Tech News

Been meaning to catch up on Mr. Robot, the totally awesome and great TV show all about cybersecurity on USA? Well, I hope you have an Amazon Prime account because Sam Esmail’s hacking sensation will be streaming there, exclusively. And if you haven’t seen it yet. Seriously, it’s really good.

Inside the Engineering of the World’s First 1,000mph Car

Yesterday, a team of British engineers unveiled Bloodhound SSC: the world’s most powerful car, intended to reach speeds of over 1,000mph. Standing beside what looks like a rocket-on-wheels, it’s obvious what a marvel of engineering it is. We spoke to the team’s Lead Mechanical Engineer to find out how the vehicle was built. Measuring 13.5…

How To Survive a Long Flight With Just Your Smartphone

Even if you get the privilege of a rather clunky entertainment system built into the seat in front of you, having to sit inside a tin can for a stretch of several hours is always going to be a struggle. Thankfully, your most dependable gadget can help the time to quite literally fly by, even…

This is What Happens When the Earth is Chewed by Tectonic Forces

I love it when the dramatic and violent history of the Earth is laid bare for anyone to see. The fault, folds, and crenulations in this marble are the unmistakable evidence of a traumatic past for this tiny patch of the world. Located in the Jazida do Urubu marble quarry, this outcrop was exposed during…

Take a Look Inside Samsung’s New U.S. R&D HQ

Yesterday, Samsung opened a brand-new 1.1 million-square-foot building in San Jose. Home to its American R&D teams, it will house 2,000 employees. Why not take a look around? The new 10-story building was designed by architecture firm NBBJ and began construction in 2013. It will house the South Korean company’s west-coast R&D teams, and Samsung…

iPhone 6S Plus Teardown: Bigger, Heavier, Slightly Smaller Battery

We’ve already seen inside the iPhone 6, and now iFixit has torn apart its larger sibling, too. This is what lurks within the iPhone 6 Plus. The guys at iFixit have been busy with their screwdrivers and torn the new, larger iPhone apart. Here are some choice findings: The display assembly weighs 80g — 33…

Report: FTC Investigating Google Over Anti-Competitive Android Practices

Earlier this year, EU authorities opened an anti-trust investigation into Google. Now, according to Bloomberg, the U.S. is doing the same thing. The news organization reports that two sources familiar with the matter tell it that “the Federal Trade Commission reached an agreement with the Justice Department to spearhead an investigation of Google’s Android business.”…

Google’s Voice Search Is Getting Way, Way Better

Google released its first neural network-powered voice recognition system in 2011 and it’s been slowly improving ever since. But now, it’s announced that the addition of recurrent neural networks will make far faster — and way more accurate. In a blog post, the Google Speech Team explains that it’s added what are known as Connectionist…

iPhone 6S Teardown: Smaller Battery, Heavier Display, Kinda Repairable

With the arrival of the iPhone 6S in eager hands around the world today, iFixit has already torn the new phone apart. Here’s what’s inside. It’s not the first iPhone teardown, but it is certainly the prettiest and likely the most comprehensive. With glass and metal prised apart, the slightly thicker and marginally heavier phone…

We’re Getting Closer to Brain-to-Brain Interfaces

Imagine being able to communicate with others through only your thoughts. No words, no signs are exchanged: only pure information travelling directly from one brain to another. Of course, that is the stuff of dreams and science-fiction flicks: in the real world, the closest that scientists have come to establishing direct communication between brains involves…

The $100 Samsung Gear VR Is Going to Change Everything

Oculus announced a lot of cool stuff at its developer conference today, like a set of new streaming apps, including one for Netflix that’s available now. But there was a verifiable Oprah moment at the Dolby Theater in LA when it was announced that Samsung’s new Gear VR headset will be sold for $100 this…

The Pentagon’s Research Arm is Putting Money Into DNA Manufacturing

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the governmnet division that tries to take cutting-edge technology and turn it into something the military can use. The agency’s latest target? Genetic engineering. The Foundry is a facility which is part of the Broad Institute, a joint MIT-Harvard biomedical research institute. It started work on a…

There’s Already an iPhone 6s Teardown

We’re still some hours away from the new iPhone launch here in the States, but over in Australia, the iFestivities are already underway. Thanks to iExperts, we also have our first peek at the new iPhone’s guts. According to them, there’s not a whole mountain of differences: the screen is now glued differently to the…

Verizon Becomes The Final Carrier to Offer an iPhone Upgrade Program

Contracts that get you a shiny new iPhone every year are the trendy thing in the world of smartphone financing. Just in time for the latest iPhone launch, Verizon has a new financing plan that will get you the latest iDevice every 12 months. The new plans start at $27/$31 a month, for the 16GB…

A Simple Map Shows Just How Shitty the NYC Subway System Is For People Using Wheelchairs 

It’s hard enough for most of us to get to work on time using the subway—but imagine if you only had access to 25 percent of stations. That’s the reality for wheelchair users in New York, for whom getting around the city is sometimes a near-impossible task. [CORRECTION] The passage of the Americans With Disabilities…

What Was Your First Screen Name, and Why?

It has to have been better than Kaila1996. In my initial forays into America Online, I was hardly brilliant, in the screen-name creativity department. The worst part is that I kept updating the name, until “Kaila1999” stuck, and saw me through college. When I first joined Gawker Media a million years ago, everyone still used…

Here’s how one of the best steaks in America is made from the butcher to the table

Peter Luger’s Steakhouse in Brooklyn, New York serves one of the most delicious and iconic slabs of meat that you can get anywhere on the planet. Their Porterhouse is what you dream of when you imagine steak at a steakhouse. Eater shows how that fantastic deliciousness gets to the restaurant starting with the butcher and…

Examining the Fascinating Typographic History Of Eye Charts

My graphic design students love to design posters using the classic eye chart composition, and they frequently ask “What typeface should I use for this?” Not having a definitive answer has always been frustrating, so I decided to investigate to find out what typeface is used on eye charts. I started my quest by asking…

Admit it: You’re Curious About Neil Armstrong’s Moon-Undies 

A tiny museum in London has been hiding a surprising artifact: a Urine Collection Bag from Apollo 11 marked with the initials “NA.” That’s right: these are the undergarments Neil Armstrong wore when he first stepped on the moon. Fantastic! The exhibit in London is now closed, so it’s anyone’s guess as to where these…

Fun video shows the real life versions of all the emojis

Something we can all agree on: emojis are endless amounts of fun. I mean, when you emoji-fy something in real life—like an eggplant, for example—the emoji suddenly carries so much more meaning than the original object ever did. It’s a whole new language. Even more fun, is pairing the emoji with its real life counterpart…