TECH

This is What a Fish Thought Looks Like

Akira Muto, Koichi Kawakami, and Junichi Nakai pioneered new technology enabling them to observe neural activity occurring in the zebrafish brain in real time.

A Brief History of SimCity

With a new SimCity coming soon, let's look back at the Sim franchise.

5 Bold Proposals For Cleaning Up Space Junk

A Short History of Revolutionary and Civil War Submarines

One Company's Bold Plan to Mine Asteroids

Brace yourselves for the coming asteroid gold rush. U.S. company Deep Space Industries this week revealed plans to send spacecraft on missions to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals. According to the announcement, the company plans to dispatch a

Some Full Body Scanners Are Being Removed

The Diabolical Motivations of 11 Video Game Villains

In video games, every violent gang and alien race in the known universe (this one and parallel) cannot stand human civilization. Have you ever wondered why, though?

Why Do We Measure Engines in Terms of Horsepower?

From your car, to your lawn mower, to your snow blower, to your chainsaw—the power of almost every engine you deal with is measured in terms of horsepower. None of these things seemingly have anything to do with horses, so where did that measurement come

How Did the Game Genie Work?

The Game Genie was the technological holy grail of my Nintendo-playing childhood. Here was a device that would let me play Super Mario Bros. with infinite lives, or get infinite rockets in Metroid. Here's exactly how it worked, and how people are still us

Did Blowing into Nintendo Cartridges Really Help?

When I was a kid with a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), sometimes my games wouldn't load. But I, like all kids, knew the secret: take out the game cartridge, blow on the contacts, and put it back in. And it seemed to work. (When it failed, I'd ju

12 Cat-Related Patents That Are Really Quite Bizarre

To visit Google's patent website is to lose yourself in a black hole of totally weird wannabe inventions—a surprising number of which are for your feline friends. From toys meant to encourage exercise to systems that deliver live birds for food, here are

7 Ingenious Hidden Spy Cameras

There may be no more important tool of espionage than the camera. It’s ideal for blackmail, collecting information, stealing documents, and reconnaissance. Because the technology involved is relatively simple, it’s possible to insert a camera into just ab

Dot-WTF? These Top-Level Domains Could Be Coming Your Way

In June, ICANN announced that over 1,400 new generic top-level domain names (in other words, .wedding, .sex, and .lawyer) were under consideration to join the familiar .com and its kin. Weirdness has ensued. A Brief Technical Lesson In the world of we

10 Stainless Steel, Spring-Loaded Things You Should Know About the Swiss Army Knife (Now With a Corkscrew!)

Image credit: Flickr user AJ Cann Pocket-sized multitools are a dime a dozen, but the Swiss Army Knife is an icon. Its name is shorthand for versatility and its cross-emblazoned red handle has gone to the North Pole, to the top of Mount Everest, to the d

What's Wrong With PROTECT IP and SOPA?

You may have heard about some new bills making their way through the U.S. Congress, related to piracy on the internet. But what are they and what's the big deal? Here's a simple guide to what the laws are and why so many internet nerds (like myself) are

Yelp Reviews For Places You Can't (or shouldn't) Go

With its user-generated reviews and recommendations, Yelp can be great for trying to find a fun spot for dinner. But there are plenty of profiles that aren't so helpful, and not just because of the quality of the reviews.

Jules Verne: Poignantly Prescient

When we think of Jules Verne, we think of the genius behind 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Journey to the Center of the Earth (my personal favorite of only because I read it first, at an impressionable age, and it got me on a sci-fi kick). In these stori

4 Famous Hackers Who Got Caught

Just recently we were reminded how delicate our online ecosystem really is when the mysterious group Anonymous took down big websites like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal because they refused to support WikiLeaks. Anonymous is the latest in the fascinating h

QR Codes

Last week we announced that we're giving away a BRAND NEW FORD FIESTA in NYC through a special QR code hunt a week from today. But what on earth is a QR code? Well, if you've ever been to Japan, you probably already know, because they're very popular over

8 Alternative Fantasy Leagues

In honor of tonight's mental_floss fantasy football league draft, here's a story on alternative fantasy leagues that first appeared last summer. Fantasy football drafts are firing up, and workplace productivity will soon grind to a halt as half the offic

Why Did Soap Operas Look Different From Other TV Shows?

Soap operas, "soaps" or "my stories," as many a <em>grandmother</em> has called them, are dramas presented in a serial format on daytime television or radio. Their name comes from a time when old serial dramas broadcast on radio had soap manufacturers (Pr

7 Hi-Tech Tees

We're all used to posts about the intersection between technology and design, or technology and medicine, but what about technology and fashion? Here are some t-shirts making the most of the latest and greatest tech innovations. (note: a few of these shir

5 People Who Exploited the Web to Get Hired

My friend and co-blogger here on the _floss, Rob Lammle, had an awesome post a few weeks back: How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job. While I wasn't able to find quite as many people who tweeted their way INTO a job, there's at least one in the list below,

Apple's iPad - some observations

I just typed "iPad" into the mental_floss back-end search engine and was amazed to discover that we haven't yet written anything substantial on this possibly game-changing device. There was this post, the interview with Chris Anderson of Wired magazine t

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