Jamie Condliffe

This Is How NASA Made Composite Images Before Photoshop Existed

You might think that this image looks a little bodged together, and you’d be right to. After all, it’s literally a collage of photographs obtained by Voyager I—all the way back in 1979. Collected when the spacecraft passed Jupiter’s moon Io for the first time, the images were assembled by hand at NASA, revealing for…

LG has confirmed that rumors about a new curved smartphone are accurate—and it’ll appear in November.

This Calculator Unboxing Parody Is Hilarious

Unboxing videos are perhaps the biggest waste of YouTube storage to grace the planet: watch a pimple-faced youth take a phone out of a cardboard container and play with some basic functions! Woo. But here’s one worth watching. Put together by the guys at Numberphile, this calculator unboxing does a wonderful job of parodying the…

Thom Yorke: Spotify Is “the Last Desperate Fart of a Dying Corpse”

Thom Yorke has already made his feelings on music streaming services known: he doesn’t like them. But now he’s spoken at length about Spotify and the current state of music distribution and he’s… well, angry. Speaking to the Mexican website Sopitas, Yorke has expanded on some of his criticisms of Spotify and its ilk. Here…

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Gravity (Spoilers)

Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter last night to offer up his thoughts—largely scientific—on the sci-fi stomer Gravity. It’s received rave reviews, but what does everyone’s favorite scientist think? In a rare moment of artistic insight, he admits that he “enjoyed ‘Gravity’ very much”—but he also saw some problems. (If you’re looking for even more,…

Rumor: HTC’s One Max Might Have a Fingerprint Scanner

One starts, then everyone follows. Well, possibly: leaked images of HTC’s rumored new One Max smartphone appear to show a fingerprint scanner nestled amongst its hardware, a la iPhone 5S. The pictures, which turned up on Chinese social network Sina Weibo, show the monstrous phone with its back removed, where a fingerprint scanner sits between…

These Cubes With No Moving Parts Are Actually Self-Assembling Robots

There’s no shortage of proposed ideas for self-assembling robots, but they’re usually either incredibly complex or just a little boring. In contrast, these adorable little cubes have no obvious moving parts—but can still climb over and around one another, leap through the air, or roll across the ground. Called M-Blocks, these things—developed at MIT—contain a…

This 4,000-Year-Old Brain Was Burned, Boiled, Shaken, and Is Still Intact

It might look a bit like a lump of charcoal, but this is a 4,000-year-old human brain that’s been shaken, scorched and boiled in its own juices. Somehow, though, it’s still in one piece. It is, in fact, one of the oldest brains ever found. It was discovered in Seyitömer Höyük, a Bronze Age settlement…

NASA’s MAVEN Mission Spared Cancellation Despite Government Shutdown

This is a rare moment of sanity and clarity from the powers-that-be. Despite the current government shutdown, NASA’s MAVEN mission—slated for a November launch—has been allowed to go ahead. Fears had been building that the government shutdown would see the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) launch postponed, but the project has been “excepted”…

“I’m the Actor Who Provided the Voice for Siri”

Siri has provided iPhone users around the planet with everything from weather forecasts to restaurant reviews, whilst fending off dumb-ass questions along the way. But if you ever wondered who whispered all those sweet nothings, here’s your answer. This woman claims to have voiced the original version of Siri, which appeared on the iPhone 4S…

Report: Piracy Isn’t Killing Content

Contrary to what the popular press might have us believe, piracy isn’t killing content. At least, that’s what a team of scholars from the London School of Economics has found after conducting a deep analysis of the situation. Sure, there are content casualties along the way—the physical music record is doomed, sorry—but there always were.…

The Pentagon’s Super-Fast Robot Now Runs on Its Own

Last year, DARPA unveiled Cheetah: a robot that could run faster than Usain Bolt. Now, the same team has managed to create a version that doesn’t need a power cord, making the electronic beast free to roam wherever it chooses. Be afraid. Be very afraid. A relative of Cheetah, say hello to WildCat. This robot…

Tall Infographics Suck

There’s an ever-increasing trend to display information in the form of tall, indecipherable infographics: long colorful panels that look like they contain a wealth of information, but don’t. That’s not a good thing. Like Randall Munroe says in today’s XKCD, “‘Big Data’ doesn’t just mean increasing the font size.” But then, if you can find…

The Most Popular Websites in the World, Country-by-Country

If you’ve ever wondered what the go-to web page was around the rest of planet, wonder no longer. This map shows the most visited websites around the world, broken down country-by-country. Assembled by Mark Graham and Stefano De Sabbata for Information Geographies, the map—based on Alexa data—depicts countries sized by Internet population. Perhaps understandably, there…

Rdio’s New Free Mobile Radio Service Is Available From Today

Rdio’s rumored free radio service is now real: from today, it’s offering free, personalized radio to non-paying users on iOS and Android. Time to get listenin’. The new service, called Stations, will be available in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In the past, users who had reached the end of Rdio’s 14-day free trial…

Fukushima Has Been Leaking Radioactive Water into the Pacific (Again)

Officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have announced that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean again. Speaking to Reuters, TEPCO admitted that it found a leak late on Wednesday, which had likely spilled into the Pacific Ocean. The authorities explained that the contaminated water was…

Snapchat Now Has a 24-Hour Self-Destruct Timeline

Snapchat’s unique selling point has always been the fact that images and videos could be shared with one other person before—poof!—they went up in smoke. Now, though, the app is branching out, to provide a 24-hour timeline to share with friends. Called Stories, it’s Snapchat’s attempt at making its service both more social and a…

Just How Advanced Is the NSA’s Decryption Tech?

There have been no end of reports about the NSA’s mind-blowing decrytion techniques. But just how much of it is super-smart computer science, and how much is brute force? In this video, Richard Mortier from the University of Nottingham, UK, describes the mathematics—and other, less sophisticated techniques—that the NSA is using to snoop on us…

Netflix had updated its iOS 7 app, providing it with HD streaming and AirPlay functionality.

If you’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Windows 8.1, then some good news: you can now pre-order it, Start button and all, on DVD for the princely sum of $120.