Tech News

No Cars Will Be Allowed on This Stately New Bridge in Portland

It was 1973 the last time a new bridge opened over Portland’s Willamette River: a double-decker span with eight lanes of freeway. Times have changed. When the Tilikum Crossing Bridge opens later this year, it will be one of the few in the U.S. that’s purpose-built for transit, bikes and pedestrians—no cars allowed. Bike Portland’s…

Would You Take the Bus If It Earned You Free Credits For Tolls?

There’s a running joke in many American cities: The only way to make public transportation truly work would be to pay people to ride it. In Atlanta, that’s kind of what a new pilot program is doing. For certain transit trips, passengers can now earn $2—but they can only use the money to pay tolls…

Why is the Times quoting this quack on the danger of Apple Watches? [Gawker]

China Finally Admits It Has an Army of Hackers for Cyberwar 

China is finally admitting what we’ve known for years: Yes, it has cyber warfare units, and plenty of them. The nation’s government has previously denied any organized cyber warfare efforts, despite investigations pinning blame for hacking attacks on the U.S. on the People’s Liberation Army. In the latest update to a PLA publication called The…

This dancer in a light suit is totally breaking reality

Damn. This video of a dancer in a light suit is like staring into a future that us humans chained to the present aren’t supposed to see. The dancing is fun to watch, of course, but there’s something about that black and white light up suit moving in those ways that is just jarring and…

Have You Ever Watched Internet Porn in Public? 

In a recent episode of Broad City, Ilana shows Abbi porn while they’re at a cafe. Abbi protests, but in the show’s rococo logic, everyone else there is watching porn too. Is this really a thing? Are people just casually pulling up RedTube at Starbucks? I once saw a person watch porn in public. On…

The New Materials That Are Revolutionizing Helmet Safety Right Now

Modern helmet construction hasn’t changed significantly since the adoption of styrofoam impact absorption in the 1960s. But new materials and construction methods are improving safety, in some cases absorbing 30 percent more energy than their styrofoam equivalents. And you can buy helmets made from them today. Wait, styrofoam? Yes, your bicycle helmet, motorcycle helmet or…

Flesh-Detecting Saw Instantly Drops the Blade Without Destroying It

Close to a decade ago a clever inventor came up with a safety feature for power tools that could detect when a blade made contact with human flesh and instantly retract it to prevent injury. Unfortunately, it destroyed the tool in the process. The SawStop technology was amazing, and probably life-saving, but it left a…

The perfection of jet takeoffs from aircraft carriers in one photo

Fighter jets and aircraft carriers and fighter jets taking off of aircraft carriers are some of our favorite things in the world for so many reasons. One of them is just how perfect each launch has to be. Just look at how the wheels of the jet reach the end of the aircraft carrier as…

Swallowing This Capsule Lets Doctors Keep Tabs On Gas in Your Gut

A build up of intestinal gases isn’t just an etiquette problem — it’s also linked to conditions like irritable bowl syndrome. So researchers have created a swallowable capsule packed with sensors that’s able to measure the concentration of gases inside a patient, and wirelessly relay that info back to a smartphone app. There are non-invasive…

Man, It’s Still So Easy to Fool Facial Recognition Software 

Passwords suck, so why not replace them with facial recognition? Because facial recognition software still kind of sucks, too, as Dan Moren discovered in Popular Science after a little craft project easily fooled his bank app. Facial recognition software isn’t totally dumb anymore. You can’t just hold up a photo of someone’s face, like you…

The Latest Play Arts Kai Batman Might Not Be Crazy, But He Looks Great

Part of what makes Square-Enix’s Play Arts Kai line great is its willingness to go completely insane when it comes to creating a variant for a figure — especially for their Batman figures. But sometimes they don’t need to rely on batshit insanity for a good figure. Sometimes it just needs to look fantastic. Based…

Trying to Arouse My New Sextbot Buddy (NSFW)

Today, I tried to arouse a sextbot. Turns out robots are assholes. In fairness, this particular sextbot wasn’t built for its bedside manner. In fact, it’s supposed to be a game. The Sext Machine is little more than a nudity-detecting algorithm at the end of a phone number. Simply send it a winky emoticon, wait…

Inside the Small Brooklyn Studio Making the Wackiest Synths I’ve Seen

Critter & Guitari make some of the most unique synthesizers I’ve ever seen. They don’t just sound cool—they’re explicitly designed to be both familiar to experienced musicians and encourage people to engage with the gear in new and creative ways. When you think synthesizer, you probably think something like a Casio digital piano, or if…

Social Graph Reveals Disturbing Connections Between Subreddits

The people who moderate some of Reddit’s most popular forums, including ones that have been defaults, are also the same people creating forums for nonconsensual pornography and snuff pictures. In a story about Reddit’s new CEO Ellen Pao in The Guardian, Alex Hern and Helena Bingsston explore the commonly-held idea that there is a “mainstream”…

Shooting Challenge: Spring

Good news, everyone! We’ve survived. March 20th marks the first day of spring. So for this week’s Shooting Challenge, get outside and photograph it. The Challenge Photograph evidence of spring poking through the last drips of winter. Buds, flowers, signs of life itself. The Technique There’s certainly no one way to photograph a season. That…

The tallest buildings on each continent throughout history, visualized

I love these fantastic charts from Halcyon Maps that show which skyscrapers or churches or temples or mounds of dirt or other structures that have been the tallest buildings on each continent throughout history. You can see the ridiculous skyscraper arms race that develop in each area over the years and see what outdid who.…

Spectacular Night Photos of the New Puma Helicopter 

These night photos of an AF Puma Mk2 helicopter being loaded onto a C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, illuminated by runway lights at Brize Norton, the largest station of the Royal Air Force, are simply too good to handle. The RAF’s latest Puma helicopter is being deployed for the first time on operations in support of…

How did this Arabic-inscribed ring wind up in a 9th century Viking grave? [io9]

The Neuroscience of Why Virtual Reality Still Sucks

The faceputer ads say virtual reality is coming and it’s gonna work this time. But here’s some real talk: There are still many ways virtual reality cannot fool the human brain. And it has little to do with the tech itself. Instead, it’s about neuroscience and our brain’s perceptual limits. True, the past year has…