Tech News

iPhone 6s Camera Review: Apple Is No Longer the King of Mobile Photos

As an Apple-toting photographer, the thing I look forward to most about each iPhone update is the camera. This year’s 6s and 6s Plus promised not only higher resolution, but better all-around pics, 4K video, and more. Now that there are other terrific smartphone cameras in the mix, the iPhone has to try extra hard…

You Can Soon Use Mini Videos As Your Profile Picture on Facebook Mobile

Facebook’s updating its profile picture feature: Mobile users will be able to use 7-second long homemade GIFs as their main picture on the site. This is gonna be just like that time people complained on MySpace when users changed their background to tiled tie-dye or neon fuchsia wallpaper with animated glitter hearts. Customization is fun,…

The Noisiest Neighborhoods in New York, Seattle, and San Francisco

Car alarms, jackhammers, barking dogs, drunken brawls outside your window—ah, the sounds of the city. Urban living comes with challenges, and annoying, loud noise is one of ‘em. But these maps show us which neighborhoods you’ll want to steer clear of in three major U.S. cities if you want a sound night’s sleep. Real estate…

Shooting Challenge: Vanishing Point

Two parallel lines slowly intersect, then seem to vanish into the distance. No wonder it’s called a vanishing point. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge, we want you to photograph it. The Challenge Take a photograph that features a vanishing point. The Method We take it for granted now, but the vanishing point was a…

Hitting Jell-O with a tennis racket gloriously slices it all up

Tennis racquets are excellent at turning objects—namely, tennis balls—into blobs because the strings have just the right amount of give to absorb a bit of punishment. What’s even cooler though, is when something—like Jell-O—goes straight through the webbing and gets cut and sliced and chopped into jiggly flying snake-like objects. You can’t actually see that…

OS X El Capitan Is Here, Go Download Right Now

As promised, the lastest version of OS X is available for download now. You should probably update as soon as you can! El Cap is full of bunches of new features mostly aimed at refining the OS X experience. You can read our guide to the latest and greatest here.

Here’s the Camera Compared In Every Single iPhone

Everyone knows the 12-megapixel iPhone 6s camera is better not really that much better than the 8-megapixel iPhone 6. But think about this: The first iPhone camera was only two megapixels. How much of a better photo does that equate to? The makers of the Camera+ app have a comparison. Over at their blog SnapSnapSnap,…

US Cybersecurity Policy in One Sad Cliche: “People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Rocks”

The US doesn’t have a problem punishing foreign hackers. The government killed an ISIS hacker with a drone in August. It quickly sanctioned North Korea following the Sony hack. So why hasn’t the United States retaliated against the OPM hackers? Watching the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on US cybersecurity policy on Tuesday, it seems…

Vinyl Record Sales Generated More Money This Year Than Free Streaming Music

The vinyl resurgence is real, but artists are still getting screwed. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) reported that U.S. consumers bought $226 million worth of vinyl records in the first half of the year. Contrast this to $162.7 million in revenues from ad-supported streams from the likes of Pandora and Spotify, and it…

California’s Using Its Amber Alert System to Find Hit-and-Run Drivers

Since 1996 Amber Alerts have been used to tell drivers to watch for cars associated with child abductions. But Amber Alerts are relatively rare (thankfully), so in the best possible use of the system the rest of the time, California is using them to find cars involved in hit-and-run crashes. Enacted by a bill signed…

Nvidia’s Game Streaming Service Launches Tomorrow, and Will Cost You $8 a Month

The Shield is Nvidia’s Android TV gaming powerhouse, and Grid isi ts software soul—a streaming service that lets you play a selection of titles over the internet. Think like a Netflix for FPSes. But Grid is changing. Starting tomorrow it will launch out of beta under the new name GeForce Now, with an $8-per-month subscription…

Back to the Future Trilogy Will Stream Exclusively on Amazon Prime In October

Are you ready for October 21, 2015? That’s the date that Marty McFly arrives in the future — at least according to the second Back to the Future movie. But if you’re planning on watching the trilogy to celebrate, you’ll only have one streaming option: Amazon Prime. Starting October 1st, Amazon has the exclusive rights…

Video: Making a handmade glass bottle from sand is so hard

The concept is easy enough to follow: find sand, melt the crap out of it at over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then watch sand turn into glass. But when you want to do something with that molten glass like say, make a glass bottle, it gets so much harder. You have to juggle so many…

A movie’s first and last scene, compared side-by-side (NSFW)

We’ve seen film editor Jacob T. Swinney juxtapose the first and last shot of a movie before. Now he’s back again, comparing how 70 more movies open and close. Obviously there may be some vague-ish spoilers in some of the closing shots and a few of the scenes in this cut are NSFW but it’s…

Japan’s Ultra-Poisonous Pufferfish Holds the Key to the Pain Killers of the Future

Fugu, the Japanese pufferfish that’s a luxe delicacy but also courses with neurotoxins more poisonous than cyanide, might help scientists gin up pain-killing drugs in the future. For killer pain, a killer fish might be the solution. A dish that’s as risky as it is fancy, fugu must be specially prepared by a licensed chef…

Getting Stuck Inside This Tiny Ball Was Part of Each NASA Astronaut’s Training

This ball is a ridiculous Health and Safety mockup, that never actually made it off-planet. It’s basically the worst-shaped spacesuit that was ever invented. 1980: Margaret Rhea Seddon, Kathryn D. Sullivan, Judith A. Resnick, Sally K. Ride, Anna L. Fisher, and Shannon W. Lucid clustered around a personal rescue enclosure prototype. Image credit: NASA The…

Last-Minute Stockpiling Only Makes Disasters Worse

When a hurricane takes aim at the coast or a blizzard looms in the forecast, something strange comes over us. We swarm into grocery stores, stripping the shelves bare of canned goods and staple foods. Lines stretch all the way around the supermarket, and it’s like Black Friday on the produce aisle, with people arguing…

A Brief History of the Brutal and Bizarre World of Fraternity Hazing

In theory, the tradition of hazing has vanished from the college campuses of America. National fraternal organizations have banned it. At least 38 states have outlawed it. From coast to coast, university officials smugly assure worried parents that their campus is free of hazing. But shielded by vows of secrecy, many chapters carry on this…

Samsung just announced prices for its Gear S2 smartwatch, the twisty-turny circular bezel one running the company’s own Tizen wearable software. If interested, you’ll be parting with $300-$350 for the S2 and the S2 Classic. They’ll be available in stores and online on October 2.

The New Version of OS X Arrives Today, and You Should Probably Update

OS X El Capitan is officially arriving on the interwebs today, complete with a pretty new background picture, and a boatload of new features. If you’ve got a compatible Apple computer (which you probably do), you should get ready to download. https://gizmodo.com/hands-on-with-apples-os-x-el-capitan-tiny-tweaks-make-1714635091 The best news about El Cap is that it’s free, and your MacBook…