Tech News

The Quickest Way to Send Photos in iMessage

A picture is worth a thousand words, so the old saying goes, so you’ll often want to snap a photo of what you’re seeing or looking like rather than try and describe it using old-fashioned text. If you’re on iMessage on iOS, there’s a shortcut you can use to get your images sent faster. It’s…

Here’s What Sharks Do When You Give Them Cameras

Fisheries biologist John Shepherd once said that “counting fish is like counting trees—except you can’t see them and they move.” This can make animal behavior research extremely difficult. And while increasingly advanced electronic telemetry tags can tell us a lot, there’s just no substitute for seeing a behavior on video. Knowing how animals behave in…

Homemade propane rifle cannon shoots like a sci-fi weapon

Science is fun! Especially when it is used to create a homemade cannon that looks so cool when it fires. This guy connected a self-igniting propane torch to some tubes and then colored the flame so that it pops off green when it blasts. It looks like an alien’s weapon! The Backyard Scientist writes: The…

Fire-Breathing Robots, Mega Mech Warriors and More at Maker Faire

What’s one part country fair, one part art festival, a side of Burning Man and an educational, geek-filled fun-fest? Maker Faire, of course. We went to the Bay Area Maker Faire this past weekend, and overdosed on creative, inspiring DiY technology. Here’s what we saw. Want to spend an afternoon ogling mind-blowingly huge, fire-breathing robotic…

How To Build a Cheap(ish) Drill-Powered Go-Kart

You can pretend it’s for your kids, but over on Make they’ve posted a step-by-step breakdown on how to build this adult-friendly wooden go-kart. It’s powered by nothing but a pair of 36-volt cordless drills, but surprisingly they’re more than powerful enough for even grownups to take a ride. The Drill Kart’s wooden frame not…

Brainprint: Your Mind’s Reaction to Certain Words Could Be Your Password

We’ve heard a lot about how our bodies—our faces, our irises, even our heartbeats—will replace passwords. Now, a group of neuroscientists are adding another body part to that list: the brain. Or more specifically, the brain’s response to certain words. Brainprint is the name of a study from Neurocomputing featured on New Scientist and Engadget…

The Apple Television That Never Was

The fabled Apple TV may be the most on-again, off-again gizmo to ever exist, seeming every sixth months a rumor would surface about its impending existence. Now, despite the protestations of billionaire Carl Icahn, Apple has reportedly quietly shelved the idea of making an Apple-branded television. Technology is filled with all kinds of rumors and…

Tweetsnow show up in Google search results on mobile devices. Twitter and Google reached a deal to work together earlier this year, and they’re making good on it now. One step at a time, though: Tweet search still doesn’t work on your desktop or any language but english.

This Man Controls His Robotic Arms With His Mind

The robotic arm looks like it came from the future, a sleek cyborg limb. But for Les Baugh, it’s a way to feel “back to human.” Baugh, who lost his arms in a teenage accident, had surgery to remap the nerves in his arms to work with the high-tech prosthetic, developed by engineers at the…

Alex Ross’ Justice League Designs Are Getting Snazzy Action Figures

Well, again, that is. Long ago DC Direct, before they were relaunched as the current DC Collectibles, made a series of 7” scale Justice League action figures based on the artwork of the iconic comic book artist Alex Ross. Missed out the first time? Good news! They’re back, with shiny new repaints in tow. There’s…

Here’s The Cardboard Gun to Go With Your Cardboard VR Headset

Why buy an expensive virtual reality headset when you could stick your smartphone into a cheap cardboard box? That’s the idea behind Google Cardboard. And soon, you might be able to interact with VR worlds using a piece of cardboard, too. When Realiteer co-founder Shuo Zhang confronted me at this week’s Silicon Valley Virtual Reality…

An Inflatable Death Star Beach Ball That Lights Up Because Why Not?

Who of us hasn’t lamented the fact that a late night trip to the beach for an evening swim can never include a beach ball for fear of it going missing in the dark? The folks at Swim Ways obviously have, because they stuck a motion-activated LED inside this inflatable Death Star beach ball so…

This 55-Inch LG Display Peels Off the Wall Like a Poster

LG consistently produces impressive screens, and this one is no exception. The 55-inch OLED panel is just 0.97 millimeters thick, and can be removed from its magnetic wall mounting like a poster. The screen, shown off at an LG event in South Korea on Tuesday, weighs just 4.1 pounds. It’s clearly much, much skinner than…

How a Hacker Could Hijack an Airplane From Their Seat

Reports that a cybersecurity expert successfully hacked into an aeroplane’s control system from a passenger seat raises many worrying questions for the airline industry. It was once believed that the cockpit network that allows the pilot to control the plane was fully insulated and separate from the passenger network running the in-flight entertainment system. This…

Can You Solve This Vietnamese Math Puzzle for 8-Year-Olds?

If you thought the Singaporean logic puzzle was tough, brace yourself for this math problem that was originally set for eight-year-old students in the Vietnamese town of Bao Loc. It’s apparently even stumped someone with a doctorate in economics with mathematics. As Alex Bellos points out on The Guardian , it’s not a theoretically difficult…

That, and mutter “someone’s gonna lose their jobs over this” under your breath as you mash the F5 button furiously. [Kind of Normal]

A French Telecoms Firm Wants to Buy Time Warner Cable

The Comcast-Time Warner merger may be dead—but that doesn’t mean the two will continue on as-is. Now, it appears that the French telecoms firm Altice is sniffing around Time Warner Cable. Both Reuters and Wall Street Journal report that the French company is in advanced talks to buy the regional cable company Suddenlink—which operates in…

Google Tone Sends URLs to Nearby Computers Using Sound

Google has published a Chrome extension that allows you to share URLs in an interesting new way. Click a button and a simple chirrup from your computer’s speakers sends the link to other devices in earshot. The little piece of software called Tone is inspired by the fact that “while digital communication methods like email…

Mapping Comes to Android Wear With Google Maps Update

An update to Google Maps has brought with it an interesting added bonus for Android smartphone users: access to maps, right there on your wrist. Android Central reports that, following an update to Google Maps version 9.9 on a corresponding phone, an LG Watch Urbane boasted an icon for the app, too, in its launcher.…

KFC Puts Keyboards In Trays So Greasy Chicken Fingers Can Keep Texting

Kentucky Fried Chicken in Germany just cooked up the weirdest fast-food techno-marketing stunt. For a week, restaurants lined their serving trays with disposable Bluetooth keyboards instead of paper liners. Not even joking. The idea is that you sync the keyboard to your phone before eating a plate of fried chicken, granting you the ability to…