Jamie Condliffe

Samsung Has Convinced Heathrow Airport to Create Terminal Galaxy S5

If you land at Heathrow in the next two weeks, don’t get too confused if you walk through Terminal Galaxy S5—because, somehow, Samsung has managed to convince the airport to rebrand its entire wing for a two-week period. Amazingly, Heathrow must have been offered enough cold, hard cash to allow Sammy to run around the…

Peer Through the Window of a Soyuz Capsule Just Returned to Earth

This isn’t a steampunk porthole or part of a move set: you’re looking through the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule that touched down on Earth on Wednesday May 14th. The capsule carried Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick…

Google Has Most of Your Email, Even If You Don’t Use Gmail

Even if you’re careful about choosing how and where your email is sent, chances are you reply to plenty of messages sent from Gmail. And, as it turns out, that probably means that Google has most of your email, whether you like it or not. Benjamin Mako Hill—who runs his own email server—decided to work…

Circle Is a Free and Approachable Bitcoin Bank For Everyday Folks

Bitcoin services don’t perhaps have the best of track records right now, and they can often appear niche and daunting. Circle hopes to change to change that,though, by offering a free and accessible bitcoin banking service for everyday folks. The service, having raised $26 million in funding, is opening its service today—though it’s a limited…

Warner, Universal and Sony have all bought stakes in Shazam, according to the WSJ. Reckon it’ll identify songs on those labels preferentially?

Which Countries Drink the Most If You Ignore Abstainers

Earlier this week the World Health Organisation ranked the globe’s biggest drinking nations—but it didn’t quite tell the entire story. This is what the data looks like if you ignore abstainers. Those pesky non-drinkers skew the average slightly, you see. While most of Belarus—the highest consuming nation according to the WHO—drinks, then, it doesn’t mean…

Never Forget a Photoshop Shortcut Again With This Interactive App

To use Photoshop like a pro, you need to know your keyboard shortcuts—but with so many to remember, you can easily feel more rookie than ever. This interactive app should help you out, by telling you in a jiffy which keys will help you get to work. Application Shortcut Mapper was created by Waldo Bronchart,…

Google’ rather ambitious plans to build a 950,000-square foot HQ in the King’s Cross district of London have been delayed: it now won’t arrive until at least 2017.

If You Love Sitting on Stairs, This Is the Sofa For You

Everyone seems to sit on the stairs at parties—so why not embrace the fact with your furniture? That’s exactly what Canadian designer Geof Ramsay has done with his Steps bench. Ramsay’s clearly been to many a house party, where he’s noticed people gravitate towards the stairs to take a seat. He explained to Dezeen: “For…

20 Day Stranger Shares Your Life With A Random Human Being

Fancy sharing your day-to-day life with someone you don’t know, in return for a glimpse into their own world? Then 20 Day Stranger—an app which tracks your location and what you’re doing, then anonymously shares it with one other person—could be for you. Put together by the MIT Media Lab’s Playful Systems group, it’s an…

Comcast Reckons All Its Users Will Be Data Capped in 5 Years Time

A Comcast executive has said that the company expects to implement usage-based billing—that’s data caps to you and me—for all of its customers within the next five years. The news came out of a call with investors yesterday. In fact, Comcast already applies data caps in some areas—including parts of Alabama, Georgia, Central Kentucky, Maine…

Look at the NSA Implanting Backdoors into Intercepted Electronics

We’ve known for months that the NSA has penchant for intercepting packages containing commercial electronic equipment to implant backdoors in them. Now, there are images which show what that process looks like. A new trove of documents, released alongside Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide, show what the NSA does when it gets its…

This Is the World’s Oldest Sperm

You’re looking at the world’s oldest sperm. At 17 million years old, it’s not quite as lively as it once was—but it still took scientists some serious investigation to identify it. The samples in which it resides were discovered at the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site by a team including University of New South Wales…

A Microsoft update for Windows 8.1 mentions that it “adds support to the Surface Pro 3 camera.” That’s either a typo, or a big hint that a new tablet is on the way…

Beware of Skimmers on Postal Service Stamp Kiosks

Crooks will co to many lengths to steal your details—from USB sticks to cameras on subways—but now they’re even cropping up on Postal Service stamp kiosks, too. Krebs on Security reports that the United States Postal Inspection Service is investigating a series of skimming incidents on automated stamp vending machines across the U.S., with consumers…

These Mice Are Lit Up With Quantum Dots

Do not adjust your monitor: these mice are supposed to glow. The eery colors emanating from their bodies is a result of quantum dots injected into the bloodstream—in an attempt to establish how nanoparticles accumulate in mammalian bodies. While nanoparticles crop up everywhere these days—in everything from food to socks—it’s not 100 percent clear that…

George R. R. Martin Explains Why He Writes Game of Thrones in DOS

Sometimes, you need the tool that’s best suited to the job in hand. And for George R. R. Martin, that means using an archaic word processor—WordStar 4.0, running on DOS, no less—to write Game of Thrones. He explained why to Conan last night. First, it means that he has a computer dedicated to writing—obviously he…

FCC Reaffirms It’s Considering Treating Cable Companies as Utilities

The FCC is changing direction more regularly than a yoyo right now: first it plans to create a fast-lane internet, then it doesn’t. Now, its senior lawyer has reaffirmed that it’s considering treating broadband providers like utilities companies. In a chat session on Twitter, Gigi Sohn—the FCC’s senior counsel for external affairs—explained that the regulator…

Anyone in the U.S. Can Buy Google Glass Now

Google has formally announced that it’s opening sales of Glass to everyone in the U.S.. If they’re in stock and you have $1,500 to spare, you can buy a pair. The move follows a one-off day in April which saw Google open its sales up to everyone in the country, and then an unofficial report…

Graphene Could Absorb an Unlimited Amount of Heat

A fundamental law of material science could be rewritten by graphene: in simulations and experiment, scientists have shown that graphene’s heart absorption varies with the size of the sample, which means it could absorb an unlimited amount of heat. Up until now, French physicist Joseph Fourier’s observations have held true: namely, that conductivity is an…