Oh hi there! Could you come to my place and hurl my phone into the ocean? Because I can't stop playing Pako Car Chase Simulator.

In the 80s, Zilog Inc. made the Z80 chip used in the ZX81 home computer. These days, they also make "Captain Zilog" — a delightfully bonkers comic to promote their… Read the rest of the article: A comic book by microchip company Zilog

Using organized teams of locals, Motor City Mapping has created an amazing map of blight in Detroit — letting neighbors and city officials see the precise condition of 400,000 houses.

In California's wealthy Cowan Heights, they used 572.4 gallons per person from July to September 2014. In Compton? 63.6 gallons.

We don't know if the moon actually has any subterranean lava tubes, but if they do exist, a new analysis suggests they could be enormous.

At Popular Science, Sarah Fecht uses some awesomely old-school dataviz techniques.

The weird stellar winds of Eta Carinae are hard to visualize — so astronomers used a Makerbot to create 3D models that they could hold in their hands.

If you're on Genius reading Book V of The Iliad, the recommendation system has some suggestions for you.

Twiddle a few knobs and in about five minutes you're making thick, lovely bleepy sounds. Great for a) creating indie-game background music b) procrastinating. (Thanks to Mefi for finding this!)

My friend Tricia Wang is an amazing tech ethnographer who's crisscrossing China — and recording her observations on an amazing Instagram feed.

Here's a gallery of programs written in the Wolfram Language, short enough to fit in a tweet — and producing lovely results.

Cats vocalize at higher frequencies than humans, so they often ignore our music. Now two scientists have made songs specifically for cats. (Audio here.)

It's called Conquered by Clippy. Rule 34 continues to bestride the Internet like a colossus, apparently. Oh, and there's more …

Metaphor makes you more empathetic, it seems: When subjects in a new study read metaphors, they got better at identifing the emotion in pictures of people's eyes.

Ian Bogost argues we need more games that focus not on characters, but on systems — like cities, economies, language, or physics.

Check out "Ghost in the MP3," a eerie song made from the audio that was removed from "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega when it was turned into an MP3.

Today, NASA is set to launch an array of four satellites that will fly in a pyramid-shaped formation — to produce a 3D image of how the magnetic fields of… Read the rest of the article: Four satellites that fly in pyramid formation

Rules for the Black Birdwatcher – With Drew LanhamWatch this video on YouTube "Never wear a hoodie. Ever." (Thanks to Jeet Heer for pointing this one out!)

Do you often have 83 open tabs on your browser? Can't refind the one you want? [RAISES HAND] Try out Vivaldi, a new browser with power-user features for managing tab… Read the rest of the article: Vivaldi, a browser to help you manage "tab chaos"

Mattel's new "Hello Barbie" will "learn about its users over time." How? By recording what the child says and sending it to servers operated by ToyTalk (the company that makes… Read the rest of the article: "Hello, Barbie" eavesdrops on kids, sends what it hears to Mattel