Tech News

AT&T’s Got Just the $500/Month Data Plan You Weren’t Looking For

The latest additions to AT&T’s new data plan stable are ostentatious, we’ll give them that. Want 30GB, 40GB, or 50GB of monthly mobile data? Sure thing, chief. That’ll just be up to $500 per month. Oh, plus another $30 for each additional smartphone. Per month. Go over that massive cap? An extra $15 per gig…

AT&T Hacker Gets 3.5 Years In Prison

Wired reports that Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, 26, has been sentenced to 41 months in prison for exploiting an AT&T security hole three years ago. His bid to stay out of prison has failed. Instead, he’s going to get 3.5 years in the slammer. https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-at-t-hackers-last-bid-to-stay-out-of-prison-5990462 In court documents first reported by Gizmodo last week, Weev’s lawyers…

California Builds the World’s Tallest Solar Collector

The US government holds vast tracts of public lands—more than a 654 million acres, in fact—for public use such as national parks as well as for military use like test ranges and proving grounds. But most of the time, much of that land is left to rot when it could be producing clean solar energy…

If Magneto Were Shopping For a Watch, He’d Buy This Omega

This past January at SIHH, Omega announced that it had created the world’s first anti-magnetic watch movement that’s resistant to magnetic fields up to 15,000 Gauss. Previously both Rolex and IWC were the only other watch manufacturers with anti-magnetic time pieces. But Omega’s new Seamaster Aqua Terra (calibre 8508) is 15x more resistant than either…

The Air Mattress That Turns into a Boat

Ivan Zhang and Jeho Yoon have designed what could be the ultimate relaxation tool: an air mattress that can transform into a boat. Thanks to an internal structure of ropes and carabiners, the Nest is a comfy air mattress perfect for lounging about in a pool. But when you disconnect all of the carabiners inside,…

Transforming Tables and Chairs: More Than Meets the Ass

Extra tables and chairs are great for when you have company over, but what do you do with that stuff during the other 364 days of the year? Not everyone has limitless storage space. The Oneness modular furniture system, designed by Kyuhyung Cho and Hironori Tsukue, tackles this issue with a multitalented furniture set that…

The First Nike FuelBand Prototypes Looked Like Humongous Sweat Bands

You know the Nike FuelBand as a sleek black band that’s a half-step removed from a Livestrong bracelet. That wasn’t always the case, though. Some looked totally different from the finished product, like this early mockup that basically got the FuelBand off the ground. Austin Carr was out at the Nike campus to report for…

Your Monday Morning Explosion Fix: Watch This Bridge Blow Up in Glorious Slow Motion

The US-281 Bridge in Marble Falls, Texas had to go. Fortunately for us, the best way to do that involved a whole bunch of explosives. The bridge was demolished yesterday morning with a series of explosions that made one specular last trip across the steel span. And while stuff blowing up is always awesome, stuff…

The Newspaper of Tomorrow: 11 Predictions from Yesteryear

Many of us here in the 21st century like to think of the newspaper as this static institution. We imagine that the newspaper was born many generations ago and until very recently, thrived without much competition. Of course this is wildly untrue. The role of the newspaper in any given community has always been in…

Big Data Brokers: They Know Everything About You and Sell it to the Highest Bidder

Data companies are scooping up enormous amounts of information about almost every American. They sell information about whether you’re pregnant or divorced or trying to lose weight, about how rich you are and what kinds of cars you have. Regulators and some in Congress have been taking a closer look at these so-called data brokers…

The TSA Is Auctioning Off Confiscated Knives for Cheap

Government entities need to get rid of excess junk too, and they often do it through a site called GovDeals.com. It’s like Ebay for the federally-funded set. For the next hour, there’s an auction going on for a lot of 40 Gerber knives. The current price is $276—a mere $7 a knife. Auctions like this…

Why You Shouldn’t Forget About Latency

If your internet connection leaves you constantly waiting for streams to buffer, you probably love nothing more than to bitch and gripe about bandwidth. But easy there, tiger, because your issue could be a much more fundamental issue that everyone seems to have forgotten about: latency. Fortunately, Ars Technica has taken a good, long look…

As of today, Pinterest is rolling out a fresh new design that makes it easier for you to find new content. Pin away.

Blackberry’s CEO Says the iPhone Is Outdated

With the launch of the last-chance Z10 around the corner, Blackberry is giving itself a pep talk to keep those hopes high. And according to CEO Thorsten Heins, the iPhone’s hardly in the race Blackberry’s fixin’ to win because it’s old news. In an interview with The Australian Financial Review Heins made it clear he…

T-Mobile is finally flipping on its LTE network. It’ll roll out to some 200 million people by the end of the year.

Best Buy Leaks Mysterious New Canon DSLR

Looks like some clumsy folks at Best Buy have listed an unannounced Canon DSLR on their website. This could fall in line with rumors circulating about a “mini-DSLR” meant to compete with compact mirrorless cameras. The specs on Best Buy’s page show an $800 “EOS-b.” This camera has an 18 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor, 3″…

Cellphone Dock Ignition Lock Keeps Your Kid from Texting and Driving and Wrapping the Family Car Around a Tree

If you absolutely can’t trust your kid to avoid texting while he’s driving the family car, the ORIGOsafe provides a brute-force way to keep them focused on the road. It’s a smartphone dock that prevents a vehicle from actually starting until a phone is inserted, ensuring the distraction remains out of sight. For safety reasons,…

How We All Die, Visualized

Here’s one for the morbid amongst you: this visualization reveals how everyone across the world died during the entire 20th century. It make for interesting—and surprising—reading. Perhaps most comforting—if you can call it that—is that the primary cause of death is non-communicable disease; the likes of heart disease and diabetes that, other than through research…

What Hangover Cures Are You Using This Morning?

Yesterday you painted the town… uh, green, and now you’re feeling a little the worse for wear. So what weird and wonderful hangover cures are you employing to set yourself straight? https://gizmodo.com/everything-you-need-to-turn-wherever-you-are-into-an-ir-5894056 Raw eggs? Fried food? Buffalo milk? Or maybe good ol’ fashioned water and ibuprofen? Share your solutions here. Image via Lisa F. Young/Shutterstock.com

Microsoft has announced that it will stop supporting Windows Phone 7.8 and 8 in the second half of 2014.