Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
You’ve probably suspected that your household drinking water—which came from a reservoir, through underground pipes, to your filthy kitchen sink—wasn’t sterile. Now scientists are studying exactly what’s in that water. DNA sequencing is letting scientists test out things that they otherwise could not—like the contents of your drinking water. Researchers from the University of Sweden…
The internet is a big place. There’s so much to read and watch and listen to that it can be overwhelming. We all have those stories that we start, get distracted for one reason or another, and promise ourselves we’ll finish later. Well, if any of those stories were on Paleofuture, here’s your second chance!…
More so than other sandwiches, a great po’ boy needs to have the best bread that’s made for a po’ boy. It needs to be light and crispy but also fluffy and without all that, a po’ boy wouldn’t really be a po’ boy then. Here is Mind of a Chef showing how John Gendusa…
Summer 2015 marked the failed American odyssey of hitchBOT, the hitchhiking humanoid built for motorists to tote from Salem, Massachusetts, to San Francisco. It got as far as Philly before being torn limb from limb. But in Canada, where people are infinitely friendlier toward roadside robots, the original hitchBOT—which did manage to thumb it cross-country—will…
Not to brag, but 2015 was a solid year for reviews of Quiznos sandwiches and other food offerings on YouTube. Here are some reviews that really made the cut. The cut of deli meat in a toasty Quizno’s sandwich! Quiznos Turkey & Brown Mustard Pretzel Sub! REVIEW by JoeysWorldTour “I love brown mustard because it’s…
It’s never happened to me but after watching Coyote Peterson show people what it’s like to get quilled by a porcupine, I can tell you that it hurts like freaking hell. Dozens of those little daggers spiked themselves into his hand and a few were lodged pretty damn deep. Coyote Peterson got himself quilled for…
Milwaukee isn’t the first power tool maker to connect its hardware to a smartphone app for automatic inventory tracking. But the company’s One-Key app now goes a step further, allowing users to precisely tweak the torque and speed settings of their power tools for the specific task at hand. The company is introducing new drill…
We’ve all got wallpaper of one kind or another on our smartphones, but some people take the pursuit of visual backdrop perfection more seriously than others. If you want to ensure a steady stream of beautiful-looking images that you can customize—complete with context—then give TapDeck a try. Available for free on the Google Play Store,…
Oh man. This is one big baby. The Liebherr T 282 is one of the largest haul trucks in the world (it has the 2nd largest haul truck payload capacity) and it’s assembly process is so impressive that I would totally believe it if each one of these bad boys were Transformers that we’ve created…
Spotify certainly has enough music to keep you entertained, but its playlists can lurch from one track to the next with little finesse. Now, it’s launching a new Party feature that includes mixed, beat-matched songs so that things feel a little more professional. The new playlists, part of a feature that will be known as…
Bitcoin has been shaking up the world of finance, but its underlying technology—known as blockchain—may yet have an even more pervasive effect. Now, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has given the green light for shares to be issued on the blockchain. According to public documents filed by the company Overstock, the SEC has…
If you’ve shopped at Safeway in California or Colorado recently, you may want to check your bank accounts. The supermarket chain has admitted that it’s investigating card skimming attacks at several of its stores in those states. Krebs on Security reports that financial institutions are investigating a series of attacks that seem to have taken…
Do all the presents you give away over the holidays look like they were wrapped in the dark? Don’t worry: this video features a series of mathematical tricks to help you ensure your gifts always look neatly wrapped. Covering the full gamut of geometrical shapes and squishy items, mathematician Katie Steckles shows us how to…
Weirdly, there’s never been a 64-bit version of Firefox until now. But if you’re running Windows 7 or later, you can now explore the internet with the browser while using twice its current 32 bits. Making use of the full 64 bits will allow the software to capitalize on the assets of modern processors. It…
The blue light that emanates from your phone’s screen is known to disrupt your sleep. So it’s good news that Google has added a light filter to its Play Books app, which gradually tapers the amount of blue light used by your display as you inch closer to bedtime. Now all apps need it. The…
Every year, Google rounds up all the arcane crap that’s flowed through its internet portal, crunches the data, and tells us how badly we’ve misused the internet. Here’s 2015, you awful people. Google’s list of top searches is exactly what you’d expect: just the right mix of breaking news events, surprise celebrities, and movies. Oh,…
As promised, Sonos has finally joined the list of apps that play nice with Apple Music—provided you’re willing to risk the beta version, that is. Starting today, anyone enrolled in the public beta for Sonos can use their rather expensive sound system to play Tay-Tay. If you’re not already on the beta program, you can…
Blockchain, the digital ledger underpinning Bitcoin, is perhaps the cryptocurrency’s most interesting (and intelligent) feature, with its ability to securely and publicly record transactions. Given that stock trading is a confusing mishmash of property trading hands, blockchain-powered trades seems like a surprisingly good idea. Overstock.com is an online retailer that has warmly embraced Bitcoin and…
Tonight’s GOP presidential debate in Vegas has already devolved into an argument over whether the next president should close down parts of the internet, with burnt-sienna insult balloon Donald Trump insisting again that, yep, why not, he’d close down parts of the internet. “I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to…
After inexplicably rattling off the introduction dates for most of Apple’s recent flagship products, GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina announced that she’ll be able to get tech companies to work with the government on security issues because she “knows them.” Then she insisted that the government is using the wrong algorithms to identify terrorists online.…
