Tech News

How science killed some great science fiction dreams

Science is awesome—until it crushes our dreams of planets full of incredible civilizations and turns fantastic inventions into impossible dreams. Here are nine examples on how nine scientific breakthroughs destroyed nine classic sci-fi themes. https://gizmodo.com/9-scientific-breakthroughs-that-killed-science-fiction-1222342077

This Munich Museum Moved Into a Building Made Entirely of Scaffolding

Renovations are tricky for museums: You have to protect your permanent collection while keeping ticket sales up, which explains why so many museums close completely or move to new locations rather than repair an existing building. Not so at Munich’s largest art museum, where workers simply built a gigantic scaffolding reconstruction next door. Pinakotek is…

The Obstacle Course Where DARPA Will Test a New Breed of Robot Heroes

As the Chernobyl and Daiichi Fukushima nuclear disasters illustrated in unnerving clarity, mankind commands technology capable wreaking destruction we can’t clean up without putting people’s lives at risk. That’s why DARPA is hosting the DARPA Robotics Challenge, in hopes of jump starting development of tomorrow’s mechanical first responders. But in order to win the ultimate…

Are you a racist for saying “twerk”? A guide to black slang for whites

If you’re white—and you watched Miley Cyrus last Sunday—perhaps you’re wondering “can I say twerk without being offensive to black people?” Perhaps. But can you say “That”? What about “It”? It’s complicated, but Gawker’s Caity Weaver will save you from racist hell with her guide. http://gawker.com/can-i-say-twerk-a-miley-cyrus-glossary-for-whites-1209010504

Facebook Wants to Use Your Profile Pic to Help Automatic Photo Tagging

Today, Facebook is proposing a series of changes to its terms if service. There’s a lot of legal mumbo jumbo, but the most interesting piece is that Facebook wants to start using your profile photo as the basis for suggesting that you be tagged in your friends’ photos. What Facebook’s really saying here is that…

An Intelligent Indoor Grill That Knows Well-Done From Rare

The end of summer usually means the end of grilling and scorched steaks for dinner. But T-fal has come up with a solution to both those problems. Its new OptiGrill can not only be used indoors, all year round, it’s also smart enough to let you know when a steak is perfectly done—whether rare, medium,…

Cool simple invention lets you control your phone with a single button

That little black thing on the image is a button that plugs into your Android phone’s headphone jack. It’s called Pressy and with it you can make your phone do really useful things by clicking it in a certain sequence. Watch it in action—it’s such a cool idea. https://gizmodo.com/add-a-button-to-any-android-phone-with-this-genius-head-1221431712

The Morbid Art of Making Dead Bodies Beautiful

Here’s a look at the delicate process of preparing a dead body for a funeral. Warning: Watching this video will force you to confront your own mortality. But at least it shows that while death may not be pretty, what you leave behind can be. Produced by by producer Patrick Abboud from Australia’s tech news…

Is this the most stupid dating idea ever conceived? [Spoiler: Yes]

Some company wants you to wear colored gel bands to show your relationship status. “If this is the future of dating, we’re fucked,” says Jezebel’s Tracy Moore. We are. Although maybe this will be a good idea: it’ll automatically mark people not to date, ever. https://jezebel.com/if-this-is-the-future-of-dating-were-fucked-1217184044

Add a Button to Any Android Phone With This Genius Headphone Jack Plug

Wish your Android phone had one more hardware button, maybe for the camera? Of course you do; hardware buttons are great. With up-and-Kickstartering gadget called Pressy, you can add one yourself at the cost of clogging one headphone jack. The concept is simple: you just slam the Pressy “button” into your headphone jack, start up…

Despite delays, US and UK governments building case for Syria attack

US and British lawmakers may be opposing the attack, but it feels like delaying the inevitable: The US government has already said that they will present proof of the chemical attacks against its own population—perhaps as solid as Colin Powell’s Iraq’s WMD Powerpoint presentation—before shooting across the bow at Syria. And despite parliament opposition, British…

Skype Says It Can Support Holographic Video Calls

For decades, we’ve been waiting for oh-so-futuristic hologram technology to make the leap from Star Wars movies to our living rooms, and it hasn’t. It sounds like it’s right around the corner, though, after Skype announced that it had developed 3D video chat technology in the lab. The Microsoft executive responsible for Skype recently disclosed…

A Better Boarding Pass: Rethinking One of the Worst Design Offenders

Airports are not enjoyable places to be. Long distance travel is not a tonne of fun. Badly designed boarding passes are annoying. Seriously annoying. The boarding pass is essential for air travel but when badly designed, must be one of the most counter-productive items an airline could issue. I think they cause headaches for airline…

Well, Foursquare just got a lot more annoying (assuming you use Android). Starting today, Android users everywhere mightstart noticing unsolicited pocket buzzes offering tips and hints Foursquare thinks you care about. Fortunately, you can turn it off if you so desire—which, you know, you probably will.

Which Americans Have the Longest Drive to the Grocery Store?

How far away is your nearest grocery store? If you live out west, probably much further than the rest of the country, as shown by this visualization of America’s “food deserts,” where the closest grocery is miles away. Flowing Data put together this look at the kind of access Americans have to food, using data…

This Hacked-Together 2k Cinema Camera Has a Mac Mini Brain

Video cameras are so last decade. Cinema cameras are the hot new thing. While companies like Canon, Blackmagic, and Sony are vying for the love of movie-makers, two ambitious Bostonians decided to build their own camera from the ground up, with a little help from a Mac Mini. https://gizmodo.com/blackmagic-cinema-camera-review-sacrifices-for-superio-511667627 NoFilmSchool first reported on the Black…

Installing LG’s Sound Plate Speaker Is Easy, If Your TV Isn’t Too Heavy

Good news for home theater enthusiasts who are short on “home”. LG’s new Sound Plate speaker looks to be a super simple solution for those wanting to boost their TV’s sound, without having to fill their tiny apartment with a mountain of audio gear. The Sound Plate is 35mm high and is designed to hide…

The Best Future Android Features You Can Get Right Now

It feels like we’ve been waiting for a big new version of Android forever; Jelly Bean is great, but it could do so much more. Surprise: it actually does! All you have to do is take matters into your own hands. Fandroids will tell you—loudly and at length—that one of the best features of Android…

The CODE Keyboard Promises to Be the Best Mechanical Keyboard Yet

In this modern, pixelated world, the computer keyboard has become a real everyday object, something we tend to touch more times than we realize. So why not seek out the best keyboard, one built from the features of lesser keyboards? That’s precisely what the CODE keyboard aims to do. Designed by keyboard expert Weyman Kwong…

You Can Finally Put GIFs on Facebook, Here’s How

The day you’ve been waiting for is finally here. You can now post GIFs on Facebook thanks to a workaround from Giphy. Basically, Giphy (a search engine for GIFs), created a code that makes GIFs actually loop on Facebook. It works simply like posting a link to a video. Either copy paste the URL of…