Tech News

A Brief History of the Google Maps Pegman

You might not think of him very often, but you know the Google Maps pegman quite well. Every time you zoom down into a new, strange locale, he’s there, pointing the way. But where did he come from? Buzzfeed FWD dug into the history, and it turns out there’s a lot more of it than…

Exploratorium Reborn: Inside San Francisco’s New Innovation Shrine

When San Francisco’s Exploratorium began to outgrow its 100,000-square-foot campus at the Palace of Fine Arts—where it had been since its founding in 1969—it looked for a new home, eventually settling on the city’s Embarcadero, a stone’s throw from downtown. With its relocation, the Exploratorium took the opportunity to design a world-class science and technology…

From Ghost-Gobblers to Princess-Saving Plumbers: the Birth of a Video Game Nation Happened in the Glorious 1980s

For the most part, I remember childhood birthday parties being held at someone’s house, a fast-food restaurant or, if I was really lucky, a bowling alley. But there was one magical birthday party that this child of the ’80s will never forget: it was at Mr. Arcade. Not only did I get to hang out…

Chat Heads Are Now In the Facebook Messenger App for Android

The weirdly named Chat Heads feature was a big focus on the new Facebook phone. But just like the “Home” launcher itself, you won’t need an HTC First to get it. The Facebook Messenger app for Android just got an update will full Chat Head functionality. [Google Play via The Verge] https://gizmodo.com/what-are-facebook-chat-heads-5993646

This Twisted Cabinet Wants to Strut Across Your Living Room

If you’re not living inside some kind of Beauty and the Beast nightmare, all your furniture is mercifully inanimate, but the Walking Cabinet gets you halfway there. It won’t actually stroll across your living room, but it looks like it wants to. Designed by Markus Johansson, the walking cabinet appears to have been frozen mid-strut…

The Walking Dead: Season 3 on Blu-ray Comes In This Creepy Cabinet of Zombie Heads

If you’re thinking about starting a collection of limited edition Blu-ray sets for your favorite movies and TV shows, you better make sure you’ve got ample shelf space on your home entertainment center for a bunch of disembodied zombie noggins. Available for pre-order for $105, the limited edition Blu-ray collection of The Walking Dead: Season…

Cicada Nation: All About Those Noisy Little Bastard Bugs

After a rather lazy 17 years spent relaxing underground, billions of incredibly noisy insects are about to burst out of the earth, noisily swarming over the East Coast and wreaking havoc along the way. This is The Great Cicada Invasion of 2013—but what the hell is a cicadia, anyway, and why have they been hiding…

A Lego Neck Strap Sets This Bricked Camera Apart From the Rest

Flickr user RGB900’s Lego DSLR is far from the first bricked camera we’ve brought you. But damned if it isn’t one of the most detailed. One of its most impressive features is a flexible neck strap, presumably made from tank tread pieces. And the inclusion of an external flash that appears to be connected via…

This Tennis Ball Bazooka Is a Weapon of Mass Exhaustion

As far as pets go, dogs are some of the most playful companions you can find. But, there’s an added bonus to that game of fetch. It helps tire them out so back home you don’t have to deal with a hyper ball of fur. And with Hyper Pet’s K-9 Kannon in your arsenal, a…

Leap Motion Hack Lets You Drive a Boat With a Wave of Your Hand

The Leap Motion hacks just keep coming. The motion-controlled gadget still hasn’t hit our shelves, but eager engineers are already hooking their developer kits up to all the electronics they own. Electrical engineer Bryan Brown has created a hack that lets you control a model boat just a like a child flying an imaginary airplane…

This Rugged Carpet Is Washington State From Space

The European Space Agency (ESA) recently released this Kompsat-2 satellite image which is an ultimately amazing piece of Earth-art. We can see the rolling hills of farmland in the northwest United States, Washington state. Here is the full version. The south and west areas of the image are in Walla Walla county, the central-eastern-upper area…

Scientists Can Make Brains Turn Transparent

Stanford scientists have developed a technique which lets them turn a brain completely transparent—without causing any damage at all to its structure. It’s worth pointing out that, sadly, the brain has to be removed from the body before the process can be undertaken, but whatever—it’s an amazing and quirky advance. So far, the scientists have…

A new Twitter web page, music.twitter.com, has sprung up—ahead of the new app that’s expected to appear later today.

Pentagon Defense Lawyers Banned From Using Computers Over Loss of Sensitive Data

Pretrial hearings for the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals have been brought to a halt because sensitive legal documents have gone missing from Pentagon computers, prompting an IT ban for the defense lawyers in question. Reuters reports that Pentagon defense lawyers found that confidential work documents began vanishing from servers in February. There has also been…

Apple to Pay Out $53 Million Over iPhone Water Damage Warranty Issues

Apple has agreed to pay out a weighty $53 million to settle a lawsuit which saw the company accused of not correctly honoring warranties of iPhone and iPod Touches, reports Wired. The settlement should in theory see tens of thousands of Apple customers, previously refused repairs or replacement hardware under warranty, receive cash payouts. It’s…

Verge sources are suggesting Apple will ink a deal with Universal next week to create an internet radio service.

Bing Serves Up Five Times More Malicious Sites Than Google

Not all search engines are created equal—and when it comes to Microsoft’s Bing, it seems that means malicious websites are happily returned far more often than by Google. An 18-month project by German independent testing lab AV-Test reveals that Bing returns five times as many results which link through to malware infested websites than Google.…

Making Music with Kitchen Sounds Would Be My Waking Nightmare

Called My Dubstep Kitchen, it’s a music video made by Sawyer Hartman that turns kitchen noises into song. Though not exactly the sort of audio regurgitation you expect to hear from typical Dubstep (where’s the drop?), it’s still a head nodding anthem made from an ordinary kitchen. That’s right, the stove igniting, the cabinets opening,…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: This Is J03

Like a modern-day Dante traversing the pits of Hell before ascending into Paradise, J03 is a man far out of his depth and just looking for the road home. Well, not so much a man as an 8-bit robot trapped in the digital revolution. Check out this cool live action/3D animated short by Once Were…

Night Wakeboarding with Light Boards Paints Gorgeously Mesmerizing Pictures

This is incredible. Unlike the shark attracting light suits of Tron surfing or the glowing outline of night skiers, seeing a wakeboarder with a light board is like seeing Picasso with a paintbrush. The tricks the wakeboarders pull makes for a visually magnetic picture. It’s like painting rainbows! https://gizmodo.com/does-anyone-else-think-these-light-up-surfboards-are-an-5868112 The delicious eye candy of these…