Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The internet is the place to pump your ideas out and hope they’ll resonate with someone somewhere. When digital strangers agree with your opinions, fawn over your pictures, or laugh at your jokes, it feels good, man. What was your biggest internet hit? The one I’ll always remember is a post I wrote on a…
This week in Tech Reads: internet drones, bee brain surgery, the continued search for Flight 370, and more. Jordan Golson explains how, despite all the tracking and navigation technology out there, it’s still possible to lose an airplane in 2014. [Wired] Brian Fung shows us how we know that Flight 370 kept flying for hours…
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission spotted an asteroid! 2014 EN45 is large (800 m), dark, and not going to kill us. At it’s closest-approach on March 17th, it’s going to pass by a downright spacious 19 million kilometres (or 49.8 times the Earth-moon distance). In related news, the Bad Astronomer has a nice…
Well this was a hell of a week. We blew the lid off of NBC’s collection of dirty-name URLs, debunked 24 hours’ worth of fake UberFacts, toured China’s largest ghost city, and more. Let’s take a look back, shall we? Amazon Prime Is Still the Best Deal in Tech Today, the fateful news came down…
Cubestormer 3 is a robot with just one job—to solve a scrambled Rubik’s Cube as swiftly as possible. Today, at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, UK, it did the task in an astounding 3.253 seconds, faster than any human or robot in the world. Just look at that thing go. The third-generation robot was…
Finding a four-leaf clover is supposed to be all about good luck, but who says you can’t boost your odds? The super-nerds at Scientific American are here to tell you exactly how to find a four-leafer using science, rather than superstition. It’s still a game of probability, but knowing how much area you’ll need to…
Though we can’t all hope to match Sherlock Holmes’ preternatural deduction abilities and knack for witty repartee, with a little practice you can build a Mind Palace just as lavish as the famed detective’s. Here’s how you can improve your memory and reasoning skills in your free time. Techniques In the latest BBC spin on…
A games shop in Paris embraced the rubber-sheet metaphor of space-time to guide their interior design. The illusion is so convincing I can imagine shoppers occasionally stumble when their eyes and feet disagree about where exactly to expect the floor. My only quibble is that I wish the display consoles were in the center of…
That was quick. After closing up shop yesterday among the usual copyright questions, and just a week after its first launch, Popcorn Time is back. TorrentFreak has the story of how the project, abandoned by its founders, will live on at the hands of YTS developers. In a conversation with TorrentFreak, YTS developer Jduncanator assures…
In a news conference on missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 today, Prime Minister Najib Razak declared that the plane was deliberately diverted from its prescribed route to Beijing, flying up to seven hours after takeoff, says The New York Times. Malaysian authorities have released a map plotting the plane’s last satellite signals somewhere along two…
Good news for habitual in-app spenders (or their parents): Android Police says Google’s newest Play store update lets you curb spending by opting to require a password for every in-app upgrade. It may not actually stop you, but hopefully it’ll make you stop and think. Maybe. The latest Google Play update lets you choose between…
This Lego build of the Burj Khalifa may cure you of insomnia, and possibly give you an orgasm. According to Health24 “filmed in a certain way, seemingly ordinary acts like this can cause your brain to flip out and enter an orgasmic state.” It’s called autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) and it’s pretty awesome. The…
This truly outstanding photo taken from the International Space Station shows the Japanese HTV-4 spacecraft illuminating the Earth’s clouds as it disintegrates in the atmosphere during re-entry. Unbelievable shot. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
Not only is Titanfall, the video game that everyone can’t stop talking about, an incredibly fun game that surpasses the hype, it also has this fantastic cinematic intro sequence that makes me almost wish I could watch the movie version of Titanfall instead of playing the video game. The sequence was made by Spov Design…
OK, folks, we started this whole strangers kissing viral craze and we have had enough of it. This video of dogs kissing for the first time is the end of this stupid trend. They are not models and they like to sniff each other’s butts and that’s all we need. Enough is enough, people. Carry…
I never get tired of Daniel Simon’s design work, the man behind the vehicle design in Tron Legacy, Oblivion, the Lotus C-01 motorbike. His classic Cosmic Motors series are amazing.
Performance art of the highest caliber is that which leaves the audience stunned, speechless, and wondering, “Lol, da fuq did i jus watch?” Here is one such example from Natalia Sliwowska.
I’m a huge fan of the work of Daniel Simon, the design wizard behind the spectacular vehicle design in Tron Legacy, Oblivion, the Lotus C-01 motorbike, and countless other machines—like his outstanding Cosmic Motors series. Whenever I look at that his Cosmic Motors book I can’t stop myself from imagining driving his creations in alien…
Major thanks to Geoff Manaugh for having conducted this interview with me on the occasion of my new book, Selected Ambient Works Volume II, part of the great 33 1/3 series. The subject of the book is the 1994 album by Aphex Twin with which it shares its title.
Here’s a thick, chaos-strewn whorl of noise courtesy of the Richmond Tape Club outta Richmond, Virginia. Squelched spoken segments secrete from dense, churning static. There are more than enough looped elements — upward — to lend signal to the noise. Originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/rvatapeclub.
