Unlike in the physical world, on the internet you're actually able to shut people up and block spoilers of newly-released movies, your favorite TV shows, or a sports event you've yet to watch on your DVR. If you haven't seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet, or just want to m ...more
My years in the restaurant business have taught me many things. Some of those things are best left unsaid and other things require a PhD in vulgarity, but the one thing I learned that I keep coming back to night after night is that you do not have to spend a lot of money to dr ...more
Brains? If you've ever played Plants vs. Zombies, then you already know that brains are a delightful treat for our undead brethren. For those of us still living, we can still indulge in some brain-related dining for Halloween next week. If you're holding a dinner party or just ...more
If you're breaking a sweat in the summer heat, but not trying to break the bank, this dead simple trick will show you how to make your own air conditioner for under ten bucks. Video: . What You'll Need 1 styrofoam cooler 2 dryer vents 1 small fan you've probably got lying aro ...more
A hacker with privileged access to a Windows 10 computer can configure it to act as a web proxy, which allows the attacker to target devices and services on the network through the compromised computer. The probes and attacks appear to originate from the Windows 10 computer, m ...more
The shooting of Walter Scott (who was unarmed) has been dominating the news these past few weeks. Scott, who ran away from police officer Michael Slager after a routine traffic stop, was shot in the back and pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Unlike similar cases where a cop ...more
Valentine's Day is upon us, and it's the perfect time to show those you love (or like) how you feel about them by making them a homemade sweet treat. Sure, you could just buy a red, heart-shaped box of candy or even a bag of seasonal M&M's. But trust me—if you put the time an ...more
Religion is one of the most-ignored topics when it comes to Steampunk, which is surprising given how important religion was in Victorian England. Even the hot-button issues of race and gender are confronted with a greater awareness than religion. Christmas would seem to be th ...more
Just in time for Women's Equality Day on Aug. 26, Treasury Wine Estates is breaking out a line of wines with augmented reality experiences that pay tribute to historically famous women. When scanned with the Living Wine Labels app for iOS or Android, the emBRAZEN wine labels ...more
While it's true that the once ubiquitous cupcake no longer strides the culinary landscape like a mighty colossus, it is still a force to be reckoned with, especially when certain holidays roll around, like Halloween. It makes sense. Not only are cupcakes the ultimate convenie ...more
Creating a haunted house for Halloween was a big deal when I was growing up, and the neighborhood kids were always coming up with ways to try and out-do each other when it came to this frightful night. One beloved game was to blindfold the participants and play the Withered Co ...more
Something special is happening. Maybe it's your child's first steps or their walk down the aisle. Maybe it's a hit-and-run accident, a flaming meteorite, or your buddy spilling a drink all over himself. These are fleeting moments that need to be captured instantly. Though you ...more
"What is dead may never die." That's easily one of the best lines (and episode title) from HBO's Game of Thrones series. While the saying may ring true for the Ironborn, it's not quite as catchy when it comes to batteries. Lithium-ion batteries power tons of consumer electron ...more
Sometimes I forget that I'm also a fiction writer, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace to share one of my stories with you. I wrote this piece awhile ago for an anthology that never came together and I'm tired of just sitting on it. It's one of the more odd stories ...more
For some people, a costume is just a necessary prerequisite to get into Halloween parties. If you're female and you're going the sexy route, it's not too hard to find something to wear, but transforming yourself into something terrifying takes a little more work. The details ...more
Google's feature drops for Pixel devices have added fun and useful new abilities, such as AR effects for Duo, Call Screen automation, scheduling Dark Mode, and Quick Access Wallet for Google Pay, that are exclusive to the company's line of smartphones. The latest feature drop ...more
Not that long ago, touchscreen-friendly gloves were an outlier accessory, something you had to track down at a specialty brick-and-mortar store or solely online. But as the smartphone has become an integral part of our lives, so, too, has the need for fashion accessories that ...more
If you're like me, then you're rarely just watching TV. You're probably also simultaneously following reactions on Twitter during a live airing of The Walking Dead. Or perhaps you're checking your fantasy football scores while a real game is in progress. Or you might just have ...more
A virus easily spread among trout and salmon could make it harder to keep your favorite fish on the menu. The image of dead and dying fish below is from a fish hatchery in the middle of an epidemic of infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV). The easily transmitted viru ...more
Infections with group A streptococcus, like Streptococcus pyogenes, claim over a half million lives a year globally, with about 163,000 due to invasive strep infections, like flesh-eating necrotizing fasciitis and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. Distinctive substances on ...more
More than one in ten people in the US have type 2 diabetes — that's over 29 million people. It's characterized by excessive sugar (glucose) in the blood due to the development of resistance to insulin, the hormone that normally metabolizes glucose. Deposits of folded and clum ...more
Drug-resistant bacteria have made curing some infections challenging, if not nearly impossible. By 2050, it's estimated that 10 million people will be dying annually from infections with antibiotic-resistant organisms. Scientists have responded to the challenge with novel str ...more
Avian flu is making the news again with new human cases in China reported in January. What does "avian flu" mean to you—and how dangerous is it? Each year you, or someone you know, probably gets a flu shot. The seasonal flu shot changes each year to reflect circulating influe ...more
Where in the world did it come from? All of a sudden, one day, someone had an infection with flesh-eating bacteria. It captured headlines and worldwide attention because it was such a severe, strange, uncontrollable, and really disgusting condition. We still might not know wh ...more
If you haven't come up with a funny, innovative costume yet for Halloween, you're running out of time. While all your friends are busy perfecting their month-long DIY costume project, you're still being lazy about it and have just now started to search online for ideas. But t ...more
Taste is certainly relative. When you look at Central American architecture and notice all of the bright pastel colors, then move just a thousand or so miles to the north and see that buildings in the United States are mostly painted in earth tones, this becomes abundantly cle ...more
If you're a child of the '70s, then you'll probably remember Pop Rocks, those fizzy little candies that created such a buzz. They went out of style in the States for a while, but now they're back with retro status. I was surprised to see them in my kids' Halloween bags a few y ...more
Halloween is only a few short weeks away, and most people are scrambling to get their costumes together before the big night. The secret to a great getup is all in the details, and including your pet in the fun can be exactly what you need to take your costume to the next leve ...more
When Treasury Wine Estates released 19 Crimes Snoop Cali Red this summer, named for its new partner in wine, rapper Snoop Dogg, it already came with the brand's signature AR-enhanced label. Now, with an assist from creative studio Tactic and the web-based AR platform from 8th ...more
Wi-Fi tools keep getting more and more accessible to beginners, and the LAZY script is a framework of serious penetration tools that can be explored easily from within it. This powerful and simple tool can be used for everything from installing new add-ons to grabbing a WPA ha ...more
Karen Gillan must have had an absolute blast chewing the scenery as Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, seeing as how Nebula is a ball of pure, seething fury pretty much 24/7. Combine that larger-than-life personality with her iconic blue and silver cyborg look, and you ...more
Six people have died from fungal infections in Pittsburgh hospitals since 2014—that fact is indisputable. The rest of the situation is much vaguer. A lawsuit has been filed against the hospitals on behalf of some of the deceased patients, alleging that moldy hospital linens ar ...more
If your iPhone has a Home button, such as either iPhone SE model, old or new, then it has a secret triple-click gesture to activate a suite of shortcuts. These options, dubbed accessibility shortcuts, can work wonders for folks that are hearing impaired, have limited use of th ...more
Throwing a party means making sure everyone has fun, but that pursuit can quickly get out-of-hand. Before you know it, you're once laid back get-together has received so many RSVPs that it becomes obvious you're throwing the party of the century. With an over-abundance of beer ...more
Having found success in video games and a hugely popular Netflix series, The Witcher franchise is now on the hunt for the coin Pokémon GO has earned in location-based augented reality mobile games. Developer Spokko, a subsidiary of CD Projekt Red (the developer behind the con ...more
PirateBox is a great way to communicate with others nearby when cellular and Wi-Fi networks aren't available. With it, you can anonymously share any kind of media or document and even talk to one another by voice — without being online. However, it needs a Raspberry Pi, which ...more
The Home button on an iPhone does a lot. That's not necessarily news for anyone who's ever owned an iPhone with a Home button, but what you might not know is that it's capable of so much beyond the standard everyday functions. So if you have an iPhone 7, 8, or the new SE model ...more
The original iPhone SE was, for some, the perfect iPhone. It brought back the popular one-handed form factor of the iPhone 5 but packed in the internals of the then-new iPhone 6S. Now, the second-generation iPhone SE is here for 2020, but can it live up to what made the first- ...more
Featured on MTV's Catfish TV series, in season 7, episode 8, Grabify is a tracking link generator that makes it easy to catch an online catfish in a lie. With the ability to identify the IP address, location, make, and model of any device that opens on a cleverly disguised tra ...more
Connecting to your headless Raspberry Pi on the go typically requires a network connection or carrying around bulky peripheral hardware like a screen and keyboard. With the help of an old-school connecting standard, though, you can log into your Pi from any computer using a si ...more
Aircraft equipped with ADS-B are constantly shouting their location into the radio void, along with other useful unauthenticated and unencrypted data. In this guide, we will make an ADS-B receiver using a Raspberry Pi with a software-defined radio (SDR) dongle, which we can us ...more
Many of the beauty products you buy at drug and department stores are loaded with potentially toxic ingredients like parabens, while their active ingredients are made of things like glycolic, lactic, malic, and alpha hydroxy acids and retinoids, which are all derived from food ...more
The best part about April Fool's Day is that everyone is fair game. Even big tech companies like Google and Twitter get in on the action every year. It encourages even the most uptight, unfunny party-poopers among us to have a little fun driving each other crazy with pranks — ...more
I've been steadily making my way through the series Hannibal, which arrived on Netflix in June. I've just now made it to the back half of the third season, which introduces us to a new villain who (spoiler alert) seeks to become the Great Red Dragon. So, imagine my delight up ...more
The Windows 10 desktop and microphone can be livestreamed without using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) software and without opening any ports on the target computer. A hacker with low user privileges can monitor and exfiltrate a target's every move and private conversation in r ...more
Stories are everywhere in social media today, but that wasn't always the case. In 2013, Snapchat introduced the world to these temporary windows into our daily lives. Since then, stories have infiltrated other popular apps. However, to stand out, you can't solely rely on the a ...more
The newest version of macOS has arrived. While everyone's mind is being blown by Mojave's groundbreaking new Dark Mode, we'll be taking advantage of its insecure file permissions to establish a persistent backdoor with a self-destructing payload that leaves little evidence for ...more
While there aren't as many ways to customize your iPhone like there is on Android, there are still a lot of apps out there that can help streamline and enhance your experience beyond Apple's own default options — and we've hand-picked over 100 essentials. No matter if you've ...more
Besides obvious features like a touchscreen and biometric sensors, the modern smartphone comes with an array of state-of-the-art hardware in the form of various sensors that help your device sense the environment around it. And if you have a Samsung handset, chances are, you h ...more
Cases and stickers are always great, but they aren't the only way to customize an iPhone. The software on your device is full of customization options, from a better-looking home screen and cooler lock screen wallpapers to app icon changes and a system-wide dark mode. There's ...more
With MP3 players all but dead, phones are now the dominant portable music devices. While smartphones have gotten better at this task over the years, they do have some glaring limitations when it comes to music. On the bright side, we can use these limitations to help find the ...more
Silence spreads over these mountains like nothing I've ever felt. If I didn't have Moby blasting in my earphones, there'd probably be no other sounds around. Well, except for someone, Phil probably, murmuring in a nearby tent just low enough to make his words indiscernible. W ...more
The next big iOS version for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch was revealed by Apple at WWDC 2018 and dropped for everyone on Sept. 17, 2018, less than a week after Apple revealed the new iPhone lineup. We've rounded up all the big picture items and secret features and changes we c ...more
You can feel it in your bones. You may die if you don't get this phone. There's just one problem — the price. Suddenly, you come across what seems like manna from heaven. That very device, at a deeply discounted rate, can be yours. The only thing that makes you pause is that ...more
All fields of study have their own language. For people interested in learning about microbes, the language can sometimes be downright difficult — but it doesn't need to be. From antibiotics to xerophiles, we have you covered in an easy-to-understand glossary. Terms are liste ...more
URL tracking codes: you'll see them on almost every link you copy online to share with friends and followers. It could be tens or hundreds of extra characters appended to the end of a URL, which websites and marketers use to tell how you got to the link in the first place. The ...more
A PirateBox creates a network that allows users to communicate wirelessly, connecting smartphones and laptops even when surrounding infrastructure has been disabled on purpose or destroyed in a disaster. Using a Raspberry Pi, we will make a wireless offline server that hosts f ...more