Tech News

This Undulating Desk Top Has Specially Carved Crevices For Your Tech

From a distance, this desk look beautifully organic: an undulating and natural surface, rich with character. Get up close, though, and you’ll realize that there are, in fact, cracks, crevices and electronics lurking within it designed especially for your tech. Called Blidu, this desk is the work of German designer Tom Schuster. The beautiful slab…

Samsung Has Convinced Heathrow Airport to Create Terminal Galaxy S5

If you land at Heathrow in the next two weeks, don’t get too confused if you walk through Terminal Galaxy S5—because, somehow, Samsung has managed to convince the airport to rebrand its entire wing for a two-week period. Amazingly, Heathrow must have been offered enough cold, hard cash to allow Sammy to run around the…

Time-lapse video captures the terrifying speed of the San Diego fires

This time-lapse video shot yesterday near Escondido—in San Diego county—captures the terror of seeing an uncontrollable forest fire coming towards you. What you are seeing here happened in only two and a half hours. The video stops as the 1000-acre fire closed in and the evacuation began at the brewery where it was filmed. It’s…

Google Has Most of Your Email, Even If You Don’t Use Gmail

Even if you’re careful about choosing how and where your email is sent, chances are you reply to plenty of messages sent from Gmail. And, as it turns out, that probably means that Google has most of your email, whether you like it or not. Benjamin Mako Hill—who runs his own email server—decided to work…

Diver fends off great white shark in frightening encounter

Not what you want to see even when you have a spear gun to hand—this diver was taking a dip off Florida earlier this month when he saw a great white shark materialise then disappear into the cloudy waters. Cue some tense moments as the shark circles, getting closer, until finally being fended off. SPLOID…

Circle Is a Free and Approachable Bitcoin Bank For Everyday Folks

Bitcoin services don’t perhaps have the best of track records right now, and they can often appear niche and daunting. Circle hopes to change to change that,though, by offering a free and accessible bitcoin banking service for everyday folks. The service, having raised $26 million in funding, is opening its service today—though it’s a limited…

Which Tech Companies Protect Your Data From the Government?

Every year, the Electronic Frontier Foundationreleases its “Who Has Your Back” report card, detailing the privacy policies of tech companies. Here’s the rundown of who fights for your privacy in the face of government requests for your data—and who doesn’t even bother. Executive Summary We entrust our most sensitive, private, and important information to technology…

The stark difference between the rich and the poor, side by side

The line is so thin yet the gap is so big. This ad campaign, Erase the Differences, shows how wealthy people and poor communities can literally live right next to each other but experience such different lives. You’d think the images are Photoshopped but they’re just aerial photographs of real life living situations in Mexico.…

Inspect the Detailed Geometry of Ships in These High Res Photos

Modern ships can be so immense that you rarely get a chance to see them in their entirety, let alone looking straight down from above. The photographs of Laurent Maes provide such a perspective, showcasing every shapely detail of giant yachts and freighters. The series is called Shipshape, and it’s unclear exactly how Maes creates…

Sony RX100 Mark III: The Point and Shoot Champ Takes It Up a Notch

The RX100 was instrumental in forging the high-end point and shoot category of digital cameras when it debuted in 2012. Last year’s Mark II version was a minor spec bump, but the new RX100 Mark III has some startling features you’d ever expect from a camera so small. At first glance, the $800 RX100 Mark…

How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Center of Your Revenge?

Jean Claude Van Damme is on a mission to discover what lies at the center of a Tootsie Pop. But this ain’t no mission of mercy and he’s certainly not going to let a bunch of psychedelic, animated woodland animals keep him from the truth—even if they do all know kung fu.

The California wildfires and fire tornadoes look like hell on Earth

This footage capturedby a Fox News video crew shows a firenado raging near Carlsbad. It’s absolutely terrifying but the video taken by some people driving through a road is even worse. It really feels like hell on Earth. The firenado Road through hell Here’s one taken right next to the road, which looks about to…

A Gear Geek’s Guide To Ultralight Backpacking

Taking weight off your back is a good thing, but not at the expense of comfort, capability or preparedness. Here’s how to ultralight backpack in style. When venturing out into the wilderness on foot, there are two objective-based motivations that can drive us: hiking and camping. If you get off on ever-changing scenery and love…

Derive and Thrive: Remix 3 Netlabels This Weekend

Update 2014.05.16: Please note there were two text errors when this project was first posted. The netlabel Audiotalaia was misidentified as Audioitalia, and the Kayaka track “O” was misidentified as “Blackening.” Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over…

Being gluten free is dumb—and gluten intolerance may not even exist

If you have Celiac, this obviously doesn’t apply to you. Don’t eat gluten. But if you don’t have Celiac—and that’s 99% of the human population, mind you—there’s no reason to be gluten free. You’re wasting your time. Even the scientist who started this gluten free craze thinks it’s useless to be gluten free. Seriously. People,…

Win An ESEE-6 Survival Knife

We’re giving away a brand new version of our favorite survival knife, the ESEE-6! At 11.75 inches in total length, with a 6.50-inch blade and made from .188-inch thick 1095 carbon steel, the ESEE-6 is a strong, versatile, capable multi-purpose outdoors tool. It’s perfect for building fires, building shelters, preparing food or even scaring off…

While I gave you a quick explanation of fire tornadoes (and adiabatic winds!) yesterday, The Vane has more details on the atmospheric science of how a fire tornado differs from a more mundane tornado.

These fully-automatic Wolverine claws are as badass as the real ones

Holy crap, Colin Furze made the best Wolverine claws replicas ever. These 12-inch steel blades are fully automatic: they can deploy or retract with the push of a button. I’ve seen many tries at making these, but nothing as amazing as this these ones. And for sure, you can use these as real—very—mortal weapons. The…

This Diver Is Cradling a 12,000-Year-Old Skull in an Underwater Cave

Inside a cave so deep and dark it’s called Hoyo Negro, or Spanish for “black hole,” divers are transporting a 12,000-year-old skull for 3D scanning. The skull belongs to one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in the Americas. Lucky for us, the expedition was documented with an entire set of stunning…

How Survival Knives Are Designed And Manufactured

What makes a $200 knife different from a $20 one? We asked Jungle survival trainer and knife designer Jeff Randall. Jeff runs Randall’s Adventure and Training, where he teaches survival in one of the harshest environments on earth — the Amazon Rainforest. Along with co-founder Mike Perrin, he also runs ESEE Knives, producing no-bullshit tools…