Tech News

Honeywell’s Wi-Fi Thermostats Tell You When to Turn It Down and Save

With people plugging more and more devices into the power grid, public utilities across the country are finding it increasingly difficult to effectively manage during peak demand. Honeywell’s line of Wi-Fi-connected smart thermostats are now doing their part to help. These events are actually quite preventable, were everybody in the community on-board with making small…

How Xbox Live’s Cloud Computing Could Make Games That Last Forever

At Microsoft’s huge Xbox reveal last spring, the company made a big hubub about the 300,000 cloud servers it would be adding to help speed up GPU and CPU heavy tasks. But in an interview with Gizmodo, Xbox Live Lead Programmer John Bruno detailed how it could change the way we think about gaming in…

Japan now has wine for cats (and it’s called Nyan Nyan, of course)

Japan—land of robots, tentacles and the weirdest weirdos—now has a “wine made exclusively for cats” made by a pet food company. They call it Nyan Nyan Nouveau and it contains Cabernet grapes juice, vitamin C and catnip, which means they will get drunk. It actually sounds like Four Loko for cats. In any case, this…

You Can Now 3D Print With This Spooky Glow-In-The-Dark Filament

We’ve been 3D printing in metal, gold, and even sugar for years now—so it seems only natural that we’d also be able to print in glow-in-the-dark plastic. This week, MakerBot announced a limited-edition run of PLA filament that glows in the dark, just in time for Halloween. The filament is made with phosphorus dye, which…

Kindle Fire HDX Teardown: Blazing Guts (Just Pray It Doesn’t Break)

We’re big fans of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX, but we’ve been waiting to see exactly what lurks within its sleek frame for a while. Fortunately, iFixit has now stripped it bare, and it’s thumbs up all round—unless you wanna try and repair it. https://gizmodo.com/kindle-fire-hdx-review-third-times-a-charmer-1427201835 iFixit reports that the device is certainly stuffed full with…

Conan Screwed Up His iOS 7 Upgrade By Trying to Do It on an iPhone 3GS

When iOS 7 launched, Conan showed us all how to go about installing it. But as one eagle-eyed viewer has since pointed out, he screwed up big time—by trying to install the OS on an iPhone 3GS, which doesn’t even support it. https://gizmodo.com/conan-shows-us-what-its-like-to-update-the-iphone-to-i-1346142028 In fact, it’s the first time a viewer has successfully challenged Conan…

Introducing MAP: An Unbreakable, Private, Portable Navigation System

Google Maps? Pfff. Nokia HERE? Get outta here. There’s an alternative to all those navigation systems you use: it’s made from 100 percent sustainable material, it’s easy to share, it’ll never break, you can fit it in your pocket, and it’s completely private. It’s a map. OK, so the video’s in French. But it’s hilarious.…

The World’s First Computer Programmer Was a Victorian Mother-of-Three

Does the name Ada Lovelace ring any bells? No? Seeing as you’re reading this on a computer, tablet or smartphone, it should. The Victorian mother-of-three, born 1815, was the world’s first ever computer programmer. A close friend of Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine (considered the first ever computer), Lovelace was tasked with translating…

Twitter Now Lets Any Follower Send You Direct Messages If You Want

Twitter is changing the way direct messages work. In the past, Twitter required two people to follow each other for direct messages to be exchanged in either direction; now, users have the option to change settings so that any of their followers can send them a direct message, without having to follow them back. The…

Applehas hired Angela Ahrendts, the current CEO of Burberry, to head up its retail efforts. Could Macs get any more fashionable?

Yahoo Mail Is Switching to HTTPS–Four Years After GMail

From January 8th, Yahoo will be enabling encryption by default for all of its webmail users. That’s great news—it just happens to be four years later than the likes of GMail. The Washington Post reports that Yahoo will roll out its SSL encryption standard—which has been kicking around as an option for users since earlier…

Scientists Found a Compound That Keeps Marijuana From Getting You High

Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the dopamine-boosting compound in marijuana that, technically speaking, “induces euphoria” — science jargon for “gets you high.” It also happens to work on the brain region involved in psychological addiction. Now, a team of researchers has identified a substance that blocks THC’s dopamine effect. Why is that important? Let’s have a…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Grandma’s Gift

Just in case the opening theme song from 2006’s Gift: Eternal Rainbow wasn’t saccharine enough on its own, someone went ahead and created this seizure-inducing music video for it, replete with a dancing granny, infinite cookies, and a giant MacOS pointer. Because it’s Japan, why the hell not.

Are These Avant-Garde Popsicles the Frozen Treats of the Future?

Whether they’re ice pops or flat Paletas, most icy treats aren’t much of an adventure. But these faceted vegan delicacies up the ante: They’re designed to have a smoother melt and better mouth feel and than anything you’ve tried before. That’s right—highly engineered popsicle mouth feel. Welcome to the future. It’s time to savor the…

This Musical iPhone App Uses Your Phone’s Camera to Remix Tunes

Until now, augmented reality has been mostly used as a way of giving you more information about the world around you, but a new iPhone app uses your surroundings to remix the music you’re listening to. “Sadly by your side” is an interdisciplinary art project encompassing an album, a book, and an iPhone app. It’s…

Doctor P and Adam F feat. Method Man: The Pit (NSFW)

It was the perfect plan. First zombify a local populace, then force them into a battle to the death against chainsaw-wielding cyborg killers. And it would have worked too, if not for those meddling DJ’s, Doctor P and Adam F. And who invited the M-E-T-H-O-D Man? Now everything is ruined! “I had as much fun…

Report: NSA Collects Millions of Email Address Books and Buddy Lists

According to the latest revelation by the Washington Post, the NSA isn’t just tracking what you’re doing on the internet. It’s also cataloging who you know, at a scope so expansive that it can barely find a way to store it all. The latest WP report, spurred by documents provided by Edward Snowden and corroborated…

This Secure, Waterproof Box Is Like A Car Trunk For Your Bike

Cycling is great, but transporting much more than your person from here to there means becoming a bit of a human pack mule. Buca Boot hopes to make the schlep a whole lot easier. The box was designed to be used like the trunk of a car—a permanent fixture where riders can safely stow their…

Did China Rip Off the Apache Helicopter?

With fully integrated avionics, weapons, and communications systems, the AH-64D Apache is one of the most successful and deadly aerial assault platforms America’s ever fielded, and the technology that powers it is a closely held secret. Imagine, then, the DoD’s surprise when these images of what appears to be an intact AH-64D surfaced over the…

Tour 3 Unrealized Projects That Almost Gave Us A Very Different L.A.

It would appear that, as a country, we’re experiencing some serious regret (or relief?) in examining plans for our cities that never came to fruition. San Francisco looked at its Unbuilt SF, a similar show opened in Washington D.C.last year, and out here in L.A.—the land of broken promises and shattered dreams—there’s Never Built Los…