Jamie Condliffe

Watch Conan Get Stressed Out While He Reviews Stress Relief Apps

Conan—like a lot of people!—has a fairly stressful job, so he decided to test out apps that could help him calm down a little. Perhaps predictably, it doesn’t quite go to plan. Throwing virtual knives, odd Scottish brogues, and even digital massage from beautiful Swedish women don’t seem to cut it. Smashing lightbulbs in real…

Rumor: AT&T Wants to Buy DirecTV

The Wall Street Journal and LA Times are reporting that AT&T is in talks with DirecTV about a possible acquisition of the satellite business and—its 20 million customers. Hot on the heels of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, the newspapers report that the telecom giant may be trying to buy the satellite TV business for…

This Is What’s in a Single Drop of Seawater

That crisp, clear seawater you paddle in isn’t as as pure as you might think. Magnify it 25 times, and you’ll find that it’s full of life. This image was captured by David Littschwager and explained in detail by Dive Shield. It shows a single drop of seawater at 25 times magnification, and allows you…

These Lamps Blow Up Just Like Balloons

These LED lamps don’t have much to them—because most of their integrity is supplied by the air from your lungs, which fills their polyethylene skins. The brainchild of German graduate designer Theo Möller, the Blow lamps are inflated by blowing into a valve at one one end of the aluminum-coated polyethylene tubes. At sufficient pressure,…

This Japanese House Is Entirely Clad in Aluminum

Talk about tin foil hats: this house is for the truly paranoid. Sitting in a small provincial town near Tokyo, this house is clad entirely in a soft metallic coat of aluminum. The brainchild of Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori, Soft-Hard Aluminium House is covered in a kind of quilted aluminum. Flanked by normal residential dwellings,…

DreamWorks: Films of the Future Will Be Paid For By the Inch

Watch films on your TV instead of your tablet? It might cost you—at least, that’s if Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, is right about a future where films are priced according to screen size. Speaking out about his vision of the future of movie consumption, he explained that “a movie screen will be…

When It Comes to Technology, It’s Best to Bow Out Gracefully

Maybe you should stop using Facebook while the going’s good? [XKCD]

This Hack Gives Your DSLR 9 Hours of Battery Life

Take a 10,000mAh Anker battery and a DC coupler from Amazon, add a hot-shoe plate and some industrial strength velcro, and throw it all at your DSLR. Nope, it’s not a craft project—it’ll give your camera an amazing 9 hours of battery life. This hack, by Chris Winter, gives a standard DSLR about 9 times…

Chromecast has been updated to show Google Drive presentations. Which is pretty handy: shove the dongle into your projector, make sure you’re on the same Wi-Fi network, and go present like a corporate rockstar. Perhaps.

This Noir Cartoon Is the Best Explanation of Fractals You’ll Ever See

Math is way more fun when it’s lent some narrative, some purpose—and we’ve never seen a better example than this stunning noir cartoon which explains fractals. You have to watch it. Starring a private eye called Manny Brot, it’s a brooding tale which kicks off with a bump on the head, a mysterious femme fatale…

This Brain-Inspired Microchip Is 9,000 Times Faster Than a Normal PC

You’re looking at Neurogrid: a slab of silicon inspired by the human brain, which is 9,000 times faster than a normal computer brain simulator and uses way less energy to boot. Developed by a team of Stanford bioengineers, it’s worth pointing out that this is hardly the first microchip to be inspired by the human…

A scientists puts the finishing touches to a space launcher thrust chamber at EADS Airbus Space Transportation in Ottobrunn, Germany. If it looks a lot like science fiction, that’s because… well, it is. [ESA]

Harper Lee has finally okayed a digital version of To Kill a Mockingbird. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel will be available as an e-book from July 8th, to coincide with the 54th anniversary of the book’s original publication.

This International Typeface Morphs Flags Into Fonts

This typeface is truly international. The 106-character font is based on national flags from around the world, abstracting their symbols and shapes to create an incredibly inclusive set of characters. The brainchild of Luis Fabra and his team of designers, Multinational Typeface has been designed for the Singapore branch of the international advertising firm Grey.…

Yelp now shows the local businesses that let you pay with Bitcoin, if you like your payment methods risky and volatile.

Now You Can Get Totally Free Voice, Texts, and Data on Your iPhone

FreedomPop’s crazy free voice, text, and data plan is awesome, but it’s just been limited to Android handsets. Now, it’s added iPhone support to its lineup. Now, you can use an iPhone and still get FreedomPop‘s typically great offering: 200 voice minutes, 500 messages and 500MB of data per month, all for free. If you…

Apple’s Updated Macbook Air: Faster Processors, $100 Cheaper

Apple has refreshed its MacBook Air lineup today, with the super-slim laptops now sporting Intel’s latest Haswell silicon to boost their speeds—and selling for $100 less. Both the 11- and 13-inch entry-level Airs now feature a 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, compared to the previous 1.3GHz chip. They still both come with 4GB of…

Not content with original TV, Yahoo is launching a new online channel that will feature one live music show a day for several years. Apparently you can expect “superstars playing stadiums to up-and-comers playing clubs.”

How Many Things Are There?

There aren’t enough humans on Earth to fill the Grand Canyon, and in a lifetime you don’t produce enough saliva to even fill a swimming pool. That suggests that most things around us are countable or measurable: so how many things are there? That question is posed and—kinda—answered in this video by Vsauce. First, though,…

A Praying Mantis Wearing Tiny 3D Glasses for “Scientific Research”

You may have thrown your 3D glasses away a long while back, but not this little critter. After all, this praying mantis has had his glued to his face by scientists in the name of “research.” In fact, this is what Newcastle University scientists in the UK are doing to try and understand the eyes…