Tech News

Pro Hackers Could Be Spying on You Through YouTube

Bad news, dudes and dudettes. It’s getting increasingly straight-forward for deep-pocketed hackers to buy commercial-grade equipment so sophisticated that it can infect your computer with malware when you do something as innocuous as watching cat videos on YouTube. This is why it’s time to encrypt your shit. Morgan Marquis-Boire, a celebrated hacker turned security researcher,…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

The Panama Canal Is 100 Years Old, Just In Time for Its Makeover

One hundred years ago today, the SS Ancon became the first ship to officially pass through the Panama Canal. Because of the outbreak of World War I, there wasn’t a big party for the grand opening. The waterway would go on change the history of transportation, and now it’s time to change the canal itself.…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

Black Hawk Choppers Are Finally Getting the Digital Cockpits They Need

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter is among the most (in)famous and easily-recognizable choppers in the US military. And, beginning today, these venerable aircraft will receive a 21st century kick in the cockpit. The Black Hawk medium lift utility chopper has been dutifully serving the US Army and Special Forces since its introduction in 1979. It’s…

Tech News Andrew Tarantola

Where I Should Live, According to Math

I don’t live in Washington, DC. I live near Washington, DC. I would like to live in it, but it’s an expensive city, and my income, while above the national average, is well below the regional average, and finding a two bedroom in our price range is difficult. This got me thinking about affordable housing…

Tech News Dave Munson - Munson's City

An Airbag Belt Could Help Protect Seniors’ Hips From Nasty Falls

It doesn’t matter how much milk you drink, at a certain age your bones start to lose their strength, eventually putting you at risk for broken limbs and even worse: a broken hip that hinders your mobility. So similar to the airbags in your car, this safety belt instantly inflates when it detects the wearer…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

How I Failed to Become a Drone Pilot

Drones are fun. Let’s just get that out there. The small, semi-affordable aircraft that violate some people’s privacy, hurt others’ faces, and generally cause trouble are super duper fun. They’re also very, very complicated. I know this, because I’ve spent the past year or so flying (and crashing) them. It was a long time coming,…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

Pick Up 4TB for Cheap, Full Sized Tablets, Better Selfies [Deals]

This WD My Book has a great reputation (including a Wirecutter recommendation), and is only $130 today for a whopping 4TB. The price will show up for you at final checkout. [WD My Book 4TB, $130] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236626 Get these deals and more, and earlier on Deals.Kinja. Connect with us on Twitter and Facebook to never…

Tech News Shep McAllister

Highways are Making California’s Mountain Lions Inbred and Aggressive

Highways let us humans zip from one place to another—at least when the traffic’s not horrendous. But for wild animals, highways are like wide concrete fences that feature metal boxes of death barreling down at 70 mph. In the Santa Monica Mountains, a population of wild mountain lions has become penned in by highways and…

Tech News Sarah Zhang

29 New, Ballmer-Friendly Logos for the LA Clippers

Earlier in the week, we asked you to help celebrate Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion basketball acquisition by giving the ex-Microsoft man a logo he could be proud of. And you, dear readers, done very, very good. Some of you chose a more traditional route, some a little absurdist, and a few of you seem to…

Tech News Ashley Feinberg

A Poignant Look at Life in America’s Trailer Parks

A lot of people turn their noses up at trailer parks. That’s unfair, and David Waldorf’s photo essay about the Brookside Trailer Park in Sonoma, California show us that there’s beauty everywhere, trailer parks included. Waldorf spent years driving to Brookside in a Uhaul that he’d set up to be a mobile studio. The accomplished…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

The first touch-sensitive LCD basketball court in the world is awesome

Nike has created this huge touch-sensitive LCD basketball court for a training session with Kobe Bryant. The court has built-in motion sensors that track every player’s movements individually. It can also display training exercises for them to follow and show statistics on performance. Check out the amazing video. The space—located in Shanghai, China—is called the…

Sploid Omar Kardoudi

The Secret US Drone Program that Killed JFK’s Eldest Brother

The Ryan Firebee is widely considered the first true UAV developed by the US military, however, it was far from their first attempt. Take Operation Aphrodite, which loaded B-17s with high explosives and remotely crashed them into enemy targets, for instance. This early UAV program wasn’t just an abject failure, it may well have changed…

Tech News Andrew Tarantola

7 Rules for Recording Police

We republished this post from Reason two years ago; the information is still valid, and given the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, seem more relevant than ever. We’ve made minor edits to account for some technological and legal advances since the original publication date, but the key points are there. It seems trivial to say…

Tech News Leslie Horn

Renovo Coupe: The Electric Dream Car For Gasoline-Crazy Gearheads

A Silicon Valley startup just revealed the latest piece of electronic future-tech, a 500-horsepower, all-electric supercar that does zero to 60 faster than a Porsche 911. But the most important part of the Renovo Coupe isn’t cutting-edge at all: It’s that gorgeous body, designed in 1964. Over at Jalopnik, our pal Damon Lavrinc spoke with…

Tech News Bob Sorokanich

This Clever Carpet “Printer” Brushes Pictures Onto Your Rugs

You know that incredibly satisfying feeling of seeing a freshly vacuumed carpet with the fibers all perfectly upright and unmarred by footprints? Designer Yuta Sugiura has found a way to take advantage of that effect to print detailed images on a rug or carpeting using a handheld machine he developed and built. It works kind…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

Report: Microsoft Will Drop Windows 9 Preview Next Month

ZDNet reports that Microsoft will release a preview of Windows 9, next month, in advance of of the general release, which is expected in Spring 2015. Which of the the rumored improvements will Microsoft show off in the early preview? So far we’ve heard a number of rumors about what Windows 9 might have in…

Tech News Mario Aguilar

5 Essential Add-Ons That Will Make Your Gmail Great

If you could add just one improvement to Gmail, what would it be? Chances are there’s an add-on, extension or plug-in that does exactly what you want—a thriving ecosystem of third-party tools has grown up alongside Google’s email client over the last ten years, and we’ve highlighted five of the most useful for you to…

Gadgets David Nield

Sharpening Blowgun Darts On Piranha Teeth

In part one of this series, Laurel C. Allen heads into the Peruvian Amazon in search of science. What she finds are big bugs, dragon’s blood and pisco sours. https://gizmodo.com/into-the-amazon-boats-breakfast-and-blowguns-1623974867 Through the plane’s windows, rivers are suddenly plunging through dense forest, coming in from all corners, doubling back on themselves, curling in impossible directions. The…

Tech News Laurel C. Allen

Cool 3D visualization captures the motion of famous olympic athletes

Felix Deimann—a motion designer based in Dortmund, Germany—created this awesome video that captures the motion of famous olympic athletes like Nadia Comăneci, Michael Phelps, the US basketball Dream Team and Usain Bolt, turning it into a continuous flow of beautiful abstract shapes. This is Deimann’s thesis project: Movements of famous Olympians where digitalised into 3D…

Sploid Omar Kardoudi

TMZ Thinks This Is an iPhone 6, Bless Its Heart

TMZ, famous for showing us some of the world’s most prominent genitalia, has another big exclusive on its hands—this time for all you tech nerds out there. “Drool, geeks,” the headline reads, and behold the glorious watermarked images of a phone that is almost definitely not the iPhone 6. But hey, let’s give them the…

Tech News Ashley Feinberg

Pro Hackers Could Be Spying on You Through YouTube

The Panama Canal Is 100 Years Old, Just In Time for Its Makeover