Tech News

9 Fascinating Objects That Illustrate the History Of Los Angeles

Like many major metropolises, Los Angeles has an international reputation, but the preconceived notions that surround the southern California hub seem to be consistently skewed. Sure, the weather’s nice—but it’s vapid, and too sprawling, and you need a car, and what about the traffic, and where’s the culture?? In honor of the city’s 232nd birthday…

Meet Nest’s Protect, a Smart Smoke Detector That’s Actually Exciting

What home appliance do you hate the most? Odds are good it’s the smoke detector—that incessantly chirping, totally inconsistent mess of beige plastic that we can only hope actually works when needed. That may be about to change: Today, Nest Labs unveiled Protect, a Wi-Fi connected alarm that lets you keep tabs on your home…

This Pressure Picture Reveals Why Jellyfish Are So Damn Efficient

Jellyfish are amazing creatures, travelling in massive blooms and pulsating mesmerically to drive themselves through the water. But how does that simple motion manage to push them through the water so quickly? While the contraction of the jellyfish’s bell is pretty, the act of expelling water in such a way doesn’t actually provide that much…

Seems the wait may almost be over if you’re lusting after an HTC One Max—the company has a launch event planned for October 15th.

A Gold HTC One? That’ll Cost You $4,400

Call that champagne iPhone 5S “gold”? Pffft. HTC and its 18ct gold paintbrush are laughing in your general direction. As leaked, HTC’s gold One has come to light today, bearing the MOBO Awards logo to celebrate the 18th anniversary of Europe’s urban music awards. It’s the most expensive phone HTC has ever made, in case…

How Virtual Machines Run the Cloud

The Cloud might seem like a modern-day marvel, but in fact it relies on software old and new. That’s why now, more than ever, Virtual Machines are used to run legacy software and power the Cloud that we don’t think twice about. This video explains how virtual machines work and how they run everything from…

Watch the iPhone 5C Get Obliterated By a .50 Caliber Rifle

In all your years of owning an iPhone, I hope you never have to use it as a bulletproof vest. Because it wouldn’t work. It might be able to survive a soft drop on the dirt and come away cracked on concrete and barely scathe away after a quick dip in water but when you…

Nikon will release an ever-so-slightly modified version oflast year’s totally fantastic,D600full-frame DSLR. The new D610’s only change is its drive. The camera will now feature a slowed-down “quiet-continuous mode” that will fire frames sequentially at a slowed-down 3 fps with closer-to-silent shutter action so you don’t disturb the birds or whatever you’re taking pictures of.…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Dead Famous

Do animals wish for immortality? Whether they do or not, we grant a select few the awkward honor of fame after death through taxidermy. But are these specimens accurate depictions of their former organisms or just caricatures of the species ideal? Dead Famous, a short film commissioned by London Taxidermy ahead of the release of…

Record/Play: A Walkman Time Machine Is Tragic Sci-Fi Love

Here’s a fantastic short for you sci-fi fans: Record/Play, directed by Jesse Atlas, is a short film that covers time travel, love, changing fate, war, memories and cassette tapes. It’s slow building yet tense, you’re itching to see what new wrinkles each play of the tape will bring. The film originally debuted at the 2012…

Is the NSA’s Data Center Melting Down Because It’s Spying Too Much?

This is embarrassingly funny. The WSJ reports that the NSA’s new Utah data center has suffered 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months because of electrical surges. The NSA is basically using so much power in its spying efforts that it is poetically killing its data centers. Seriously, the surges have destroyed hundreds of thousands…

Watch a Guy Hold Burning Fire with His Bare Hands in Slow Motion

The dancing orange wisps of fire looks like choreographed chaos when seen in slow motion. It dances, it burns, it shines and it’s easy to get lost in it. But seeing burning fire is a lot different than actually holding it. The guys from Beyond Slow Motion used a nice little trick that never gets…

Could GM’s Tiny Self-Driving Smartcar Actually Revolutionize Cities?

The city of the future is going to be “crowded, dirty, and resource-constrained,” said Stephen J. Girsky, a vice president of GM, at CityLab, an event in Battery Park City earlier today. And that means everyone’s gonna want one of GM’s new Electric Networked Vehicles, or EN-V. According to Girsky, GM’s vision of the zero-emission,…

Pentax K-3: A DSLR Camera That Sees the World a Few Different Ways

As the sub-$1000, beginner DSLR camera’s utility has been gradually been replaced by the rise of mirrorless cameras, the just-over $1000 DSLR market remains an area where camera companies are hoping to reign in more advanced and even professional users. With that in mind, let’s take a look at Pentax’s new K-3, a completely overhauled…

Infections Fight To The Death Inside This 3D-Printed Chimpanzee Skull

A research team at the University of Texas, led by chemists Jodi Connell, Marvin Whiteley, and Jason Shear, has 3D-printed this microscopic chimpanzee skull, which later served as an unsettling proof-of-concept for printing “microscopic houses” to trap bacteria, forming “tiny zoos for the study of infections.” The team made the somewhat sinister skull—like a ghostly…

SONPUB: Rock With You

Are our attention spans really getting shorter? Maybe microblogging services like Twitter and Vine are simply forcing us to be more concise by preventing the digital equivalent of run-on sentences. Director Yuki Tokunaga shows us how effective storytelling can be—even in six-second bites—in his latest music video, which was shot entirely on Vine. That’s SONPUB’s…

The Suprisingly Intricate Science Behind Studying How Flies Fly

Flies are a nuisance. At worst, they’re landing their dirty poop-feet on your or your stuff. At best, they’re targets for your salt shotgun. But flies are secretly really cool, and the scientists that study them have some amazing tools. Michael Dickinson is one of those scientists, and the New York Times spent some time…

Scientists Get Mice Drunk To Explain Why Binge Drinking Breaks Bones

It’s a well-known thing amongst doctors that heavy drinkers have a mysterious propensity for breaking their bones—and not just because they may trip over their own feet in an inebriated stupor. Medical researchers from Loyola University in Chicago wanted to get to the bottom of the issue, and they addressed the question the only way…

Woohoo! Test your Simpsons knowledge with this epic quote tournament

Here are 32 quotes from the “peak years” of The Simpsons. It’s sorta like March Madness, with four divisions: a Homer division, the rest of the Simpson Family bracket, a Ralph Wiggum division and a final group bracket for all the other loquacious Springfield residents. Enjoy!

Fitness Tracking Tech Could Be the New Best Way to Diagnose Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia seen in the elderly, is increasingly becoming a global healthcare challenge. There is still no cure, and therapies that slow symptom progression require early diagnosis to be effective. Now, an interdisciplinary team of German researchers has found that simple motion sensors can pick up the physical activity…