Jamie Condliffe

Stephen Colbert on Hillary Clinton’s Social Media Campaign

Many of the presidential candidates are doing the best they can to interact with millennials, especially on Twitter — but none of them seems to be working as hard on it as Hilary Clinton. This clip from the Late Show takes a look at her social media strategy, which mainly seems to involve… emoji. “Can…

New Coating Radiates Heat to Keep Solar Cells Cool—and More Efficient

Solar cells suffer a strange problem: the hotter they get as the sun pours down on them, the less efficient they become at converting light into electricity. But now a team of Stanford researchers have developed a new transparent coating that can help them keep a little cooler—and more efficient. The new coating is based…

A New Light-Based Memory Chip Could Change the Fundamentals of Computing

Electrons are quick, but they’re not quick enough — in fact they’re holding back the speed of modern computing. Now, a team has developed the world’s first ever light-based memory chip that can store data permanently, and it could help usher in a new era of computing You might have noticed that the clock speeds…

Vibration of Small Particles Could Trigger Aftershocks of Earthquakes

Earthquakes can create copycat events up to 1,000 kiometers away — and it could be the result of the vibration of small particles, according to new computer simulations of seismic activity in the Earth. New Scientist reports that a team of researchers from the Second University of Naples in Italy has developed a computer model…

An Acrylic Tunnel Turns a London Museum Into a Sci-Fi Alice in Wonderland

You’re staring through a new installation at London’s V&A Museum, called Mise-en-abyme. The narrowing isn’t just perspective — those acrylic archways really are getting smaller. Created by London designers Matteo Fogale and Laetitia de Allegri as part of London Design Festival 2015, the installation takes inspiration from the exhibitions around it. The pair explains to…

Edward Snowden: Advanced Encryption May Stop Us Communicating With Aliens

On Friday, Neil deGrasse Tyson welcomed Edward Snowden to his StarTalk podcast. Along with the usual conversations about privacy and government, Snowden had another important warning to provide: encryption may hurt our abilities to see, or be seen by, extraterrestrials. Speaking to deGrasse Tyson from Russia, Snowden explained that the current need for data encryption…

The long-delayed extradition hearing of Kim Dotcom has begun in Auckland, New Zealand. It’s expected to last weeks, as he battles against claims from U.S. authorities that he cost cost music and movie companies over $500m.

This Is What Happens When an Indie Band Experiments at the LHC

It’s normally just researchers that get to experiment at the LHC. But one physicist has decided to invite a series of bands to play around at the world’s largest science lab — and this is the result. The first event of a new an initiative called Ex/Noise/CERN, that’s led by Dr. James Beacham, saw the…

These Are Some of the Best Astronomy Pictures of the Year

Last night, the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition announced its winners. The results, as you might expect, are astronomical. Here are a few of our favorites. The image above, by Chap Him Wong from Hong Kong, won the People & Space category. It depicts Sunset Peak, Hong Kong’s third-highest mountain, with star trails…

Do Numbers Really Exist?

Here’s a nice, simple topic for first thing on a Friday morning: do numbers really exist? Well, do they? As Mark Jago from the University of Nottingham explains in this video, it’s really quite hard to find out about what numbers really, truly are because they’re not physical, tangible things. Prepare to have your mind…

This Is How Your Computer Really Works

Really, it’s just a mess of things you’ve managed to force to co-exist and work together that, could all come tumbling down at any given moment. [XKCD]

The Mississippi Swampland Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

The banks of the Mississippi are usually lush and green — but in this image, captured by the European Space Agency’ Sentinel-2A, radar imaging shows vegetation in bright red. There’s a lot of vegetation. The grey color, on the other hand, shows water. Beyond the winding river itself, you can make out a series of…

Report: New Chromecast With Better Hardware and Spotify Due This Month

If the new Apple TV didn’t do it for you, an overhauled Chromecast might. A new report suggests that a new model will be launched later this month, with majorly updated hardware and new features — including Spotify support. 9to5Google reports that one of the major improvements will be to the wifi spec: the first…

This Warship Looks Like a Scene From Tron

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a scene from a Hollywood movie, but in fact it’s the the guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely as it sails through the Atlantic Ocean on training operations. The MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter sits atop the ship as it refuels, while sailors take part in a training exercise with the…

These Shelves Fill However Much Space You Have

Whether you need to move furniture around your place or are just too lazy to use a tape measure, flexible storage is very useful — like this set of shelves, that can double in size with a simple tug. Created by Nendo, the Nest Shelf is a versatile piece of furniture: collapsed there are three…

New Russian ATM Malware Can Steal Your Banking Details

Security researchers have discovered a new piece of malware called Backdoor.ATM.Suceful that infects ATMs and can steal your baking details. Discovered by security firm FireEye Labs, the malware directly targets card-holders rather than duping banks. The virus can run on multiple types of ATM, including those made by Diebold and NRC, and is claimed to…

On the heels of iOS 9 comes an update for iTunes, too. That’s not too exciting, apart from the fact that it enables two-factor authentication. Which you should definitely use.

Simple Tech Has Stopped 660m Cases of Malaria in Africa Since 2000

A new report from Oxford University describes that the overall rate of malaria infections in Africa has fallen by 50 percent since 2000. The researchers claim that’s largely the result of a very simple technology indeed: bed nets. The new study, published in Nature, combines a database of 30,000 malaria field surveys in sub-Saharan Africa…

Report: Russian Government Has Been Running a 7-Year Malware Campaign

According to a new report by security researchers at F-Secure Labs, hacking groups funded by the Russian government have been a running a large-scale malware campaign that’s hit the likes of NATO and U.S. government institutions. The new report describes a hacking group called “the Dukes,” outlining how they used a series malware tools to…

Microsoft May Use Cortana to Control Its Windows-in-the-Car System

Last year, Microsoft unveiled Windows-in-the-car concept. At the time, it shied away from explaining how people would interact with the system — but now it’s revealed that it could be powered by its smart assistant, Cortana. At a Microsoft event being held in Taiwan today, the chief operating officer Samuel Shen of Microsoft Asia-Pacific Research…