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Even before I took to techbloggering, my life was filled with boxes and boxes of tangled cables: power sources to this, connector wires for that, and doubles (or triples) for everything. Could this attractive little solution be my salvation? This proposed design for Cable Hive looks exactly like what it’s name describes: a honeycomb-like grid…
The hitchhiking robot known as hitchBOT was destroyed in Philadelphia over the weekend. And now we finally have footage of the jerk who did it. Vlogger Jesse Wellens posted the footage below to Snapchat. It shows a lone man in a sports jersey repeatedly kicking hitchBOT. Judging from the timecode, the person kicks hitchBOT at…
David Byrne, well-known recording artist and performer, has written a stirring op-ed about streaming music and the plight of musicians in today’s recording industry. He’s right about the problems, but his solution seems a little…far-fetched. So here’s the problem according to David Byrne. These days famous musicians, like David Byrne and Pharrell Williams, can get…
Beloved hitchhiking robot hitchBOT was destroyed by vandals in Philadelphia over the weekend, and everyone wants to know who would do such a thing. We may soon have an answer. Vlogger Jesse Wellens claims to have security camera footage of hitchBOT’s demise. Wellens, whose video blog BFvsGF has over 7.3 million subscribers, was among the…
The colors! The colors! Holy cow, the colors. The world destroyer that is the red hot nickel ball got put to task on floral foam and the result is an awesome burn through that unleashes so many colors and then creates scales and pretty much topples the entire foam tower. Always a pleasure, red hot…
Late last month, AT&T bought DirecTV for $48.5 billion, merging America’s second biggest cell carrier with its biggest satellite TV provider. Now, DirecTV and Ma Bell are already announcing a $200 promo deal that’ll roll out nationwide next week. With the promo, new customers to AT&T’s U-verse TV or DirecTV will get basic HD TV…
The Turing Phone is one weird dude. Like some cross between a scifi prop and an actual Android phone, this new device from Turing Robotics is what they call a “cipher” phone—the next evolutionary step for smartphones. Whether that’s the case or not, who knows, but you can pre-order it right now and find out…
The global positioning system (GPS) can keep you from getting lost, manage air traffic, and track the migration of endangered species. And in a new study published today by Nature, it’s helped paleontologists understand how an organism that’s been extinct for about 540 million years reproduced. Fractofusus is one of the oldest known multicellular organisms,…
“Oh don’t worry,” your uncle said when you were shopping for a new computer. “Macs are virtually virus proof.” Your uncle was wrong. A team of white hat hackers just announced the development of the world’s first firmware worm that’s vicious enough to break through Apple’s legendary security. The so-called Thunderstrike 2 attack can be…
This is Shannon’s information theory, and it’s the equation that makes data compression possible. Without it, you wouldn’t be reading this article online right now. Shannon’s equation codifies exactly how much information a string of numbers or characters actually contains. It allowed Shannon — and, later, software engineers — to develop new ways to compress…
There are few job descriptions (hell, the job description is in the job title) as terrifying as being a firefighter. When things are burning, you run there. When something catches on fire, it’s your job to put it out. When fire is thrown at you, you have to stare it down. It’s just crazy. And…
Phones aren’t really used for their original purpose anymore: Making actual phone calls. In fact, most of us don’t even want to deal with listening to missed voicemail—and Apple’s reportedly working on a fix for that, too. According to Business Insider, Siri may soon be able to transcribe your voicemail for you. And if you…
The Spratly islands are not a natural spot for a layover. They are isolated—tiny, shallow islands spread out over a huge chunk of the South China Sea. So why are so many nations rushing to construct airline runways and other infrastructure there? On a map, the islands look like someone flicked a paintbrush at Earth…
This inflatable Darth Vader is not only the easiest way to decorate your front lawn for the holidays, it will also blow away whatever your neighbors come up with because at 16-feet tall it’s one of the largest lawn ornaments you can buy. And isn’t besting your neighbors what the holidays are really all about?…
The day that most new parents fear isn’t when their child finally reaches the terrible twos, or first heads off to school, it’s when their kid starts asking for a pony for their birthday. And since few of us can afford the real thing, this stuffed horse head might be a more affordable substitute. It…
These grainy radio echoes of a weirdly-shaped asteroid tumbling through a close approach of our home planet are oddly hypnotizing. Asteroid 1999 JD6 is a contact binary: two distinct lobes stuck together. From previous observations, we know the asteroid tumbles through a complete revolution about once every 7.5 hours. The asteroid recently made a relatively…
Ever wondered how different parts of the U.S. kept the electricity flowing day and night? This maps breaks down every power plant around the country showing their fuel type and power output. Created by The Washington Post, the map represents each power station by a circle: its color denotes what kind of station it is,…
Sony has just announced two new mid-range phones, both with a firm emphasis on photography—and in the case of this the Xperia C5 Ultra, that means selfies. The handset, pictured above, features not one but two 13-megapixel Exmor RS cameras: one onf the back, one on the front. The font-facer in fact provides a 22m…
Presumably someone at Google is making sure that the car knows its driver is actually a human, rather than a rock. Or a particularly large cat. [XKCD]
This isn’t a dirty, peeling sticker but a scientific first. Researchers have been able to make complex 2D and 3D structures using nanoparticles for years—but they’ve never before been able to curve or fold a flat sheet of them like this. Now, researchers from the University of Chicago, the University of Missouri and the U.S.…
