Tech News

Since When Are Logitech Products So Pretty?

I remember my family’s first Logitech product well. It was a mouse, roughly the size of a small football and shaped like a half eaten apple and the color of dirty bones. It rolled and it clicked and did everything it was supposed to. It was not an artifact of fine design. Fast forward about…

Going to a wedding this summer? This is the best advice you’ll ever get

It’s wedding season. Female guests shouldn’t wear white, male guests should respect the dress code—and nobody should try to make out with the bride’s dad. To avoid the latter, follow this useful guide on how to drink without making an ass of yourself.

This Site Shows You Every Time Someone Has Changed Their Twitter Bio

Brace yourself for embarrassment or nostalgia. BioIsChanged is a site that will show you every single time someone has edited their Twitter bio and avatar. Not much to say here. Just enter the name for any Twitter user and you can scroll through their past bios. It’s kind of fun to look back and see…

The FBI Has Used Spy Drones Without Warrants at Least 10 Times

The legality of drone surveillance is vague. But one thing is clear: the feds are using them, and we’ve just learned from a letter from the FBI Senator Rand Paul, they’ve used them without warrants in the U.S. in at least 10 different cases. The FBI’s assistant director for the office of congressional affairs Stephen…

This Solar Sanitizer Will Bring Safer Surgery to the Developing World

Modern medical techniques, specifically stringent sterilization practices, have led to a dramatic drop in the number of post-op infections—assuming the facility has the necessary electricity and equipment to do so. However, in the remote regions of developing countries like India, neither of those is guaranteed. But that’s where Rice University’s new solar steamer comes in.…

Microsoft Word Problems

The only thing harder than math is math about real life. These Microsoft Word problems from our friends at McSweeney’s are impossible: 1. Helen’s bibliography contains 27 web sites, two-thirds of which Microsoft Word annoyingly converts into hyperlinks. If selecting “remove hyper link” requires two clicks of the mouse, how many clicks will Helen expend…

The Lie Is Out There: Three Types of Alien Encounters

Nearly everyone who’s looked up at the night sky has asked him or herself at least some form of the very same question: Are we really, truly alone in the universe? The only thing that’s certain is that we definitely don’t want to be. Maybe that explains why we keep seeing UFOs in the sky……

These bros in a boat get the Imbeciles of the Month Award (video)

Why do people insist on killing themselves being ridiculously reckless and uploading their stupid failed stunts to YouTube? It’s a modern mystery! We like it. Here are some idiots filming a skimboarder’s attempt to high five his bros in a speeding boat. There are still five days left in the month. If you think you…

Microsoft Has Invented a Way To Embed Data in 3D Printed Objects

Say you have a 3D-printed item you’re selling. Maybe you slap a barcode on it that identifies what it is, where it came from, and how much it costs. However, Microsoft has developed a new technology called InfaStructs that offers a better alternative. With it, you could embed information directly inside of an item. InfaStructs…

This is what frozen light looks like

Can you imagine the idea of freezing light, stopping its photons in space as if time itself seemingly stood still? You are looking at it. German scientists have actually frozen the fastest thing in the universe for an entire minute. It’s a major physics breakthrough.

What should you call your new mistress?

It’s not enough these days to have a mistress—everybody on Wall Street has at least one. What’s important is to give your new girlfriend the kind of fake name that will impress your bros and help the tabloids while instantly arousing suspicion from your wife and friends.

Ford’s New Shift Knob Teaches You to Drive Stick

In this touchscreen, push-button, mouse-click world, there’s an undeniable mechanical satisfaction about driving a manual transmission. A perfectly rev-matched downshift proves to the world that you’re the master of the machine, not vice-versa. But if you’re a stick shift novice raised on video games, how will you teach your button-mashing hands to finesse a gear…

New Nexus 7 Now On Amazon [UPDATE]

Update 1: Check out the “offers” section on your Amex account to get $25 off at Best Buy that you can apply to your Nexus 7 purchase. Update 2: Use coupon code 41178 to get $30 off the Nexus 7 (or any tablet) at Staples. Amazon has Google’s latest and greatest tablet ready to ship,…

Marilyn Monroe Assembled Drones During World War II

It seems every six months or so these photos of Marilyn Monroe from World War II make the rounds on the good ol’ internet machine. At the time they were captured in 1944 she hadn’t yet taken the name Marilyn Monroe, nor had she dyed her curly locks blonde. She was simply known as Norma…

Archaeologists Discover World’s Oldest Calendar in Scotland

The discovery of a near 10,000-year-old lunar calendar in Scotland has archaeologists scrambling to rethink the beginnings of history. The implications are huge, too. It turns out that the men of the Stone Age weren’t as primitive as we’d previously thought. The calendar itself is primitive to be sure. However, it’s also the oldest calendar…

Homeland Security Is Moving Into an Abandoned Insane Asylum

Did you know that the US government’s third-largest agency is ramping up a 20-year, $4.5 billion construction project that will turn the grounds of a former mental hospital into an “elaborate” headquarters for its sprawling network of agencies? It’s already a decade behind schedule and $1 billion over budget. In Bloomberg Businessweek, Devin Leonard describes…

Starting tomorrow, T-Mobile will be waving the downpayment on hot phones like the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4 “for a limited time.” Usually those phones would cost you $150 and $100 down respectively. The catch? The downpayment will be incorporated into T-Mobile’s monthly device installment plan. Pay now or pay later—you decide.

A Forbes Reporter Hacked Smart Homes From a Thousand Miles Away

The connected house you can control from the internet or your smartphone? They might be called a smart homes, but some of them have some very dumb vulnerabilities. In fact, some of the houses made smart by a company called Insteon were insecure enough that a Forbes reporter could hack them from the comfort of…

A Century-Old Roman Palazzo Grows a Faceted Glass-and-Steel Parasite

We’ve talked about top-down demolition—where building are deconstructed one floor at a time, ending at the ground—before. But a newly-completed building in Rome, by Italian studio Fuksas, puts a twist on the concept: The old building’s facade was perfectly preserved. The Palazzo ex Unione Militare was built in 1901 and once housed the Italian military…

Insane person invents the perfect Oreo cookie: the Moreo

With cream or without cream, the classic Oreo Hamlet question—no more. The Moreo, a new Oreo cookie variation invented at some insane person’s kitchen—Bear Silber—brings a new dilemma: without cream or with enough cream to die of a sugar overdose?