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Voice control is one of the core capabilities of the Amazon Echo: the tall, black cylinder comes with a basic remote and some on-board buttons, but speaking commands and questions is the most intuitive way of interacting with it. If you’re wondering just what your Echo can do and which commands it responds to, here’s…
Weighing in at just four-and-a-half pounds, Otto Dieffenbach’s latest flying creation is a remarkably lifelike replica of Bjørn Alexander Brem, the lead singer of an Osl0-based band called Gothminister. The easiest way to tell the two apart is to remember that the real Bjørn can’t fly. Watching it gracefully hover is even creepier than when…
Just when you thought the terrible attire at Coachella couldn’t get any worse, reports emerged yesterday that everyone’s favorite culturally insensitive feather headdress parade will be providing this year’s attendees with virtual reality headsets. The Coachella VR headset will be included in every ticket buyer’s welcome kit and will work with Android and iPhone apps.…
Opera has just released the latest developer version of its browser, and it has an interesting new feature: built-in ad blockers that are claimed to make it faster than other browsers with third-party alternatives. The company claims that its built-in blockers allow it to load pages 45 percent faster than Chrome with AdBlock and 21…
Programming a quantum computer is not straightforward. But playing computer games is–and this one will help academics gather information to help them write code for quantum computers in the future. The game, called meQuanics, has been developed by a team from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Saitama, Japan. It’s based on a…
Sonos has announced that it’s making some big changes, laying off staff and shifting the focus of its hardware—to concentrate on streaming music and embrace voice control. In a blog post, Sonos CEO John MacFarlane explains that the company must “make some changes to [its] team” in order to remain innovative and successful. “We’re not…
The Pentagon has admitted that the US military has used its drones for domestic surveillance missions. But, it also points out, the occurrences have been rare and always within the letter of the law. USA Today reports that the news stems from a Freedom of Information Act request. A Pentagon report explains that fewer then…
In the second of a series of matches, Google’s AI has again beaten the world champion of Go, Lee Sedol. The best-of-five tournament now requires the AI to win just once more to be crowned champion. Despite the first game, played yesterday, being described as “close” by Google, the AI is clearly giving the current…
The Aurora Borealis are a beautiful sight—but, it turns out, they can be a real pain in the ass too. A new report explains that they can and do mess up drilling operations, especially in areas around the Arctic where they’re most common. Auroras happen when solar winds disturb the Earth’s magnetosphere. As a result,…
According to Reuters, the Chinese city of Shenzen is experimenting with electronic tracking of vehicles. Depending on your slant, this could either be a big step forward for driverless cars, or an autocratic regime run wild. The city is conducting a pilot program, with 200,000 electronic IDs currently issued to a range of vehicles such…
In most every country worth mentioning, flying a drone to 11,000 feet is illegal without all sorts of complicated paperwork. But if you don’t give a shit about the law, the footage you can capture from that high up is darn cool. The video was captured using a DJI Phantom 2, which is the last…
There’s another debate tonight. And you can bet I’ll be watching. But sweet Mother Mary, haven’t we had enough of these things yet? If you’re interested in watching Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders slug it out, the details are below. Time: 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific, 5am Leningrad Network: CNN Cordcutter option: CNN.com If you’re not…
In 2012, Instagram started moderating certain terms used by pro-anorexia groups, making it one of the more tightly moderated social media platforms. A group of Georgia Tech researchers decided to study if banning such words helped the communities using them. Instead, they found that it may make matters worse. Like many social media sites, the…
It’s deeply unsettling when a character from films by Stanley Kubrick locks eyes with you through the fourth wall. They’re not entirely breaking the barrier but they do make it uneasy, like they know that we’re watching them. It’s a fairly common shot in his movies, which you’ll see in this video showing ‘The Kubrick…
Some brave Canadian laddermen recently showed up to put out a grass fire, but their hoses weren’t getting any suction from the hydrant. Why? Because it was stuffed with fucking fish! No the fish weren’t literally fucking in the hydrant. It’s just the craziest damn thing that fish somehow ended up in the fire hydrant…
Iki-ningyō are life-sized dolls that were primarily used in festivals and exhibitions in Japan. This one, which belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum, is estimated to have been made around 1880, shortly after the samurai class was outlawed. The restoration process is a careful and complicated one that seeks to match as many of…
People squawking on their phones on public transportation is annoying as hell. That’s why one Chicago man allegedly took it upon himself to jam fellow commuters’ cell phone signals as part of a morning ritual that lasted months. Now he’s a charged felon in jail, being held for a $10,000 bail. Dennis Nicholl, 63, is…
A revolutionary procedure that gave hope to infertile American women was ultimately not successful. The first uterus to be transplanted in the US has been removed after two weeks, even after the patient appeared at a press conference Monday saying she hoped to get pregnant one day. The Cleveland Clinic announced today that the 26-year-old…
Are you tired of hearing about how awesome it is that we’ve discovered gravitational waves? LIGO is so last month, right? Here’s something to make the topic seem fresh and wondrous again: a delightful a cappella parody music video, set to the tune of The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” by A Capella Science. A…
I love time capsules. But I just had the strangest realization. When teachers have their students contribute items to time capsules, it’s kind of like stealing. I came to this bizarre realization while reading a story in Newsday with this opening paragraph (emphasis mine): In the past few weeks since a story about Richard Siegelman’s…
