A lot’s changed in the world of audio over the last 170 years. Gone are the days of cranking a handle to make noise, replaced instead by silicon and circuity to pump out digital tunes. This beautiful illustration walks you through how and when those changes happened.
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Just like the products and services they sell, company logos have a tendency to change over time. In this series of animations by Nick DiLallo, you can see how the logos of six big firms have changed over the years.
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As babies, it doesn’t take long for us to realize that—as fun as it is to grab on to everything within our reach—it’s even more fun to chuck those things as far and as hard as we can. And now, thanks to a new study, we know the reason behind that delightfully destructive pitcher’s instinct—and it all started with Homo erectus almost two million years ago.
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It makes sense that an animal might hid away in the ground while it’s maturing, but 17 years is a long, seemingly random amount of time. But it’s not like cicadas picked a number out of hate and were stuck with it. There’s a something specific about that number, and numberphile is sussing it out.
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A lot has happened since 2007. Just look at how much the iPhone home screen has changed. Or how little it has? Back in the days of the first iPhone (it wasn’t even called iOS yet), we couldn’t get third party apps or even move apps around. Now, we have a bigger screen and all these funktastic icons.
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Swallows that nest on roadsides appear to have evolved shorter wings to help them maneuver better and avoid cars, claim a team of scientists from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. More »
If you’ve ever sat in a bath staring at your fingers as they wrinkle involuntarily, you’re in good company. Now, a team of scientists has worked out why it happens. More »
If it’s not one thing, it’s another: a new hypothesis floating around the scientific community suggests that evolving bigger brains and superior intellect may have led to a dramatically elevated risk of cancer in humans. Thanks, brain. More »
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Are you reading this? Seriously, are you? Sure, we know you think you are, but what if you’re just a sub-feature of a complex computer program. A sprite, nothing more than the creation of software. The problem with this question is, how would you ever know? You wouldn’t, right? Well, not so fast there. Turns out, maybe there is a way to unravel the matrix (if there is one). It’ll come as no surprise, that this is one of the topics in this week’s collection of alternative stories. Think that’s all we got? Not even close. We’ll explore the truth behind cloning dinosaurs, as well a rare performance by singing mice — all before dinner. Or is it really dinner? This is alt-week.
Continue reading Alt-week 10.13.12: is the Universe a simulation, cloning dinosaurs and singing mice
Alt-week 10.13.12: is the Universe a simulation, cloning dinosaurs and singing mice originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The placebo effect seems to make no sense: get mildly ill, take a dummy pill without knowing it’s ineffective, and you’ll recover in much the same way as someone taking real drugs. But new evidence suggests that we might have evolved the placebo effect to save energy. More »
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