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Google might be ripping off one of Facebook Messenger’s best features on the phone for its own Hangouts app on the desktop: chat heads. A new leak on Phandroid shows that Google is currently experimenting with this feature. Hangouts is a mess and chat heads are awesome. Google may never actually release this, but I’ll…
Sending data between small, portable devices is full of compromise: higher transfer rates usually means a bigger drain on the battery. But UCLA researchers have a plan to use reflected Wi-Fi signals to help solve that problem. A teams from UCLA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has spent the last two years developing technology which allows small…
Some of the most powerful people in the tech world are dumping buckets of ice water on their heads. No, they haven’t lost it. They’re doing it for charity. The stunt is a part of a campaign to raise money to fight amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as the motor neurons disease. Those who…
Now that the WorldView-3, the world’s first satellite capable of capturing high-resolution public images has launched, here’s exactly what it is capable of doing all the way up from 385 miles above the Earth, according to this cool Mashable article: It may prevent famine in Syria by identifying ahead of time exactly how many crops…
Not only will e-cigarettes mess you up if you smoke them too much, they are now under scrutiny for listing as a flight hazard. The New York Times reports that officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport are asking the Transportation Department to consider classifying e-cigarettes as hazardous materials after a smoldering bag had to be…
This is so ridiculous that it’s kind of fun. Maymo, the lemon beagle in the video, is so great at balancing things on his head that he can wear 100 different kinds of fruits and vegetables as hats. The more color, the better. Maymo’s YouTube channel writes: Cute Dog Maymo balances 100 different fruits &…
If you’re using your unlimited T-Mobile 4G/LTE plan to download the last season of Game Of Thrones in all its 1080P glory, stop now or be throttled. According to an internal memo to staff, T-Mobile knows if you abuse your data allowance and will “address” you shortly. T-Mobile’s terms and conditions clearly spell out what…
Here’s how Charles Schulz, the trailblazing cartoonist who created Peanuts, drew Charlie Brown. I love his sure strokes and how he builds out the character but most importantly, I love how he’s done in less than half a minute. The Peanuts channel also has other videos of other artists drawing other Peanuts characters. This one…
We can trace the world’s obsession with curvaceous humanoids like Kim Kardashian and mannequin dolls named after cities and hotel chains back to the first documentary ever made: Nanook of the North. It was a documentary that faked the life of eskimos to entertain people. Does that sound familiar? Why yes of course. That’s basically…
It’s like watching an orchestra. One arm of the machine maintains a gentle yet precise grip on the condom, swooping down and up on the metal rod. Another brushes the rubber while the machine in the back sucks it back in for packaging. It’s a never ending cycle. One day we will make a How…
Amongst the abandoned diggers, unexploded bombs, and Medieval bodies, a labyrinth of Tube tracks—both fully functional and obsolete—wind beneath the streets of London. Last week the city got a whole new subterranean social scene at the House of Vans, a series of five disused tunnels outfitted with bars, a diner, gallery, music venue, and skate…
You can buy your pretty new iPhone 6 with somewhat of a clearer conscience this fall. Apple announced today that they’re eliminating two known toxins—benzene and n-hexane—from the production of iPhone and iPads. Activists groups have been pressuring Apple to remove the toxins for months, launching a petition that claims that over 1.5 million workers…
What do you do when you log onto Twitter and find out your honey’s unfollowed you? Or you try to friend her on Facebook but she never accepts? What if you’re also a teen and you just got braces? You fire up this ballad and you double tap, baby. Maybe you can’t call her or…
That Surf and Turf now costs an arm and a leg thanks to lobster’s recent resurgence in popularity. But, as David Foster Wallace’s famous essay, Consider the Lobster illustrated, throughout Colonial-era America, the crustacean was considered among the least desirable foods one could put in their face—a garbage meat fit only for the indigent, indentured,…
If you think it’s just a joke that robots are going to replace humans, it’s not. It’s going to happen. In fact, CGP Grey explains in ‘Humans Need Not Apply’ how it’s already happening around us right now. You might not notice it but you will after you watch how we’re following historical patterns towards…
If you’ve ever brewed beer commercially in the United States, chances are you’re familiar with a one Kent “Battle” Martin. Because as far as brewers are concerned, he is the Alpha and the Omega of beer labels—without his approval, you’re effectively screwed. Officially, Battle (as he prefers to be called) is employed by the Treasury…
In recent years carbon fiber has developed a nasty habit of turning up in places it really doesn’t belong. Its woven black finish might look neat on a mousepad, but the ultralight material should stick to places it really belongs like on high-performance race cars, in any product coming from the aerospace industry, and office…
If anyone else heads to the International Space Station, they’re going to need to circle until Friday waiting for a parking slot. The station is at full capacity after the successful fully-automated arrival of ATV-5. Now five spacecraft are currently docked to the station: ATV-5, Soyuz 38 (TMA-12M), Soyuz 39 (TMA-13M), Orbital Cygnus, and Progress…
Remember way back in February when we reported that this summer you’d be able to remotely control robots to explore the Tate Britain After Dark Well—it’s (finally) this summer, and now’s your chance! Starting this very minute, you can check out the live footage of four bots gone wild—and sign up to make them move…
Remember when the Syrian government shut down the entire country’s internet a little under two years ago? Well, thanks to Edward Snowden’s recent Wired interview, we now know that may not quite be what happened. In fact, according to Snowden, it was the NSA who flipped the switch. In the midst of the Syrian civil…
