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On December 1, 2013, to much fanfare and next-level hype, Jeff Bezos announced Amazon Prime Air on 60 Minutes. The idea seemed insane, implausible really, due to a bunch of air space regulation that hadn’t even been thought of yet. But now that regulation is beginning to shape up, and Amazon says it’s ready. Technology…
We’ve been flying tiny helicopters around our living rooms for years now, but Silverlit, the company who created the world’s smallest flying toy, has somehow found a way to squeeze a video camera into its miniature RC choppers now. The NanoFalcon DigiCam features a double-rotor design to keep it from spinning out of control while…
Product designers have been trying to find a great way of combining the power of your smartphone with an attachable souped-up camera. So far, designs have been awkward and less than user-friendly. DxO thinks it has a better solution with the new One camera. The One looks like an action cam in size and shape.…
It’s hard to build a cheap two-in-one PC that doesn’t have something fundamentally wrong with it. Believe us, we’ve looked—lower end convertibles usually have bad screens, flimsy hinges or sell essential accessories separately. Then something like the new 10-inch HP Pavilion x2 comes along. It’s small, costs only $300 and, at first blush, seems to…
Reddit is to start encrypting all of its traffic using HTTPS by the end of the month.
As the Blue Angels rip through the sky above the Ocean City Air Show in their F/A-18 Hornets, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were a single aircraft. They’re just so. Amazingly. Close. It’s partly a trick of the angle, of course, the perspective fooling our brains into thinking that they’re sitting atop each other.…
Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German—along with the existing English, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish.
Even the hardest of materials react to immense pressures. In this image, x-ray imaging reveals how a laser-generated shock wave propagates through a piece of diamond. The shock wave was created in the three-centimeter piece of diamond, which was just 0.3 millimeters thick, by a high-intensity laser pulse. It provided 12 trillion watts of power…
Go on, it’ll be funny. (Full version, created by Doghouse Diaries, below.) [Doghouse Diaries]
With the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules in place, Sprint is already feeling the effects: it’s no longer throttling the speeds of its wireless internet connections. The carrier has been limiting the speeds of data connections for years now, reducing the flow of data for the heaviest users when its networks were particularly…
Back in 1999, Sony released a robotic dog called Aibo, a canine companion that didn’t crap everywhere and only ate electricity. It sold pretty well — 150,000 units, despite the $2,000 price tag. Some owners became remarkably attached, which makes it even more sad that Sony has stopped repairing Aibo. Slowly but surely, they’re all…
Back in February, Canon teased the development of a new premium superzoom camera aimed at enthusiasts. They have finally taken the lid off completely with the announcement of the Powershot G3X. It looks neat, but may lack some important features of its competitors. The G3X, which will cost $1000 when it ships in July, is…
The Ricoh GR was a fantastically simple compact camera — one big APS-C sensor crammed into a portable body, with a good prime lens, decent controls, and not much else in the way. Two years after the original release, Ricoh has released the GR II. What ain’t broke isn’t fixed — the only major addition…
Helen Greiner, founder of iRobot, almost single-handedly started the home robotics revolution. Her company produced the sweeping robot, Roomba, and now makes the PackBot, a military robot that can defuse bombs and aid in rescue missions. But she never would have learned to program without Radio Shack. Many of us have been mourning the loss…
Liberty Enlightening the World. That’s the title of patent #USD11023 granted to one Auguste Bartholdi on February 18, 1879. You might know it better as the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty is 130 today. But that anniversary marks its arrival in New York, not its actual creation, which goes back as far as…
This adorable little girl gets to live every kid’s dream and turn her arm into an animated rocket cannon that blasts bad guys. The music video for Grades’ song King was made by Taichi Kimura and features Laika Takasu dancing (really well!) around an empty school as animation enemies sprout all around her. Eventually, the…
This is important! The EFF’s annual report card is out on how tech companies respond to government requests for your private data. Some companies take a firm position against government spying while others are basically government patsies. Where do the services you use stand? The report card rates 24 companies on five different questions. These…
I recently renewed my AT&T contract, and it was a big mistake. Sure, the company gave me a little discount on a new iPhone that I very much enjoy. However, we also know AT&T gives millions of customers a bullshit deal when it sells them “unlimited” data service but later throttles that data to an…
The history of technology is littered with the bodies of brilliantly innovative devices that failed in the marketplace. Maybe they were ahead of their time; maybe they were crushed by unworthy competitors; maybe we were all just too stupid to buy them. What was the very best machine that deserved to succeed and didn’t? I…
I don’t care that I supposedly understand how vinyl records work because I still totally think they’re the work of at least some low level sorcery. Trapping sound and music and voices? Come on! Anyways, my disbelief aside of analog technology aside, here’s a cool microscope view of vinyl records being played. The video by…
