Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
What looks like some horrific, early 20th century polygraph test cum torture chamber was, in fact, a gentle medical solution to a common, achey problem. The Schnee Four Cell Bath was a type of galvanic bath that was prized for its convenience by busy—although rheumatic—men and women about town. Unlike conventional galvanic baths (a type…
Hunker down, everyone. There’s a MASSIVE BLIZZARD heading for the northeast and you’re all going to die. Or at least you’re going to need a very warm coat, like the North Face Himalayan Down Parka. How much goose is in this jacket you ask? Eight hundred fill (a rating, we know.) to be exact and…
Apparently, some kind of weather catastrophe is on its way to the NE. I was vaguely aware that we would be getting a winter storm of some kind. Several inches of snow, a foot perhaps. But now I’m scared into a frenzy. Good! That means the system works! I want to go home and hide…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know there’s a big ol’ Nor’Easter about to tackle the East coast. If you have been living under a rock, you might be about to freeze to death under it. It’s always a good idea to be prepared for a storm, but it’s a particularly good idea…
For years we all assumed that robots and artificial creatures had to be made of metal and other rigid materials. But there’s now a movement to create soft, squishy bots that use unorthodox power sources like compressed air, and, believe it or not, literal explosions. Researchers at Harvard University created this three-legged silicone robot that’s…
Instead of a picture of a sunset, your kid or yourself, you can have a randomly-generated GIF as lock screen wallpaper with GIF-Lock for your Android phone. Shake your phone, and you’ll get a new GIF. Once you find one you like, pin it, and you’ll have an awesome moving wallpaper. You can’t choose which…
Give infinite monkeys infinite typewriters and over an infinite timeline, they’ll come up with Hamlet. You know the thought experiment. But apply the same concept to brute forcing every possible photograph, pixel by pixel, and the idea becomes just slightly less ludicrous. Non-ludicrous enough that artist Jeffrey Thompson is actually giving it a try, though…
Here’s a fascinating look at what and how the USAF’s finest pilots eat while flying America’s favorite spy plane: the A-12. Second only to the A-12 Oxcart and its brother, the SR-71 BlackBird, being a A-12 pilot is an extremely physically demanding job, often requiring 12 hours of flying. Watch Ssgt. Suzzett Stalesky—an airspace physiologist…
Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage when you sign up. iCloud offers 5GB. While there are plenty of reasons to prefer those services, the storage space they offer is way less than what you can get with Box today. Usually Box only gives you 5GB of storage for free, but if you sign up with…
On your approach, you probably wouldn’t even know this house is a house. The front rises out of the ground like the facade of a secret underground lab, but from the back, it’s a giant windowed beauty. It’s called the Edgeland Residence, and it’s a re-interpretation of a Native American pit house. A pit house…
Wraparound sunglasses provide as much protection from glare as you can get without having to resort to a full-on helmet and visor. But those curved lenses also makes them bulky and hard to stash away when not worn. So a company called Visoptical has developed a solution: sunglasses with a clever sliding rail system that…
The zipper tie has long been the salvation of those who only wear a suit a few times a year and never learned a proper knot. And for the most part, they’re designed to completely hide their dark secret—except this one. Laughing in the face of the formalities traditionally associated with business attire, the $65…
“Investigative reporter” Teri Buhl is running around the Internet threatening to sue people for publishing her public tweets. That’s ridiculous in and of itself. But then your head just about explodes when you realize that a few years ago she published a teenager’s private sex diary online without permission. What a hypocrite. Today, the Internet…
Mailbox, the new e-mail client that’s had the tech world all atwitter recently, has officially gone live in the App Store. Created by the productivity software masters at Orchestra, the ultimate goal was to reinvent the mobile-specific email experience. Mailbox’s greatest innovation comes in the way you address e-mails: a single swipe to side will…
It can be easy to forget, but a chess game is a battle. And while you’re sitting there, scratching your chin and trying to feel smart, soldiers are dying at your command. This clever chess set designed by Orr Kislev helps you keep that in mind by leaving all the corpses on the board. Taking…
So what if Google designed a Prius that can guide itself along Nevada’s barren highways. The US Army has a helicopter that can guide itself through war zones. The ULB is the latest in a long line of Light Observational helicopters. The US Army ordered more than a thousand of the choppers in 1965 for…
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and if you’re frustrated at the prospect of spending another February 14th by yourself, this collection of ten different ways to destroy a heart should bring you some perverse satisfaction. From taking a baseball bat to a romantic breakfast, to smashing a chalky candy heart with an axe,…
The problem with most ebooks is you can’t exactly give them with a friends or pass them onto your children when you’re done. But Amazon might actually address that with a new patent to sell used ebooks. Unfortunately you can’t just buy an ebook and own an ebook and do what you want with it.…
Chilean artist Oscar Ramos has made these awesome Escherian (Escherist? Escherish?) color illustrations in which bacon turn into apples or fishes into flowers. They are very detailed and simply beautiful. Scroll vertically quickly to get full effect. [Piensa Positivo via Bored Panda]
The quirky Yorky lamp by Hlynur Atlason looks like a two-legged dog. And it’s just about as submissive to your will, because it’s adjustable to several positions. The canine-like lamp actually looks like it’s sitting, begging, or lying down, depending how you place it on its legs. Made of flexible silicon, it comes in yellow,…
