Jamie Condliffe

Watch What Happens When You Ignite Methane With a Laser

Setting fire to things isn’t in and of itself science. But if you record it using schlieren photography at 10,000 frames per second—as in this video of laser-ignited methane—then it’s getting closer. The video, created by Victor Miller and his team from Stanford University and first shown on the New York Times site, shows what…

Microsoft’s Amazing Hyperlapse Video-Smoothing App Now Available for Mac

Earlier this year, Microsoft launched a neat piece of software called Hyperlapse that could make butter-smooth time-lapses from jerky footage. Not, it’s available for Mac. Here’s a reminder of what it does: Hyperlapse doesn’t just speed up a long piece of footage. That process usually involves dropping a specific number of frames and can actually…

Faulty Security Certificates Are Screwing Up Some Mac App Store Updates

If your Mac’s app updates are acting a little weird, you’re not alone. A security management slip-up means that some software updates might actually require a delete and reinstall to work properly. The Stack reports that the the security certificates of some apps—including 1Password, Acorn, Byword, Call of Duty and Tweetbot—expired this Wednesday, and in…

A Simple Guide to Urgent Missed Calls

Honestly, you may as well just use WhatsApp. [Truth Facts]

This Face Is the Average of Inanimate Objects That Look Like Faces

No real faces were used in the making of this face. Instead, it’s what happens when you average out the appearance of a bunch of inanimate objects that people think look like faces. Using an algorithm usually used to average out the faces of real people, Robby Kraft instead used it to average out around…

This Giant Vending Machine Can Dispense Your Next Car

If buying a car all seems a little too complex, relax: you can now walk straight up to a five-story vending machine to choose your new set of wheels, as if it were a gigantic candy bar. You’re looking at a new kind of car dealership that’s been built by Carvana. Featuring a series of…

Bluetooth Will Have Twice the Speed and Four Times the Range in 2016

Since Bluetooth was given an overhaul in 2010 with the 4.0 standard, it’s surged in popularity. Now, it’s about to get another serious spec bump, providing four times the range, twice the speed and even mesh networking. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has announced its plans for the future of the wireless standard, and they…

Report Claims FBI Paid Carnegie Mellon University $1M to Attack Tor

Last year, Tor—the service which allows people to use the internet with anonymity—was attacked. Now, a new report suggests that the FBI paid Carnegie Mellon University a cool $1 million to carry out the work. At the time of the attack, Tor believed it had been carried out by Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Emergency Response Team.…

Apple Said To Be Developing a Person-to-Person Payment Service

According to a new report, Apple is said to be in discussion with banks to build a person-to-person payment system that would allow people to transfer money between phones without the need for cards or checks. The Wall Street Journal reports that the service “would allow consumers to send payments from their checking accounts to…

Samsung’s New High-End Smartphone Chip Is Its First To Be Fully Integrated 

Samsung has just announced its new top-end chipset, the Exynos 8 Octa 8890. Like its Qualcomm competitors, it squeezes everything it needs into a single slab of silicon. In fact, this is the first Samsung flagship system to be fully integrated into a single chip and only the second to be based on the 14-nanometer…

A Finished Version of Firefox for iOS Is Finally Available on the App Store

It’s been in the planning since the start of the year and testing since September, but the first version of Firefox for iOS is finally available in the App Store. Late to the iOS browser game, Firefox will face some stiff competition with most people having long since settled on Safari, Chrome, Opera or something…

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 Chips Will Provide Better Signal and Battery Life

Qulacomm has announced its next generation or chip in the form of the Snapdrgaon 820—and it hopes to usher in better signal and longer battery life to the next slew of high-end phones. The new system-on-a-chip is based on a 64-bit quad-core Kyro processor, which clocks in at 2.2GHz. Qualcomm claims that it’s twice as…

Microsoft Will Guess Your Emotion in a Photo

Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled a tool that could guess your age from a single photograph. Now, it wants to guess how you’re feeling too. It might not get the answer right—but it is kinda fun. Announced at Microsoft’sFuture Decoded conference in the UK, the software will take any photograph you hand it, identify the…

This Is What a Candy Crush Movie Might Look Like

What if Candy Crush was turned into a movie? One that starred Liam Neeson, too? Well, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert imagined just that. Be afraid. Be very afraid. [The Late Show with Stephen Colbert]

Three Men Charged With Widespread Hacking, Including Huge JP Morgan Hit

Last year it came to light that roughly half of the households in America had their JPMorgan Chase accounts compromised. Now, over a year later, three mean have been charged with widespread hacks that include the sustained financial attack. Yesterday, federal prosecutors announced that they were charging three men in relation to a series of…

A Politician Would Like New York Trees to Have Their Own Email Addresses

It’s virtually impossible to get by in today’s modern world without digital communication. Perhaps that’s why a New York City politician has a plan to give 200 trees around the city their own email addresses. The idea belongs to Mark Levine, an Upper West Side Councilmember. In an interview with Gothamist, he explained that“NYC is…

Japan’s First Ever Passenger Jet Just Took Its Maiden Flight

Japan doesn’t have a track record for manufacturing airplanes—but now its first ever domestic passenger jet has finally taken its maiden test flight. The new Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) took off from Nagoya airport earlier today. A decade in the planning, design and manufacture, the two-engine aircraft has been developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The…

You Can Pre-Order Samsung’s $100 VR Headset Right Now

You can now pre-order Samsung’s Gear VR headset—the device that looks like it may finally push VR into the mainstream—from Best Buy for $100. If you’re clamouring for some VR, you can head over to Best Buy now and pre-order one of the devices right away. The retailer gives an official release date for the…

The HTC One A9’s price is up and down like a yo-yo. After starting life at $400 then jumping up to $500, it’s now on sale in the HTC online store for $400 once more. Whether you wanna buy the thing, though, is another matter entirely.

Interactive Visualization Shows How Your Day Compares to Everyone Else’s

Sometimes at the end of long, hard week, it’s easy to wallow in self pity: “I doubt many people have it this hard,” you think to yourself. But this interactive visualization can help you see just how many people share your experiences of day-to-day life. Put together by Nathan Yau, the charts make use of…