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Apple Pay will now work with PayAnywhere, a card reader that attaches to mobile devices to accept NFC and magnetic stripe payments. That means Apple’s contactless payment solution will now work in 300,000 more places in the US, and we’re one step closer to the walletless utopia. [9to5Mac] Contact the author at [email protected].
Most gaming headphones I’ve ever used have sacrificed actual sound quality for aggressive styling that lets everyone else know you call your computer desk a battlestation. Logitech’s latest headphones for gamers aren’t exactly discreet, but the company is promising sound quality that lives up to the visual hype. There’s two new pairs: the G633, and…
It seemed like the amazing HTC Vive virtual reality headset would be the first to market—ahead of Sony’s Morpheus and the Oculus Rift. That’s not necessarily happening. According to a new press release, consumers probably won’t be getting their hands on Valve VR until 2016. Shame. While originally, the Vive was set to ship this…
The other day I wanted to post a photo to Gizmodo’s Instagram account. I had to log all the way out of my personal account, dig up the password for Gizmodo’s account, log back in as Gizmodo, and post the photo. It made me wonder: Why doesn’t Instagram make it as easy as Twitter to…
You might have heard the term “road diet,” which sounds like the dining habits of some asphalt-chomping ogre. And it kind of is! But what does it really mean? Here are four videos that explain exactly what transportation planners are doing when they turn space for cars into space for walkers and bikers—and why it’s…
Soon-to-be dad Mark Zuckerberg just made a big announcement on Facebook, a soul-searching website he created in 2004: “For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.” Do you know what that means? That means that over 6 billion people did not use Facebook in a single day. In the…
Now we know that almost none of the woman in the Ashley Madison database ever used the site. The question is, was this a deliberate fraud? Or was it just a dating site gone wrong? Editor’s Note: The number of female users reported in this article are based in part on a misinterpretation of the…
It’s usually easy for our human brains to predict how any given car, pedestrian, or cyclist is going to act, but computers must be programmed to “understand” all of our varying behaviors on the road. The latest thing perplexing Google’s self-driving cars (and thereby entertaining us)? A simple track stand, according to Washington Post’s Matt…
The craft of making neon lights is always so fun for me to see. The way the glass curves and the way the light fills up the tube is like seeing magic light up. Even better is to see the entire process of a neon sign get made, Stray Matter shows Andrew Hibbs at work…
The successful union of egg and sperm in fertilization depends on a sperm cell’s ability to get through an egg’s thick protective coating and latch itself to its membrane. A study published in the journal Andrology yesterday gives us our first look at the protein responsible for the tie-down. Sperm-lysozyme-like protein 1 (SLLP1, above) is…
We’re busy preparing for all the new smartwatches, phones, and gadgets that will be coming out of IFA in Berlin next week, but let’s take a moment to remember all the neat software that will fill up those cases of aluminum, glass, and silicon. Here are the best apps from this week. Android Cortana Wait.…
Michał Kaźmierczak is the Lego super-builder responsible for the massive gates of Erebor build from The Hobbit. Well, he’s now added an insanely-large Lego interior to the build. And it’s incredibly cool. In total 120,000 bricks were used to build the 7-foot tall, 5.5-foot deep, 6-foot wide behemoth. And itweighs as much as two dwarves…
ISIS talks a big talk when it comes to hacking, and United States forces just showed they’re not going to put up with it. The Obama administration just announced that a drone strike has killed the organization’s top cyber-terrorist, Junaid Hussain. At least one American leader says the rest of the ISIS hackers should watch…
“Loose tweets destroy fleets.” That’s the slogan of the United States Air Force’s latest operations security (OPSEC) campaign, and if the phrase sounds familiar, don’t be surprised. We collected 50 propaganda posters from World War II that show an age when keeping military secrets was a matter of life or death. In the 1940s, operations…
As a kid, fire drills taught you fire safety. And you haven’t been killed by a fire. Your parents trained similarly for nuclear war. With 248 mass shootings in US in the 238 days of 2015, it’s time we began treating those the same way. This is how. That statistic is drawn from ShootingTracker.com, a…
Alienware generally makes giant honking gaming computers. There are two exceptions: The tiny Alpha, and the console-sized X51 desktop. And today, the X51 is getting some pretty huge additions—including custom liquid cooling, PCIe solid state storage, and external graphics. In other words: If you’re looking for all the power and upgradability of a full gaming…
Lost in all those superhero comic book flicks that hijack too many screens in movie theaters is how in preventing a villain from let’s say, world destruction or universe domination, the superhero becomes responsible for a lot of damage to a city. Like seriously, cities get messed up. Imagine being a citizen of a world…
If you’re a smoker looking for a “healthier” cigarette you may have turned to American Spirits in recent years. They’re marketed as “natural” and “additive-free,” leading many people to believe that they’re less harmful. This, of course, is bullshit. And now the FDA wants to finally crack down on them. For the first time ever,…
Orbiting the Earth is a bit like living in a minefield, with millions of tiny flecks of space junk whizzing about at thousands of miles per hour. If a rice-sized pellet whacked into the International Space Station, it could pack the punch of a hand grenade, causing precious oxygen to seep into space. So materials…
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was the prototypical World’s Fair. It brought together wonders of engineering, the latest technologies and consumer products, and music and art from far-off lands. Sadly, almost all of its buildings are no more—but in Chicago, three lovely fragments of one have resurfaced. Discovered in a storage facility operated by the…
