Chris Mills

The Battle For Emoji Diversification Is Almost Over

The fight for emoji diversity is one with a long and storied history, but it looks like victory might be on the horizon: in the latest version of OS X, Apple is giving you more choice than just white emoji or racist emoji. In case you’re not up to speed on the battle for #emojidiversity,…

No, this isn’t some hi-tech torture dungeon: it’s the Maxwell Test Chamber at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands. It’s used to simulate the dead of space for satellites. Inside, no-one can hear you scream. The spikes are made of foam, and serve to absorb any internal signals from satellites that are being tested.…

Decoding The Internet’s Hidden Infrastructure

The internet has obviously changed our virtual lives beyond recognition — heck, no-one had ‘virtual lives’ before the internet — but it’s also had a marked, if more subtle impact on our physical surroundings. Ingrid Burrington’s project ‘Networks of New York’ is an attempt to decode some of the internet infrastructure hiding in plain sight…

SpaceX Will Make Its Second Attempt At A Rocket Landing On Sunday

After its first attempt to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a drone barge went up in flames, SpaceX isn’t quitting: round two will take place this Sunday. A SpaceX rocket will be used to launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a US government satellite that will monitor ‘space weather’. The launch is scheduled…

Green Screens Were Way More Clever Before Computers

In the digital age, it’s pretty simple to understand how green screens work: anything of a certain color in the image is replaced with the background. But green screens were around for decades before digital photography, and the old technology was impressively crafty. As YouTube master-explainer Tom Scott explains in this video, there were two…

A Smartphone Dongle That Will Tell You If You’ve Got STDs

After the hoverboard, there are few sci-fi inventions more worked-on than Star Trek’s tricorder. Portable, simple diagnostic machines have been promised for years — there’s even a $7 million prize for building one — but most designs are still years away from reality. While this particular smartphone dongle certainly isn’t a tricorder — it can…

Someone Beat Amazon To The Drone Delivery Party

Drone delivery might be a pipe dream, but it’s Amazon’s pipe dream. Well, not any more: Chinese online shopping giant Alibaba has a drone delivery pilot programme, starting today. From now until Friday, select members of the public in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai will be able to order a particular brand of ginger tea (which…

This Cable Charges Your Phone Faster – Sort Of

You might think that plugging a USB cable into a USB socket would mean your phone always juices up at the same speed — but you would be sorely mistaken. Charging your phone is a surprisingly complicated thing to get right, a problem that this particular crowdfunding campaign is on a mission to solve. Let’s…

A week ago, while you were safely tucked up in bed, a group of NASA scientists up in Alaska were preparing to launch a rocket into the Northern Lights. The Auroral Spatial Structures Probe was a mid-sized rocket, launched 30 miles into the thermosphere to study the electromagnetic energy that heats the atmosphere during the…

This Is What It’s Like To See Sound

Synesthesia is a superpower phenomenon whereby a lucky group of people see color when exposed to stimuli, most commonly sounds. It’s the inspiration behind some famous art and music — but it’s virtually impossible for mere mortals to get their heads around. This visualization is the best attempt I’ve yet seen. CHROMO comes from the…

Finally, A Way To Feel Magnetic Fields Without Implants

I’ve always been captivated bybiohackers who implant tiny magnetsunder their skin, giving themselves the ability to physically feel magnetic fields. However, I’m not quite dedicated enough to go through the hassle (or commitment) of actually going under the knife. In this month’sNature Communications, a team of scientists have published something that could offer a magnetic…

Report: Amazon Might Buy Up Radioshack Stores

Earlier today, RadioShack stumbled one step closer to death with the news that the NYSE is trying to delist its stock — basically, the company is fucked. And according to Bloomberg, Amazon — which is, let’s be honest, the number one RadioShack murder suspect — might buy up some of their retail stores. Bloomberg’s report…

A Giant Telescope Will Search The Stars For ‘Planet X’

For years, astronomers have been searching (pointlessly?) for ‘Planet X‘, a rumored Earth-size planet said to live in the outer reaches of the Solar System (and which is going to collide with Earth and kill us all, if you listen to the truthers). NPRhas taken a look at the search for ‘Planet X’, and the…

This Socket Makes Plugging Devices In Way Easier

I am willing to bet that at some point in the last few months, you slightly struggled to plug something in. Not a particularly difficult scrap: just enough to cost you a few seconds, turn on a light, or actually put your iPad down. Well, someone is now here to solve your most first-world of…

There Are Five Other Countries Hidden In This Norwegian Flag

This is either an incredibly simple or incredibly lazy ad, depending on your point of view. To try and demonstrate the number of locations that Norwegian Airlines flies to, M&C Saatchi hid the flags of five other countries in the Norwegian standard. Well, sort of. Red, white and blue are probably some of the most…

Drug Dealers Are Using Nokia Dumbphones To Stay Ahead Of “The Feds”

According to a story from the UK edition of Vice (a story which, I hasten to add, relies on a source named ‘K2’ and should therefore be taken with the requisite gallon of salt), drug dealers in the fair city of Birmingham have turned to dumphones in an attempt to evade the police. The particular…

This Fleet Of Micro-Satellites Will Use GPS To Predict The Weather

Weather forecasting is one of those sciences that never seems to be quite as good as we want it to be. But what if it had more data? That’s the idea behind Spire, a tech startup which wants to use a huge fleet of tiny, cheap satellites to tell you when it’s going to rain.…

These Balloonists Just Broke A Decades-Old Distance Record

In the surprisingly competitive world of long-distance ballooning, the world distance record is the holy grail — more or less the equivalent of the marathon record. Somewhere just off the San Fransisco coastline, two guys just broke that record — and they’re still flying. The US-Russian duo of Troy Bradley and Leonid Tiukhtyaev left Japan…

This Star Model Is Based On Nothing But Shadows

Saturn’s rings are already mind-blowingly large — about 70,000 kilometres across — but astronomers at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands have found a much more extensive ring system. At least, they think they have — all they can actually see are shadows. The discovery of the rings came about during observation of star j1407,…

A Brief History Of Emergency Alerts On Your Phone

As I sit here, in my calm, non-snowpocalpysed city reading Twitter, there’s one definite theme emerging from blizzard-bound New Yorkers: alcohol is a good coping mechanism! But also, everyone is getting unsolicited alerts about the weather on their phones. Here’s why. Although it might seem natural in a post-Yo world that your phone will tell…