Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Imagine if gadgets worked like something out of Pixar film, and you could inflate them by blowing down the power cord. It’d bring fresh new meaning to the name MacBook Air. [XKCD]
Sometimes, you can find secrets in the strangest places—and it seems Chinese hackers are well aware of that fact. According to the New York Times, digital attacks from China have recently been focussing on more obscure federal agencies. The newspaper notesthat, according to senior American officials, the Government Printing Office and the Government Accountability Office…
Illustrator and digital artist Oliver Wetter photoshopped Kaiju and other big beasts into classical landscape paintings, mimicking the artists’ styles . He nails the lighting, brush strokes and mood, all hand drawn with a stylus—a skilled tribute to the original painters as well as the cult icons he added. The original paintings Oliver remixed were…
Following years of criticism, Google has announcedthat it’s scrapping its requirement that anyone using Google+ uses their real name on the network. The policy was put in place when Google+ launched three years ago, intended to make the network more… well, more like Facebook, really. But last night Google admittedthat “it also excluded a number…
The bread and butter at Razza Pizza Artiginale is made by James Beard Rising Star Chef semi-finalist Dan Richer. He’s the chef behind the restaurant and might be more obsessed with bread and butter than any person on the planet. This video shows how he made his restaurant’s bread and butter the most delicious. It’s…
45 years ago today—on July 16, 1969—astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launched to the Moon on top of the mightiest spaceship ever built. These amazing photos from NASA’s vaults show how they built and launched that spaceship—I look at them in awe and admiration. It was the most important trip in the…
I wish there wasn’t any music to this video. I wish it would just be the sounds of the pottery wheel spinning, the hands shaping the clay and the quiet focus of the ceramics masters resonating. But even with the music, watching masters of their craft actually perform their craft is an incredible sight to…
When you’re trying to build the fastest car in human history, like the guys making the Bloodhound SSC, you have to make wheels that basically re-invent the wheel. To reach 1000mph and go supersonic, the wheels they’re using weigh over 230 pounds, nearly 3 feet wide and spin four times faster than a F1 car.…
You may think this is some real life level of Mario Bros. Or that it’s an organ pipe made for a robot giant but it’s actually one of the pump stations that keep beautiful New Orleans safe from flooding. It sucks in water from one side and spits it out on the other. What you’re…
After nearly two years, Slingbox has just announced its newest boxes, and a brand new look. Welcome to SlingTV. An update to the previous Slingbox 350, the new Slingbox M1 comes with built in Wi-Fi (thank god) but still relies on old school component cables to hook up to your TV proper. It’s also fully…
Syfy’s forthcoming 12 Monkeys TV show is actually more than 50 years in the making. If you read the previews, you’ll know that the show is based on the 1995 Terry Gilliam flick starring Bruce Willis. What you might not know is that that the Gilliam movie is based on a much older, much weirder…
Whoa. Artist Alexy Zakharov re-imagined the world of Futurama in 3D and transformed the cartoon into a complete stunner. It makes me want to watch a movie version of Futurama set in this world right now. Hell, it makes me want to cryogenically freeze myself so I can live in this world when I wake…
Did you know Yosemite Valley used to have an identical twin? It was dammed in the early 1900s to provide San Francisco with water it relies on to this day, but recently, conservationists have been calling for its restoration. Yosemite Valley is a spectacular glacial valley in the Sierra Nevada, forming the crown jewel of…
Definitely not coming to water park near you is a FloWave, a state-of-the-art wave poolthat whips water around, simulating waves as tall as 90-feet and currents at 20 feet per second. FloWave is a real ocean simulator, you see, and its job is to prepare our infrastructure for the violent battering of the seas. Where…
Everybody knows the sound of a scratched record. But have you ever wondered what that maddening little blemish looks like up close? Well, you’re in luck, because Zammuto’s music video for “Great Equator” featuring scratched records was filmed entirely with a microscope. And it’s more interesting than you might think. Up close, vinyl records look…
A team of researchers in Texas recently did something extraordinary. They made a genetic tweak to worms’ brains that made it impossible for them to get drunk. More specifically, the scientists modified the worms’ genes so that a molecular channel that binds alcohol to their brains would no longer work. And humans have a similar…
Back in 1926, the town of Inglewood, California had a mobile traffic court that operated out of a truck — complete with a judge, a bailiff, and police officers. In the photo above we see one unlucky motorist in July of 1926 who’s been pulled over for speeding. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most…
Robert S. Ballard and his team of ocean explorershave taken new crystal-clear photos of a Nazi submarine in the Gulf of Mexico, right off the Texas’ shoreline: U-166 was one of the many Kriegsmarine U-boats that swam like sharks waiting for prey around the United States’ coast. Admire it in all its decrepit glory—in high…
Laying in a hammock while wrangling a simple book is often a challenge, which explains why hammocks replacing desks in offices never caught on. Here’s a nice compromise, though: A compact hammock for your feet that hangs under your desk and raises or lowers to put you in a working or slacking mood as needed.…
Apple and IBMhave just announced an unprecedented partnership to bring the iPhone to enterprise customers. In other words, you’re actually going to be able to use your iPhone for work. The surprising partnership comes after years of tense relations between the two companies, but now, the two will be working together to “help companies deploy…
