbed “The Blue Marble”"

In September, Google chief executive Larry Page announced his latest “moonshot,” a mysterious new venture to extend the human life span.

We don’t know much yet about the initiative, dubbed Calico, but Pagerevealed in a blog post that it will receive funding from Google. Biotechnology mogul Arthur Levinson, 63, who sat on both Google and Apple’s boards and formerly served as the chief executive at Genentech, will lead Calico as its CEO. Levinson said he declined numerous high-profile CEO positions before agreeing to join … Read More → "This anti-aging brain trust is the most interesting startup in Silicon Valley"

Who wouldn’t want a remote control for their pet? Or, perhaps, who would?

I love pet gadgets, especially wacky ones like Bowlingual, which claims to translate barks into human speech.

Well, a collar attachment called Pet-Remote is getting billed as a way to “control your dog with your iPhone and iPad.”

It sounds a bit ridiculous and counterproductive, but Pet-Remote is more of … Read More → "Can this iPhone app remote-control your dog?"

Sony has filed a patent application for “SmartWig”, as firms jostle for the lead in the wearable technology sector.

It says the SmartWig can be worn “in addition to natural hair”, and will be able to process data and communicate wirelessly with other external devices.

According to the filing, the SmartWig can help navigate roads and collect information such as blood … Read More → "Sony files patent for ‘Smart Wig’"

The FTC’s advertising rules strictly prohibit deceptive advertisements: ads that readers or viewers probably won’t recognize as ads. Online, though, those distinctions can become unclear. Even if something is labeled “native advertising” or “sponsored content,” its placement or writing style can lead people to believe it’s part of the rest of the site. In a day-long workshop yesterday, the agency questioned where to draw the line, and as The New York Times reports</ … Read More → "FTC questions whether online ‘sponsored’ content is deceptive advertising"

In the 13th century, young schoolboys learning to write filled these scraps with alphabets and short texts. Bark was ideal material for writing down things with such a short half-life. Then the pupils got bored and started to doodle, as kids do: crude drawings of individuals with big hands, as well as a figure with a raised sword standing next to a defeated beast
via Read More → "Medieval kids’ birch-bark doodles"

Do you have a heavy kitchen table? Wish you could move it all by yourself? [Ekaggrat] set out to design one for this year’s Beijing Design Week back in September.

It’s based off of the awesome Strandbeest design by [Theo Jansen], and it looks great. [Ekaggrat] made several prototypes of the “Crab Table” out of ABS plastic, and was planning to make … Read More → "Crab-ble: A Table that walks"

Barcelona-based Natural Machines, a company working on a 3D printer for food called Foodini, printed out the dough and sauce for a pizza before adding cheese and spices by hand. The result? A very round pizza with sauce evenly spread across its surface. Yum!
via Laughing Squid

Read More → "3D-printed pizza by Natural Machines"