Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Even if you don’t personally use Gmail, someone you know does. The service is perfect for people who need an email address independent of their work one, and a far better alternative than security nightmares like YahooMail. Yet Gmail, despite the name, isn’t just a great platform for email. Gmail makes use of the cloud,…
Costume-changes during a live performance are fast and frenetic, limiting how elaborate makeup and outfits can be. But for this performance by Japanese dance duo AyaBambi, a high-speed face-tracking projector was used to change their appearances while they performed, even creating the illusion of wearing masks that instantaneously appear over their faces. Japanese studio WOW,…
Just as everything is cooler in slow motion, humans are fascinated with watching things happen in reverse. That’s probably because time only moves in one direction for us, but whatever the reason, watching gummies melt and unmelt alongside classical music just made Thursday a little easier to bear. Erwin Trummer is the genius behind this…
In 2009, Kerry McPhail descended Jacques Cousteau-style towards the Axial Volcano, inside the cramped, 30-year-old little submarine DSV Alvin, with a pilot and another scientist. Three hundred miles off the coast of Oregon, they were collecting tubeworms, bacterial mats and bivalves living near a deep sea volcanic vent. These samples could potentially yield new pharmaceutical…
A newly-discovered tyrannosaur that lived 75 million years ago in what is now Montana is offering insights into the facial features and uncanny senses of these fearsome prehistoric beasts. Like modern crocodiles, tyrannosaurs had faces covered with highly sensitive scales that allowed them to sense the slightest changes to their environment—like their next meal trying…
One of President Trump’s first actions after taking office was to institute a federal hiring freeze, leaving thousands of jobs vacant across the US government. Many of these jobs are in agencies that Trump supposedly values, like NASA. But when you look at the job vacancies that NASA is forbidden from filling, we see Trump’s…
The Australian state of Queensland was hit hard this week by a vicious tropical cyclone. And while there has been property damage, thankfully no one was seriously injured by Cyclone Debbie. Well, no one, unless you count this 5-foot long shark that was found dead this morning near the floodwaters. The bull shark was found…
Earlier tonight, the broadcast of The Daily Show was briefly interrupted by a blip of stock war footage, a spinning ballerina, and a web address with a Russian domain name. The internet quickly assumed that the late night comedy show had been hacked. It wasn’t. Simply put this was a dumb publicity stunt designed to…
Last month Google filed a lawsuit against Uber alleging that the ridesharing company colluded with a former Google engineer to steal trade secrets and proprietary designs from the Waymo self-driving car unit. Today, Uber’s lawyers filed a motion to move the case into the dark hole of arbitration. https://gizmodo.com/a-brief-history-of-uber-and-googles-very-complicated-re-1792713811 The motion revealed for the first…
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just had one of those days that we all have from time to time. He officially became the second richest human on the planet, and he shut down a business that was founded by one of his bitter rivals. https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-aspiring-supervillain-tests-out-gigantic-r-1793434748 Bloomberg reports that Bezos’ personal fortune increased by a cool $1.5…
National Parks exist for all Americans to share and enjoy. And when something like a fossil or footprint goes missing, it stinks for everyone, including us Americans and scientists who need to know the footprint’s location to help understand the animal that made it. A footprint fossil went missing from a lakebed at Death Valley…
Hollywood movies have used giant squids and octopi to inspire underwater nightmares for decades. But Festo, a German company that makes industrial machinery, has realized that an octopus’ amazing muscle-packed body and tentacles could actually be the ideal way to design and build a robot destined to work alongside humans. Robotic arms have already joined…
While the Trump Administration’s plan for massive cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency has caused a veritable national panic, much less discussed has been the proposal to slash the budget of the National Institutes of Health. On top of a 20%, $5.8 billion cut to the agency’s total budget revealed earlier this month as part…
Looking back at older versions of software makes you wonder how we even managed to use them years ago. Dusty iterations of programs like Word, Excel, and even Photoshop were crude as hell by today’s standards. But what if Snapchat—Mark Zuckerberg’s favorite ephemeral app—had existed on desktop computers in the ‘90s? It probably would have…
Esteemed tech analysts are already wondering if the new Samsung phone will explode. So… will it? We don’t know yet. Thank you for reading.
Congress has moved to dismantle some Obama-era rules that would have protected the online privacy of everyday Americans. This sucks. The deregulation means it will be easier for huge telecom companies to track and sell their customers’ browsing history. This sucks! But not all is lost. Regardless of what the Capitol Hill-based wrecking ball does…
The giant deep-sea octopus Haliphron is so rare that marine biologists have seen it just three times in 27 years. Using a robotic sub, scientists have finally caught video footage of this animal at mealtime—revealing its distinct preference for gelatinous sea creatures. A new study published in Scientific Reports is providing the first observational evidence…
On Tuesday, President Trump pledged to end the “war on coal” by rolling back the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era federal policy that compels states to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. China responded Wednesday, reaffirming its commitment to investing in clean energy and honoring the Paris Agreement, an international accord to tackle climate change…
Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is very important because as you probably know, Samsung is in a bit of trouble. The Note 7 explosions from last summer continue to haunt the company, and Samsung’s leadership is currently embroiled in a scandal that is, to put it gently, totally bananas. The company needs a big win lest it…
The Royal Mint released 300 million new one pound coins into circulation on Tuesday. The money’s packed with cutting edge anti-counterfeiting measures, including one that British authorities won’t even talk about. Is it a coincidence that this happened the day before British Prime Minister Teresa May triggered the UK’s exit from the European Union? Probably.…
