Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Never say anything in an electronic message that you wouldn’t want appearing, and attributed to you, in tomorrow’s front-page headline in the New York Times. That was the advice of Colonel David Russell, head of the IPTO at DARPA in the mid-1970s and it still holds true today. In 1985 RAND issued a report on…
Theranos seemed to be offering a miraculous new service: a single finger pinprick could yield the results of up to 200 different blood tests. But a scathing report in the The Wall Street Journal punctured these claims. Now Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has come to her company’s defense. https://gizmodo.com/every-walgreens-is-about-to-offer-cheap-painless-blood-1660078785 The California-based health-tech firm, valued at…
Windows 10 can do it, OS X El Capitan can do it—and Chrome OS can do it, too. I’m talking about snapping windows to the sides of the screen to make it easier to compare apps and webpages. But if you’re not familiar with the process on your Chromebook or Chromebox, then here’s what you…
Despite being tiny Lego imposters, Nanoblocks have managed to gain a healthy fan base by doing the same thing its competitor does: licensing brands and popular properties. Remember those Nanoblock McDonald’s sets? Now Nikon is getting in on the building fun too. Available exclusively from the Japanese Nikon Direct online store, this Nanoblock set is…
The Congress on Love and Sex with Robots was set to discuss everything human/robot from ethics to teledildonics. Then Malaysian authorities shut it down. The Congress on Love and Sex with Robots is the brainchild of David Levy (author of Love and Sex with Robots), who specializes in robotics software, and Professor Adrian David Cheok,…
The past 24 hours have been a tortured 24 hours for YouTube professionals and their fans. The famously free video site announced a new paid service called YouTube Red, and nobody’s really sure what it means. But some YouTubers are already making end-time predictions. Those predictions fall on the dramatic end of the reaction spectrum,…
The tallest building in the world? The Burj Khalifa. Duh. But if plans had worked out differently for other buildings, the Burj Khalifa wouldn’t even crack the top 10 tallest buildings in the world. Here’s a cool chart showing all the tallest planned buildings in the world. Some of them are still ongoing while others…
Many drivers think that it’s safer to use a voice-controlled assistant like Cortana or Siri while driving, instead of directly interacting with my phone. But a pair of new studies about voice-controlled assistants and in-car hands-free systems are still “very distracting, very error prone and very frustrating to use.” The studies were conducted by University…
When a star wanders too close to a black hole, immense gravitational forces begin to rip it apart in an epic cosmic slaying called a “tidal disruption event.” Some of the star’s mass is flung outward into space, while the rest is drawn in, triggering a powerful flare that showers the sky with x-rays. Using…
State laws in the US can set rules for a sex education classroom, but the actual quality of the instruction depends on what happens at the local level. Aaron Yarmuth’s article in Louisville’s LeoWeekly looks at one way a comprehensive sex ed class can thread that needle. Check it out! Contact the author at [email protected].
This is Xbox’s $150 Elite controller. $150! Sounds crazy, right? I thought so too when Microsoft alerted the world of its existence. But yeah, I was wrong. Although we’re saving our full review for when we can pin this guy up against the ole’ regular Xbox controller while sniping Grunts in Halo 5: Guardians next…
The human hand is a marvelous evolutionary invention: it can tie knots, tap out blog posts, wield tools and wire circuit boards. But how did we get these hands, with their long, dextrous fingers and conveniently opposable thumbs? It’s likely that tool-grasping played a role, but according to one evolutionary biologist, so did whacking your…
One of the apps in this week’s roundup is brand spankin’ new (hint: it’s the one at the very top). There’s also an extremely advanced widget creator for Android, a news app that wants to be your best driving buddy, and a Facebook app that wasn’t made by Facebook. Enjoy! Android PHHHOTO PHHHOTO–yes, that’s with…
This photo shows US Navy fighter jets flying side-by-side with Chilean Air Force fighter jets next to the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. It’s like seeing little ducklings follow the big mama duck, only these are sophisticated weapons worth millions of dollars. U.S. Naval aircraft and aircraft from the Chilean Air Force participate in a…
A few days ago we were all oohing and awing over a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 that was modded with a clear back panel revealing some of the components inside. But it can’t compare to the nerd lust some of your are probably feeling over this incredibly rare Apple Newton. A Newton MessagePad 110, to…
Break out your Kermit flail gifs, everyone, because we’re not only getting Muppet action figures—they look pretty damn fabulous, too. Piggybacking (no pun intended) off the return of the Muppets to TV, Diamond Select Toys are releasing a line of action figures based on the Henson Company’s wonderful creations. The first wave is a series…
July 28, 1973: Skylab drifts far above the Amazon River Valley of Brazil like a deep-space dragonfly. NASA astronauts lan L. Bean, Owen K. Garriott, and Jack R. Lousma admired this view while approaching the the Skylab space station. The astronauts were tucked into the Skylab 3 Command/Service Module, about to start their 59-day mission.…
Portable chargers have become as ubiquitous a smartphone accessory as cases, and rarely do they include any genuine innovation anymore—but the Quarter does. It’s the first backup battery that can be charged using your MacBook’s power adapter, giving you enough juice to revive a dead iPhone in just 15 minutes. There’s a certain irony that…
This illustration of Operation Igloo White comes from the January 10, 1970 report ADA485166. You can read more about Igloo White, Vietnam War-era drones, and the invention of modern border surveillance here.
Instagram is coming out with a new app called Boomerang that lets people share one-second silent mini-videos. The obvious comparison here is Vine, but Boomerang won’t have its own feed—instead, you post the mini-videos on Instagram or Facebook. So it’s a tool, not a social network. Boomerang doesn’t do anything Apple’s Live Photos doesn’t do—just…
