Chris Mills

Internet Inventor Vint Cerf Thinks the FCC’s Proposed Wi-Fi Rules Are Crap

The FCC’s latest controversy is over a proposed set of changes to the rules surrounding Wi-Fi routers, in theory to make them more secure, and less easy to abuse. But a group of big-name internet experts would beg to differ. The FCC’s regulations are mostly designed to make sure that any radio-emitting device—including the Wi-Fi…

The Asus Zenfone 2 is a cheap-and-cheerful Android powerhouse, which makes it a prime candidate for people wanting to tinker. Asus just made that job a whole lot easier, offering up a tool to unlock the bootloader (and flash custom ROMs) with minimal effort. [Asus via Android Central]

Nothing Says Nerdy Like a Transforming Darth Vader Mug

Some people will drink coffee out of any old ceramic receptacle. But me? I want a mug that reminds me of the power of the Dark Side every time I drink. The $12 mug from ThinkGeek changes color when you pour a hot liquid into it. In the cupboard, it’s just your regular run-of-the-mill Vader…

Apple Quietly Made the Fusion Drive Much Smaller

For the last few years, Apple’s iMacs have tried to combine the best of both storage worlds in the Fusion Drive, a SSD/hard-drive combo that’s meant to blend performance and storage capacity into one. The newly refreshed iMacs are sporting Fusion Drives, but they’re much smaller than their predecessors. The Fusion Drives in previous iMacs…

The GranitePhone Thinks Your Privacy Is Worth $850

How much do you value your darkest secrets? Enough to pay $850 for a $300 Android phone? Archos and Sikur, makers of a super-secure mid-range handset think so. On the surface, the GranitePhone looks more or less like a run-of-the-mill Android device: a 5-inch 1080p screen, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, Snapdragon 615…

Kickstarter Bans Product For Not Existing

Kickstarter and vaporware go hand-in-hand, but as it turns out, there is a limit. That limit is a laser-powered razor with no good prototype. According to an email sent to backers and obtained by The Register, Kickstarter has suspended the Laser Razor project after deciding it’s “in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of…

A New PS4 Remote Makes the Playstation a Halfway Decent Set-Top Box

Sony’s Playstation 4 does most of the TV-watching things a TV-watching box is meant to do, apart from the fact that watching Netflix using two analog sticks is a pain. Sony’s new Bluetooth universal remote should fix all that. The new PS4 Universal Media Remote, $30 from your favorite internet retailer later this month, should…

Google’s New Video Teaches You How To Google

Google—or is it Alphabet?—has so many fingers in so many technologically-refined pies that it’s difficult to keep track sometime. So this Halloween, your friendly neighborhood search company would like to remind you what it’s all about. In a new series of YouTube videos, Google’s trying to remind people about its core product: the ability to…

NASA Needs Your Help Testing Its New Space Suits

As Matt Damon has proved beyond doubt, wandering around on Mars takes one hell of a cool space suit. NASA’s current suits—and suit-testing protocols—aren’t up to snuff, and it wants your help making something better. In a dryly-worded press release, NASA has said that it “is seeking proposals for test methods or procedures to assess…

Apple Doesn’t Think the Battery Difference Between Its New iPhones Is a Big Deal

Apple’s latest iPhone has shipped with two slightly different versions of the A9 processor, one made by Samsung, and one by TSMC. Some people have reported a difference in battery life depending on the chip inside, but Apple disagrees. According to a few side-by-side tests reported on forums and YouTube, the TSMC processor gets two…

If you’re an Android gamer with very little money, good news: the Google Play Store is currently selling a bunch of popular games like Monopoly and Need for Speed for $0.10. Good time to stock up. [Play Store via Droid Life]

Swiftkey Has a Neural Network Keyboard and It’s Creepily Good

It’s always been a little comforting that no matter how clever our smartphones get, the autocorrect will still be a hot mess of dumb suggestions. Well, Swiftkey’s new keyboard uses a neural network to think more like a human—and it’s almost too good at it. Up until now, most prediction models for keyboards have used…

Go Find Out If Your iPhone Has a Good or a Bad Processor

As it turns out, not all new iPhones are created equal. There’s two different versions of the A9 processor, and while they’re mostly the same, one of the chips seems to be killing battery life. As Anantech noted shortly after the phone’s launch, there are two different A9 chips: one made by Samsung on a…

The FAA is Planning a System to Find Illegal Drones Near Airports

Flying a quadrotor near an actual airport is a dumb idea to begin with, but it hasn’t stopped some people. So, the FAA is testing technology that would track down drones—or any other R/C aircraft—that are getting a little too close for comfort. Rather than tracking the drones themselves, which would require all sorts of…

Former Reuters Employee Matthew Keys Found Guilty of Hacking 

Earlier today, a Sacramento jury found former Reuters social media manager Matthew Keys guilty on three counts of computer hacking. The charges related to a 2010 incident, where Keys posted login credentials to the content management of the Tribune Company to an Anonymous chatroom. The Tribune Company owned properties including the LA Times, which was…

VW’s Giant Diesel Recall of Shame Begins in January

VW is still in full damage-control mode over itscheating diesel cars, and slowly but surely, the pieces are falling into place: if everything goes to plan, the first cars in Europe will be recalled in January 2016, to be finished by the end of 2016. That’s a long time to use a rental. The details…

For $40,000, This Bang & Olufsen Speaker Should Play Sound in 11 Dimensions

Bang & Olufsen will freely admit that its new BeoLab 90 speaker is ‘not for everyone’. Given that most people can’t blow $40,000 on a car, let alone speaker-systems-as-modern-art, that’s not surprising. But at least for the money, you should get a nice hi-fi. The 90 is being designed to celebrate the company’s 90th anniversary,…

Reddit’s First Video AMA With Neil DeGrasse Tyson Is Just Another Celebrity Q&A

A new, post-Ellen Reddit is here, and it’s a different kind of beast, with high-quality video AMAs with big-name celebrities. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is the first, and although it’s a very good video, it also feels a little bit weird. Nothing about this video is Reddit. It opens with a Tyson monologue over black-and-white images…

Microsoft Surface Pro 4: Bigger Screen, Faster Guts

Now that Apple has joined the convertible don’t-call-it-a-laptop party with theiPad Pro, Microsoft is giving the Surface Pro a much-needed specs bump. Productivity has never been so competitive. The Surface Pro 4 is a direct successor to the Pro 3 (duh), meaning it’s a fully-fledged laptop replacement, with a beefy and capable processor. (That’s less…

Microsoft’s Crazy HoloLens AR Will Be $3000 For Developers, Next Year

Microsoft just blew us (and some virtual robots) away with a demo of its HoloLens ‘mixed reality’ gaming system. The good news? Those spider robots are just virtual. The bad: HoloLens still isn’t available for consumers. Starting today, Microsoft is taking applications for developers who want to get their hands on a HoloLens set. If…