Pranav Dixit

Amazon’s New Mobile Card Reader Brutally Undercuts Square And PayPal

Look who crashed Square’s payments-on-the-go party. Amazon just announced its own credit card reader and app combination called Amazon Local Register, which will enable anyone from your mom organizing a yard sale to taco trucks use a smartphone or a tablet to instantly accept credit card payments. The device only costs $10, the app is…

Trojan Horse Gold Particles Could Finally Treat Brain Tumors

Glioblastoma multiforme is a cancer that’s as deadly as it sounds. It’s the most common and aggressive brain tumor in adults that’s especially difficult to remove surgically—but we now have a technique to treat it. It’s so tricky to remove because the tumor cells invade the surrounding, healthy brain tissue. Victims typically die within a…

Facebook Will Now Crash 50% Less Often on iOS

I don’t know why you would use the official Facebook app on the iPhone — Paper’s fabulous — but just in case you do, you’ll be happy to know that Facebook has squashed a pretty major bug that reduces crash rates by 50%. The company’s engineering blog states that one of the app’s top crashes…

Remember that new Type-C reversible USB connector we told you about last year? Well, it’s finally ready for mass production. You’ll begin seeing devices with the new standard in the next few months. Yes, it will break compatibility with existing USB connectors, possibly leading to worldwide outrage — think about what happened when Apple replaced…

With A Brand New API, Uber Is About To Be Everywhere

You can request an Uber directly from the Google Maps app on your phone. Heck, you might even be able to order a car directly from Facebook Messenger. So why not other apps? It seems like you could start doing that as soon as next month. Sources tell TechCrunch that Uber plans to launch an…

Stinky Landfills Might Soon Generate Clean Energy

Hydrogen can be devastating, but in the right hands, it can also be awesome. When burned, for instance, it emits only water vapor instead of nasty carbon dioxide that’s responsible for much of the climate change we see today. Now, researchers have discovered a way to convert methane — the same gas that makes landfills…

Google Funds An Undersea Cable to Connect the US to Asia at 60 Tbps

The US and Asia will soon be connected by a trans-Pacific cable network that will carry data at — hold your breath — 60 terabits per second. The high-speed network, named FASTER (you know, than just about everything else on the planet), will connect Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, Oregon and Seattle to Chikura and…

Report: The Next iPad Will Have a New Glare-Free Display

The next iPad will have a new anti-reflection coating to make the display easier to read, according to a new Bloomberg report. The news agency claims that Apple’s suppliers have already started putting together the new iPads, which will feature a special coating on their display to cut glare. But manufacturing complications as a result…

Here’s What Happens If You Like Everything On Your Facebook Feed

Despite popular perception, your Facebook news feed isn’t just a string of updates from your friends and Pages you Like. It’s a highly-customized list created by Facebook’s mind-bogglingly complex algorithms. So what would your feed look like if you decided to Like every single thing you saw on it? Mat Honan, Wired’s intrepid reporter, bravely…

You Can Now Cast Your Google+ Stream To Your Chromecast

Here’s one more thing you can add to all the awesome things you can do with a Chromecast: cast your Google+ stream directly from the app to your Chromecast-connected TV set to view posts, pictures and videos in full HD glory. This only works if you’re on Android, for now, but you have to think…

This Is A Good Time To Catch Up On American Horror Story

Now that we know what the next season of American Horror Story is about, it’s a good time to catch up on the last few seasons of the show if you haven’t already seen it. I recommend starting with Season 2 (“Asylum“), moving on Season 1 (“Murder House“) and then watching Season 3 (“Coven“) This…

Shania Twain: You’re Still The One

I just survived a long-distance relationship. The girlfriend and I met after two whole years. Having a face-to-face conversation after months of Whatsapping and Skyping feels… unreal, and it’s kind of awesome just to be in the same time zone as each other. For my Soundtrack pick tonight, I’m going back to the late 90s…

We’re Not Dead Yet, Says BlackBerry, Launching a “Fact Check” Portal

BlackBerry’s U.S. market share is now 0 percent. But the company doesn’t want you to think that it has given up yet. Instead, it has launched a new portal called the “BlackBerry Fact Check” to counter the “smoke and mirrors marketing tactics by competitors” and fight back with facts. The company has been updating its…

Microsoft’s Cross-Platform Smartwatch Might Be Here In October

We hope you didn’t blow all your cash on that Surface Pro 3. Tom’s Hardware says that a “trusted source with knowledge of the development” has verified that a Microsoft smartwatch will be released in October. There aren’t really a lot of details about hardware or pricing yet, but here’s what Tom’s claims they do…

This Is The Most Earth-Like Planet Discovered Yet

The nearest Earth-like planet is only 16 light-years away from us. It has a mass that is more than five times the mass of the Earth and it orbits a red dwarf star that has half the mass and radius of our sun. But the most important thing about the Gliese 832c, as astronomers at…

Facebook Doesn’t Think Manipulating Users’ Emotions Is A Big Deal

If you missed this outrageous study published earlier this month in an academic journal, here’s the nutshell version: In January 2012, a Facebook data scientist, along with two university researchers, tweaked the News Feed of almost 690,000 users to display more “positive” or “negative” stories to figure out if “emotions are contagious on social networks”.…

Google, Not Device Makers, Will Control Android Wear, Auto and TV UI

When Android Wear, Android Auto and Android TV launch this fall, they’ll solve a problem that has plagued Android since day one: an inconsistent user experience across devices. Ars Technica’s Andrew Cunningham points out that unlike Android phones from different manufacturers that sport ugly custom UIs, launchers and interacting with Android on different smartwatches was…

Watching Gordon Ramsay Be an Arrogant Prick Is Delightful

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares would easily beat The Wolf Of Wall Street in a number-of-cusses-every-60-seconds contest. You get a generous serving of “bollocks”, a side of “arse”, and a dash of genitalia-related terms through the course of the show. This is an old gem that I discovered on Netflix last week and I’ve been pretty hooked…

Jesper Kyd: Earth

Someone has to say it: Assassin’s Creed II, like its predecessor, was an average game. Once you got over the lush visuals, the missions became a chore, the running around became tedious, and the actual assassinations became routine when you realized that you didn’t actually need to be stealthy to carry them out — you…

The National Weather Service Will Use Airplanes As Weather Balloons

Here’s how weather forecasts in the United States work: The National Weather Service attaches devices that measure pressure, temperature and humidity to weather balloons that are launched, twice a day, from 69 locations in the US. This is the way it has been since, well, the 1930s. Now, the Weather Service is finally getting better…