Tech News

How Google Hacked Our Imaginations with #IfIHadGlass

In just about every James Bond and Batman film, there is a segment where Q (or Morgan Freeman) introduces us to a few new gadgets. At first, the hero looks over the objects quizzically, but then the handler demonstrates how to use them, unlocking their mystery and inviting both the hero and the audience to…

MSFT Office 365 is free to college students for six months and includes 20GB of SkyDrive and 60 Skype minutes.

$260 Portable Lounge Chair ISO Professional Beach Bum

For most sunbathers a towel, a bottle of lotion, and some sunglasses are all they need for a day at the beach. But with every activity there’s always that one person who has to do overdo it, and they’ll be easy to spot dragging around this 22-pound transforming monstrosity of a lounge chair. Featuring everything…

Teeth Grown from Gum Cells May Make Dentures Obsolete

A team of British researchers have successfully grown a tooth from human gum tissue—which might make false teeth a thing of the past. The scientists, from King’s College London, took human epithelial cells from the gums of volunteers, cultured them in the lab to grow a larger sample, then mixed them with mesenchyme cells from…

The BlackBerry Z10 will launch on AT&T on March 22 for $200, with pre-orders starting tomorrow.

Where’s Waldo GIF: The Best Thing to Happen to Both Waldo and GIFs

While all those volumes of Where’s Waldo books sit in a dusty cardboard box in your attic, the spirit of Waldo lives on in a remarkable bit of GIFage by Redditor Swiftapple. Waldo is alive and well. And bobbing. The simple joy of spotting Waldo’s red-and-white cap in motion instantly brought me back to the…

A Symphony Played by Exercising Mice Fits Any City’s Budget

The cultural significance of a city is often gauged by how talented its local symphony is. But living in a small town that can’t even round up a decent quartet doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy a night at the local concert hall. Just round up 40 mice and a few music boxes. Created by a…

Inside the Murky World of Webcam Hackers

There’s a horrible and growing trend in the darkest corners of the internet: using Remote Administration Tools, hackers are increasingly taking control of webcams around the world. Ars Technica has taken a long, hard look into the murky world of webcam hackers. From Ars: The woman is visible from thousands of miles away on a…

Is This the Samsung Galaxy S IV?

We’re just days away from Samsung’s official launch of the Galaxy S IV, and a Chinese forum post claims to be offering images of what purports to be the new flagship phone. Up front, let’s be honest with ourselves: this rumor needs a decent pinch of salt to accompany it. Samsung has successfully camouflaged phones…

Inside the Sistine Chapel’s Security Tech for the Papal Election

Tomorrow, the Sistine Chapel will fill with cardinals who will spend hours—or days—deciding who should be elected as the next Pope. But while they do, the Sistine chapel will be filled with electronic jammers and swept for bugs to ensure no information is leaked. Reuters reports that a team of workmen are busy preparing the…

Publishers File Formal Complaints Over Amazon’s Bid to Secure the .Book Domain

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers have filed formal objections to Amazon’s bid to secure new generic top-level domains like “.book,” “.author” and “.read”. The book groups have explained to governing body ICANN that “placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anticompetitive”, and are…

YouTube Co-Founder to Launch Rival Video Site

YouTube already has its fair share of rivals on all sides, from Vimeo to Hulu. Now, though, one of YouTube’s co-founders, Chris Hurley, is planning to create a rival of his own. Hurley left YouTube, by then a part of Google, in 2010. Seems he’s planning to try and pull at least part of the…

A tweaked Apple TV is hitting stores with mods so subtle they’re invisible to users—including a tiny new A5 processor.

The Suicide Machines: New Girl

Ever play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater? The original? Even just the demo? Then I probably don’t have to say any more about this song. For the rest of you, just listen. Shhhh. Do you hear that? It’s the 90s. I’ve been on something of a ska kick this weekend, and The Suicide Machines classic “New…

Iran’s Blocking VPNs To Tighten Its Stranglehold on the Internet

Iran and the Internet don’t exactly get along. Between trying to shut down all Google services and replacing YouTube with a state-sponsored clone, Iran has been making moves to make its intranet the place to be. By blocking everything else. Until now, tech-savvy and Internet-loving Iranians have been able to use VPNs to get out…

An Idiot Counterfeiter Returned His Printer with a Sheet of Fake Hundreds Inside

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book; if you can’t earn money, why not make it? With your printer. Now that doesn’t actually work. Making counterfeit cash is really hard. But that won’t keep idiots from trying it, apparently. A Wisconsin man took it a step further though, by trying to return his…

China’s Internet Architecture Gives the Rest of Us a Run for Our Money

In a lot of ways, China’s Internet isn’t the sort of Internet you want to be using. It’s ridiculously censored, for example. But in other ways, it’s way better than the stuff we have over here. According to a recent report from the New England Complex Systems Institute, China’s ‘net infrastructure is head and shoulders…

What’s the Most Important App on Your Phone Right Now?

Everyone has at least one. Stock apps and don’t count; you get those for free. You are given a brand new phone of your choice running its stock OS, and you are allowed to install one and only one app on it. What do you pick? Image by Oleksiy Mark/Shutterstock

You can now pre-order the Piston Steam Box for $900. That’s $100 off its (eventual) retail price.

Which Encryption Apps Are Strong Enough to Help You Take Down a Government?

It seems like these days I can’t eat breakfast without reading about some new encryption app that will (supposedly) revolutionize our communications — while making tyrannical regimes fall like cheap confetti. This is exciting stuff, and I want to believe. After all, I’ve spent a lot of my professional life working on crypto, and it’s…