Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
We all know the problem: You pay for one impressive-sounding broadband speed but you actually get a much less impressive speed. Now, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman and his new teammate Tim Wu are doing something about the problem. They’re investigating! In a letter last week, Wu told Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Cablevision…
Microsoft’s latest laptop killers, the Surface Pro 4 and the strangely great Surface Book are now on sale on Microsoft.com, Amazon, and in stores. You can read our thoughts, and all our other Surface coverage, right here.
If you’re in the mood to take a glorious snooze, waking up much later than you intended to, go ahead and install the iOS 9.1 update overnight. iOS users are taking to Twitter and various forums to warn others that updating iPads and iPhones overnight will cancel any alarms from going off. The updates have…
It’s been a long time coming, but the updated Apple TV is a thing you can finally plunk down your money for starting today. The new 32 GB ($150) and 64 GB ($200) models represent the biggest update to Apple’s set-top-box since it launched ages ago. The coolest new feature? The Siri remote which features…
If you got to work by bus today, you can thank, or blame, Stanislaus Baudry. Baudry lived in the town of Nantes in France at a time when you either had your own carriage, hired a cab to get you from one specific place to another, or walked. The industrial age was really kicking off,…
They say good artists copy, while great artists steal. But aspiring artists? They trace, and the new transparent Boogie Board, which we first covered back at CES, is finally hitting the market with an accompanying tablet app and activity packs letting kids practice their penmanship, or just doodle. Arriving just in time to pop up…
Everyone knows what the iconic right-handed helix of DNA looks like, with its inter-linking string of molecules forming a pleasing, gentle twist. But there’s more to the shape than meets the eye, and this video explains some of the mathematical secrets lurking within DNA. Professor Mariel Vazquez from UC Davis describes the math behind the…
Bad news for illegal streamers: one of the most popular versions of Popcorn Time has been shut down, likely for good. Over the weekend, the Popcorntime.io website — the internet shop front for the most popular of a series of Torrent-streaming apps — has been shut down, reports Torrent Freak, after a torturous week for…
A major earthquake has hit northern Afghanistan this morning. It was also felt in Pakistan and northern India. According to the US Geological survey, the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.7 and was centered in a mountainous region 158 miles north-east of the Afghan capital of Kabul at a depth of 133 miles. It occurred…
A team of scientists has created what they claim is the blackest material ever produced by human hands, which absorbs virtually all of the light that hits its surface. The new material, developed by researchers from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulla University of Science and Technology, is built up using carbon nanotubes to help absorb the…
In Ye Olden Days, the concern about a Russian-American conflict would be the end of the world as we know it. In the 21st century however, an international crisis requires cutting undersea internet cables. According to a New York Times headline, ‘Russian Ships Near Data Cables Are Too Close For U.S. Comfort’. The point is…
Conventional construction logic says that you have to build foundations first, roofs last. Montreal, Canada, home to poutine and twisted logic, disagrees. A Montreal construction company is building a 10-story condo building in the heart of downtown. That itself is not surprising in a city undergoing rapid gentrification; what is unusual is the construction method.…
The Wi-Fi Assist feature in iOS 9 was meant to save consumers from shitty Wi-Fi by switching to cell data. Instead, it’s eating through data caps, and now apparently causing lawsuits. https://gizmodo.com/ios-9s-wi-fi-assist-is-eating-my-cell-data-1733513159 A California couple is suing Apple for $5 million in damages relating to Wi-Fi Assist. The suit alleges that after upgrading to iOS…
Homo naledi, the newly discovered species of early hominin announced last month, is drawing a lot of fire from paleoanthropologists. For one thing, there’s still debate over whether Homo naledi is actually a new species at all. Some anthropologists, like Jeffrey Schwarz, say the specimens look more like an early human ancestor from a whole…
Welcome to this week’s Reading List, our weekly collection of great science and technology articles from around the internet. This week, we’ll do a shift at an Amazon warehouse, delve into the Deep Web, and confront online bullying. The so-called Darknet is only a tiny fraction of what’s on the Deep Web, the part of…
Smoke and lasers take this model aircraft from looking good to gorgeous. The flow visualization was part of high speed research on the F-16 Scamp conducted at NASA’s Langeley Research Center in 1992. [NASA]
Halloween is fast approaching, which means many Americans will partake in the annual mutilate-a-squash ritual this weekend. But let’s face it: toothy grins and pointy eyes are passé. If you really want your gourd to stand out this year, we recommend spicing things up with a healthy dose of physics. The wonderful nerds behind Symmetry…
Hazel Bishop isn’t well-known today, but in the 1950s her name was on everyone’s lips. She made the most famous lipstick in the world, and she did it by plugging away at different formulas in her kitchen in the evenings. Hazel Bishop lipstick set off multiple “make-up wars.” The first was among different make-up giants,…
Like many children of the ‘80s, Pizza Hut occupies a special place in my heart. Those red-roofed, linoleum-floored restaurants are woven into my early childhood memories as palaces of delectably greasy pizza, texture-perfect breadsticks, and carefree Saturday afternoons. I haven’t been to a Pizza Hut in over a decade, and apparently, I’m not alone. Pizza…
It’s always the most embarrassing part of a fallen regime. All those statues, no longer relevant. Usually they come down, hence the severed head of Vladimir Lenin recently unearthed in Berlin. But what to do with all those Lenins still standing? Turn them into the likeness of a more benevolent leader, of course. That’s what…
