Tech News

The hypnotizing art of juggling has never looked so cool

To call these three guys just jugglers doesn’t really do them justice. They combine dance moves and slick choreography and really smart coordination to pull off all their stunts that it makes juggling just the backdrop for what they do. There is so much going on and it’s all so fun to keep track of…

The Lego Millennium Falcon Looks Fantastic Decked Out in Racing Livery

Han Solo boasted the Millennium Falcon was the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. But Joe Gan’s version, decked out in some amazing racing livery borrowed from the Lego Technic Grand Prix Racer set, could easily do it in ten. We already got a taste of what intergalactic racing is…

The U.S. Might’ve Just Taken Two Steps Closer Toward Its Own Maglev Train

This weekend, millions were approved in funding for a high-speed rail project linking Baltimore and Washington, D.C. by maglev train. A day later, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation flew to Japan to see what riding one was like firsthand. These are two promising signs, my friends, for high-speed rail’s future in America—though there’s still a…

How to Start Any Office Application in Safe Mode

Word starting to wobble? Excel eating itself? PowerPoint playing up? If you’re having trouble with your Office apps, then launch them in a special stripped-down Safe Mode. Like Windows Safe Mode, it loads the software in its most basic configuration, enabling you to troubleshoot issues and hopefully identify what’s causing your problems. Here’s how it’s…

Watch Newborn Babies Reluctantly Walk for Science

Ever wonder how babies learn to walk? This adorable experiment in which a newborn gets perp-walked (complete with a blurred-out face) by a scientist tells us a little about how that happens. The needlessly anonymized little baby being forced to walk along above is having his or her lumbosacral motoneuron activity monitored. As you can…

A Death Star Filled With Plastic Stormtroopers Is a Better Bucket of Army Men

If there’s one toy that defines cheap and mass-produced, it’s those buckets full of tiny green plastic army men. They really stop being desirable once you turn six, except when those plastic soldiers are replaced with tiny white stormtroopers led by an equally tiny Darth Vader. There’s no pricing for Banpresto’s bucket o’ Star Wars…

Video: The incredible 18 month process of making a shotgun

It takes decades of experience and hundreds and hundreds of man hours to make a William & Son shotgun. There’s an expert for the barrel, a master to handle the engraving, a wizard to finish it off and many more skilled hands involved in the entire process. We get to see a glimpse of how…

These Trampolining Water Droplets Seem to Defy Physics

Winter is coming, bringing with it inevitable flight delays as ground crews scramble to de-ice all those airplane wings before takeoff on cold wintry days. Wouldn’t it be awesome if all that moisture never had a chance to freeze, and instead just bounced right off the surface? Swedish scientists think they may have found a…

Apple Confirms You’ll Be Able to Pre-Order the iPad Pro This Wednesday

Today Apple confirmed the company’s new monstrous iPad Pro will be available for pre-order online starting this Wednesday, November 11, and can be found in Apple stores, select carriers, and at authorized reseller locations later this week. The 12-inch iPad Pro’s companion devices, the Apple Pencil ($99) and Smart Keyboard ($169), will also be available…

Xiaomi’s Super-Cheap Fitness Tracker Now Monitors Heart-Rate for $16

Last year, Xaiomi launched an incredibly cheap fitness tracker that you might have actually deigned to wear. Now, it also monitors your pulse, and yet still only costs $16. The Next Web reports that the updated device, known as the Mi Band Pulse, now reads your heart rate using light-based photoplethysmography, as well as logging…

You’d Never Guess This Animation Was Actually Made in Keynote

Keynote may not be as painful to use as PowerPoint, but it is still a pretty basic piece of presentation software. You might find it hard to believe, then, that this cute animation was made using the humble piece of everyday software. Created by Linda Dong, the video below is a lovely example of how…

We’ve Been Using Media to Escape Human Interaction for Centuries 

It’s easy to blame your displeasure with contemporary behaviour on the technology in our hands. But, really, humans have been busy using whatever they can to ignore you for centuries. Randall Munroe predicts the inevitable in today’s XKCD: “2060: The gregarious superintelligent AI, happily talking its way out of a box, is fast becoming a…

Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Hit High, Likely to Become ‘Permanent Reality’

A new bulletin from the World Meteorological Organization reports that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached another new record high in 2014 that could become a ‘permanent reality.’ The bulletin explains that the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 has reached 397.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2014—close to the (largely symbolic) 400ppm…

Pinterest Now Has Visual Search and It’s Kinda Smart

Smart image recognition systems can be incredibly powerful, and how interior designers and fashionistas can take advantage of them. Pinterest now has a tool that allows you to search not using words but images, which could make tracking down that artisanal teapot a little easier. In the past, Pinterest has required you to know how…

Today’s lovely Google Doodle celebrates the 101st birthday of inventor and actress Hedy Lamarr, who we have to thank for wifi. Thanks again, Hedy.

If the only thing stopping you buying Blackberry’s new Android slider was the AT&T exclusive, good news: the Priv is also coming to Verizon. Remember: Blackberry is going to keep on loving you. Contact the author at [email protected].

The (Unknown) Inventor of Bitcoin Nominated For the Nobel Prize in Economics

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is, as with most Nobel prizes, quite a big deal. Past laureates are a who’s who of economics—and starting in 2016, that list could include the inventor of Bitcoin. Assuming, of course, someone works out who that is. Satoshi Nakamoto is the widely recognized inventor of Bitcoin. They…

An Australian Carrier Just Pulled 1Gbps Over Its 4G Network

Think 100Mbps over a fiber connection is cool? Try 1000Mbps (1Gbps) over a wireless 4G connection. That’s what Aussie carrier Telstra and Ericsson just hit in their new network testing. That’s right: using LTE-Advanced and carrier-aggregation tech, Ericsson and Telstra pulled down 1Gbps over 4G wireless as it gears up to build a new 5G…

EPA Decides To Start Properly Testing Cars Post-Dieselgate

Part of the reason Volkswagen was able to cheat the federal government’s emissions testing for so long was the test itself: standardized, free of variables, and easy to engineer around. In the wake of Dieselgate, the EPA is announcing an overhauled, actually-useful testing procedure. https://jalopnik.com/your-guide-to-dieselgate-volkswagens-diesel-cheating-c-1731857018 According to the New York Times, the EPA is going…

Scientists Have Found Fossilized Brains

Conventional wisdom says that brains don’t fossilize, but these seven fossilized brains beg to differ. An arthropod called Fuxianhuia protensa, which lived on the ocean floor about 520 million years ago, would have looked much like today’s shrimp, say paleontologists. Thanks to fossilized remains, we now know that its brain was also similar to those…