Tech News

IKEA Is Now Putting Wireless Charging In Your Furniture

Charging cables? Who needs ’em. Smartphone makers (and even big chain coffee shops) have been clamoring for ways to ditch those tangled microUSB nuisances—and now the world’s largest furniture retailer is joining the fight. IKEA has announced a new lineup of desks, bedside tables, and lamps that will come with Qi wireless charging technology built…

HP’s Spectre x360 Might Be The Best Transforming Laptop I’ve Ever Seen

Milled aluminum. All-day battery life. Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. A bitchin’ keyboard, and a large, clickable trackpad with excellent multitouch response. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think I was describing a MacBook Air. I’m not—I’m talking HP’s Spectre x360, a gorgeous premium convertible PC that starts at just $900. Normally, I…

LG Watch Urbane: LTE On Your Wrist Never Looked So Good

Smartwatches are still trying desperately to be cool. LG’s latest attempt at pulling it off is the LG Watch Urbane. And it comes in two flavors: a basic model, and a luxury version with LTE. We tried them both here in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress and the results are, at first sight, interesting,…

LG’s Bringing Curved Screens To Its Cheaper Phones, Because Why Not

That curve on LG Flex’s screen might seem like a total gimmick, even if it’s pretty rad. As far as LG’s concerned though, it’s the next big thing for all phones How so? They are bringing curved screen to their mid-range phones and they plan to keep doing so in the future. We’ve tried the…

These Tiny Satellites Just Left The International Space Station

A pair of nanosatellites were deployed by the NanoRacks Launcher on the end of the Japanese robotic arm of the International Space Station on Friday. The tiny CubeSats are loaded with tools to observe the planet. Top image: CubeSats released from the International Space Station on February 27, 2015. Credit: NASA/Sam Cristoforetti CubeSats are NASA’s…

A Quantum Computer Isn’t Nearly As Glamorous As It Sounds

You’d think quantum computers exist in heavily-guarded labs, with many men in white suits manning control stations filled with unfathomable screens and charts. Actually, they exist in a small cupboard in England’s West Country. Tom Scott took a tour of Bristol’s Quantum Photonics lab to look at their quantum computer. Far from glamorous, it’s actually…

The loss of Leonard Nimoy is hitting hard. So many people working in science, particularly in astronomy and space science, were influenced by his early work as Spock on Star Trek. It’s no surprise that the astronauts on the International Space Station have one final tribute to the ultimate science officer. Top image: Astronaut Samantha…

You Can’t Burn Yourself With This Teapot

Someone at OSHA probably has a terrifying stat about the number of workplace injuries caused by teapots. But if everyone rushes out and buys this gorgeous glass hot beverage receptacle, we can do something about this critical national issue. The Ora teapot uses a double-wall glass construction to insulate your tea from the outside, just…

This Custom Shipping Container For Telescope Parts Is Fantastic

The James Webb Space Telescope takes carefully packing parts to new extremes: the packaging for the latest shipment weighted more than fifty times the actual part! This is the Space Telescope Transporter for Air Road and Sea, the shipping container for telescopes. https://gizmodo.com/the-next-generation-of-telescopes-will-take-us-closer-t-1606314839 The Space Telescope Transporter for Air Road and Sea (STTARS) is designed…

The U.S. Doesn’t Like It When China Wants To Build Encryption Backdoors

The NSA and U.S. tech giants have come to blows over government backdoors in encryption products lately, with the government arguing that backdoors are vital to national security, and the likes of Yahoo claiming it will make encryption pointless. Well, it looks the party line on backdoors changes pretty sharpish when China is involved. As…

Adam Savage’s Replica Hedge Maze From The Shining Is Scarily Accurate

When Mythbusters’ Adam Savage isn’t, uh, busting myths, he spends his time crafting amazing replicas of movie props, among other hobbies. This time around it’s the hedge maze from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, prompted by Savage’s disappointment in what should have been the “official” version. The video here, which describes the build process in detail,…

These R/C Cars Drift So Much Better Than You Ever Will

Drifting R/C cars isn’t a completely new pasttime, but there’s still something magical about watching a trio of R/C cars go flying off a jump — sideways. It’s everything you ever wasted your childhood trying to achieve, but done by grown-ups with far more skill. The video was filmed by the Kuma Films team at…

The Craziest Designs For London’s Newest Pedestrian Bridge

The great city of London currently has something of a fascination with pedestrian bridges to span the waterway that bisects the city. The latest project is for a bridge that will connect Nine Elms to Pimlico in the Borough of Wandsworth. Currently, 87 proposals have been submitted: here are the craziest. https://gizmodo.com/londons-crazy-stupid-garden-bridge-is-actually-going-ah-1665980312 At the moment,…

Huawei Already Revealed Its First Android Watch

All the cool kids are peddling Android wearables these days, and it looks like Huawei is no exception: in advance of the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it looks like the Chinese phone giant has revealed its upcoming watch in an (accidental?) ad. First spotted by Android Central, the ad gives it the original…

I Never Realized I Need A Bluetooth Wallet

When a new Kickstarter launches for an everyday item with (Bluetooth/NFC/WiFi/solar panels/CNC’d aluminium unibody — delete as appropriate) capabilities on board, I’m normally first in the line of jeering sceptics. But a wallet with built-in Bluetooth actually makes a lot of sense. Pass the Kool-Aid, please. Woolet is a fairly classy-looking leather wallet with a…

I never imagined liquids could move in this way

I’m not exactly sure what I just watched but I saw liquid dance in ways I didn’t know liquid could even move. At least, not on Earth. The water ballet was filmed by Kamiel Rongen. He insists that everything in this video is real and hints that it was filmed in a fish bowl. There’s…

A gun machine that shoots dumplings together would be the greatest thing

The world should put together all their brain power and weapons experts and artillery and dumpling ammo so that we can make this dumpling gun machine happen. Imagine a world where at a push of a button we can shoot out the perfect amount of meat, spice it, wrap it and cook it in less…

This Unusually Short-Lived Fish Could Hold the Secrets to Getting Old

The turquoise killifish is largely unremarkable except for how fast it ages. In just three months, it goes from a spry, young fish (left) to a decrepit, old one (right). For scientists who study aging, the turquoise killifish could be the key to their future experiments. The fish is one of the shortest lived vertebrates…

Hot Beer. No Really, Hot Beer. 

When I go home to Tennessee, nobody ever asks me if I want a beer. “How ’bout a col’beer?” say the Southerners as they toss a can through the air. (All one word.) The ice cold brew cuts through the summertime humidity nicely. This frigid February in New York City deserves a different kind of…

A lone coyote running across the frozen waters of the Boston Bay

The US Coast Guard just tweeted this photo of a coyote running across ice, taken from one of its ships in the Boston Harbor, near Quincy. I imagine this is what would happen if humans were destroyed, civilization disappeared forever, and everything was cold and miserable—which sounds like Boston to me. SPLOID is delicious brain…