Tech News

11 Splendid Roald Dahl Illustrations Let You Revisit Your Childhood

Let’s be honest: Roald Dahl books don’t really need illustrations. The famed British author was such a visual and visceral writer that you could just close your eyes and see Matilda skipping off to school or the Fantastic Mr. Fox plotting his next act of mischief. That said, when illustrators do take on the subject…

Daredevil Photographer Rappels Down Skyscrapers For the Perfect Shot

Even window washers can be scary when you don’t expect to see them outside your office window. But a camera-wielding man dangling from a single rope goes beyond the pale. A fearless photographer named Carlos Ayesta is doing just that, rappelling down the side of Paris’s skyscrapers to shoot remarkable images of the city’s towers.…

This Psychedelic Art Is Actually Bacteria

This swirling mass may look like some kind of LSD trip, but it’s actually fractal artwork created using bacteria. Produced by Eshel Ben-Jacob—a scientist-cum-artist at Tel Aviv University—the piece came about thanks to two strains of bacteria which grew together in interesting and weird ways. to grow in different ways. Smithsonian explains: As opposed to…

Now You Can Buy Fine Art on Amazon

Amazon has just announced that it’s partnered up with over 150 galleries and art dealers across the US to sell you fine art through its new initiative Amazon Art. The site offers over 40,000 original works of fine art, showcasing 4,500 artists. That, perhaps unsurprisingly, makes it the largest online collection of art directly available…

What Should Be in the NSA Surveillance Reform Legislation?

Following a wave of polls showing a remarkable turn of public opinion, Congress has finally gotten serious about bringing limits, transparency and oversight to the NSA’s mass surveillance apparatus aimed at Americans. While we still believe that the best first step is a modern Church Committee, an independent, public investigation and accounting of the government’s…

Resistive RAM: Terabytes of Storage, 20 Times Faster Than NAND

There’s never a shortage of new experimental forms of memory—but a company called Crossbar has now worked up something called resistive RAM which could wipe the floor with NAND. At half the size of conventional NAND RAM but with 20 times faster write speeds—around 140MB/s—this stuff really means business. It also uses 20 times less…

This $300 Solar-Powered Ubuntu Laptop Lasts 10 Hours on 2 Hours of Sun

Working with a computer outdoors can often mean you’re at the mercy of your battery—but not if you have this`Sol laptop, which can run for 10 hours on a single solar charge. Designed for use in developing countries where electricity supply is erratic—or non-existent—it’s equipped with a fold out panel of solar cells which can…

IKEA’s new 2014 catalog app lets you arrange virtual furniture in your home using augmented reality. You still have to put it together yourself eventually, though.

What Famous Photos Would Look Like If They Were Taken with an iPhone

Because we all carry smartphones and because we all fancy ourselves as photographers and because we’re all just satisfied with good enough, the pictures we take hardly ever reach the full potential of a shot. Even worse, they’re run through filters that destroy the tone, they’re squared off to limit the scope and they’re used…

This is the tiniest painting in the world

Scientists have created the tiniest painting ever, the Mona Lisa that you can see here. It’s only 30 microns—less than half the thickness of a human hair. If that’s hard to imagine, look at the comparison: If this microscopic Gioconda were a tattoo on an ant, it would only take a minuscule fraction of its…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Iceberg

This is what happens when you let M. Night Shamalan direct the Titanic reboot. Mantas Bačiuška animated this micro-film with a twist for the for Animade Full Secs project.

The Difference Between Real Life and Video Games Is Comically Sad

It’s not at all embarrassing or shameful to admit that you learned a lot about life from playing video games. Maybe you fell in love with sports by playing Madden. Or first understood the concept of driving with Mario Kart. Or maybe it was Sim City that taught you budgeting or Tetris that introduced logic…

Al-Qaeda Can Turn Clothes into Explosives By Dipping Them in Liquid

ABC News is reporting that al Qaeda has come up with a “new generation of liquid explosives” for a potential attack. The scary thing is that the bomb “would not be detected by current security measures”. Even scarier is that a US official called the new method “ingenious”. Well, then. The new bomb method sounds…

Man, Watching Airplanes Take Off and Land Is Like Playing a Video Game

This timelapse video shows the controlled chaos that is airplanes taking off and landing at San Francisco International Airport. If you ever played Flight Control on your phone, it’s pretty much exactly as impossible as that. It’s incredible how nerve wreckingly efficient the whole process is. I will shut my mouth up next time when…

New Newspaper Owner Jeff Bezos on the Bleak Future of Newspapers Last Year

Well this is just fun. Jeff Bezos talked with German newspaper Berliner-Zeitung in 2012 about the dark future of newspapers and how they can be relevant to Amazon. And well, since Bezos is now a newspaper baron, it’s probably a good idea to revisit his rather bleak thoughts on print. Here’s the meat of it,…

This Short Doc About a Magnetic Tape Fanatic Will Break Your Heart

No matter how outmoded the technology, you’ll find someone who’s devastated that it’s gone. These people are in absolute denial about the old tech’s inferiority to the advancements that supplanted it. This is Micke, the Swedish tape nut. He is precisely the luddite we’re talking about. The Magnetist a beautiful 15 minute look at Micke’s…

Apple is going to let people trade in their third party iPhone chargers for an official Apple USB Power Adapter for 10 bucks. So if you want to save $9 off the retail price and/or get rid of possibly faulty chargers, head to an Apple Store starting August 16th with a third party charger and…

Plan your vacation now and briefly escape your boring life

If you don’t plan your vacation now, you might never get one at all! It’s bad enough that so few American workers have paid time off and that so many people lack the money to go anywhere. Now even the lucky few with paid vacation time have to fight other co-workers for a chance to…

Galileo Was Even Smarter Than We Thought

Galileo is perhaps best known as the guy who proved Copernicus right about the sun sitting in the center of our solar system. But this proof would have been impossible without the improvements Galileo made to the telescope, which allowed him to see into the world beyond our planet like never before. And it turns…

The Orbits of 1,400 Asteroids NASA Says Could Smash the Earth

In case you didn’t have enough to worry about, NASA says there are over 1,400 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) orbiting our sun. If it makes you feel any better, this visualization of their orbits is kinda pretty. The beauty of impending destruction. If you’re really wondering, Asteroids fall into the PHA category when they get…