Leslie Horn

How Cathedrals’ New Video Makes Light Dance to the Music

This is the video for the Cathedrals‘ song “Unbound.” It’s lovely! And the way the light cubes in the background pair up with the music is no accident—there’s some really cool tech behind it. I spoke with Alex Green, the guy who created the dancing light cubes, originally a project for Burning Man a few…

Makonnen featuring Drake: Tuesday

Makonnonen’s been having a moment ever since Drake hopped on this track early this fall. Now it’s Tuesday, and the video just dropped, so playing the song’s appropriate. But the song works every day, always. Makonnen is weird, but weird is good, and “club goin’ UP! On a Tuesday!” is infectious. This video essentially describes…

Whitney Museum Earnestly Proclaims “KOONS IS GREAT FOR SELFIES”

The Whitney Museum just closed out one of the most influential selfie backdrops of the past three decades. Er, I mean the Whitney just closed out its Jeff Koons retrospective, an exhibit where it encouraged #teens to post #selifes with #balloondogs. Cool. Forget for a minute that Jeff Koons is one of the most successful…

How the Cast of Fury Trained for the Most Realistic WWII Film Yet

Fury, the WWII film starring Brad Pitt, opens in theaters today. The story follows a five-man tank crew as they make the last push into Nazi Germany in April 1945. And to get things right, the filmmakers brought in a military advisor with 22 years of experience. David “Sting” Rae is as seasoned as they…

It Looks Like Camera Roll Is Coming Back to iOS 8

Looks like Apple is listening, y’all. Despite the seemingly never-ending hiccups of iOS 8, the company has apparently decided to respond to overwhelming demand and reintroduce the much-missed Camera Roll feature in iOS 8.1. But resurrected Camera Roll might not be the old feature you remember. https://gizmodo.com/ios-8-0-1-is-breaking-cell-connections-on-the-iphone-6-1638669641 We heard mention of Camera Roll coming back…

The Future of TV Is Great If You Hate Sports

Thanks to the new promise of HBO without a cable subscription, we’re getting very close to the cord-cutting future of TV we’ve hoped for. It’s not hard to imagine that soon you can pay for only the content you want and none of what you don’t. It’ll be pretty great, as long as you hate…

How We Got to Now: PBS Celebrates Science Heroes You’ve Never Heard Of

In 2014 we live pretty comfortable lives, free of rampant disease and inconvenience that plagued our not-too-distant ancestors. The people who helped us get to this point are not necessarily rich or famous but they’re no less important for it. PBS celebrates these folks in its new series, How We Got To Now, hosted by…

With Standalone HBO, How Much Will It Cost to Cut the Cord?

Sometime next year, HBO is going to start offering HBO without a cable subscription. It’s what we’ve been waiting for, and it means maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to finally cut the cord. The question remains as to how much that’ll cost—will it really be much cheaper than a traditional cable package? Let’s run…

Yes! HBO Without a Cable Subscription Is Coming Next Year

This is big news: HBO just announced it will launch a web-only service sometime next year. Meaning, you can get HBO with no cable subscription. Yay! HBO CEO Richard Pleper made the announcement at an investor presentation today. He said: [There] is a large and growing opportunity that should no longer be left untapped. It…

Run the Jewels: Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)

Run the Jewels is the combined, unstoppable forces of Killer Mike and El-P. Their follow-up project, Run the Jewels 2, is out October 27. Great, because one day later and I might die of anticipation-related disease. “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck),” which features Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, is…

The wait is over. Mailbox for OS X, the Dropbox-owned email client, has exited beta and is now open for anyone to try. [Mailbox App h/t The Verge]

Clickhole Skewers the Kids-React-to-Old-Tech Trope Perfectly

Present kids with old tech and see how they react—it’s an old trick we’ve seen YouTube’d to death. But just when you thought there was nothing left to squeeze out of it, the gag done got Clickholed. See kids react to a Boombox (with a recording of their parents fighting). Just watch. It’s perfect. [Clickhole…

GT Advanced Court Filing Reveals Apple’s $50 Million Penalty for Leaks

Apple is ordinarily hush hush about its deals with suppliers. But a court filing with GT Advanced, the company that was supposed to supply the Apple Watch’s sapphire screens, reveals that Apple would inflict a $50 million penalty for any leak of clandestine product info. Ouch. These documents were released ahead of a hearing for…

11 Ludicrous Gifts from Neiman’s Holiday Catalog

You know Christmas is a-comin’ because there’s a slight nip in the air and the disgustingly over-the-top Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog is out. As usual, it’s full of expensive crap most of us do not need (or even want!) like Snowflake cufflinks, mink backpacks, and golden Beats by Dre headphones. Behold! Luxury: A five-foot-tall Tanqueray…

Foo Fighters: Big Me

I forgot how good this song was. I also totally forgot that the entire video is a parody of a Mentos commercial. But it was just the beginning of a whole slew of Foo Fighters parody videos. There’s “Learn to Fly,” which riffs off the movie Airplane. Then there’s “Everlong,” a Michael Gondry-directed take on…

Transparent, the first truly good Amazon original series, just got renewed for a second season. The series chronicles Jeffrey Tambor’s late-in-life gender transition, and it is excellent. [h/t @KateAurthur]

iRobot Now Has One App to Control All Its Badass Bots

Shoot, it used to be you’d have a whole team of iRobot robots, to man your factory or diffuse your explosives, but each one required its own joystick controller. That’s a lot to carry for a robot operator. But not anymore! Now iRobot has one Android app to man all its defense and security bots.…

TV on the Radio: Careful You

This morning, I pulled up Spotify and searched TV on the Radio, and surprise! A new song from TV on the Radio. Nice little gift for us to receive this Tuesday. “Careful You” follows “Happy Idiot” as the second track off the band’s upcoming album, Seeds, its first since 2011. Both tracks are excellent. Seeds…

The iPhone 6 Plus Is Still Awkward to Balance With a One-Handed Keyboard

Meet One-Handed Keyboard, the first (obviously) one-handed keyboard for the iPhone 6 Plus. It will help you type a little bit easier, but the only thing is, it won’t make your big-ass phone any easier to balance in just one smallish hand. The concept is simple: The One-Handed Keyboard is a replacement keyboard that’s smaller…

Oculus Rift Took Me Inside Interstellar and I Wanted to Stay There

Holy shit, we’re all fired up for Christopher Nolan’s save the world space epic, Interstellar. It doesn’t hit theaters until November 7, but in the meantime I got to experience a little bit of it with the help of an Oculus Rift. All we know about Interstellar is what we’ve seen in a couple of…