Jamie Condliffe

Google Lets You Re-Skin Its Apps Using Light or Dark Side Star Wars Themes

To celebrate the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Google has put together a set of skins for its apps which let you demonstrate your allegiance to either the light or dark side. The tweaks to Google apps include new Gmail backgrounds, a YouTube progress that looks like a light saver, a Maps positions…

Independent Health Review: Ebola Response for West Africa Was ‘Too Slow’

A panel of independent health experts has published a report that explains how a slow international response and a lack of appropriate leadership in tacking the Ebola epidemic caused “needless suffering and death” across West Africa. The team, made up of health experts from the Harvard Global Health Institute and the London School of Hygiene…

This Building’s Swooping Curves Were Fabricated By a Robot

An architecture firm called Studio RAP has built what it claims is the“first robotically fabricated building in the Netherlands,” using automated milling techniques to craft a unique, swooping structure. The 130-square-metre building was put together inside a giant disused machine hall. The team used 3D modelling program Rhino to create the plans for the 2235-panel…

FDA Approves Salmon the First GM Animal Safe to Eat, Doesn’t Require Labels

After decades of indecision, the Food and Drug Administration has finally approved its first genetically modified animal as safe to eat. Welcome a fast-growing GM Atlantic Salmon to your plate. Following extensive research, the Administration has declared that AquAdvantage salmon are “as safe to eat as any non-genetically engineered Atlantic salmon, and also as nutritious.”…

New Case of Ebola Identified in Liberia

Reports from health authorities in Liberia have confirmed that a new case of Ebola has been identified in the country, which had previously been declared Ebola-free. The Associated Press reports that a 10-year-old boy has been diagnosed with Ebola. He was taken to treatment center outside the nations’s capital, Monrovia, on Thursday, where he is…

Kenya’s Suffering a 3-Day, 30-Mile Traffic Jam

Be grateful you’re not on the road from Mombasa to Nairobi in Kenya—because the route is suffering a traffic jam that’s reported to have lasted three days, stretching as far as 30 miles. It’s not a huge surprise: the road is the arterial route for supplies shipped into Mombassa to reach the rest of Kenya,…

How NASA Engineers are Designing the Aerodynamics of Its New Heavy-Lift Launcher

NASA’s new Space Launch System is going to be the first to carry astronauts beyond low Earth orbit since Saturn V went into space—but it will also carry 10 percent more payload. That’s giving its engineers an awful lot of math to worry about, and this is what their work looks like. A team at…

Watch This: Why Futurists and Engineers are Building a Clock to Last 10,000 Years

On a mountain in West Texas, a team of inventors, futurists and engineers led by Danny Hillis is busy building a clock that will last for 10,000 years. But… why? This video, shot by Public Record, probes the team behind the project and discovers a love of long-term thinking, a desire to slow down—and an…

The NIH Is Retiring All of Its Research Chimpanzees

The National Institutes of Health has announced that it’s bringing its chimpanzee testing programme to an entire halt, sending its 50 remaining primates to sanctuaries. Nature reports that the NIH director Francis Collins announced to the agency earlier this week that the 50 chimpanzees that it owns will be retired. Meanwhile, other chimps that are…

Miners Just Unearthed This Huge Diamond—the Largest To Be Found in 100 Years

Imagine putting this thing on a ring. You’re looking at the biggest diamond to be found in the last 100 years, which was discovered in a mine in north-central Botswana. Lucara Diamond, the company that controls the mine in question, reports that the stone weighs in at a frankly staggering 1,111 carats. That’s 7.8 ounces…

First-Ever Working Vocal Cords Grown in a Lab

The first-ever working vocal cords able to produce realistic sound have been grown from scratch in a lab, promising hope to people who have lost their voice due to illness, injury or invasive surgery. The vocal chords are actually, in theory, fairly simple: two bands of smooth muscle lined with delicate folds of mucosa. As…

If Only These Opinion-Cancelling Headphones Were Real

“We took the space-age technology behind noise-cancelling headphones,” this spoof ad explains, “and added our own patented algorithms to filter out unwanted thoughts and conclusions.” [We The Internet]

Bacteria Resistant to ‘Last Resort’ Antibiotics Discovered

Don’t panic (you should probably panic), but a team of researchers has discovered the first known example of a resistance gene, present in animals and some human infections, for a type of antibiotic known as colistin—the so-called ‘last resort’ antibiotic. Back in 2012, the World Health Organization deemed colistin—an antibiotic in the family called polymyxins—to…

Samsung’s New BRITECELL Camera Sensor Promises Amazing Low-Light Performance 

Samsung has revealed details of a new camera sensor technology that it refers to as BRITECELL. The sensor promises better low-light performance, while also providing much slimmer sensors. Sam Mobile reports that the new sensors use smaller 1-micron pixels that manage to persevere the same light sensitivity as pixels that measure 1.12 microns. The resulting…

Carnegie Mellon University Denies Being Paid $1M to Hack Tor

Last week, it was suggested that a research group from Carnegie Mellon University had been paid $1 million by the FBI to hack Tor. Now, CMU has issued a statement denying that money changed hands—but seems to suggest it was forced to hand over data to the authorities. In the statement, the University highlights that…

Skype’s Android app now lets you save video messages forever if you’re particularly attached to them.

China Is Starting to Spank the U.S. With Supercomputing Resources

When it comes to supercomputers, the U.S. used to rule the roost. But these days its status is slipping—while China is surging ahead. How bad is the problem? This bad, according to the new Top500 list, which rounds up supercomputer performance around the world every six months: China nearly tripled the number of systems on…

You Can Now Use Two-Step Authentication on Amazon—Here’s How

Two-step authentication is one the easiest ways to make your online accounts more secure. Finally, Amazon has decided to provide the option of using the system—and here’s how you can enable it. While most of the Internet’s big players—Apple, Google, Facebook and the like—have long offered the option of using two-step authentication, Amazon has steadfastly…

The UK Is Shutting Down All Its Coal Power Stations

The British Government has announced that it plans to shut down all of its coal-powered fire stations by 2025, with restrictions put on their use as early as 2023. The UK’s 15 remaining coal power stations currently account for 28 percent of the nation’s energy production. The country’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd,…

A British ‘Elite Cyber Offensive Force’ Will Join the Digital War on ISIS

Yesterday, Anonymous declared digital war on ISIS. Now, Britain seems to be joining the fight, with an elite cyber offensive force that plans to strike Islamic State fighters. Reuters reports that the UK Chancellor George Osborne wants the country to “strike at Islamic State fighters, hackers and hostile powers” with plans to “bolster spending on…