Tech News

Your Next Real Christmas Tree Might Have a Wacky New Color or Scent

Botanists have been busy trying to iron out the pesky needle drop from Christmas trees for years by crossing different species of fir. But now, scientists are getting involved—and the results could mean that your next tree looks or smells completely different. Not content with the rate of progress that horticulturists make—after all, it can…

Samsung’s New Chips Could Put 4GB of RAM Into Every Phone

There’s an inherent trade-off when designing a phone, between pure power and respectable battery life. Fortunately, Samsung’s latest memory chips are so efficient that they could make 4GB of RAM in phones an industry standard—and make 4K phones a very real thing indeed. The company’s first 1GB low-power DDR4 memory chip uses a higher bandwidth…

7 Smart New Affordable Housing Projects Making Cities Stronger

The looming affordable housing crisis will likely be the biggest issue facing our cities in 2014. A convergence of cataclysmic real estate prices, a development slowdown, and a weak job market are squeezing low-income residents out of urban areas. But all is not dire: I found seven new projects that are bright spots in the…

Why Superheroes Wear Their Underwear on the Outside

While there have been many fantastical proposed origins of this seemingly odd modish style amongst comic artists -my favorite of which being that most superheroes lost their parents at an early age, so they had no one to tell them underwear goes UNDER your clothes -the true origin is pretty simple. According to Julius Schwartz…

These 100 Year-Old Negatives Were Found Frozen in Antarctic Ice

These images look pretty great considering they’re 100 years old. They look even better when you learn they’ve been sealed in Antarctic ice for 100 years. Discovered by a team of Antarctic conservators, the treasure trove contained 22 unprocessed cellulose nitrate negatives. They’re believed to have been snapped by the Ross Sea Party way back…

Death laser ray spider-bot bring us one step closer to the apocalypse

From the DIY Laser Guy: “I present my most terrifying laser creation as of yet… the remote controlled death ray drone bot! This beast packs a potent 2W blue laser that fries anything in it’s path. It can walk around and shoot it’s death ray at the touch of a button.” To the DIY Laser…

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is free on iTunes today as part of its 12 Days of Gifts promo. That’s pretty great!

These guys put a GoPro camera inside a running airplane jet engine

This video shows the typical life of an Airbus A340, one of the most popular long-range airliners in the world. As a passenger, and even as a pilot, you never get to see this beast from most of these angles—especially from inside one of the jet engines. It’s a fascinating view. Go to the 3:09…

This 110-Inch Monster Is the World’s Largest Ultra HDTV

At last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung unveiled the world’s largest 4K TV. But its paltry 85-inch size is now dwarfed by a bigger brother, which offers up 110 inches of screen real estate. This things is crazy big. https://gizmodo.com/samsungs-giant-amazing-ultra-hd-tvs-are-imprisoned-in-h-5973925 Indeed, Samsung promised a larger version of the TV almost a year ago now, and…

WSJ: Google and Audi Are Working on In-Car Android

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google has been working with Audi to develop in-car entertainment and information systems based on Android—and the pair plan to make an announcement at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The newspaper explains that the announcement will also detail collaborative efforts with other manufacturers—it specifically names…

Auld Lang Syne Isn’t Always Lame

This morning I decided that I was going to write a soundtrack post called “Here’s the Deal with Auld Lang Syne.” And then around 4pm “What’s the Deal with Auld Lang Syne?” went up on Huffington Post. So cool. Go there for your 1788 Scottish poetry/music lesson. But if you want to hear this weird…

A Maximally Simple Breathalyzer Makes Sense for Drunk People

There are a lot of smartphone breathalyzers out there, but they don’t tend to prioritize design aesthetic. It’s more of an ‘am I too drunk, yes or no,’ kind of thing. But the Lapka Bam Breathalyzer is all about bringing form and function together. First of all, the Lapka is designed so you don’t need…

More Than Half of Internet Traffic Is Just Bots

People attribute a lot of annoying internet stuff to bots. Twitterbot followers, bots that sneak past spam filters, bots that send weird gibberish on messaging services. It sounds kind of tired, but maybe the situation is exactly as bad as everyone thinks. Security and cloud service provider Incapsula analyzed 1.45 billion page views from 20,000…

A New York City Mugger Declined to Steal a Flip Phone

There have been 13 robberies reported in Central Park so far in 2013. But in most of them the robber presumably takes stuff. That’s how that works, right? Things were different for New York Sports Club salesman Kevin Cook, though. He was walking with a friend in the lower part of the park after midnight…

2013 As Told By Top BitTorrent Searches

There isn’t one central BitTorrent search engine to release top searches queries of the year, but Kickass Torrents is pretty close. It’s definitely a go-to for standard stuff. And the most searched terms in 2013 were all over the place. Let’s dig in. The top five is Yify (the group that puts tons of Hollywood…

Are Family Photos Still a Thing?

Family photos can happen any time, but all-clan snaps seem like an imperative around the holidays. Does your family still do them? Is it a last-minute smartphone camera affair or do you have an aunt who busts out a DSLR? The picture above was supposed to be one of those three-generations-in-one-photo photos. That’s my grandma…

Reddit Is Trying to Actually Make Some Money

90 million unique visitors a month has to be good for something. But so far Reddit hasn’t been able to stay consistently profitable even with all those people (yeah, you) banging down the door. The big issue for Reddit is that its users would hold page advertising against them in a big way. So instead…

Leftover Christmas Candy Meets Its Fiery Doom

Chemical fires are usually bad, but when they’re intentional, controlled and consuming weird Christmas/santa ring pops (is that what that is?) they’re easily endorsable. mist8k apparently agrees, because you know what molten potassium chloride does really well? Chemical fires!

The NSA Actually Intercepted Packages to Put Backdoors in Electronics

The NSA revelations keep on coming, and if you’re feeling desensitized to the whole thing it’s time to refocus and get your game face on for 2014. Because shit continues to get real. SPIEGEL published two pieces this morning about the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division, aka premier hacking ninja squad. According to Snowden…

A Wall Made of 300 Chairs Takes Repurposing a Step Further

Screens and curtains are alright, but sometimes you want a real wall. Solid, substantial and offering some privacy. And if bricks and cement blocks are too boring, you can always turn to repurposed household items. Right? Artist Fumiko Kobayashi used about 300 chairs to create “1000 Legs, Cultivating Fruits,” a huge wall built entirely out…