Tech News

Ask an OkCupid Founder for Any Last-Minute Valentine’s Day Advice

OkCupid: you use it to find both love or random hookups, and since tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, you’re probably looking for at least one of those. Accordingly, we have Sam Yagan, one of the dating site’s founders, here to answer all your burning (let’s hope not) questions. Looking for a last minute date? Want to…

The Smuggler’s Belt Helps Sneak Your Stash Around

You know those money belts over-cautious dorky tourists wear when they go to Europe? The Smuggler’s Belt is like that only much, much cooler. It looks like a run-of-the-mill leather belt, but it has a hidden pocket behind the iron buckle where you can conceal your cash or valuables or weed or valuable weeds. You…

Come Along on a Bourbon-soaked Eating and Drinking Tour of Seattle, Wild Boar and Urchin Included

Andrew Steinthal and Chris Stang from Immaculate Infatuation already crushed San Francisco, and this time they traverse the Great Northwest for fish a million ways, some wild boar, and, of course, lots of bourbon. The city we were most looking forward to visiting on our tour was Seattle, not only because none of us had…

Adidas Energy Running: The Next Great Running Innovation, Or the Next Big Cheat

Running shoes are a touchy subject. Some people like minimal cushioning to promote good form, others prefer something more engineered. Adidas’s new Energy Running push comes down on the latter side of the argument in an impressive way. Maybe even too impressive. So “Energy Running” means Adidas has two new things to stick in its…

Amazon just added even more shows to Prime Instant Video, this time from CBS, aka your parents’ favorite network.

9 Reasons to Root Your Android Device

To root or not to root? That is the question. Rooting your Android device definitely pushes you up a level or two in your geekdom. It requires a certain level of commitment, at least a little savvy, and even a modicum of risk. So, why would you want to bother? We’ve got nine good reasons…

13 Lazy Christians Giving Up Facebook for Lent

Lent begins today, commemorating the story of Jesus and some friends trapped in the desert, starving, hot, miserable, and tempted by Satan. A reminder of piety. It’s also a depressing reminder of how cripplingly addicted we are to Facebook. The idea behind Lent, if I’ve read this Wikipedia entry correctly, is giving up a vice…

You’ll Desperately Want To Complete This Connect-The-Dots Music Video

Motion capture technology isn’t all about creating life-like digital creatures. A band called Foal recently used it on the music video for its song My Number to create a moving connect-the-dots puzzle that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. The video took about three months to create, from the motion capture sessions to the computer animation…

Googlers Reported More Than Half of the Vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Latest Patch

Microsoft just released a giant “Patch Tuesday” bulletin for the month. Weird thing about this update? More than half of the bugs found in Microsoft products were reported by none other than Google engineers. It’s not unusual for Googlers to uncover security flaws in Word, Office, Internet Explorer, and so forth. Mountain View’s finest found…

Cram All Your Soccer Gear, Including a Net, Into This Backpack

Not since the tennis ball has a product promised to so radically change the face of pick-up kickball games. Gone are the days of kids having to place two backpacks side-by-side to create an impromptu goal because Golme’s new Urban Pac backpack features a five-foot wide pop-out net. The backpack itself is also spacious enough…

Slacker Radio Redesigns Its Look to Entice the Pandora-Weary

Pandora is the leader in streaming music mostly because it got there first. But use it for a while, and you realize the service’s catalog—not to mention its features—are limited. On paper, Slacker Radio is superior, and today, the five-year-old service is launching an overhaul aimed at proving it’s superior. Slacker Radio is Internet radio…

The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro Just Got $200 Cheaper

Apple just cut the price of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. You can now pick one up for $1,500—$200 less than the original starting price of $1,700. That means that the basic 13-inch Retina Pro—with 128GB of storage—is now slightly more wallet friendly. For $1,700, the same price as the old entry-level model,…

Feet Of Flames: These Survival Boots Include a Built-In Fire Starting Kit

RockS2V is working hard to build a name for itself when it comes to emergency survival gear. The company’s Provision coat includes a built-in life-saving toolkit if you find yourself stranded somewhere remote, and its new Substratum boots feature a secret compartment inside designed to stash an emergency fire starting kit. In reality you can…

Surface Pro Teardown: Don’t Dream of Taking This Thing Apart

Microsoft’s Surface Pro may only have been released last week, but iFixit has already torn it apart. Perhaps unsurprisingly, you don’t wanna think about repairing or upgrading this thing, period. iFixit counted a whole 90 screws that had to be removed to open the Surface Pro up completely as well as a whole bunch of…

Jawbone User Accounts Compromised in Hack

If you use a Jambox, now might be a real good time to change your MyTalk password: Jawbone’s servers have been hacked, and a swathe of users have had their details swiped. Jawbone’s MyTalk service lets users update and personalize speakers and headsets. Apparently hackers stole names, email addresses, and encrypted passwords from the company’s…

Is There Anything More Annoying Than a Stalled Progress Bar?

Despite leaps and bounds in the advancements in technology—we now have shiny little rectangles that respond to touch and voice and connect us to other people half way round the world!—one thing still sucks hard: stalled progress bars. It’s not just waiting for things to happen which is annoying—it’s that they’re inaccurate. There is little…

Doping Regulations Are a Matter of Scientific Perspective

A lot of people get very upset about doping in sport. They may well have a point—but maybe a little scientific perspective is required. Randal Monroe puts the issue well in the alt text of today’s XKCD cartoon: “A human is a system for converting dust billions of years ago into dust billions of years…

83 Percent of Radiologists Didn’t Spot the Gorilla Hiding in This CT Scan

You’ve almost certainly seen the dancing gorilla video which demonstrates the theory of change blindness—a phenomenon which means we don’t see changes we’re not expecting. Now, an updated experiment shows that the same may be true of radiologists analyzing CT images. A team of psychological scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston wanted to…

Opera has announced that it will start using WebKit to render pages—just Chrome and Safari. About time!

This Mug Would Let Tea Drinkers Say Goodbye to Spoons For Good

Spoons? You don’t need no spoons. Or at least, you wouldn’t if the SlingsHOT mug became a reality, because the shape of its handle is designed especially to let you deal with teabags using just your bare hands. There’s a groove running up and around the handle of the SlingsHOT mug, which both keeps the…