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Google’s been busy this week. First came the new push to make email interactive. Then the flashy “Google Stories”—a Snapchat-esque package that can live in Google’s search results. Most importantly, we’re about to get Google’s newest version of Chrome, which will block “annoying” ads by default. At first glance these projects might not seem unrelated. If anything, they look like a public good. Google is flexing its muscle to make the core experiences of the open web—email, searching, and reading web pages—a cleaner, better, more user-friendly affair....

Mountains. What are they? You think you might know the answer, but it’s actually surprisingly confusing. So Tom Scott investigates the deceptively simple question you thought you learned in the first grade—what is a mountain?View full post on YoutubeThe answer lies in a metric called topographical prominence. The idea works on a hypothetical scenario where the sea rises to the peak you’re standing on. You then measure how many meters it takes for the water to drop before you can walk to the next peak, and that number tells you if what you’re standing on is indeed a mountain....

In the final episode of Season 7 of Game of Thrones, the Night King uses a terrifying weapon—the recently deceased dragon Viserion, now reanimated—to destroy the massive, magic-infused Wall that has for millennia stopped the White Walkers from invading Westeros. As the Army of the Dead lumbers through the gap, it’s pretty clear: Winter is here.We’ve only seen the Army of the Dead in action a few times now: Hardhome, in Season 5, and Season 7’s epic Wight Hunt, but it seems like Episode 3 of Game of Thrones’ final season is setting us up for an absolutely titanic clash at the Stark’s ancestral home of Winterfell....

China is planning to launch a spacecraft to explore one of Earth’s nearest non-moon neighbors. The spacecraft will attempt to return a sample from that asteroid back to Earth before exploring a comet in the asteroid belt.The primary target is an asteroid known as 2016 HO3, and it’s a very unique specimen. It’s known as a “quasi-satellite”: almost, but not quite, a moon. 2016 HO3 orbits the sun instead of Earth, but its orbit lines up perfectly with our own, so it never drifts more than a few dozen times as far away as our actual moon....

In a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away, something goes thump in the night. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, have perplexed astrophysicists for years, but a new study could solve the mystery of these high energy bursts of radio waves detected across the universe. In research published today in Nature and also presented at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, a consortium of international researchers operating radio telescopes around the world are nearing an explanation for the only known fast radio burst to regularly repeat....

Update 6/15: Olivine is not raining down on Hawaii from the Kilauea eruption—at least not in the way that the photos circulating on social media suggest. Geologists from the University of Hawaii and USGS say the olivine crystals in the photos are likely not from this eruption, which they say is olivine poor. Trace amounts of olivine could be embedded within some of the volcanic rocks that spew out of the volcano, but these mineral specimens are tiny and would not rain down in the manner suggested....

Earth has four main layers.Earth’s innermost layer is a solid core made from iron. It’s outer core is a molten mixture of iron and nickel. These layers are surrounded by Earth’s mantle, the mushy layer of molten rock that feeds Earth’s volcanoes. And finally, the lithosphere consists of Earth’s upper mantle and crust. So what exactly is a volcano? It’s essentially just an opening on Earth’s surface where molten rock that is piped up from the upper mantle pours out....

Electrical work can be intimidating, but if you do your research and follow some basic safety measures, you can learn to wire for lighting, outlets, and more. Wiring an electrical outlet is a standard process that any DIYer can handle, and can save you big bucks over hiring an electrician.Before attempting any electrical work yourself, it’s best to get tutored by an electrician or someone who knows the proper way to handle wiring that is up to code....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe completely wireless computer, like the paperless society, is a utopian fiction of the technological world. Look behind any desk and you’ll likely see a rat’s nest of power and data cables for USB-connected drives, printers, multiple screens, keyboards, webcams, mice, digital cameras, camcorders, iPods, cellular phones and—oh, the irony—wireless routers. And the mess of connections is by no means limited to computing devices. Audiovisual gear is just as bad, if not worse....

The scene isn’t all that hard to imagine. It’s Memorial Day. The Indianapolis 500, the world’s largest sporting event, is underway. At least four-hundred thousand fans are standing, stomping and screaming. Far louder and more deafening, at 95 decibels, are the 550-700 horsepower engines of the thirty-three roaring Indy 500 twin-turbocharged race cars. Because the Federal Government considers this a National Special Security Event, the Secret Service, F.B.I., and FEMA are deployed alongside local and state police to keep everyone safe....

Alexa and her pals can tell you the weather. They can recite your schedule or call up a song. One thing they definitely can’t do is pour you a tall glass of bourbon at the end of a hard day. Well, now there’s “Jim,” a device Jim Beam calls “the latest in cutting-edge bourbon technology.” The little box contains the voice of master distiller Fred Noe, and it will pour a shot of beam when you ask it for one....

Last year, scientists discovered a binary star system around 320 light years from Earth which they nicknamed Krios and Kronos. These two stars are more chemically different than any other pair known to humanity, so different that at first scientists couldn’t believe they were actually binary. PBS SpaceTime takes a look at what’s going on here.View full post on YoutubeThe key difference between the stars is that Kronos would devour nearby planets....

Three years ago, a little-known telescope made waves with an incredible discovery, or rather, detected some waves. In 2015, the LIGO telescope became the first to detect gravitational waves, first hypothesized by Einstein over a hundred years ago. Now, after nearly a dozen gravitational wave detections over the past few years, the telescope is getting a significant upgrade that will let it peer even deeper into the universe.LIGO is technically a telescope, but it doesn’t look like any telescope you’ve ever seen....

Media Platforms Design TeamReplacing a mailbox and post is a straightforward DIY project, and it contributes to a house’s curb appeal. You don’t need much experience to tackle it, though removing the old post can be a wrestling match, especially if it was built with a hefty concrete footing. My advice: Enlist help for the project’s demolition phase.When it comes time to build, you’ve got your choice of materials for the post and box support: steel, wood, wood wrapped with vinyl or aluminum, or even granite....

Media Platforms Design Team DETROIT — It’s got mean lines and a hunkered down stance, but even more impressive than the Mitsubishi Concept-RA’s aggressive looks are its high-tech underpinnings. Though the styling suggests that Mitsubishi isn’t straying from it’s roots, the choice of a clean diesel mill also means this Japanese manufacturer is willing to bend toward an eco-friendly future. This concept’s 2.2 liter, 16-valve turbodiesel boasts continually variable valve timing via MIVEC, short for Mitsubishi Innovative Valve lift with Electronic Control....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s good news for bad movie lovers: In the not too distant future, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day Marathon will make its return. Joel Hodgson and crew resurrected the celebration of all things schlock last year as a streaming event. It’s coming back to YouTube this year with a new slate of handpicked episodes. These will feature new introductions from Hodgson, who hosted the show from its 1988 inception on cable access television until 1993, when writer Mike Nelson boarded the Satellite of Love in his place....

As lighting conditions shift when you’re mountainside, switching out goggles to match your surrounding illumination can be a huge pain. But Oakley Prizm React technology, coming out at the end of November, eliminates the hassle. By packing three differing lens tints into piece of headgear, snow-bound adventurers can now toggle to the right tint at the push of a glove-friendly button. The dark, medium, and light lens tints were designed to give mountain riders all-day comfort, the California-based company says....

Few sights in nature are majestic as a whale or dolphin jumping out of the water, but these graceful-looking maneuvers are technically challenging to pull off. So a group of researchers set out to understand how jumping out of the water actually works by building a robot to do it.The researchers, from Cornell University, studied simpler and more common animals like frogs and small crustaceans that perform a breaching maneuver. These smaller animals tend to breach either to catch prey or to escape from predators, and their small size and predictable behavior makes them ideal study subjects....

Do you ever head out of the house without checking the weather to later realize that you are either under or overdressed? A research lab in California known as Otherlab, has been working on what it callis “thermally adaptive materials” using ARPA-E funding. This fabric responds to the rises and falls in temperature to keep you comfortable in any weather.The fabric is made of two different materials that react to temperature differently....

Dry Ingredients1 cup self-rising flour 1 level Tbsp baking powder1 level Tbsp cornmeal (You could eyeball this and it would still come out okay: a palm full of flour, a large pinch of baking powder, and a large pinch of cornmeal.)Wet Ingredients1 egg 1 cup buttermilk (or 2% milk)1 capful vegetable oil (use the cap for the vegetable oil container)Mixing InstructionsMix the dry ingredients with a fork.Mix the wet ingredients with a fork....