Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Tangled cables are an unfortunate staple of my life, thanks to the five different devices I have to juice up every night. Until good wireless charging is a thing, I suspect that will never change; but this USB hub with its neat cable-management system might stave off insanity a little longer. The Fishbone, currently just…
Canon’s original EOS M was a disaster. Two years later, the company is pushing its third generation compact mirrorless camera into the US, six months after swearing the little shooter wouldn’t come to America. Why should anyone care? No manufacturer has been slower to develop mirroless interchangeable-lens cameras than Canon, but as DSLR and point-and-shoot…
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon’s Lab126—makers of the Kindle, Fire Phone, and Amazon Echo—is laying off dozens of engineers. That’s a shame. Some consolation: now we can hear about the gadgets they were secretly building! Here are the projects still brewing in Amazon’s Silicon Valley lab, according to the WSJ report: 1.)…
Windows Phone enthusiasts have been waiting years — in mobile phone time, decades — for the launch of a new flagship device that can go toe-to-toe with the iPhones and Galaxies of the world. Well, thanks to the @evleaks Twitter account, we’ve got a good look at the two new Lumias Microsoft is supposedly announcing…
The Hyperloop is not real. But that won’t prevent it from being taught at institutions of higher learning. Now Purdue University is offering a Hyperloop Design course through its three engineering programs. The first class was yesterday and apparently 54 students showed up. The course is being offered at an interesting time in Hyperloop’s development.…
When hacker group Impact Team released the Ashley Madison data, they asserted that “thousands” of the women’s profiles were fake. Later, this number got blown up in news stories that asserted “90-95%” of them were fake, though nobody put forth any evidence for such an enormous number. So I downloaded the data and analyzed it…
Deep space is a wonderland of strange and awe-inspiring sights, but few astronomical curiosities match the exquisite beauty of the Twin Jet Nebula, a dying, binary star that looks like a pair of iridescent butterfly wings. The image above, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and released to the public today, shows off the remarkable…
To show off the world’s most precise drone system, PRENAV made this video demonstrating how exact their drones can be. The drone basically plots points in the air and then becomes a dancing array of light that’s oh so fun to watch. The PRENAV system supposedly lets drones write letters and draw shapes in the…
Another day, another revolting revelation from the Ashley Madison hack. This time, the Daily Dot reports that Ashley Madison executives were excited about an app their team built. It was called “What’s Your Wife Worth,” and it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Based on a 2013 email exchange between Ashley Madison CEO Noel…
I don’t know exactly what’s going on but you see trees get chopped down and stripped and cooked and boiled and drained and dried and flattened and then transformed into pieces of paper that were all delicately made by hand. It’s a lovely process to watch, especially since it’s so damn soothing. Kuroyanagi Takashi made…
The season one finale of Mr. Robot has been postponed until next week: Wednesday, September 2 at 10 p.m. EST on USA. In a statement, the network said the episode contained “a graphic scene similar in nature to today’s tragic events in Virginia,” and is being delayed out of respect to the victims. USA will…
I’m writing this from a train. Without access to a car, I had to make a plan this morning for how to get to an interview: rent a car, ride a bike, take a train and a bus, use an on-demand ride service. I chose the train for a few reasons. But mostly because I…
North Dakota just became the first state to legalize taser drones. Shocking. The Daily Beast reports that the state’s House Bill 1328 was designed in response to concerns over the militarization of police. The bill requires police to obtain a warrant before searching for evidence in a criminal investigation. The bill also originally prohibited the…
Imagine if we lived in a world where, years later, Batman ‘66 was re-imagined by Wallace & Gromit creators Aardman Animation and turned into a stop-motion TV show. Not only that be THE BEST WORLD EVER, but I would imagine that the puppets looked just like these kooky, and slightly creepy, toys. The series of…
What if you could pull a giant Pringles can out of your backpack, and turn it into an incredibly safe, easy to fly camera drone in practically no time at all? I just described the Fotokite Phi—one of the coolest quadcopters I’ve ever tried. Where most GoPro-equipped flying machines require you to pull them out…
Construction crews in Scotland just discovered a time capsule from 1894 containing what they think is a bottle of whiskey — leading the literally dozens of time capsules aficionados in the world to ask themselves the obvious question: Would I drink it? The capsule, a rusted metal box that is clearly showing its age, was…
In the not-too-distant future, tiny robotic fish could be cruising around inside our our bodies, delivering drugs and cleaning up toxins. This week, engineers at the University of San Diego unveiled the first prototype: a chemically powered, magnetically controlled swimmer. It’s called the “microfish,” and true to its name, it looks quite a bit like…
I might have cried. I don’t know for sure because I’m unable to process emotion or feel my face after seeing these two guys, Ilya Bagaev and OlgaCricket, tease death by pulling tricks on the roof and even on the side of a 40-story building. I stopped the video multiple times because I just couldn’t…
Having your parents throw an awesome Transformers-themed party for your sixth birthday is one thing. But having your dad make a talking Optimus Prime cake that actually transforms? That’s a birthday you’re never, ever going to forget. The lucky lad in this case is the son of YouTuber Russell Munro who used a 3D printer…