Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
For some reason Restoration Hardware only sells a version of this sleek Roadster Scoot that accommodates kids aged two to four—not adults. So if you and your partner have ever thought about having or adopting kids, you’ve now got a perfectly good reason to expand your family. At $150 its metal frame, real rubber tires,…
2015 was an insanely wild year in robotics: From leaps in AI technology to piloted, Gundam-like battle machines. We’re living in a bizarre, sci-fi world that entangles humans with robots more than ever before. Here are ten of the craziest ‘bots from the past year. Mk.II It was probably the biggest robot story of 2015.…
America’s largest military shipbuilding company, the Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls Shipbuilding division, launched the company’s 30th Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer in early December. The ship, called Ralph Johnson, is scheduled to be christened in the spring of 2016, and you can watch the time lapse footage of the translation and launch of the ship…
No one has seen a certain species of sea snake in more than 15 years, prompting concerns that they’ve gone extinct. So imagine the surprise of researchers when they spotted a pair of these elusive sea snakes off the coast of Western Australia. The Australian short nosed sea snake (Aipysurus apraefrontalis) was officially listed as…
When you first see where skier Aymar Navarro is trying to go, it doesn’t quite register in your brain. Like, no, it couldn’t be there. And then you look at the inevitability of his ski line at Cerro Torrecillas in the Andes and you’re like holy crap, he’s really going for it. It’s like he’s…
The updates in iOS 9.2 aren’t much to write home about (even if you are in the habit of writing to your folks about new iOS releases), but there is one useful new feature now available on mobile: Mail Drop. It lets you send big files from your iPhone via iCloud, and here’s how to…
CineFix’s 8-bit movie series are always good but this one on the original Star Wars trilogy is especially awesome because for each movie, the graphics get a little bit better as if they were progressing from like the original Nintendo to Super Nintendo. It’s also great because I’d watch this entire trilogy in 8-bit before…
No one’s going to mistake this cartoony penguin for the real thing, but it’s the clever engineering by the Lego masters at JK Brickworks—not its realism—that makes this creation a must-see both inside and out. As the little penguin spins in circles on the slippery iceberg, inside it’s powered by a device called the Trammel…
Say what you will about Tickle Me Elmo, but at least that trendy holiday gift didn’t spontaneously combust and burn down houses. Hoverboards—those cheap handless motorized scooters that do not hover—are one of the most coveted presents this year. They’re also unregulated and prone to bursting into flames. This Saturday Night Live commercial parody this…
Iranian hackers gained access to the control system at the Bowman Avenue Dam in 2013. The dam is some twenty miles from New York City, according to The Wall Street Journal. Yikes. While there’s no apparent damage related to the hack, it’s alarming for a number of reasons. The scariest bit is that it reportedly…
Robovacs make at least one household chore a little easier, but with limited intelligence you can’t just tell them what rooms need cleaning. So LG’s HOM-BOT Turbo+ introduces a new feature which allows users snap a photo of their home and simply tap where the robovac needs to make another pass. The new Home-Joy feature…
The complexity of a puzzle is usually dependent on how many tiny pieces are crammed inside its box. But by introducing mathematical fractals into the design, this plain nine-piece puzzle by Oscar van Deventer looks like a nightmare to solve. Deventer’s Fractal Jigsaw, available from his website for just shy of $55, is made all…
When you go see a big blockbuster movie that’s been heavily done over in CG, you’re not exactly expecting reality. But you also don’t want to see huge visual effect gaffes that make you laugh at the ridiculousness of it either. Whether it’s bad practical effects like the dummy in The Fugitive or if it’s…
As Senior Airman Sonya Alexander got to work refuelling an E-3 Sentry (AWACS) jet, something pretty great happened. Yes, that is the reflection of the jet in her sunglasses. Image by U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman John Nieves Camacho
The blood testing start-up Theranos came under intense media scrutiny back in October. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. health regulators are investigating complaints about the company’s lab and research practices. The newspaper has discovered that complaints made by two former employees are being investigated. The first was filed in September to the…
Earlier this year, it came to light that Toshiba had exaggerated its operating profits by $1.2 billion over the past six years. Now, it looks set to report a staggering $4.5 billion of losses—and cut 6,800 jobs as a result. The BBC reports that those jobs are being lost in its consumer electronics division as…
A team of researchers from Cambridge University is borrowing some of the techniques used in autonomous vehicles to teach your phone to navigate, even when it doesn’t have access to positioning information like a GPS signal. In fact, the team has developed two new pieces of software that run on mobile phones but think a…
Not even squinting will help you see this image without the help of a microscope. This is the smallest inkjet-printed colour image ever produced, and it’s the same size as a single pixel on a Retina display. Created by researchers from ETH Zurich University and a startup company called Scrona, the image was made using…
HTTP status codes are not normally a thing that aids political dissidents, or really anything to get excited about. But the newly-made code 451, to be used when something is taken down for legal reasons, is a timely exception. Status codes are used when requesting and transmitting data over the internet, for example, pulling up…
DJI, maker of drones and enabler of lawsuits, has become the most recognized drone company in the world, despite not having any actual stores. That’s all changing with the opening of its first flagship in Shenzen. The 8500-square-foot building looks a lot more like an art gallery than a retail store, growing up out of…
