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ReviewsOther GadgetsThis Electric Scooter For Adults Might Replace My Need For a Second Car
Despite their growing popularity in cities like San Francisco as another alternative to cars, electric scooters have always seemed like nothing more than a pricier version of a toy I enjoyed as a kid. But the Unagi, an e-scooter that looks like it was actually designed for grown-ups, gave me a new appreciation for how … Continued
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Tech NewsLarge Steel Balls Wreak Havoc on Seattle Neighborhood After Driver Fails to Secure His Load
The Seattle Police Department (SPD) was forced to shut down a road in West Seattle on Wednesday after a semi-truck unleashed its massive load of steel balls onto its streets. The 2-pound grinding balls, ultimately totaling a dumped load of 44,000 pounds of steel, wreaked havoc on the neighborhood and damaged several cars. The Seattle … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech News
Lyft’s New Subscription Plan Seems Like a Legendary Ripoff
Lyft just announced the broad availability of its new All-Access Plan. This subscription-based service gets you 30 “FREE” Lyft rides (as long as those rides cost $15 or less) every 30 days for $300. After that, subscribers get a 5 percent discount on all rides. If the math that would make this a good deal … Continued
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Tech News
San Francisco’s Electric Scooter Drama Is Getting Feisty
Lime—the San Francisco-based company behind those scooters that threatened to call the cops on people—lost a request on Friday for a temporary restraining order that would have delayed two competitors from launching in the California city next week. TechCrunch reported Friday that Lime filed the lawsuit this week as a last-minute attempt to stop the … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
Los Angeles Devises Plan to Add Absolute Worst Thing About Air Travel to Subways
The agency in charge of Los Angeles’ subways announced at a press conference today that it is working with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to install body scanners in the city’s metro system. The plan to scan the bodies of passengers for “concealed threats” is said to be the first of its kind in the … Continued
By Harri Weber -
Tech NewsThis 1935 Streamlined Car of the Future Looks Like a Beautiful Death Trap
We’ve looked at a lot of weird cars here at Paleofuture. But this one might take the cake. Built in 1935 by Angelo R. Noble just north of Los Angeles, it clearly takes its influence from the other streamlined products of the 1930s. And despite looking vaguely like a tank, it seems like it’d be … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Vaping Pilot Trying to Hide E-Cig Cloud Accidentally Sends Passenger Flight Plummeting
An Air China flight crew had to enact emergency protocols during a flight from Hong Kong to the city of Dalian on Tuesday, all because a co-pilot tried to sneak in a vape break. China’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC) began investigating the alarming incident and found that the co-pilot tried to turn off air-recycling fans … Continued
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Tech News
FBI Warns of ‘Alarming’ Increase in In-Flight Sexual Assaults
Reports of in-flight sexual assaults committed by passengers against passengers are going up by double-digit margins, according to federal crime statistics, and it’s unclear why. Investigating alleged sexual assaults on airplanes falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI. Per CNN, the agency is at a loss to explain the increase in mid-flight sexual assaults, saying … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsPolice Find ‘Human Body Parts’ in Crack in Japanese Bullet Train’s Nose
A bullet train en route to Tokyo reportedly struck and killed a 52-year-old man on Thursday afternoon, but the man’s death wasn’t uncovered until some 20 miles later, where authorities made a grisly discovery. When the train’s driver heard the sound of the impact, he didn’t send a report to the operation center, as he … Continued
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ScienceHealth
Woman Says Poop Fell From Plane and Into Her Sunroof, Splattering Her Face and Giving Her Pink Eye
A woman in Kelowna, British Columbia, says she has pink eye after human feces fell from the sky and through her sunroof, hitting her in the face. Susan Allan says she and her 21-year-old son were struck by the mass of sky poo when they were stopped at a traffic light on May 9. According … Continued
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EartherEnvironmental Justice
Costa Rica Plans to Be the World’s First Fossil Fuel-Free Country
If you’re looking for a beacon of climate hope in our dark, wretched world, look to Costa Rica. The country accounts for a fraction of the world’s carbon emissions, but something like 99 percent of global ambition to address climate change. Case in point: this week, its new president announced he plans to make the … Continued
By Brian Kahn -
Tech News
Elon Musk Is Back to Digging Tunnels, This Time Under DC
Noted tunnel enthusiast Elon Musk is digging again, this time for hazily defined purposes at an abandoned parking lot near the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives headquarters building in northeastern Washington, DC, the Washington Post reports. Per the Post report, Musk’s Boring Company has been granted “an early, and vague, building permit” to … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsFlying Car Crashes Into Building, Pilot and Passenger Survive
On Monday, video surfaced on Reddit showing a SkyRunner “flying car” crashing into a building. And while the video is certainly horrifying, there wasn’t any context for the accident—just the typical Reddit jokes. But we just learned more from SkyRunner. Thankfully, both the pilot and the passenger survived. The full video is on YouTube: According … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsGadgets
Uber and Lyft Have a Hot New Idea for Screwing Over City-Dwellers
The arrival of autonomous vehicles is an inevitability, so it makes sense that before mass adoption hits, companies like Lyft and Uber would want to band together to determine what our self-driving future will look like. Sounds pretty harmless, right? Well, not so fast, because a new pledge by 15 big-name transportation companies seems designed … Continued
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Tech News
Uber’s Big Claim That It’s Not Really a Cab Company Is Bogus, EU Court Rules
For years Uber has been trying to convince the world it is a tech company, not a transportation company. But the highest court in the European Union isn’t having it. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) dealt a blow to the ride-hailing company this week thanks to a 2014 case stemming from a Barcelona taxi … Continued
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Tech News‘Real Life Iron Man’ Sets Record For Fastest Jetpack Flight
We’ve been waiting to get our hands on real life jetpacks for almost a century now. And while you can’t buy them at Costco yet, they seem to be one modest step closer to reality. Richard Browning, test pilot for the British tech company Gravity Industries and “real life Iron Man,” just set the Guinness … Continued
By Matt Novak -
EartherClimate Change
Cities Need to Look Beyond Their Borders When Fighting Climate Change
When you’re in a major city, it can be easy to forget about the outside world. But city life is not a hermetic experience—in fact, the environmental footprints of cities can stretch around the world. A new study shows that cities are overlooking a major source of emissions as they craft policies to transition toward … Continued
By Ari Phillips -
Earther
Thousands of Idled, Dirty Railroad Cars Are Littering the American Landscape
On an overcast day at the end of October, about 25 tanker railcars rolled through the small town of North Creek, New York, north of Saratoga Springs. They were heading for Minerva in Essex county to join a couple of dozen other railcars parked earlier in the month on a 30-mile stretch of track that … Continued
Tracy Staedter -
Tech NewsCheck Out Elon Musk’s Tunnel
Elon Musk and his Boring Company have been very busy digging a deep, long hole under Los Angeles, and Musk wants to show it off. On Saturday, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO posted the first glimpse of a mostly finished portion of the Boring Company’s test site in California. Said tunnel looks pretty legit by … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech News
This 1935 Car of the Future Had Huge Spheres Instead of Wheels
Between flying cars and three-wheeled cars, the period between World War I and World War II had some interesting ideas for the future of automobiles. But this one may have been the weirdest. Who needs wheels when you’ve got giantic rolling spheres? The September 1935 issue of Popular Science included the illustration above, showing off … Continued
By Matt Novak