Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Eternal or even elongated life is an idiotic thing to wish for. You don’t want to get old, and then tack on 50 more years of wrinkles and Metamucil. But prolonged youth? Full body youth? More time being young and nubile and beautiful? Absolutely. And the key to that could lie right inside your brain.…
The days of traders shouting orders on the New York Stock Exchange’s floor may soon be over. A new breed of investing, known as High Frequency Trading, has taken hold of the equities market—one that relies on computerization and automation to exploit momentary price changes for an investor’s financial gain. And where latency is the…
The new World Trade Center building is getting its awesome spire lifted to the roof. You can watch it getting hoisted up on the livestream RIGHT NOW.
Adobe Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty just showed off a preview for how Adobe’s most powerful photo retouching tool might one day show up on your tablet. Oh please, please make this happen. Mobile photo editing has come a long way lately, most notably with the launch of Adobe Photoshop Touch for Android and iOS.…
ASCII—aka the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, aka the numeric codes that represent those little shapes on your keyboard—turns fifty this year. And while it’s since been surpassed by UTF-8, it still holds a special place in our hearts (and computers). Yesterday we got a deep dive into the history of ASCII art thanks…
If Tony Stark’s fancy suit is good enough for taking down baddies like the Mandarin, surely at least part of his getup must be an effective way to secure your digital paraphernalia? Available in eight and sixteen gig capacities, these Iron Man severed hand flash drives include posable fingers, a glowing repulser in the palm,…
Originally a Nook exclusive before coming to Android last fall, the open source, Google Maps alternative is finally coming to iOS, which is arguably the most alternative-map-app-needing platform of them all. What does it do? Pulls data from OpenStreetMap, a worldwide open source mapping project to create a totally interactive map with consistent, free updates.…
The US Navy is inaugurating its first squadron of drones today. The “Magicians” will consist of a “still-to-be-determined” number of Northrop Grumman Fire Scout MQ-8 B unmanned choppers, which are capable of flying 12 hours without refueling. [AP]
A good Bitcoin mining rig is hard to find. They’re expensive, they take up space, they wrack up huge energy bills. Not at all practical for your average ESEA gaming network employee. Nefarious code that turns 14,000 of your users into an unwitting personal bitcoin botnet? Totally doable. Like so many great schemes, it must…
Released a few months back, Traktor DJ for iPad is an almost perfect app. Native Instruments just dropped a remixed iPhone/iPod Touch version that fits that party-making machine in your pocket. Its available now for five bucks, compared to $20 on the iPad More than just an impressive tool for mixing songs live and throwing…
If you live in a fairly well-populated city you’ve probably been visited by one of those Shaolin Warrior traveling shows. But the next time they roll through your town you should save your money and instead queue up this fantastic high-speed footage of their incredible acrobatics as captured by BBC Earth Productions. It goes without…
Last week we reported that the ability to control Google Glass with the wink of an eye was a very real possibility. Now, an enterprising chap by the name of Mike DiGiovanni has made that a reality. The developer has created an app called Winky, which lets you power up Glass from standby and take…
Just three months after an acid leak caused a fatality in a Samsung plant, the same thing’s happened again, injuring three people. Sounds like something needs fixing.
Sadly NASA’s Space Shuttle program is shuttered, but when you’re feeling whimsical at least you can still watch footage of the behemoth being sent into space. What you might not know, though, is that NASA threw all kinds of camera tech at recording the launches for posterity—and this video shows it off. An old promotional…
While you’d be forgiven for thinking that this looks like a dome of bubble wrap, it’s actually the world’s first working compound-eye camera—which sees the world just like an insect would. With 180 separate imaging elements—each replicating the separate ommatidium, or “small eyes” which make up an insect’s odd visual system—arranged over its surface, it…
A Las Vegas District Court judge is currently weighing a big question that you may have opinions on: is exploiting a bug on a casino’s video poker machine illegal or not? Wired reports that a pair of gamblers, John Kane and Andre Nestor , stumbled upon a bug while playing video poker in a Las…
The Department of Defense is planning to approve Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones and Apple’s iPhone and iPad for government agency use. Maybe they’ll replace some of the 470,000 BlackBerrys they currently use…
Helicopters aren’t supposed to do this. I know this because I’ve seen too many military movies (Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty) where the chopper nosedives into destruction. They’re sensitive machines. You need a clear landing pad! You need an open target! You don’t land a freaking helicopter on a freeway guard rail. Or do…
Your axe may be razor sharp, your slingshot aim might be undeadly accurate but if you forget your head the second zombies start rising from the grave, all your cardio training will be for naught. So, let’s just take a moment and go over the basics one more time, just to be sure.
Intel’s integrated graphics have taken plenty of heat over the years, and most of it deserved. But the climb to respectability that started back with Sandy Bridge is about to get a turboboost. Meet Iris, the biggest generation jump in Intel’s integrated graphics to date. Get ready to game. Intel’s Iris graphics are going to…
