Tech News

News Corp has announced that its iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, is closing. We’re sad to see it go. [Business Insider]

Dyson Has Patented a Faucet That Also Dries Your Hands

Public and workplace washrooms often have far fewer hand dryers than they have sinks to wash hands in, leaving people queuing for a dryer with dripping hands. OK, perhaps it’s not one of the world’s biggest problems. But it is annoying enough to be addressed by vacuum cleaner and Airblade hand dryer maker Dyson of…

The Cameras and Settings That Captured This Year’s Best Photos

Every year, Reuters publishes a list of its best photography, and you’ll recognise plenty of the 95 iconic images that capture this year’s biggest news stories. One keen Redditor, though, wanted to know more—so analyzed the EXIF data of all the images to find out how they were captured. The result, put together by hallbuzz,…

Watch This Dude Pull an 8-Ton Truck With His Ear

Lasha Pataraya has an unusual gift. He’s not just insanely strong: he has insanely strong ears, too. Which is why he was able to use one of them to pull an 8-ton truck. No, really. Associated Press caught the moment on camera, as he slipped a rope around his ear and pulled an 8-ton truck…

Reason For Bad Signal #37: You’re in a Faraday Cage Fight

Dammit, it’s hard to get a decent mobile data connection sometimes. Are the walls thick in your building? Are you surrounded by exotic electrical equipment that’s causing interference? Or did you just stumble into a cage fight by accident? Clearly the organizer doesn’t want you Googling tactics during the fight, anyway. Maybe just throw the…

Mitsubishi is the final “major” manufacturer to announce it’s scrapping rear-projection TVs for good. So long! [CEPro]

Some New iMacs Are Assembled in the US

It seems not all of Apple’s slinky new iMacs are made in China. Apple Insider is reporting that some of the new standard-spec iMacs are labelled as “Assembled in USA”. https://gizmodo.com/apples-new-imacs-are-crazy-thin-5953775 US sssembly is usually reserved for Apple’s made-to-order machines. But already a handful of standard 21.5-inch iMacs have been spotted labelled as American born-n-bred.…

Watch This Laser-Cut Map Appear Before Your Eyes, Block By Block

Not super into cartography? Add some lasers into the mix and see what happens. This video features a laser digging into some metal to create a map of Atlanta, Georgia and it’s mesmerizing to watch it come into being before your eyes. Laser-cutting isn’t quite that fast; this video is sped up to 4x, but…

stellastarr*: My Coco

Apparently this song was on MVP Baseball 2004, which is where a lot of the people who know it know it from. I found it on Pandora. Either way “My Coco” by stellastarr* is a fantastic tune and well worth a listen. Off stellastarr*’s self-titled debut (which has some other good tunes like “Somewhere Across…

Do App Store Gift Cards Make Passable Gifts?

It’s that time of year where you have to start gifting, and you’ll find yourself faced with all sorts of deep, important questions. Here’s one to get you started: Is it tacky to give an app store gift card as a gift? On the one hand, it’s incredibly impersonal. All you have to do is…

This Minimalist Christmas Tree Is Great for the Irredeemably Lazy

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat and whatnot. Maybe you’re in the market for a Christmas tree, maybe you’re not. Maybe you’d like to be in said market, but you are extremely, extremely lazy. Treeasy’s got your back, that is, if you don’t mind something bare and metallic. Designed by José Manuel Rebert…

These Pictures of NYC From a Bicycle’s Perspective Are Beautiful

There are all kinds of ways to get great, clever pictures. You can strap your DSLR to the frame of your bike and get amazing angles at high speeds, for instance. That’s what photographer Tom Olesnevich did with his project “NYC By Bike” and the results are fantastic. The pictures were taken with a Nikon…

Nokia Hired An Entire Orchestra Just To Put Out a Couple of Measly Ringtones

Nokia was looking at some of its numbers when somebody noticed that the popularity of classical music ringtones was pretty high, second most popular. So did they shrug this inane newes off with amused sighs and feeble “that’s neat”s? Not at all. They went out and hired a whole 55-piece orchestra to whip up 25…

Insane Blasts of Heat Could Make Flash Memory Live Longer Than Ever

Flash memory is fast, it’s stable, but it’s not without its flaws. It has a tendency to wear out after too many write-erase cycles, for example. Now there’s a way to deal with that problem, and it could lead to self-healing NAND flash memory that could last for much, much longer than the stuff we…

Watch this Band Play with Killer Gunmetal Instruments

Confiscated weapons are always destroyed, but that doesn’t mean the wreckage can’t be used for something. Artist Pedro Reyes took the remains of 6,700 guns—many of which had probably seen some action—and used their dismembered parts to build instruments for a makeshift gunmetal orchestra. The instruments were all constructed out of pistols, shotguns, and even…

New Apple Patent Outlines The Wireless Charging Future We’re All Dreaming Of

Truly wireless charging, it’s a tech utopia we all long for. Sure, we’re getting there, but it still requires contact, which is only slightly better. If places like Starbucks starts putting pads in their tables, hooray, but it’s a far cry from a real charging zone. A recent Apple patent outlines just that, the wireless…

MIT’s Reconfigurable Robots Are Tiny Transformers That Will Turn Into Anything

The idea of transformers is cool even when they just turn from one thing to another, so how much cooler would they be if they could form into anything? That’s the goal MIT aims to achieve with their tiny reconfigurable chain links that could be the Swiss Army knife of robotics. The idea is to…

Thoughtful Gifts For Your Sainted Mother

She birthed you. She nurtured you. She took way too many pictures of you before prom. The very least you can do for the original special lady in your life is get her a decent holiday gift. Put down the Keurig, son. Try these instead. Hey there! You might notice our gift guides look a…

How To Watch Every TV Ad Apple Has Ever Made

Feel like taking a little trip back in tech time? What better way to do that than to watch a whole bunch of ridiculously old ads? The appropriately named YouTuber EveryAppleAds can help you out with just that, and put together this playlist that claims to include every Apple ad for TV. Ever. It’s a…

This Radio Won’t Shut Up Until You Shove a Cork In It

You use buttons to turn things off and on all the time, and it gets boring. Surely there are cleverer ways to go about such a toggle. That’s what the designers at Skrekkøgle thought when they came up with this neat little radio that shuts up when you cram a cork in it. The radio,…