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The nebulous territory of “good” and “bad” taste have always confused me. Who are you to tell me what completely unaffordable couch I should or shouldn’t buy, well-meaning Architectural Digest editor? Well, back in 1909, a German art historian named Gustav E. Pazaurek devised a system to help us all out. Let’s call it a…
The fact that we can 3D-print guns, each scarier than the last, is unsettling enough. But why would we stop at weapon itself? Why not 3D-printed ammo? Like, say, these devastating shotgun slugs, fresh from a Solidoodle 3 printer. https://gizmodo.com/100-000-people-have-already-downloaded-3d-printed-gun-p-498755006 Wired had a nice long chat with Jeff Heeszel, the man seen in the video…
In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. Sounds obvious today. But in 1968, a full year before ARPANET made its first connection? It was downright clairvoyant. Sometimes a vision of the future can be so accurate that it’s hard for those of us…
It’s about damn time. After an endless, occasionally entertaining—but mostly disconcerting—string of high-profile hacks, Twitter has finally introduced two-factor authentication to verify that yes, it is, in fact, you logging in. https://gizmodo.com/whoops-cbs-got-twitter-hacked-and-spat-out-virus-y-lin-5995150 Of course, you’ll have to opt in for the new, long overdue security measure to be put into place. And once you do,…
Alexis Madrigal over at The Atlantic has a fun dissection of Microsoft’s 1999 magazine ad campaign which featured predictions for ebooks in the 21st century. John Overholt, a curator of early modern books and manuscripts at Harvard University, posted the ads to Flickr and tweeted them out yesterday. Some were way off the mark, like…
If you’ve been looking for a good, tiny MP3 player, the latest and greatest iPod Nano is currently $90 over at Walmart. For the most part, the iPod Nano is the same basic device that has been around in seven different forms since 2005. It’s tiny. It plays music. It’s intuitive. But the seventh generation…
Google’s got its hands in a lot of cooke jars. It’s juggling Android, and ChromeOS, and maps, and Gmail, and Glass, and self-driving cars. But the real, secret goods are (presumably) hidden deep inside the secret “Google [x]” lab, and Bloomberg got an awful close—but not quite uncensored—peek. Located in a rather unremarkable two-story brick…
Worker compensation is a fairly new thing, dating only back to the Labor Movement in the early 1900s. Before that, injuries on the job were usually treated with either indifference or cheap payoff—after all, the average factory worker was making mere cents a day, so half a year’s pay was chump change for large companies.…
Yesterday’s Xbox One premier was a blazing hailstorm of announcements, each one more tantalizing than the next. And while all the new bells and whistles were exciting in and of themselves, the real endgoal, as FastCo. Design uncovered, probably won’t be hitting us for another few years: a totally connected, totally integrated home control portal.…
Is there anything wrong with a chain of coffee shops trying to drum up a little extra business while they’re ensuring drowsy drivers don’t end up swerving off the road? Thailand-base Cafe Amazon certainly hopes not. Working with BBDO Proximity, the chain created an iPhone app that monitors drivers for signs of sleepiness, and when…
Structure fires are never a good thing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be damned impressive. Last Sunday, this railroad trestle in Texas caught fire, and when authorities decided it’d be too dangerous to fight, they just let it burn. The result is a spectacular show of what have to be some of the most…
If you work for Amazon, you might soon have the option to feel like you’re working outside every day. Proposed earlier this week at Seattle City Hall’s Design Review Board, this trio of interconnected glass domes is the company’s plan for a space where employees could work and hang out. Here are the details: it’s…
In the US, Memorial Day means a three-day weekend. It’s also a time when veterans don dusty uniforms in rituals to remind us all of the human costs behind the world we live in today. For this week’s Shooting Challenge, I want you to capture a snapshot of this phenomenon—whether you’re a patriot or not.…
Just like their annual Zeitgeist roundup of its most-searched-for terms, Google Trends now offers monthly, Knowledge Graph-based “Top Charts” in some 40 odd categories including Chemical Elements, Medications, Teen Pop Artists, and Whiskey. You know, the important things.
Coalition airstrikes helped turn the tides of the Libyan revolution in favor of the rebels; why not do the same in Syria? Because the Syrian government may or may not have just taken possession of one of the most frightening anti-aircraft batteries ever devised, that’s why. The Russian-made S-300 long-range SAM (surface-to-air) system, known as…
This is China’s stealth combat drone, an airplane that seems very similar to the American Northrop Grumman X-47B. The unmanned combat air vehicle was photographed while performing taxiing tests. Given the development speed of China’s other military airplanes, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this in flight in the next few weeks. According to China…
Photographer Jared Lim has an knack for capturing colorful patterns around the world, and they make for some eye-catching photos in his series Urban Exploration. As he told MyModernMet, the project is a work in progress that’s spanned many years. The Singapore-based Lim travels for work, and over the course of his trips, he’s culled…
If you’ve dropped a small fortune on a large pair of thumping headphones to replace the wimpy earbuds that came with your smartphone, you might not be getting all the sound you paid for. The headphone jack on most mobile devices is fine for powering smaller cans, but they usually lack the oomph needed to…
When I stepped off the plane in Mexico I got that sinking feeling. My iPhone wasn’t going to work. I mean it was, but, you know, it’s expensive to use a cell phone abroad. It’s even more expensive to use a smartphone abroad. A few years ago, I took a work trip to Paris and…
The first crazy leaps into a Star Trek future just showed up in the latest stable build of Chrome. As of now, “Conversational Search” has now rolled out, which means that Chrome can now remember what you’re searching for if you ask a couple of questions in a row. Like Google demoed at I/O, the…
