Tech News

Short Battery Life Sinks First Windows 8 Notebooks

Confusing dual-mode operating system, no Start button, counterintuitive swipe gestures? None of these things spells doom for Windows 8. What will kill Microsoft’s newest operating system is the abysmal battery life of the systems on which it’s supposed to perform the best. For all of Windows 8’s strengths, its one major weakness might be something…

A Map of the Entire Internet

Plotted on TeleGeography’s Internet Exchange Map are the buildings that connect the cables of the whole ‘net. It’s a really good picture of what the infrastructure of the entire internet looks like. https://gizmodo.com/the-bullseye-of-america-s-internet-5913934 The map gives information on 274 Internet exchanges and 512 buildings. Click a specific pin to find out more information about that…

Hardware Gifts for Handy Homeowners

You don’t need a shed full of hardware to get things done around the house. Even if your weekend workload looks like a real life episode of This Old House, you probably rely on a fairly small core set of tools. Here are a few items suited for both ends of the spectrum—whether you can…

This Conversation Between Two Drone Pilots Is Really Sad

Spiegel’s Nicola Abé wrote a very interesting story on The Woes of an American Drone Operator. It includes the conversation between two drone pilots, right after firing a Hellfire missile only to see a kid appear on their targeting screens a second before impact: “Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting…

Is This the Most Over the Top Christmas Tree Ever? Maybe

I came across this image buried in one of those wacky picture dumpster sites, wandering from url to url across the web. I don’t know who set the tree up. I don’t know how many thousands of LED lights are around that tree. And I don’t know why people spend so much money making these…

This Expanding Lamp Is Beautifully Intricate

When I was a kid, I had a toy Hoberman sphere. Despite the fact it did absolutely nothing of interest, it was utterly fascinating in an incredibly nerdy way—and now there’s a lamp that will let me play with one as an adult, too. Designed by Erik Stehmann, this is called the Expanding Lamp, and…

That Samsung Sex Tape Ad Is Way Creepier When It’s Santa

We all remember that time Samsung made a Galaxy S III ad that promoted the healthy exchange of sex tapes between mature adults, right? Like all good things, it’s received its mandatory holiday tie-in. One that manages to ruin your childhood. https://gizmodo.com/samsung-suggests-you-make-and-share-sex-tapes-in-latest-5954764 On the one hand, sure, I’m glad that Santa and Mrs. Claus still…

10 Bets You’re Guaranteed to Win At Your Holiday Party

YouTube’s favorite conman Richard Wiseman has returned with ten more bets you’ll never lose, just in time to spice up the never-evending barrage of holiday parties and family get-togethers this time of year. The trick where simple science and a little gravity is used to magically swap water and whiskey between two shot glasses is…

Dish.fm Consults Foursquare and Yelp to Help You Decide What to Order

What should you order for dinner? Dish.fm is a new iOS and web app that pulls from thousands of reviews on Yelp and Foursquare to help you decide specifically which dish is the best. The app culls these user-generated reviews to check for mentions of specific menu items. So if the pad thai is a…

TNT is blowing up on Amazon. Falling Skies and The Closer will now be available on Prime Instant Streaming.

Hackers Take Over Westboro Baptist Church Twitter (Updated)

We can all agree that the Westboro Baptist Church is the objectively worst collections of humans in the history of the species. And after planning to “protest” the funerals of dead children, the hackers at UGNazi got revenge. Update: We spoke with UGNazi. A Twitter account belonging to Shirley Phelps-Roper, a “lawyer” and “official spokesperson”…

Your Instagram Data Is Now Officially Facebook Data

A new Instagram privacy policy goes into effect on January 16th, 2013. The service will now be sharing your data with its new owner Facebook. Get used to it. Basically, Instagram has updated a few of the subhead sections of its policy to reflect the fact that it is a part of Facebook now. Instagram…

Scientists Develop the World’s First Chemistree

Making a strong case for the Nobel Prize in Holiday Cheer, Redditor Breokz posted a photo of the Christmas ‘Chemistree’ at the Avans University of Applied Science laboratory. Instead of the more traditional pine tree, this creation is assembled from glassware and support structures like a giant chemistry experiment. And while this ‘research’ isn’t going…

The Evolution of the Batman Logo, Visualized

The Batman logo has changed an awful lot in the 72 years since the dark knight started cleaning up the streets of Gotham back in 1940. Fortunately, Cathryn Lavery has pieced together its changing form in this amazing poster. There have been some clear trends (click on the image below for a larger version): the…

Woman Gains Full Mind Control Of Robotic Arm, Just Like in Star Wars

This is truly extraordinary: Jan Scheuermann, a 52-year-old quadriplegic woman, has gained full control of a robotic arm. Not just simple commands, but truly complete control with “skill and speed almost similar to that of an able-bodied person.” According to the study—led by the University of Pittsburgh’s professor of neurobiology Andrew Schwartz—she achieved this incredible…

Rumor: Facebook Will Launch Its Own Snapchat-Style App

Facebook is apparently testing its own version of an app which resembles Snapchat, the messaging software which allows users to send “disposable” photographs to each other. All Things D claims, citing “sources familiar with the matter”, that Facebook will launch the app in the coming weeks, sometime before the end of the year. ‘Things D…

How to Get Siri to Provide Google Maps Directions, No Hack Required

Ask Siri for directions, and by default she’ll throw up an Apple Maps solution. Which means you’ll get lost. But it’s actually really easy to get her to give you directions using Google’s maps—and it doesn’t even require a hack. As JailbreakNation shows in this vide, adding the phrase “via transit” to the end of…

Rumor has it the Nokia Lumia 800 is seeing a WinPho 7.8 update creeping out, a littler earlier than expected. [WP7.nl]

The Cinema of 2012: 300 Films in 7 Minutes

This beautiful montage, put together by Genevieve Ip, pieces together clips from over 300 films to relive the cinema of 2012 —in just seven minutes. It’s cleverly done, exposing themes from this year’s movies whilst managing to hang together in its own right as a piece of video. Because it’s inevitable you’ll want to look…

Facebook Joins the NASDAQ-100 (While RIM Gets Ditched)

The NASDAQ-100 is a stock market index which tracks the performance of the largest non-financial companies in the world. Yawn. But every year, it gets a little reshuffle to keep it fresh and relevant—and the changes can be rather telling. NASDAQ has just announced how its index will change in 2013, and the shuffle is…