Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
As ambitious politicians announce their plans to run for president in 2016, you can be sure that cheeky hackers are gearing up for some good pranks. Who will they hit? Nobody can be sure, but a former developer for the Obama campaign just posted a side-by-side comparison of the security protections on the top four…
If I’ve learned anything from watching Game of Thrones, it’s that the Iron Throne is a terrible seat to sit on. It’s uncomfortable and dangerous and when you finally start to enjoy it, you’ll probably be dead. But an Iron Throne toilet? Now that’s awesome. You get to feel like the most powerful person in…
Vizio can’t stop making its cheap 4K TVs even cheaper. The company just announced this year’s M-Series Ultra HD Smart TV Collection. They start at $600 for the 43-inch screen, and boy do they look beautiful. Of course, cheaper 4K options do exist. You can buy a 39-inch Ultra HD Seiki TV from Walmart for…
3D printers? Who needs ‘em! I don’t want a bunch of crappy plastic tchotchkes filling up my apartme—OH MY GOD there’s an artist designing printable D&D monsters. So, how much are 3D printers going for nowadays? Spotted by John Biggs over at TechCrunch, designer and my new personal hero Miguel Zavala is making 3D-printable creations…
The Cavalry is here, in glorious Funko Pop! Form. It’s about time someone other than Coulson got the toy treatment, but let’s be real: When the hell are we going to get an actual Melinda May action figure? Instead of griping about what this toy is (more on that later), let’s enjoy what it is…
The latest episode of Super-Fan Builds just popped up online, and if you were one of the millions of fans who excitedly watched the first episode of Game of Thrones season five last night, prepare to be insanely jealous. Because while other fans have made countless attempts to turn their own bathroom thrones into Westeros’…
Over the weekend, economist Paul Krugman wrote an interesting column for the New York Times that explains why Apple is emphasizing wealth and luxury in its Apple Watch campaigns. Krugman believes that’s because all wearables are aimed at giving you an experience that only super rich people can have. Krugman starts by talking about how…
Time capsulers are always on the hunt for items that perfectly represent the 2010s. Lately they’ve been burying iPhones, Tasers, and even Dogecoins. So what seems to be the hot new trend for 2015? 3D-printed objects. This past February crews working on the restoration of Baltimore’s Washington Monument were surprised to discover a time capsule…
If an upcoming PowerPoint presentation has the potential to make or break your career, the last thing you want is to look nervous and unconfident in front of your co-workers. A new Kickstarter project promises to help you hide your nerves with a stabilized laser pointer that projects a steady red dot so you look…
Here’s footage from Vickers Tactical showing what firing a RPG-7 looks like in slow motion. It’s like a rocket launch, only turned horizontal. The back blast off is so huge that it might be just as bad to stand directly behind the RPG as it would be to stand it front of it. Okay, maybe…
Remember that epic dick joke from the season finale of HBO’s Silicon Valley? Well, Stanford researchers have run the numbers. And if you’ll pardon the pun, it stands up. Says math! Below is the full explanation of the joke. It’s totally mathematically sound, and it includes further explanations and drawings, in case you were chuckling…
Researchers at Spotify crunched roughly 2.8 million “sleep-themed” playlists and came to the startling conclusion that people love to listen to boring-ass music when they’re trying to fall asleep. Superstar British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran tops the list of artists most-featured on sleepytime playlists. Seven of the top 20 sleep tracks belong to him. The second…
The new Galaxy S6 may have the best display yet with the most most pixels. But we need more, and Sharp is going to give it to us with an absolutely bonkers 5.5-inch LCD 4K display—that’s 806ppi for anyone keeping count. In 2011, Apple decided the resolution limit of the human eye when holding a…
Need to scrape gum off a sidewalk or get bird crap off your car or even clean your toilet? Just pour soda on it or around it or in it and let the delicious bubbly sugar liquid diabetes do its thing. Soda can be a magic cleaning material. Which is awesome to know in a…
A team of researchers recently found a zombie vulnerability that affects every single version of Windows—including the Windows 10 preview. Microsoft has no plans to fix the vulnerability. The vulnerability is a zombie, because it’s an undead version of a vulnerability that first appeared in 1997. Working with Cylance, a team of security researchers at…
Following in the illuminated footsteps of noted iconoclast Tupac Shakur, a protest group in Spain took to the streets on Sunday—in hologram form. To the best of our knowledge it’s the first hologram political demonstration ever. Screencap from RTVE Fusion reports that a group called No Somos Delito (“We Are Not a Crime”) are demonstrating…
Everybody hates the IRS. As John Oliver put it in his latest rant, “Dealing with them is obligatory. It often functions badly. And it combines two of the things we hate most in life: someone taking our money and math.” Good point. But blaming the Internal Revenue Service for taxes is like blaming a check…
If you’ve stared in awe and jealousy at your local museum’s collection of dinosaur fossils, a Japanese toy company called Re-Ment wants you to finally be able to have your own. And with its new line of highly-articulated plastic dinosaur skeletons, you can even play museum curator and pose your prehistoric figures however you want.…
There are all kinds of ways to get notified about what’s of interest to you: Twitter, RSS, IFTTT, Yo, specific apps, your favorite sites, your next-door neighbor and so on. Hooks is a clean and simple app for iOS that focuses on notifications and nothing else; it can prompt you with alerts for everything from…
The Sony hack was the worst corporate cyberattack ever, and now anyone with $30,000 in Bitcoin and the ability to use Tor can buy the type of exploit used to hack Sony on underground cyberweapon websites, according to ex-hacker Jon Miller. The malware used to carry out the Sony hack wasn’t custom-made, Miller pointed out…
