Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The internet as you know it might seem infinite, but according to ICANN, it’s still not quite infinite enough. Soon, a whole new world of internet real estate is coming your way in the form of 122 brand new domain names. That’s right, you can finally make YourNameHere.SEXY all your very own. Starting tomorrow soon,…
Joel Huerta, wearing his brother’s NYPD Auxiliary vest, heads back to his own apartment after clearing the local florist’s walk; there, he will continue to clear a path in what has become one of New York City’s more snow-filled winters. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
Hydrotherapy was all the rage in the 19th century. Inventors devised countless contraptions to immerse people in water, hoping to restore them to health using nature’s favorite liquid. But none were quite as awkward as the invention above: the “rocking bath tub” of 1891. Hydrotherapy was thought to be able to cure all kinds of…
Making those ethereal long exposure photos where you ‘paint’ an image with an LED light requires a combination of artistic talent, skill, and patience. But if you’re lacking all three, just order one of these $100 Thymio II robots, that can be easily programmed to do all the light painting for you. Is some of…
How the Super Bowl failed its transit-riding attendees, an L.A. museum that collects houses, and why Monarch butterflies are dying (spoiler: because of us). Plus a McDonald’s in Queens, Millennials in St. Louis, and biking in Las Vegas. It’s time for your weekly Urban Reads. What was promoted as the “Mass Transit Super Bowl” was…
Movie magic makes fantasy worlds feel real everyday, but this short film called “Icons” takes it to a whole other level by transforming one actor over and over again, putting him in multiple iconic scenes and works of art in a single incredible shot. From the Thinker to Mad Men to Reservoir Dogs to Daft…
Dust on your camera’s sensor is a tormenting problem made worse by the fact that attempting to clean it is slightly risky. The Sensor Gel Stick could offer an easier and safer way to go about getting grime off the delicate surface. The idea is simply to dab the sticky gel lightly on the image…
Paper may not be a total Facebook replacement yet. But it does have the potential to change the way you interact with Facebook as a whole. In other words, it’s everything that Facebook Home wasn’t. And that’s a great thing. What Is It? Facebook’s new, standalone app that places your timeline and everything in it…
Harry Grant Dart had quite an eye for the future. The early 20th century illustrator imagined women driving flying machines, the airmail of the future dropping from the sky, and even a world of robot butlers long before the word robot had even been coined. But one of Dart’s illustrations from 1908 was perhaps the…
By all accounts—except maybe Vladimir Putin’s—the small Russian resort town of Sochi isn’t ready for the Olympics. In fact, coverage of the preparations has taken on a downright panic-stricken tone. Can Sochi pull it out of the flames? The answer is yes—but at a steep cost. Last week, we posted images of Sochi’s half-finished Olympic…
At last, a good panorama from China’s Chang’e 3 lander.It shows a three-step time-lapse of the Jade Rabbit robotic rover heading south, getting away from its mothership “likely never to return again.” Zoom in: Here’s one of the latest high quality panoramas from a lunar mission: A near 360-degree view from the Apollo Lunar Surface…
Valentine’s Day is less than a couple of weeks away, and if you’ve yet to plan a romantic evening with your sweetheart, don’t sweat it. This tube of meter-long spaghetti lets you recreate that famous scene from Lady and the Tramp. Because what’s more romantic than a couple of runaway dogs fighting over table scraps…
The U.S. Department of Transportation brought us one step closer to that utopian future where cars never crash on Monday with the announcement that it will move ahead with vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V) technology. In short, the government wants all the cars on the road to talk to one another. It makes perfect sense, especially where…
Pick up a SONOS Play:3 or Play:5 speaker today and Amazon will sweeten the deal with a $50 gift card you can put toward anything sold by Amazon, including other components for your new SONOS system. [Amazon] Once you’ve gotten your fill of DIY rig components from today’s Amazon Gold Box, you’ll of course need…
Chromecast has always been great at what it does, but up until now it’s done fairly little. Compatible apps have been just trickling in, largely because Google has been hand-picking what devs even get to play with the $35 wonderstick. No more! Google’s opened up the Chromecast to developers everywhere. Finally, it should start getting…
Today’s largest cargo ships can exceed 130 feet—in width—making any sort of passage through the arctic’s ice-encrusted trade routes nearly impossible without the help of not one but two conventional icebreakers. But with just a single one of these triangular ships leading the way, even the largest container vessel can forge through ice fields with…
One of the most exciting new apps in months has hit Apple’s App Store today: Paper, an app that provides a refreshing new Facebook experience. This is an app that, conservatively, hundreds of thousands of people want to download today. Good luck finding it. It’s well-known that Apple’s app-discovery chops are lacking. The company itself…
Twitter just flipped the switch on a redesign on the web and it looks totally different. Everything is flat, the font has changed, your profile picture shows up in the top left-hand corner, and overall, it looks a whole lot cleaner. We knew this redesign was coming, but today it’s getting rolled out to everyone.…
Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier is firing icebergs into the Atlantic Ocean faster than ever, at an unprecedented rate in fact, according to researchers. Worse: it seems to be accelerating. Maybe the glacier that killed the Titanic with one of its icebergs is blood thirsty again. Above: the iceberg that actually sunk the Titanic, which according to…
The Kentucky Senate just passed a law that will let students take computer programming classes to satisfy their foreign language requirements. Do you think that’s a good move? What this new law means is, rather than taking three years of Spanish or French or whatever, kids can choose to learn to code. Sure, whether it’s…
