Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
It turns out that making a throwable camera isn’t that tricky. But making a throwable camera that doesn’t capture random obscure images, or spinning video that induces motion sickness, is kind of hard. In fact it’s taken Steve Hollinger years to develop such a camera, but with the Squito—his latest prototype—it looks like he’s almost…
Key-shaped USB flash drives have guaranteed we never forget to bring our important files ever again. And taking the same approach, Bluelounge’s Kii guarantees you always have an emergency iPhone or iPad charger on hand—as long as you remembered to lock your home and bring your keys. A 30-pin dock connector version of the Kii,…
We recently learned that the NSA is definitely watching us, and as it turns out, our Soviet Big Brother is spying on us too. Intelligence historian Matthew Aid discovered through declassified CIA documents that Russia still has a massive network of former KGB listening stations that are actively eavesdropping. And here’s where they are. While…
Google has apparently plugged the massive, 4-year-old security hole in Android that allowed malware to make its way on to your phone. Now you just need to wait for your phone manufacturer to pass it on to you.
If you’re in the mood for something… different, David Lynch has offered up a free stream of his new album The Big Dream on Pitchfork. Weirdness guaranteed.
There’s a video game called Watch_Dogs which views Chicago as a city where everyone and everything is linked through a central network—like something out of a sci-fi film. But to tie in with the games, the developers have made real versions that pull together mountains of data about Paris, Berlin, and London—and the effect is…
Crack out your flight sims: this arcade cabinet has to be the ultimate way to dogfight, resembling as it does the iconic MiG-23 fighter jet. Put together by Radek Michalowski, the cabinet is numbered 846 in tribute to the MiG-23 his friend’s father once flew. And it really does look like the plane it’s inspired…
Sennheiser is usually known for high-end audio quality and rather clunky design. That changed, a little, with its Momentum headphones—but now the act is smartened up even further with these colorful cans. These over-the-ear headphones are smaller, neater version of the first Momentums—in fact, they pack the same audio innards. But just of much as…
If you’ve ever tried to squeeze data down into a tiny file, you’ll know that there comes a point where you can’t get it any smaller. This video explains why that is. The answer is something you might have heard about in physics or chemistry classes back at school: entropy. But it turns out Professor…
Because Florida was hastily attached to America to be the butt of her jokes, this latest piece of ridiculousness should come as no surprise: Florida might have accidentally banned all computers and smart phones. How? It all stems from a poorly worded bill that banned Internet cafes and slot machines. The purpose of the ban…
Take a wild and raucous romp through a nonsequiter world of ninjas, tentacle monsters, roving eyes, and strutting fingertips in this manic music video for Agemixer’s Da Shit animated by Alexandr Tanana.
It’s always nice to get a response from Company X’s official Twitter account when you rage tweet about how Company X is so terrible and awful and that you’d never do anything with them again. It seems like they care about you! It seems like they want to help! It seems like they’re… human. Too…
Here’s a problem about guys: many of us don’t wash our hands after using the restroom. It might be general grossness or everyman laziness or being too trusting your own hygiene or being too drunk or taking on a drive through mentality with a urinal but if you monitor a men’s restroom, you’ll see many…
If your brain is swelling, either due to infection or physical injury, you’re going to need these Headsense cranial monitors more than you need another hole in your head. The fluids in your cranial cavity exerts a specific force on the brain and skull, known as your intracranial pressure (ICP), and help keep your brain…
You have the Internet in your pocket. The ability to communicate with anyone in the world at your fingertips. A big and beautiful glass screen that’s asking to be touched. Too bad all those things can combine into one giant firework bomb in your pants. We’ve all heard about phones exploding and seen the damage…
Kids these days sure have a funny way of flirting. Heavy beats and haunting lyrics dominate Oblast’s latest music video about a warring couple. Oblast is a Berlin-based electronica trio, whose shows have been described as a “crash in slow motion,” but in the good way. The group augments its industrial drum-n-bass sound with pictures,…
In 1908, Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda isolated and patented monosodium glutamate, more commonly known to English-speakers of the 21st century as the often-maligned MSG. Ikeda thought that his discovery was so special that the taste deserved to be described with a brand new word, a word that a century later has become quite popular among…
iOS 7’s switch to the Helvetica Neue Ultra Light typeface was one of the bigger design points for the new OS. But it came with a catch: It looked, in places, pretty bad on non-retina screens. The fix was simple enough. Just change it back to regular weight. Here’s what that looks like, courtesy Panic…
There are plenty of artists who have spent the majority of their careers devoted to a single unlikely medium: For James Turrell, it’s light. For El Anatsui, it’s soda tabs. But for Motoi Yamamoto, a 47-year-old Japanese artist whose two latest shows recently opened recently at Mint Museum and the Monterey Museum of Art, it’s…
Just over a year ago we brought you Anna Farkas’ 2500 Watt astronomical lampshade, which projects constellations on the ceiling whenever the light is turned on. At the time, it was just a one-off concept—but as we had hoped, the stars have aligned: Today, the lamps are finally available for sale under the new name…