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A few months ago I started getting headaches, and they were weird. If a bad hangover headache feels splitting, I’d describe these headaches as searing, as if someone had hit me over the head with a red hot rod of steel sending electric bolts of pain across my skull. By the time I finally went…
Have you seen this video of the new 4-inch iPhone SE “spotted in the wild” in China? It’s fake. But it doesn’t matter. Because that’s probably what they’re going to look like anyway. Do you think the new iPhones are going to have a satellite dish jutting from the side? Or maybe antlers? Fifty years…
In the future, your slightly awkward selfies will do more than just get you a few compliments from your grandmother: They might also help you shop for toilet paper, lube, and all the other things you secretly buy on Amazon. A patent application filed in October and published last week suggests that Amazon is intent…
Let’s not mince, dice, or julienne words here: There’s never a bad time for a burrito. It’s the holy grain of foodstuffs, a whole meal, perfectly cocooned inside a crispy tortilla. Less fraught with health false consciousness than the wrap, more portable than the sandwich, and less likely to take out an eyeball than the…
Being able to play games on your wrist is no longer a feature that only smartwatches can boast. Swiss watchmaker Hautlence has just revealed a peculiar piece called the Playground Labyrinth featuring a tiny 18k gold ball that can be navigated around a complicated maze just by moving your wrist. When you get the ball…
Matches are a great way to start a fire when you don’t want to rub a bunch of sticks together, but their short burn time makes them terrible when you just need a little light. Here’s a better idea: a matchbook full of tiny disposable LED flashlights you can keep tucked away for when you…
Stanford’s μTug minibots are on a roll lately. The latest battery of experiments at Stanford’s Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab dealt with harnessing the power of ants in robot form— specifically, researchers hoped to replicate ants’ ability to work together to haul very heavy objects. In the experiments, robots that jump or walk with a…
If you thought lithium-ion batteries catching fire were dangerous, how about a portable power source that actually relies on igniting its fuel from the get-go? That’s pretty much what a new battery alternative developed at MIT does. A few years ago, researchers found that they could coat a long thin carbon nanotube—like a sheet of…
It was hailed as the most significant test of machine intelligence since Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in chess nearly 20 years ago. Google’s AlphaGo has won two of the first three games against grandmaster Lee Sedol in a Go tournament, showing the dramatic extent to which AI has improved over the years. That fateful…
Mattel might be the first to market with a 3D printer aimed at kids, but Hasbro isn’t sitting by and letting its main competitor have all the 3D fun. The company just patented a kid-friendly 3D scanner that can digitize small objects using a smartphone’s camera and clever software. Given how the company has already…
Poking at your smartphone before bed makes it harder to fall asleep because the cool, bluish glow of its screen tricks your body think it’s daytime. Warmer tones are the key to drifting off, so Philips is introducing a new white bulb to its Hue line that can be adjusted from cool to warm color…
Did you know there’s a basic video editor built into YouTube? One of the features quietly added in recent weeks is the ability to blur out faces, license plates, and anything else you like. Here’s how to protect your privacy (and everyone else’s) while still sharing your movies with the world at large. The new…
Finding money on the floor is rarely this exciting. This single gold coin was discovered by a hiker and Israel’s Antiquities Authority has since established that it’s one of only two ever discovered. The coin’s 2,000 years old—and, before you ask, priceless. The coin dates to the year A.D. 107 and shows the Roman ruler…
The government is still trying to break the encryption on the San Bernadino iPhone. But now a report by The Guardian suggest that Google, WhatsApp, and Facebook are all planning to strengthen their encryption services. The report claims that Whatsapp is about to roll out encryption for its voice calls, Google is investigating “extra uses”…
Soldering is still an incredibly common and useful process for repairing electronics, but it could be about to get a little cooler. Quite literally, because researchers have developed a new way to solder without heat. Researchers from Iowa State University have developed a way to encapsulate liquid droplets of metal in a thin shell so…
Microsoft has announced that it’s starting to use Minecraft as a space in which to build, test and develop new artificial intelligence systems. The new platform, developed by academics, will be made available to everyone over the summer. A team from Microsoft’s UK research lab in Cambridge has developed the new system, which is called…
Ugh. You’re up an hour early, your body hates you for it, and even a gallon of coffee can’t get your day on track. Daylight saving sucks. But you know the worst part? It doesn’t have to be like this. >> This article was first published in March 2013. Daylight saving isn’t as old as…
“The FBI and its supporters can be weirdly dismissive of [the encryption] issue, in ways that indicate they don’t fully understand how technology works—or are pretending not to,” explained Jon Oliver on Last Week Tonight. And so begins his wonderful take on the state of encryption. This 20-minute segment sees Oliver taking on the entire…
Over the weekend, Dubai hosted the first ever World Drone Prix, the winner of which was a 15-year-old pilot from England. He walked away with a cool $250,000, while Dubai itself took the opportunity to announce that it will host the World Future Sports Games. The World Drone Prix saw four pilots at a time…
Google’s artificial intelligence is getting speedily (and worryingly?) better, as its recent slam-dunk of a human Go champion demonstrated. That victory required highly computationally-efficient AI rather than just brute force, something Google thinks could help it move speech recognition offline. The speech recognition we’re all used to in Siri and Google Now relies heavily on…
