Jamie Condliffe

A 90-Year Human Life in Weeks (And How You’ll Spend Them)

Ever wondered how your life might pan out? Well, certain aspects of it are fairly predictable—as this wonderful chart, breaking down a 90-year life in weeks, demonstrates. Put together by Wait But Why, the chart on the left shows the blank canvas that is 90 years in weeks: a sea of time in which you…

Google Play Movies & TV now offers offline viewing on Chromebooks—handy, given the hardware’s other shortcomings away from an internet connection.

iOS 8 Lets You Scan Your Credit Card With Your Camera Instead of Typing

Apple’s new iOS 8 is packed with neat little features, but 9to5Mac has just discovered a new one that’s pretty neat: the latest version of Safari will let you scan a credit card with the device’s camera instead of typing. When confronted with a card details form, Safari already allowed you to choose a credit…

Is There a Cleaner Way to Make Metals?

Making metal is a dirty business, and we don’t just mean in terms of getting your hands dirty. Creating useable metals from the ores that are dug from the ground is a heavily polluting endeavor—but it might be about to get a whole lot cleaner. Most metals are created in a two-step process. First, the…

The UK has announced plans to hand out life sentences to hackers that undertake “cyberattacks which result in loss of life, serious illness or injury or serious damage to national security, or a significant risk thereof.” It is, however, very broadly written—so it could end up being applied more liberally than one may like.

This Is Britain’s Ultra-Secret Middle East Spy Base

It’s emerged that Britain has an ultra-secret spy base in the Middle East which taps undersea cables running through the region. The Register reports that the base and its operations are”above-top-secret” and, despite being leaked by Edward Snowden, have until now remained under wraps. Apparently some media organizations have been subject to government pressure not…

No, this isn’t the Eye of Sauron: it’s an amazing image of the ringed star HR 4796A, captured by the new Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope atop Cerro Paranal in Chile. The newly installed SPHERE filters out light to acquire exceptionally sharp images like these—unlike any telescope before it.…

This Is What Happens When You Ask the Internet What You Should Draw

The Internet is a weird and wonderful place, but what happens when you turn to it for inspiration? Ben Redford found out when he sought suggestions to create a new artwork—drawing only what people told him to. Put together as a Kickstarter, Internetopia is a bizarre but rather pretty artwork where the canvas was filled…

Report: NASA Can’t Afford Manned Missions to Mars

A large-scale review of NASA’s human spaceflight program has revealed that it doesn’t have the budget to successfully undertake manned missions to Mars. The report—a 286-page monster by the National Research Council—took 18 months and, ironically, $3.2 million to perform. The main conclusion: the space agency currently has an unsustainable strategy for landing human feet…

How Your Cell Phone Knows Where You Are — Even Without GPS

Nowadays our phones use GPS to let us work out where we are. But mobile phone networks were able to work out where you were long before phones got smart—and this video explains how. It’s all to do with base stations and some clever math which is used to send data to your phone. Crucially,…

Intel Wants to Make Your Office Entirely Cable-Free By 2016

A rat’s nest of cables at the back of a desk is truly the sign of the gadget-obsessed. But Intel plans to end all that, and soon: it wants your desk—hell, your entire digital life—to be completely wireless by 2016. At this week’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Intel’s Senior Vice President Kirk Skaugen explained…

Here’s a List of Macs Compatible With OS X Yosemite

Monday’s announcement of OS X Yosemite unveiled some pretty cool new features coming to your Mac. But will your computer be able to run the new OS? For those who want to know if the computer sat in front of them will support the OS, Ars Technica has compiled a list of compatible hardware. It…

Conan Shows How Google’s New Cars Have No Driver—Or Mercy

Depending on who you listen to, Google’s driverless cars are either exactly what we need or doomed to failure. But, as Conan points out, that’s all beside the point until the bugs are ironed out. This (lightly edited) video shows what we might be in store for in the coming years: cars with no driver,…

This Beautiful Bench Has a Real Sense of Balance

If you like to challenge gravity, the Leaning Bench might be just the ticket for you: it uses physics to stay upright, but fans of sudden movements may find that they need to sit a little more carefully if they’re to remain seated. Created by Izabela Boloz, the bench features just two legs, and relies…

Google Glass Could Let Soldiers Shoot Around Corners

Google Glass is finding a place on the mean city streets, but it could also prove useful in the battlefield, too. Soon, Glass could allow soldiers to shoot round corners, using the HUD to take aim while behind cover. The concept comes from Austin-based startup TrackingPoint which creates precision-guided firearms that help improve the aim…

Cadmium Arsenide: A 3D Alternative to Graphene That’s Way More Useful

There’s no denying that graphene is a wonderful material—strong, flexible, and highly conductive—but it’s taking a long time to become a commercial reality. Now, scientists working with a material called cadmium arsenide believe it offers many of the same benefits—but could actually be far easier to use in the real world. Researchers from Oxford, Stanford…

Developers are reporting that iOS 8 seems to display app icons on the lock screen when they’ll work nearby—like when you’re walking past Starbucks or sat in a train station. Apple didn’t announce the feature Monday.

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter sunshield undergoes thermal testing. The infrared image on the right shows the temperature of the surface; the red region is at a toasty 380 Celsius or 715 Fahrenheit. [ESA]

Google Now Offers End-to-End Encryption on Email

Google has released the source code for a new extension for Chrome—but this is no ordinary extension. It’s called End-to-End, and it will provide users with the ability to encrypt their email the whole way from outbox to recipient. The new system uses the open-source encryption standard OpenPGP, and should make it easy for users…

Nevada Roads Could Be Home to Computer-Assisted Trucks By 2015

If driverless cars give you the jitters, how about computer-assisted trucks instead? Because two 18-wheelers in Nevada look set to use automation to make them safer and more efficient—and they could be on the roads as soon as 2015. Popular Science reports that the new computer-aided trucks, developed by Peloton Tech, can maintain a nice,…