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In a move aimed at persuading more young internet-type people to use Twitter, Jack Dorsey and friends are integrating Gif search into its social network, following many messaging apps’ footsteps. The integrated search is a combined partnership between venerable Gif havens Giphy and Riffsy. As seen up top, the new conspicuously placed “play” button icon…
Indoor and outdoor exercise routines require different types of gear, including your headphones. Editors from the Wirecutter listened, ran with, soaked, kicked, tugged, stomped on, and listened again to more than 80 pairs of headphones to find the best cans for every type of exercise, with the JLab Epic Bluetooth Earbuds being the best-sounding for…
The FBI wants Apple’s help to investigate a terrorist attack. Apple says providing this help is the real danger. We’ve reached a boiling point in the battle between tech companies and the government over encryption. And what happens will affect anyone who uses a smartphone, including you. After the San Bernardino shootings, the FBI seized…
After ten years, BattleBots officially returned to network TV last summer. And the response from fans was so overwhelming that not only did ABC renew the series for a second season, but Hexbug has also turned the league’s most popular robots into tiny remote control toys you can battle at home. To perfectly recreate the…
Hum, Verizon’s gadget that makes make dumb old cars smarter, will soon be granting loved ones remote access to your car’s location, driving history, speeding habits, and all sorts of other potentially damaging or embarrassing information. Hum originally launched in August to make older cars more connected to modern tech like OnStar and Bluetooth without…
To help celebrate the annual festival of broken necks, the town of Bassersdorf in Zurich, Switzerland holds a parade featuring some of the most ridiculous floats you’ve ever seen, including one with a working roller coaster that Hollywood stuntmen would pass on riding. This video, posted by Rolf Zemp to YouTube, does have an odd…
Keen to engage younglings with the science fiction of yore, NASA has put an interesting new challenge to its K-12 audience: design the future of space-based food production, using the real-life version of Jean-Luc Picard’s tea machine. In collaboration with the American Society for Mechanical Engineers Foundation and Star Trek, NASA launched the Star Trek…
You’ll never convince us there’s a better racing game out there than Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo. Hours and hours of our childhoods were spent racing those pixelated courses in our parents’ basements, but with the SNES only supporting four players, our races were never as intense as this epic 101-player battle royale.…
Fisher Price’s Power Wheels line is best known for its miniature drivable versions of real-life cars, like the Porsche 911 GT3. But one of its more original and unique creations, the Wild Thing, is being brought back with a more rugged design so kids can now take it off-road. The original Wild Thing was a…
This morning, Spotify announced a deal: Sign up for three months of Spotify for $29.97, you’ll get a free Chromecast. That’s sweet. We love Chromecast, Google’s super-cheap streaming dongle. And we super love Spotify, the leading on-demand streaming music service. The cost of a Chromecast is $35, so you basically get the Spotify for free.…
For just shy of $300, Harlequin Illusions will sell you a seemingly magical red oak wine rack that always looks empty when viewed from the side, despite there obviously being bottles stored in it. But the secret behind this trick isn’t wormholes or holograms, it’s a magician’s most faithful assistant. A quick patent search on…
This is the Freedom 251. It gets the name from its rather modest 251-rupee price tag, which equates to about $4. And you know what? Its specs aren’t too bad, either. The device features the kind of technical specification that many people would be quite content with: A 4-inch screen, 1.3 GHz quadcore processor, 1GB…
It may look like any other picture of a silicon chip, but this one’s rather special: It’s the centrepiece of a new 94 GHz radar system being developed by the European Space Agency, that will transform radar systems in space missions. The new hardware is being developed in Ireland by a company called Arralis. Its…
The sci-fi dream of flexible electronics is on its way—it’s just taking a while to arrive. But this new prototype flexible smartphone, that responds to the way it’s bent and twisted, at least hints at how your future phone may behave. Created by researchers from Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab, the device uses a 720p…
Yesterday, a District Court Judge ordered Apple to help the FBI access files on one of the iPhones of the San Bernardino shooters. Now, Apple CEO Tim Cook has defined Apple’s position on the matter—and it plans to fight the ruling as far as it can. In an open letter published on the Apple website,…
It’s over four months since retailers around the US were supposed to start using EMV technology to accept your card payments. So why is it that so many stores seem to be ignoring the chip? That’s exactly what payments expert Allen Weinberg has been wondering too. In a nice article on his blog, he runs…
If domain names like “.com” and “.org” lack the sense of buzzword-fuelled modernity that your website requires, well, it’s your lucky day. You can now buy “.cloud” domains, because the internet isn’t clichéd enough just yet. The top level .cloud domain was bought by the Italian company Aruba in 2014 and now it’s opened it…
If you want to not be hacked, the absolute best thing you can do is turn on two-factor authentication for all your accounts. Instagram is way behind the trend here, but it looks like tween’s second-favorite photo network is finally getting with the times. According to TechCrunch, Instagram is in the process of rolling out…
In case you’re ever in the position of wanting to get back at a lawyer, here’s some news from Florida: don’t get your revenge by posting false reviews across the internet, or you’ll be in the hole for $350,000. The case concerns a divorcing couple, Copia Blake and Peter Birzon, and Blake’s lawyer, Ann-Marie Giustibelli.…
The problem of law enforcement and encryption is mostly talked about in vague terms of “backdoors” and “a new Manhattan Project”, but here’s something concrete: a District Court Judge just ordered Apple to help the FBI access files on one of the iPhones of the San Bernardino shooters. The ruling was handed down by Sheri…
