Mario Aguilar

The Pirate Bay: Screw It, We’re Going to North Korea (Except, Probably Definitely Not)

The Pirate Bay may have found a new way to keep its servers up and running amidst increasing adversity from European governments and copyright groups. North Korea to the rescue! Except, you know, it’s probably a hoax. Updated below TorrentFreak reports that just last week, The Pirate Bay was shut down and forced to move…

Google Has a Hip-Hop Sensation Working in Its New York Office, and This Is His Google Song

Andrew Fink is a New York-based Google drone by day, and an unsigned hip-hop artist from Baltimore by night. Today is his 25th birthday, and he just collapsed that Jekyll and Hyde existence into a music video. “Welcome to Google” is filmed in the company’s offices, but the rhymes are all Fink’s. We’re speechless. I…

Sonos Playbar Review: Everything Wireless Should Be This Easy

Sound bars don’t immediately benefit from Wi-Fi connectivity the way music systems do, because you usually use them with your TV, and your TV isn’t something you need to put in your pocket and walk around with. But that doesn’t mean that Sonos’ wireless music features don’t benefit from its first sound bar. Just the…

Let’s Talk About Anything You Want for the Next Hour

Hey, guess what? It’s Friday! We’re sure you’re feeling just as restless as we are, so to help the final minutes of this day fly by, we’ll be hanging around this thread to talk about anything you want for the next hour. Not a joke. Give us your words. Anything goes. Image via Shutterstock/IR Stone

How the Sequester Will Affect Science and Technology

At midnight tonight, the federal government’s budget sequester kicks in. That means—if congressional leaders and President Obama can’t sort out their disagreements over the country’s finances—$85 billion will be cut from the 2013 budgets for government programs. Space exploration, medical research, and technology investment are just a few of the items on the block. Here…

Sony SLT-A58: A Beginner DSLR for a Beginner Budget

The Sony SLT-A58 is a refresh of last year’s pretty darn good A-57 DSLR. It comes with a new 20-megapixel image sensor, and importantly, a refreshing $600 price tag when it’s bundled with an 18-55mm lens. But don’t let the surging megapixel count and plummeting price tag fool you. We just took the camera for…

Chrome for Android updated so that audio keeps playing when it’s in the background. We think that’s a good thing.

Spyware Implanted in PDFs Has Been Sneaking Into Government Computers Worldwide

A new spyware epidemic has broken out at government entities and NGOs in 23 countries including several organizations in the United States. And it’s not bogus Twitter links or porn that’s getting people this time—it’s PDFs that look like work. The exploit, called miniDuke, was discovered in a joint effort by security researchers at Kaspersky…

Kindle for iOS users: Don’t update the app! A “known issue” could delete all the books from your device.

The Easiest Guitar Tuner in the World

Guitar tuners aren’t always the simplest gadgets in the world, even if they’re mostly charged with an impossibly simple task. In fact, advanced features on more expensive tuners might confuse someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. This one, though, opts for simple and cheap. There’s something to be said for that. Korg’s new plastic…

After hitting its 100,000 user API token limit, Twitter app Falcon Pro’s price boosted to $132 so you won’t buy it. https://gizmodo.com/twitter-wants-to-stop-you-from-using-twitter-apps-not-m-5935517

The Government Can Use Your iPhone to Figure Out Where You’ve Been

Court documents obtained by the ACLU reveal just how vulnerable information about your private life is to prying government eyes that get a hold of your phone. It’s more than just your text messages, folks. It’s every connection point your phone has used. The “extraction report” (PDF) details the huge amounts of data the Department…

Recording Industry Manages a Sliver of Growth for the First Time Since 1999

Global recorded music revenues grew .3-percent to $16.5 billion last year, marking the first increase since 1999. That’s the year, you’ll remember, that Napster and file sharing brought the industry to its knees. According to the report from the IFPI, growth is being driven by digital revenue, which was up 9-percent in 2012. That digital…

What Is the Copyright Alert System?

The Copyright Alert System was conceived all the way back in 2011 as a new way to deal with seemingly unstoppable online piracy. It finally goes into effect today, and it will impact a huge portion of US Internet users. Sounds scary, but what is it, exactly? And what does it mean for you? The…

New Googleplex First Look: A 1.1 Million-Square-Foot Monster Optimized By Nerds

Vanity Fair has a nice look at the new Google headquarters, including a rendering of the mammoth 1.1 million-square-foot campus. The new campus is called “Bay View.” At first, you think you’re just looking at a bunch of boring identical buildings. But it’s designed like a search algorithm to get employees from start to finish…

Let’s Talk About Whatever You Want for the Next Hour

Hey, guess what? It’s Friday! We’re sure you’re feeling just as restless as we are, so to help the day fly by, we’ll be hanging around this thread to talk about anything you want for the next hour. No more work no more! Unless you’re Wagner, in which case you’re on a plane to Barcelona…

Cup Holders Prove that Even the Simplest Tech Can Take Forever to Catch On

You would never buy a car without cup holders like you’d never buy a car without seat belts. A secure place to store your scalding coffee so you can concentrate on driving and put both hands on the wheel isn’t a convenience—it’s a safety feature. And it wasn’t even standard on cars until the 1980’s.…

Meridian Explorer USB DAC Review: Make Your Digital Music Sing

The Meridian Explorer takes the digital audio from your computer’s USB port, puts the code through some very fancy electronics, and spits out an analog signal to to your headphones or stereo. Yes, your computer’s sound card already has a built-in digital-to-audio converter that does this, but the Explorer is made by one of the…

iOS 6.1.3 Beta Fixes iPhone Lock Screen Security Hole

Apple’s been keeping busy rolling out small patches of iOS 6. The latest, iOS 6.1.3 beta 2 just hit developers. Importantly, 9To5Mac reports that the update fixes the gaping lock screen bug that allows access even with out a passcode. No word on whether it patches up the recent Evasi0n jailbreak. Unfortunately, it’s only a…

Traktor DJ for iPad Is Better Than Turntables

If you go out and hunt for a DJ app that lets you mix together two different tracks, you’re going to come across a lot of really, really, bad design. Even the best stuff is a hell of fake spinning turntable skeuomorphs. After playing with Native Instruments’ Traktor DJ for iPad, we’re sure there’s a…