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What’s the point of carrying around a backup battery that’s larger than the smartphone it’s designed to boost? It defeats the purpose of carrying a pocketable device in the first place. When it comes to backup batteries, slim is the only way to go, and with a set of pop-ports that keep its USB ports…
You know you want this door decal of Han Solo stuck in carbonite. The 32-inch by 80-inch laminated graphic can be attached and reattached to both doors and walls and is specially designed to create that great 3D-like effect. It really does look like Han could climb right out of there, at least in the…
The Washington Post just published the first interview with Edward Snowden since the initial wave of press after the 30-year-old former analyst’s leaks this summer. His main theme: Edward Snowden done good. This is not to say that Snowden doesn’t deserve the praise. The Washington Post makes it very clear in nearly 4,500 words of…
Researchers say Samsung’s Knox security software for the Galaxy S4 could be vulnerable enough to allow email tracking and data interception. Bad timing for Samsung’s pitch to compete with Blackberry as the US Department of Defense device of choice. [WSJ]
Alan Turing, father of modern computer science, destroyer of Nazi encoding, has finally been posthumously pardoned, 61 years after he was convicted for being who he was. About damn time. https://gizmodo.com/how-to-build-turing-s-universal-machine-5891399 It’s been a long time coming; 59 years have passed since Turing’s suicide by cyanide-laced apple in the face of force chemical castration after…
Nothing will ever be able to replace the simple beauty of a real, live Christmas tree—and don’t even get us started on the smell. But no matter how much we may cherish this piney holiday tradition, the reality remains: They’re bulky, messy, and a pain in the ass to toss out once they’re dead. But…
Forget the sanding, the painting, and all the construction; the worst part of a renovation is having to use a tape measure to size up a room. But if you’re willing to cough up $560, there’s now a much better way that almost sounds like magic. It’s a smartphone accessory called the Spike that uses…
Smithsonian’s Around the Mall blog recently dug up an awesome FAO Schwarz catalog from 1911, found over at the Internet Archive. It’s filled with some pretty fantastic toys, including airship-themed board games, Kodak cameras, and carriages led by sheep. But these gifts didn’t come cheap. Even the board games were expensive. That airship-themed game (complete…
‘Tis the season for family gatherings, home cooked meals, and drugs, apparently. All of the drugs, all at the same time by the looks of things.
Aww. This is adorable. Lilly and Leon Mackie play dress up with their little kid Orson and turn him into baby versions of Luke Skywalker, baby Batman, baby Macaulay Culkin, baby Castaway and so forth so that they could recreate scenes from famous movies. You’ll see mom, dad and child pose for photos of baby…
As far as tyrannosaurus rex replicas go, this one seems pretty cheery. Sure, it has sharp teeth and claws but they look playfully toothy. One thing scary about it though: the head and eyes seems to follow you wherever you go. Like the paper T-Rex is watching your every move. What’s scarier? It’s not actually…
It took me a second to wrap my brain around what exactly is going on here, but even if I didn’t know, I could listen to these two Moog synthesizer modules play the Tetris theme over and over again forever. I think this music made my brain more smarter. So what we’ve got here is…
The Aiguille du Midi, or Needle of the South, has been home to the terrifying highest vertical ascent cable car in the world for three decades. But this month, it’s stepping up its scaring-the-wits-out-of-tourists game—with a glass box that hangs over the yawning void next to the peak. Image: Alexis Moro/AP. The installation is called…
Get your Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind references ready, because scientists have just figured out a way to erase bad memories using—you guessed it—electroshock therapy. Get ready for on-demand forgetting. It’s a real thing now. A team of Dutch neuroscientists recently devised an electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to “target and disrupt patients’ memory of a…
It’s usually one or the other. If you live in a big city, you forgo nature and stars in the sky. And if you live under the starry night sky, you’re out in the boonies far away from civilization. But what if you can have both? In Los Angeles (I know), master time lapse maker…
We’ve all heard about the placebo effect but what about the nocebo effect? That’s when you take something completely harmless but begin to think something harmful is happening to your body. This informative video by CGP Grey takes a deeper dive on it and reveals how some studies showed people gaining rashes from harmless injections…
The simple act of beaming something from your phone to a set-top box, like say a Roku, can be needlessly complicated. A new app called AllCast from developer ClockworkMod makes it super simple to view the photos and videos on your phone on virtually an connected TV platform. The AllCast demo video over on Google…
Visions of the future from the past always serve as an endless source of comedy. Look how dumb we were! Look how silly those people look! Look! Look! It’s completely true. Our imaginations of the future are rooted in the limits of today which typically makes it an awful thought exercise. So in a few…
Every year, my parents’ neighborhood in Dallas goes all-out for Christmas. We’re talking, trees wrapped in lights from trunk to top, teams of reindeer on display, and even a house with giant, moving jack-in-the-box effigies of every family member moving in sync with carols. Have you seen similar stuff? We want to see it. Christmas…
Most people’s first reaction to a toaster with just a single slot is to feel pity on the lonely soul who would need such a device. But that’s the wrong reaction to have here. The pity part is ok—but not because the probable owner of this toaster must be single and lonely. It’s more likely…
