Jamie Condliffe

Sprint CEO Brands T-Mobile’s Uncarrier Concept Bullshit on Twitter

The joys of a simple Twitter slanging match. Sprint’s CEO Marcelo Claure has taken T-Mobile CEO John Legere’s criticism of his new “All-In” wireless plan badly. It’s like being in a playground with very wealthy people. Legere—rightly—points out that Sprint’s new initiative has some holes.In response, Claure slams T-Mobile for lying to its customers. Here’s…

Prince is starting to remove his back catalog from music streaming services, with tracks disappearing from Spotifyand Rdio so far. They’re still available on Google Play, Deezer and Tidal—though it’s not clear how long that will last.

Google’s Neural Network Chatbot Can Discuss Philosophy and IT Troubles

Chatbots are notoriously difficult to make work well. But now Google’s developed a new conversational AI that uses neural networks to learn from movie dialogue—and it can just about hold down conversations about ethics and VPN problems. The new chatbot eschews the usual techniques for building a chatbot—which usually sees a team of engineers programing…

What Are the Strange Spots on These Brand New Images of Pluto?

New color images acquired by NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft show us Pluto as we’ve never seen it before—and on its surface appear to be a series of giant spots that scientists can not yet explain. NASA researchers have identified a series of spots along the dwarf planet’s equator. Each one is about 300 miles across…

How To Make Your Gmail Look Way, Way Better

The handful of themes offered by Gmail have let you make your inbox look less like a faceless, nameless sprawl of email and more like something you actually enjoy gazing at. And now, Google has added hundreds of photos and new theme options that are going to make it look much better. You’ve been able…

How to Listen to Apple’s Beats 1 Radio Station on Android, Right Now

Your friends that use iOS and OS X have been babbling about Apple Music and Beats 1, but you use an Android phone and are feeling left out. Well, now there’s a “very unofficial” way to listen along. While the official Apple Music app won’t arrive on Android until the fall, Twitter user Benji R…

There Are Weird Undeveloped Sperm in Your Semen (But No Need to Worry)

Doctors have long observed odd, circular cells in semen. They resemble undeveloped sperm, but scientists have been unable to work out how or why they appear—until now. Whenever a sperm sample is checked, healthy swimmers are counted along with the mysterious round cells. They’re often assumed to be underdeveloped sperm, but sometimes classified as white…

Mark Zuckerberg on VR, AI and Sending Thoughts Over the Internet

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg ran a Q&A on Facebook, answering questions about the future of the social network, its technology and the Internet more generally. Here are some of the choice cuts. We’ve already covered his first public statements on real names and LGBT users. But elsewhere in the Q&A his discussed some of the less…

The Solar Cells of the Future Look Very Pretty Up Close

You’re looking at a perovskite. Not an Eastern European bird of prey, nor an exotic toy to play with in the wind, but a potential future of solar power. The materials, first discovered in 1839 but only recently used in solar applications, are defiined not by the elements they contain but their crystalline structure. And…

These Cancer Cells Are Being Levitated Using Magnets

Magnetic levitation isn’t anything new: you’ve probably seen frogs made to float and maybe even trains hovering above their rails. But now scientists have gained enough subtle control over such forces that they can be used to levitate single cells, too. A team at Stanford University has developed a new way of levitating cells, which…

Can You Fool This Nudity-Spotting Algorithm?

Identifying nudity online is a notoriously thorny issue. Is it a butt or a bent elbow? Renaissance art or porn? Well, now one company that builds algorithms to identify such differences has built a website that you can challenge with your own, um, material. IsItNude.com is the brainchild of Algorithmia and it provides much the…

The Code For This Pleasingly Simple Game Fits in a Single Tweet

If you’ve got a few spare minutes, you might enjoy a quick game of Tiny-Twitch. But then you’ll no doubt end up amazed by the fact that the source code for the whole thing can fit inside a single tweet. Developed by Alex Yoder, the game—which requires you to try and click the X that…

This Simple Video Celebration of Everyday Color Will Brighten Your Day

The world around you is a rainbow, if only you stop and notice it. This video is a charming celebration of color in our everyday lives—and a bewilderingly pleasant way to spend two minutes. [Vimeo] Image by laffy4k under Creative Commons license.

The latest preview build of Windows 10 for PCs comes complete with a version of Microsoft’s new Edge web browser so you can try it out before the official launch on July 29th.

These Are the First Images From ESA’s Sentinel-2A Satellite

Late last week, the European Space Agency lofted its Sentinel-2A satellite into orbit. Now, just four days later, it’s started beaming its first images back to Earth. Part of the ESA’s Copernicus environmental monitoring program, the satellite provides images using a variety of multi-spectral instruments in amazing detail. Its sensors have a resolution that provide…

BBC Is Listing Pages Removed By Google Under EU Right-To-Be-Forgotten

A year has passed since the EU ruled that people have the “right to be forgotten” online, and Google has been busy removing links when people ask it to. But the BBC has been keeping track of its articles that Google has de-listed—and now it’s published the list online. “The BBC has decided to make…

This Is the Robotic Rig That Google Uses to Test Android Latency

Latency on your phone is annoying. But Google feels your pain—which is why it has this dedicated robotic rig, used to test out hardware and software in order to keep Android and Chrome OS devices zippy. Known as the Chrome TouchBot, it was built by the Finish company OptoFidelity especially for Google. Using high-speed video…

Solar Impulse Sets Off on Grueling 5-Day Flight From Japan to Hawaii

The Solar Impulse solar-powered airplane has set off from Nagoya in Japan on its 120-hour flight to Hawaii—one the most perilous legs of its round-the-world flight. At the start of the month the airplane attempted the trans-pacific flight—one of the most difficult on the first-ever solar powered round-the-world flight—but it had to abandon the attempt…

Facebook’s Testing New Snapchat-Style Features in Its Photo Editor

Facebook is testing new Snapchat-style features that allow you to add filters, text and goofy stickers to your photos to, ahem, delight you friends. TechCrunch reports that the new features are already being tested by some users, as they’ve been rolled out to a select few installs of the Facebook iOS app. There, they provide…

Apple has told Buzzfeed that Apple Music will work with Sonos devices by the end of 2015.