Jamie Condliffe

Views of Central California From Space Are Amazing—and Troubling

This view of central California from space is amazing for any number of reasons: you can make out the San Andreas Fault, for one, and it’s quite simply gorgeous to look at. But it’s also a parched landscape, whose vibrant greens have dulled to dirty browns. This radar image was captured on April 1st by…

Soldiers on (Virtual) Patrol

This is not a drill. In fact, it’s a virtual drill. You’re looking at soldiers from the 35th Engineer Brigade of the Missouri National Guard as they use a VR training tool known as the Dismounted Soldier Training System. The system uses motion tracking to allow soldiers to train in a simulated deployed environment, performing…

Audi’s Developing a Moon Rover For Google’s Lunar Xprize

Audi is no stranger to branching out from cars, but its most recent project is perhaps more ambitious than usual: with a team of German scientists and engineers, it’s helping build a rover that could one day make it to the moon. Working with a team known as Part-Time Scientists, the car manufacturer is developing…

A Visual Guide to Your Company’s Organizational Structure

Oh man why don’t we all just give up right now and go and live in a field some place? (Full version below.) [Doghouse Diaries]

Would You Buy This Retro ThinkPad Stuffed With Modern Tech?

What goes around comes around, especially when it comes to design aesthetics. Now Lenovo design VP David Hill gas dreamed up a new concept: an old-school ThinkPad stuffed with ultra-modern guts. Would you buy one? In a blog post on the Lenovo website, Hill explains how his idle daydream about a modern remake of the…

This Is SpaceX’s Second Barge, Preparing to Catch a Rocket on Sunday

SpaceX has been trying for some time now to land a rocket on a barge—and on Sunday it’ll try again, attempting to set down a spacecraft aboard this vessel, called Of Course I Still Love You. The name, though, isn’t a reference to the Falcon 9 crashing and burning aboard a similar barge. Instead, the…

Landing a Lockheed U-2 Isn’t for the Faint-Hearted

It’s easy to forget just how shallow some airplanes are. In this image, you’re looking at a U.S. Air Force Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft as it flies above Royal Air Force Fairford in England earlier this month. As the Air Force points out, the long wings and shallow body mean U-2 pilots have a very…

This Full-Color Display is Just Microns Thick and Flexible Like Skin

The prospect of a material that can change color yet is still flexible enough to wear as clothing is a perennial sci-fi dream—and now amazingly close to reality. This new electronic skin is just a few microns thick and yet manages to change color, acting as a credible digital display. The new material, pictured above,…

Google Has Its Own Alternative to GitHub: Cloud Source Repositories

If you work with code every day, you’re likely used to GitHub—a place to store code with all the revision history you ever need. Now, though, Google has its own take on the service, open as a beta release for you to use for free. VentureBeat has unearthed the new service, which is called Cloud…

Has Your T-Mobile iPhone Started Crashing?

If your T-Mobile iPhone has begun to freeze, crash and even show a static blue screen of death, don’t worry: you’re not alone. Apple forums—along with Facebook, Twitter and Reddit—are abuzz with stories about iPhones that are running on the carrier’s network crashing. According to MacRumors, the problem seems to affect the iPhone 5S, iPhone…

Amazon has announced that some of its Prime Instant Video shows will be screened in high dynamic range. It’ll start with original series and Samsung SUHD TVs, but moew shows and devices should be supported soon.

Even a B52 Looks Serene From This Height

It’s not often that you could use a word like serene to describe a B-52H Stratofortress. But in this image, accompanied by Saab JAS 39 Gripen jets from the Swedish Armed Forces, that’s exactly how it looks. This image was captured over the Baltic Sea during training maneuvers on June 11th. [U.S. Air Force]

Google’s Street View Tour of El Capitan Is Epic

Google’s Street View gets everywhere these days, but rarely does it manage to scale sheer slabs of rock. Now, with the help of acclaimed climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, you can take a trip up El Capitan from the comfort of a computer. The views are astonishing. Perhaps understandably, Google found it…

Ford’s New Full-Size Electric Bike Tells You Where to Avoid Potholes

For many people, cycling all the way into the city is impractical—so instead a combination of car and bike can be useful. At least, that’s what Ford thinks, because it’s the motivation behind this new full-size electric bike that can be folded up to fit inside the trunk of a car. The Mode: Flex smart…

This $300 Palm-Sized Bug Wirelessly Steals  Laptop Crypto Keys

This self-contained snooping device can steal data from laptops within 19 inches of it, sniffing out information based on the radio waves that leak from processors as a result of their variations in power use. And, as its designers point out, it’s small enough to fit inside a pita. Developed by researchers from Tel Aviv…

Lenovo’s Ideacenter Stick 300 Is a Windows PC on a Stick for $140

The computer-on-a-stick is not a new—nor always terribly successful—idea. But that hasn’t stopped Lenovo, which has announced its own stab at the concept: the Ideacenter Stick 300. The new device comes in several spec levels, featuring an Intel Baytrail CPU, up to 2GB of RAM, up to 32GB of storage, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0,…

This Lovely Data Viz of Tornado Hot Spots Was Made in Excel

This geometric data visualization shows the occurrence of tornadoes across the U.S. since 1950. It’s straightforward, good-looking and… made in Excel. Created by John Nelson, the map looks like it could have been made something rather more design-focused. But given each of the cells is just a simple square, Excel can, it seems, do the…

John Oliver Explains Why the Internet Sucks For Women

“Congratulations on your white penis — because if you have one of those, you probably have a very different experience of the internet,” explained Jon Oliver on last night’s Last Week Tonight. And in this 15-minute video, he explains why that’s the case. With his usual combination of brutal honestly and biting satire, he explores…

These Smart Gloves Use Bacteria-Sensing Silk to Warn of Risky Exposure

These gloves may look fairly normal, but the warning message on the side is made from a a silk compound which changes color once they’re exposed to bacteria such as E. coli—providing a means of spotting and avoiding exposure. The gloves have been developed by a team from Tufts University as a proof-0f-concpet of a…

Uber’s Banned Drivers and Passengers From Carrying Guns

Uber has changed it legal policies in order to prohibit the carrying of firearms by both drivers and passengers. Its new legal policy explains that: We seek to ensure that everyone using the Uber digital platform—both driver-partners and riders—feels safe and comfortable using the service. During a ride arranged through the Uber platform, Uber and…