Tech News

Man Flying to Europe with Helium Balloons Gives Up After Just 350 Miles

Well, that was quick. Balloon-loving daredevil Jonathan Trappe was supposed to float all the way to Europe under 370 helium-filled balloons in three to six days, but he gave up after only 12 hours citing technical difficulties. He hadn’t even made it out of North America. Late Thursday night, Trappe posted a vague message to…

This video demonstrates that some low speed limits are dumb

Fact: the faster your drive, the shorter your reaction time is, the less probability to avoid an accident. Fact: the faster you drive, the more kinetic energy, the less probability of surviving an impact. Fact: some low speed limits are dumb—but not as dumb as people who drive recklessly around Manhattan. https://gizmodo.com/police-arrests-man-who-broke-the-drive-around-manhattan-1263160070 https://jalopnik.com/this-is-the-best-takedown-of-the-speed-kills-myth-you-1302382244

Google Street View Driver Rams 2 Buses, 1 Truck in Failed Hit-and-Run

It’s not a good year to be a Google Street View driver—or rather, in this case, to be anywhere in the vicinity of one. In Bogor, Indonesia, one ill-fated Google Street View car got itself into a bit of trouble when the driver’s failed attempt at a hit-and-run involved him ramming into two large public…

The unlucky beasts that were too close to NASA’s rocket launches

Despite the fact that all NASA’s launch sites are natural paradises thanks to the agency’s conservationists efforts, sometimes accidents happen when frogs, bats, pelicans or turkey vultures cross the path of rockets as they soar into space. Here are some sad examples. Of course, there were other lucky ones who survive. In fact, the norm…

What Would a City Based On Your Foursquare Data Look Like?

Most cities evolved based on centuries of complex economic and cultural forces. But what would it look like if that process were reversed? That’s the concept behind Generating Utopia, a program that turns a user’s location-based data into a sprawling, Rio de Janeiro-style cityscape. German interaction designer Stefan Wagner wrote the script, which he describes…

Watch How a Man Turns Guns into Musical Instruments

Artist Pedro Reyes takes confiscated weapons and turns them into fully mechanized instruments in an ongoing project called Destroy. Here’s a look at how. We saw the remains of 6,700 guns turned into an entire orchestra that played John Lennon’s “Imagine” last winter. Now Reyes is back again with eight new instruments, and a look…

9 Massive Refugee Camps That Are Home to Nearly 1.5 Million People

While the Arab Spring and its resulting political upheavals have firmly held the world’s attention over the past two years, the Middle East’s conflicts are, sadly, far from the only ones going on. Wars in North, West, and East Africa have displaced millions of people and killed untold more. Those lucky enough to escape with…

Facebook Is Testing an Auto-Play Video Function to Save Your Clicks

Facebook’s announced a plan to change the way videos work on its news feeds, with clips soon to start automatically playing should you linger on them while scrolling past. Think of the incredibly minor amounts of inconvenience that’ll avoid. Much like video sharing starlet Vine, the clips will begin playing in a muted fashion, so…

The Audio Cassette Is 50 Years Old Today

The humble cassette tape, beloved of 80s music lovers, may now be defunct—but it’s hardly surprising given that the once-revolutionary medium turns 50 today. The natural descendant of the 8-track—which used similar magnetic tape but housed it in a much bigger, bulkier frame—the audio cassette was the brainchild of engineers at Philips. It’s precise birthday…

Mount McKinley Has Shrunk By 83 Feet

North America’s highest peak, Mount McKinley, has shrunk by 83 feet according to new data acquired by US geographers. The Alaskan mountain was last officially measured in 1952 and found to stand 20,320ft tall, but the new official figure means it now measures just 20,237ft. The measurement—recorded in 2012 but now published—was taken using Interferometric…

Is There Anything More Irritating Than Animated Galleries?

Animated galleries are the blinking text of modern websites: they offend our eyes, but they’re all over the internet. Please, please, please make it stop. Please. [XKCD]

You Can Pre-Order the iPhone 5C Right Now

iPhone 5C pre-orders just went live and if you want to brighten up your life with some colorful plastic and if you want to avoid waiting in a silly line, you can head over to Apple.com to get your new iPhone. The carriers are all taking pre-orders too (along with others), so hopefully you have…

A gold-colored HTC One part has come to light in China. The start of a new trend, perhaps?

The NSA Disguises Itself as Google to Spy

It’s come to light that the NSA has impersonated Google—and possibly other big websites—in order to intercept, store, and read supposedly secure online communications. Mother Jones reports that the agency managed this by using “man-in-the-middle (MITM)” attacks, which are often used by high-class hackers. PowerPoint slides made public by a Brazilian news channel also suggest…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: The Longest Road

The moral of the story: sometimes your vision quest just isn’t that f*cking important, is it?

The History of the Pixar Logo Animation

Pixar’s production logo—that animation sequence that pops up before a Pixar movie—is as iconic as they come. Who can’t help but smile when they see cute little Luxo Jr. squash the I in Pixar and turn its bulb towards you. But the Pixar logo animation wasn’t always so adorable, a few of Pixar’s early shorts…

The Truth About Nikola Tesla Is That There Are Two Versions of Him

Because we live on the Internet and we’re supposed to love certain things like bacon and cats and net neutrality, we almost unanimously bow in adoration towards one Nikola Tesla. Anybody who thinks anything different is yelled at with all caps for being anti-science, anti-electricity and anti-life. But the truth is, the Tesla of the…

Even a Real Pilot Thinks We Should Use Cell Phones on Planes

NY Times tech guy and finder of his lost iPhone David Pogue has a fun little interview about airplanes with a pilot that reveals a few things you might have always wondered about flying winged tubes. https://gizmodo.com/breaking-david-pogue-has-lost-his-iphone-update-2-3-5931258 Turbulence is annoying but it doesn’t mean the plane is going to crash. Planes can’t fly themselves. Airplane…

A Speaker Helmet That Maybe Takes First-Person Shooters Too Seriously

You’ve already got the hyper-realistic machine gun controller, but you’ve probably noticed that playing a war-themed first-person shooter on your basement couch just doesn’t feel like you’re actually at war. There’s definitely something missing—and that something surely has to be Hyperkin’s new ComRad that packs speakers and a boom mic into a realistic looking helmet.…

The Secret Role That Copy Machines Have Played In Modern Art

The copy machines of today get a lot of action from office temps and owners of lost dogs, but did you know that the xerox machine has played a small—but crucial—role in modern art? Xerography, a new exhibition at a UK gallery called FirstSite, explored how this 75-year-old technology has been leveraged in the most…