firehose

Researchers in Italy have warned that Michelangelo's David is at risk of toppling, and they say its ankles are to blame. The celebrated marble sculpture, housed at a museum in Florence, stands at about 17 feet and weighs over 12,000 pounds. It's remained largely intact for more than 500 years, but tiny cracks in its ankles may threaten its stability, according to recent findings from Italy's National Research Council (CNR), published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Experts have long said that David is at risk of collapsing due to the poor-quality marble that Michelangelo used, as well as its precarious pose. Because of these structural problems, an earthquake or even vibrations from nearby construction could cause it to fall. To test its stability, researchers from CNR and the University of Florence created small plaster replicas of the sculpture and exposed them to forces stronger than gravity inside a centrifuge. Based on their results, they believe the ankle micro-fractures developed after years of outdoor exposure in a public square, where it leaned forward at an angle of about five degrees. David was put on public display outside a Florentine government building in 1504, when it was first unveiled, before being moved inside the Accademia Gallery in 1873.

The cracks have been covered in plaster in the past, only to resurface later. It's not yet clear whether efforts to stabilize the work are underway, though some have called for it to be moved to an earthquake-proof room, away from Florence's busy city center.

Once upon a time (that is, in the early 1960s), if you wanted to play a game on a computer, your options were pretty limited. While a few experiments in game creation had been done on oscilloscopes and the like, the fact was, if you wanted a game to really put your fancy 200 kHz computer through its paces, you were going to have to punch the code for it into the paper tape yourself. So, in 1962, that’s exactly what a handful of M.I.T. students did, spending roughly 200 hours putting together Spacewar!, an epic, dramatic space opera featuring hours of cut scenes, performances by celebrity voice actors, and extensive social network integration, complete with in-app purchases.

Or, rather, it featured two spaceships (“The Wedge” and “The Needle”) controlled by knobs on the front of the computer, and a star in the middle of the screen ...

Deadline reports that the title of the long-running syndicated game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? could soon sound even more like a dare, as Terry Crews is in final talks to host. Crews is already plenty busy with his role on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but apparently not so busy that he can’t make room for coaxing the answers to trivia questions out of Millionaire contestants—possibly by just reaching in and ripping them right out of their throats to save time. It’s also expected Crews could shave a few minutes off every episode by responding to their pansy-ass requests to “use a lifeline” by being Terry Crews. “You want to be a millionaire or what?” Crews would ask some stammering, soft-bodied loser as they slink back into the darkness. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

If he takes the job, Crews would succeed previous host Cedric The ...