Tech News

Pornhub Wants Us to Pay for Porn Now?

Finding free porn on the internet is not hard. Literally type “porn” intothe search engineof your choice and bada bing, bada boobs—you’ll get yourself some T&A&whatever other genitalia your freaky heart desires. Which is why Pornhub’s latest service—paid porn—is a bold move. Pornhub is launching a “Netflix-style” premium streaming service called Pornhub Premium for its…

You Can Adjust This Car Seat Using Gestures Instead of Awkward Levers

If it were just slightly more convenient to perfectly adjust a chair, we’d all embrace ergonomics with open arms. So that’s what researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute are hoping to achieve with a newly developed car seat that trades random knobs and levers for the simple swipe gestures you already use on your phone. Developed…

This Guy’s Laptop-and-Music Stand Commute Set-Up Is Absurdly Wonderful

Falling foul of a deadline because your commute to work takes too long? Well, you’re just not doing it right. Meet “Techno Dad” (as I’ve just christened him). Nothing, be it the trials of parenting or public scrutiny, will keep him from his laptop. He is a new Giz office hero. Snapped on a London…

Scientists Have Grown Human Serotonin Neurons in the Lab

This flurry of neon color above may look like a blurry photography of a particularly wild party, but in fact it’s the first ever sample of human serotonin neurons to be grown in the bottom of a Petri dish. Scientists have long known about serotonin neurons — which release and take up the neurotransmitter, which…

There’s now an Outlook app for Apple Watch that lets you see full emails and reply to messages directly from your wrist.

Mapping the Rising Poverty of the U.S.

Poverty is increasing in the U.S. A new series of detailed maps created by Justin Palmerplots its rise across the country. As Palmer points out, the City Observatory reports that the number of high-poverty neighborhoods in urban areas across the U.S. has tripled since the 1970s. In the same time period, the number of poor…

A New Wastewater Treatment Captures CO2 and Produces Energy Too

A team of engineers has developed a new kind of wastewater treatment that manages to capture CO2 and produce energy at the same time as cleaning water. The new system has been built by researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder. Called Microbial Electrolytic Carbon Capture (MECC), it exploits an electrochemical reaction to clean water…

Even Simple Convection Can Look Beautiful

This looks like it could be a fabric print, but in fact you’re looking at magnified view of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh-Benard convection, as temperature differences drive the motion of silicone oil. Convection occurs when temperatures differences create subtle differences in density in fluids: less dense liquid rises but cools as it does so,…

How We Won the World Robot Soccer Championship

My team from UNSW Australia defeated team B-Human from Germany 3-1 last week to claim back-to-back Robocup SPL World Championships. Here’s how we did it. The competition involves fully autonomous robots, with no remote control, competing against each other in 5-on-5 soccer. Each team uses the same robots, so the competition is focused on software…

This Flamethrowing Helicopter Is Helping Fight California’s Wildfires

Water-bombing aircraft are pretty standard wildfire-fighting equipment. Helicopters that spew fire onto the forest? Not so much. Although flying around an already-burning forest with a flaming propane tank might seem counterintuitive, there is logic to the Apocalypse Now madness. Think back to your fire triangle: by burning tinder that’s in the path of the advancing…

Twitter’s in-Tweet Buy button, previously reservedfor a select few #brands, might be about to see some real action: according to a report from Re/Code, 100,000 merchants from the Shopify network will get access to the Buy button in the near future. Prepare yourself for some RT capitalism. [Re/Code]

Don’t Buy The $15 DVD Player App For Windows 10

Windows 10 doesn’t ship with the software to play DVDs. If you want to make that happen, Microsoft thinks you should spend $15 on a Microsoft DVD-playing app from the App Store. Don’t do that. It’s kind of a shame that there’s no built-in software to play DVDs on Windows 10 — one more thing…

Why CGI doesn’t actually suck

It’s popular to poke fun of CG and whine about the overuse of CG special effects in movies and wish for the old days when everything was done with practical effects but that’s not really the case. What’s great about good CG is that it’s totally unnoticeable, so many movies implement CG that you don’t…

I Love These Nonsense Signs That Don’t Tell New Yorkers To Do Anything

In our quest to keep our cities neat and orderly, our streets have become cluttered with signage prohibiting everything. No Stopping. No Parking. No Loading. No Unloading. How refreshing, then, are these official city signs which don’t really tell residents to do anything at all? The signs are by artist Stephen Powers, who has painted…

This Is How Much San Franciscans Hate Burning Man Now

Every year, San Francisco empties out during Burning Man week. Suddenly there are no lines at the cargo container ice cream shop. Nobody is wearing an “interesting” hat to make a statement about self-actualization. We are at peace. That’s why a group of comedians are crowdsourcing a Great Wall of San Francisco. I think this…

A helicopter closely chases a race car in this truly insane stunt

You see the word insane get thrown around on the Internet a lot. It’s a good word! But few things actually deserve the word insane. This stunt does though. Felix Baumgartner (the dude who jumped from space) pilots a Bolkov BO105 aerobatic helicopter that is basically having a movie car chase scene with a race…

There May Be Dozens of ‘Mini Moons’ Zipping Around the Earth

While Earth’s official Moonis busy photobombing us, a bunch of smaller upstarts are vying to become Moon #2. That’s right — Earth may have a rotating entourage of ‘mini moons’, and astronomers are determined to find them. “Only one is known,” Robert Jedicke said August 3 at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union, according…

The Race To Digitize Iraqi History Before ISIS Can Get To It 

Like so many bully regimes before it, the Islamic State has a talent for propaganda. A big part of that effort is documenting the destruction of everything from architecture to artifacts,even if they’re unwittingly destroying replicas. In Iraq, the cultural heritage is real—and so is the threat. Baghdad’s National Library is home to thousands of…

Reddit Bans /r/Coontown For All the Wrong Reasons

Today the community site Reddit finally banned several controversial forums, including /r/Rapingwomen and the racist forums associated with /r/Coontown. The problem is that CEO Steve Huffman did it by putting a terrible set of policies in place. At the root of the problem is a basic issue Reddit’s leadership has with what constitutes a bannable…

It’s Crazy How Much Cell Information Cops Think They Can Just Seize 

A federal appeals court just ruled that the government needs a warrant to obtain cell phone location records from your service provider. It’s the third ruling at this level on the matter, and the first that says a warrant is indeed necessary. Warrantless tracking of this kind is now more likely to be heard by…