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You kids and your #nofilter tags. Everything’s filtered! The engineer who built your camera made dozens of decisions about color, lighting, and contrast processing. So for this week’s Shooting Challenge, let’s celebrate the filter. Nay, let’s full-out ROAST the filter. The Challenge Take a photograph and process it with the craziest filter(s) you can find…
Lining up a USB cable with the tiny charging port on your phone is hard enough during the day. At night it might as well be a MENSA test that you’ll always fail. But what if the business end of your USB cable glowed like a beacon in the night when touched? Now you see…
Correction: So, Amazon has helpfully informed me that the items that will “Ship by Region” will only appear as Prime-eligible if you can get two-day shipping to your region. That means we won’t see those Prime items if they’re not eligible for two-day shipping. So..this is actually good, and nevermind anything I said. Except for…
The brilliant designs of the post-apocalyptic Fallout series have long been yearning to get turned into awesome toys. And while we’re getting some cutesy Funko Pops based on the series, a new line of figures from the folks over at Threezero is giving us a much more faithful—and pricier—batch of figures. The company recently announced…
At one time the only way to get a truly clean windshield was to enlist the help of an urban professional working on a downtown street corner. But now that Black+Decker has attached a squeegee to a Dustbuster, streaky windows are no longer a plague on society. Now streaky windows are unquestionably a first world…
After searching through the Ashley Madison database and private email last week, I reported that there might be roughly 12,000 real women active on Ashley Madison. Now, after looking at the company’s source code, it’s clear that I arrived at that low number based in part on a misunderstanding of the evidence. Equally clear is…
Donald Trump just posted a new attack ad against Jeb Bush on Instagram. And in typical attack ad form, it takes quotes from Jeb, uses them out of context, and tosses in photos of criminals while spooky music plays in the background. I have seen the future of American politics, and whether it includes a…
His name was Richard Ramirez, but at the time of his August 1985 capture, most knew him only as the “Night Stalker,” the rapist and murderer who’d been terrorizing California for two years. When a fingerprint outed his identity, his photograph was widely circulated—and his days of killing became perilously numbered. He was caught on…
Most kids are happy to push around an empty cardboard box, so it’s no surprise they’d also settle for a boring wooden train set. But as an adult you know better, and for around $70 you can upgrade their wooden train to a high-speed Formula 1 track. This 30-piece set from Ikonic Toys includes two…
President Obama is in Alaska this week. There, he plans to hike up a glacier, then shoot an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls. That should be fun. Elsewhere, REI has discovered Instagram and LA’s own millennial miner is in legal trouble. This is What’s New Outside. President Obama’s Great Alaskan Adventure: He should…
What does Long Beach Comic Con have that other big conventions don’t? A whole series of programs devoted to space exploration, called Space Expo. We talked to the panelists about road tripping on Mars, weird landforms on Ceres, and what fictional technologies they most wish would become a reality. Less than two weeks from now,…
This is a $500 Xbox One. Why would you buy a $500 Xbox One when the going price is $350 right now? Because this Xbox One will boot faster, load games quicker, and comes with an amazing new gamepad you have to see to believe. Yes, this is the Xbox One Elite, a new version…
In the post-apocalyptic future depicted in this short film there are no smartphones, computers, or octopus-shaped robots trying to destroy what’s left of humanity. Here, people live like they used to in the Wild West. They ride horses, wear funny hats, and are well aware that their life is worth less than the bullet that…
Remember when Obama declared a national emergency in April and issued an executive order to allow sanctions for cyberattacks? The administration is now talking about using those sanctions to punish China for stealing US trade secrets, including nuclear power plant designs. The US is infatuated with sanctions as a primary foreign policy option, despite a…
Think twice before jailbreaking your iPhone. A recent rash of malware has helped hackers steal over 250,000 Apple accounts, the largest theft of its kind. The malware only affects jailbroken devices, but if you get pwned, hackers can not only peek your password but also make App Store purchases without your permission. The research team…
Google just gave the Apple Watch a crap-ton of competition. As of today, Android Wear is available for iOS with the iPhone 5 (and above) and running at least iOS 8.2. It’s a rumor we’ve heard a lot about, and now Google is making it official. That’s the good news. The bad news is only…
It’s popped on and off the internet all weekend long, but it looks like this leaked commercial for the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lego sets has finally found a stable home on YouTube courtesy of Star Wars Junk—so check it out while you can. The ad only features two of the upcoming sets…
Earlier this month, an ad for the morning sickness pill Diclegis came under fire from the FDA. Which wasn’t so unusual; the FDA goes after deceptive advertising all the time. The unusual part was the platform: It was an Instagram ad by Kim Kardashian. And now Kardashian has been forced to post a “corrective ad”…
Reliable leaker Upleaks posted three images today of Motorola’s new Moto 360 Android Wear lineup, including the newest addition to the family: the Sport. In the image itself, the Sport watch appears to be tracking time, distance, pace and beats per minute. The older generation could also keep track of heart rate, but now —…
BoingBoing says this crazy zooming GIF is that of an amphipod. Or well, it starts with an amphipod and then moves into diatom and then reveals the bacterium. Which, well, cool. But also totally gross to imagine all the little invisible critters and germs on any given surface at any given time. SPLOID is delicious…
