Jamie Condliffe

A Sheet of Graphene Is the World’s Thinnest Lightbulb

Amid a revolution in low-energy lighting, some scientists are returning to older ways of thinking. Now, graphene has been turned into a working filament, lighting up when it’s pumped with electricity. A team of researchers from Columbia, Seoul National University and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science report that they’ve been able to use…

Privacy Experts Gave Up on Facial Recognition Talks With Big Tech Firms

A team of privacy lobbyists have been working with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to “craft privacy safeguards for the commercial use of facial recognition technology.” But talks with major technology firms have gone so badly that they’ve abandoned the discussions. The goal of the discussions, started last year, was to bring together “representatives…

Cambridge University is hiring a professor of Lego

The best learning is, as any parent knows, through play. Academics at Camrbridge University agree: they’ve just received funding to recruit a Lego professorship of play in education, development and learning. The University’s Faculty of Education has will receive a total of $6 million in funding from the Lego Foundation which in part will help…

A New Way to Track Sperm Could Make IVF Easier

When men don’t have any sperm in their ejaculate and they’re trying for a baby with their partner, doctors try and extract the swimmers directly from their testicles instead. Success rates of the process are strangely low—but a new way of tracking sperm could help improve things. Usually, doctors blindly guess at where in the…

Maybe We Should Just Stop Worrying About Delivery Drones

It might not be sensible to go around shooting UPS delivery trucks. But the grandpa of Cedar Van Tassel makes a potentially insightful point in this cartoon: drones might be new, but society’s problems with them are rooted in perennial concerns. [Comic Nuggets]

North Korea Has Turned Off 3G Networks For Foreign Visitors

Visitors to North Korea now have another unusual observation to add to their list: they don’t have a shred of 3G data access during their trip. While North Koreans struggle to access the global Internet, restricted instead to domestic content, foreign visitors and residents can pay for 3G access which affords them relatively unrestricted access…

MIT Scientists Can Now 3D Print Optically Transparent Glass

3D printing has become a cheap and versatile way of creating new solid objects — but some materials have so far refused to be shaped using the manufacturing technology. Now, researchers at MIT have finally developed a way to 3D print optically transparent glass. While it’s easy enough to 3D print using all kinds of…

The FCC Wants all Phones to Feature Theft Prevention Features

The Federal Communications Commission’s head Tom Wheeler has issued a challenge to the smartphone industry: he wants them to roll out a range of theft prevention features across the board at “no cost to the consumer.” In a statement issued yesterday, Wheeler explained that he wants the industry to make services such as remote-locking, remote-data-wiping…

This Powerless Pump Appears to Defy Gravity

Moving water from one position to another, higher one usually requires power—be that your arms to carry it or a motor to drive a pump. But this device can actually move liquid uphill without any external energy source. The powerless pump has been created by researchers from Beihang University in Beijing, China. It’s real enough,…

A Soyuz Capsule Returns to Earth—With a Flash

Yesterday, the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft brought three astronauts safely back to Earth. This image captures the capsule as it lands, but don’t worry: the flames are helping soften the landing and not a sign of bad news. The parachute used to slow the Soyuz capsules as they return to Earth manage to reduce the speed…

Do You Agree With Google’s Android Phone Suggestion For You?

If you can’t choose which handset to plump for next, Google has created a tool to lighten the burden. Its new online app asks you a series of questions about what you’ll use a phone for and then suggests what you should buy. But do you agree with its verdict? The Which Phone tool will…

If Only This Was a Real Twitter Error Message

Not enough tweets! Twitter will try to increase the load with Jack Dorsey. [Joy of Tech]

The Surface Texture of This Material Is Tuned With a Simple Squeeze

This lump of polymer may look nice and smooth right now, but given a shove it can form complex pasterns of ridges or bumps on its surface—the result of 3D printing the harder, black material within a softer matrix. The material’s been created by a team from MIT using a 3D printing process to accurately…

Watch This Beautiful Short About an Old Lady Struggling to Text Message

Here’s an amusing and emotional short film about an old woman in a nursing home who struggles to send a text message to her daughter. You should watch it. In case you need convincing, the video—produced by Mick Andrews and Brett O’Gorman—has won plaudits at film festivals around the world, snatching title of Best Short…

iPhone users will be able to block ads in Safair running on iOS 9.

Amazon’s Building a Solar Farm in Virginia to Green Its Data Centers

If it’s good enough for Apple, it’s clearly good enough for Amazon. Bezos & Co. has announced that it’s channeling money into the construction and running of an 80 megawatt solar farm in Virginia. The plant—enough to power 15,000 U.S. homes each year—should be up and running by 2016. The energy it creates will be…

An Aluminum Plate After a 6,700 mph Collision With a Grain of Sand

According to Gravity, space debris causes untold damage to spacecraft—and space agencies do indeed spend a lot of time testing materials they put into orbit. This image shows what happens when a sand grain-sized piece of aluminium oxide strikes aluminum sheet at hypervelocity. Ouch. At high speeds, even a small mass can cause untold damage.…

Every Satellite Got Into Space Thanks to Newton’s Law of Gravitation

What goes up must come down — though not always in the way you’d expect. This is Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation, and you can thank it for GPS, Google Earth and even the pictures beamed back from the other side of the Solar System. Here’s why. The equation neatly describes the gravitational attraction that…

Apple’s Taking Cars to the Road to Add StreetView-Like Features to Maps

With a subtle announcement on its website, Apple has confirmed that it’s sending cars out on to the streets of the U.S., UK and Ireland in order to acquire data—including images—that will be used to improve its Maps service. On anew page, Apple writes that it’s “driving vehicles around the world to collect data which…

Samsung’s Mirrored and Clear OLED Screens Are Straight From the Future

Samsung has announced a new series of prototype OLED displays in Hong Kong that, with their mirrored and transparent surfaces, are like something from a sci-fi film. The new mirror display has been shown off as a kind of virtual fitting room, allowing whoever’s looking at it too see a reflection of themselves augmented with…