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Every flagship smartphone hypes its camera with a spicy mix of marketing-speak. Laser Focus. Ultra Pixels. Often it’s just bullshit, but I’ve been using the camera on the new LG G4 and it it really does live up to the hype. Mostly. The camera on the G4 should be great in theory, due to its…
When a massive earthquake struck Nepal on April 25, it created seismic waves that traveled around the world in a matter of minutes, propagating swiftly through Earth’s crust and mantle to rattle seismic stations in the US. The Nepal quake was devastating, but the fact that it was felt 8,000 miles away is actually not…
When you’re asked to help out around the house and do chores, volunteer for some yard work. That way you can take the leaf blower and blast the living hell out of the outdoor fireplace and create your own erupting man made volcano. Mom won’t be too happy but it’ll look awesome. SPLOID is delicious…
It’s a medical breakthrough, thanks to a piece of technology most people are using to make plastic toys. Using a 3D printer, a group of researchers just tested this lifesaving device on three very sick infants. Researchers at the University of Michigan have 3D-printed a device to keep infants’ airways from collapsing. Designed to treat…
Recently, we did an experiment: We took an outdated issue of a respected popular science magazine, Scientific American, and researched exactly what happened to the highly-touted breakthroughs of the era that would supposedly change everything. What we discovered is just how terrible we are at predicting the long arc of scientific discovery. The daily churn…
Insult emoticons have arrived at last, thanks to Microsoft. Windows 10 will feature the first wave of blatantly offensive emoji, a collection of middle fingers in full F-you salute. One sad step closer to Instagramese becoming the de facto language of humanity. [Emojipedia] Image via Emojipedia
Joseph Lechleider, the first person to show that it was possible to reliably send broadband signals over traditional copper telephone lines, has died. He was 82. Lechleider worked for Bellcore, a research firm that was split off from AT&T in 1982 when the US government broke up the phone monopoly. His research in the 1980s…
For May the Fourth the folks at Wired decided to recreate one of the final scenes in Return of the Jedi where Vader’s Super Star Destroyer crashes head first into the Death Star and explodes. Except that instead of using a CG simulation, or even a movie-caliber model, they simply dropped the hard-to-find $800 Lego…
We’ve known for a long time that Helen Greiner, who co-designed the original Roomba and co-founded iRobot, was building a drone. Now, we know what that drone looks like: Pretty awesome. Greiner’s new company, CyPhy Works, just announced its latest product, the LVL 1 drone, on Kickstarter. It’s a mean-looking thing with six rotors that…
Before the internet came along, the only way kids could keep track of what was new in the world of toys was brief visits to the mall, or shop-at-home catalogs. And Dinosaur Dracula recently took a nostalgic romp through the toy section of a 1984 Consumers Distributing catalog and highlighted some of the many reasons…
The hundreds of thousands of chemicals that are packed into our homes and lives are what make modern consumerism possible, keeping our food fresh and our walls from molding. They are also, in many cases, completely untested and backed by giant corporations with a financial stake in their successful adoption. The latest episode of Retro…
In a video announcing the new Internet.org platform, Mark Zuckerberg’s eyes beam straight through your soul, while he tells you dryly how Facebook is going to fix the internet. “Facebook is watching you…” his eyes say silently. Internet.org, it turns out, is a privacy nightmare. The new Internet.org platform will let any developer create services…
Learning a foreign language boosts brain activity, broadens your cultural horizons, and helps you avoid catastrophes when ordering from a menu in an unfamiliar country. You don’t necessarily have to sign up for classes or pay for a course to get started though—these sites and apps will get you on your way for free. 1.…
Here’s a fun video showing the rainbow of colors that anodized titanium can become. There are blues and purples and gold and it all changes so fast. It’s basically magic (or science!) that just applying voltage to a piece of titanium in an electrolytic bath can transform the color completely. An explanation of the anodizing…
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina just announced that she’s running for president, gunning for the GOP presidential bid along with Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. But it looks like she forgot to register her domain names before jumping into the political arena. Whoops. Somebody has already grabbed CarlyFiorina.org, and it’s definitely not her…
If you’re already tired of Star Wars news then May the Fourth is the one day you’ll probably want to avoid the internet altogether. It’s the unofficial Star Wars holiday, and to celebrate the occasion fans at a shopping mall in Melbourne, Australia, helped Lego master builders Dan and Chris Steininger build a massive 16-feet…
More mega iPad rumors surface, Grooveshark goes the way of the dinosaur, and Periscope becomes the savior of people who don’t want to spend $100 on PPV boxing. Bitstream is all the news and rumors you missed over the weekend. So there was a big fight this weekend. Did you hear? And supposedly HBO and…
To celebrate May the Fourth, the most important date on a Star Wars fan’s calendar, iFixit has set aside its Apple Watches and laptops and instead focused its expertise in disassembling on the one gadget everyone in this galaxy (and those far, far away) really want: a lightsaber. For this teardown they opted for Ob-Wan…
You might think that the best way to fight card skimmers would be hunt them down and destroy them. But in California, at least, police have been leaving the skimmers right where they are—after they’ve fitted GPS trackers to them, that is. Krebs on Security reports that the California police department has been fighting criminals…
Just look at this photo. On the highest mountain in North America, surrounded by stunning snowy scenery and beneath a sun halo, sits a 50-year-old tandem rotor heavy lift helicopter equipped with ski landing gear. An aviator from D Company, 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment stands outside a CH-47F Chinook helicopter at the Kahiltna Glacier…
