Jamie Condliffe

This Giant Pin Screen Will Render Your Face at the Winter Olympics

If you head along to this year’s Sochi Winter Olympics, you could be the face of the games. Quite literally, actually, thanks to the British architect Asif Khan‘s Megaface—a giant pinscreen on the side of a building that will morph to display the scanned faces of visitors. Forming one side of Russian carrier Megafon’s pavilion…

Google has just promoted its licensing rights filter right to the top of its image search, making it way easier to find images that you’re actually allowed to use.

You Can Build This Elegant Raspberry Pi Tablet Yourself

Hey, a new tablet! Crisp 10-inch touchscreen? Check. Luxurious carbon fiber and wood case? Present. Huge 10,000mAh battery? Yep. Linux-based and built at home? Err… This chunky-yet-oddly-elegant tablet was designed and built from scratch by Michael Castor. Powered by one of those open source Raspberry Pi mini computers, it’s affectionately known as the PiPad. Castor…

How the Carbon Cycle Dictates Our Lives

Carbon is the fundamental element which all life on our planet is based on—but it’s also much maligned for its role in climate change. So which is it, friend or foe? The truth is: both. We’ve got a lot to be grateful for when it comes to carbon, but we also ought not pump too…

Two Espressos Enhance Your Long-Term Memory

Many of us would he hard-pressed to function without our morning coffee, but now there’s compelling evidencethat it could actually help enhance your long-term memory. A study led by Michael Yassa from the University of California, Irvine, sought to establish the effects of small quantities of caffeine on memory function in adults. His 160 participants…

Just four months after its introduction, Sprint is axing its ‘One Up’ early upgrade plan, instead pushing its new “Framily” plan (which doesn’t offer any option for early upgrades without paying for unlimited data). That didn’t last long.

How Computers Create Convincing Light and Shade in Graphics

Creating rich, lush computer-generated images is no mean feat, and one of the most fundamental aspects is light and shade. This video explains how programmers and designers tackle that crucial problem. It’s a question of rolling together all kinds of data—from information about lighting sources to material properties and geometry—to create a convincing effect. Listen…

Netflix scored its first Golden Globe win last night, with Robin Wright scooping Best Actress in a TV Drama for her work in House of Cards.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Blackberry’s CEO John Chen said that the future of the brand is in hardware keyboards. “I personally love the keyboards,” he said, “so you will look to Blackberry going forward to do keyboards — I wouldn’t use the word exclusively, but predominantly.” Welcome to the past!

Sometimes the Only Explanation For Your Computer Fault Is Witchcraft

Despite being so user-friendly on the whole, computers are incredibly complex systems. So complex that sometimes—just sometimes—the only explanation for a fault is that it must be haunted or something. Just blame the ghost in the machine. [XKCD]

Drinking Up to Four Cups of Coffee Won’t Dehydrate You At All

The received wisdom is that coffee dehydrates you. Fact. Period. No arguments. But a new study shows that, actually, in moderation, coffee is no less hydrating than water. A team of researchers from Loughborough University, UK, were interested in accurately establishing the effects of coffee drinking on people’s daily balance of fluids. In fact, they…

A Massive Road-Building Initiative Is Transforming Africa’s Landscape

Africa is home to some of the poorest road networks in the world, which act as a major barrier for trade, education and healthcare. Not for long, though—as it’s embarking on a frenetic road-building exercise that could revolutionize the entire continent. You only need look at the numbers to realize that Africa’s roads need attention.…

Plumen’s Beautiful New Bulbs Make Low-Energy Into High Art

A bulb is a bulb is a bulb. Wait, no, not—not when it looks like this it isn’t. These energy-efficient bulbs make low power consumption a form of high art. Designed by Plumen, which arguably created the first nice-looking energy efficient bulb back in 2011, this is the second model: Plumen 002. And, as every-day,…

Magnetic Levitation Looks Magical in Slow Motion

What do you get if you take some magnets, superconductors, and liquid nitrogen, and a slow-mo camera to film them with? This kind of magical footage is what. This little demonstration of magnetic levitation isn’t much new—we’ve all heard of it, and maybe even seen it—but the video includes some magical footage. It’s mesmerising, it…

PlayStation Now—the streaming game service—will, weirdly, require a proprietary DualShock controller to play PS3 games on TVs, phones and tablets.

How to Stop Google From Letting Strangers Send You Email

Google has updated Gmail with a feature that some of you might not appreciate. Now, simply typing in someone’s name into the ‘To’ field will automatically grab their address from Google+, and, worse, the service is applied to your account by default. Google announced the feature on its Gmail blog yesterday, and have clarified to…

Why You Sleep at Night

It’s not just because it’s dark. Well, it partly is, but more accurately it’s a result of a complex series of biological processes which give rise to something called circadian rhythms. This video by Sci Show explains how they work—and how they regulate all kinds of different processes in our bodies, from eating to behavior.…

China’s Smog Is So Bad That Hotels Now Give Guests Gas Masks

It’s no secret that China is choking on smog, but the problem has gotten so bad recently that hotels have started issuing guests with gas masks to use during their stay. For real. https://gizmodo.com/beijing-is-choking-on-smog-5976356 Redditor Mthomaseddy posted this picture of an elegantly packaged gas mask, which was sat in his room when he arrived at…

Why Is the Solar System Flat?

When our solar system formed from a swirling cloud of dust, it happened to form in such a way that all planets sit on a single plane. But with all of 3D space to choose from, why did it turn out flat? Noticing that plenty of other structures in the Universe are flat, too, this…

Headphones Are a Social Panacea

Headphones can transform any awkward social situation. Fact. [Doghouse Diaries]