Tech News

Food Trucks Are Increasingly Serious Terrorism Threat, Says NYC’s Fire Department

In an internal-use-only document obtained by Public Intelligence, NYC’s Fire Department outlines its concerns about the increasing number of food trucks around New York. Not only are they serious fire hazards—with large propane and gasoline tanks—but also a genuine terrorist threat. It sounds silly, but the arguments make a lot of sense: FDNY says there…

China Finally Cracks Apple’s Secret iPhone 5 Cable: Here Come the Cheap Clones

Apple doesn’t want you buying cables for your iPhone 5 (or new iPads) from anyone other than Apple, because it charges a fat $20 for each one. Luckily, we can now confirm a flood of cheap knockoff cables are real. https://gizmodo.com/first-look-at-whats-inside-apples-new-dock-adapter-its-5950947 We already know there’s a tiny security chip inside every Lightning cable that’s mandatory—the…

There’s Already an iPad Mini Knockoff

From the makers of the iPhone 5 knock-off, comes an iPad Mini knock off just one day after Apple revealed its dwarfpad. Hilarious, but also not surprising considering how much we actually knew about the baby tablet. https://gizmodo.com/chinas-already-knocking-off-the-iphone-5-5938613 The GooPad mini is an eight-inch tablet that looks just like the iPad Mini and comes with…

Shooting Challenge: Solarization

It looks simultaneously familiar and strange. Solarization reverses the shadows and highlights of an image, creating a sort of opposite world. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge, you’re going to try it out. The Challenge Take a photo. And solarize it (reversing the highlights and shadows to create a new image). Your end product should…

This Is the 13-Inch Retina MacBook Pro You Should Get

From the first time we saw the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, we’ve been thinking: “Well, that’s great, but can it be a little smaller?” Done. You can now buy a beautiful, bright, pixel-perfect display attached to a souped-up ultrabook. But the new models might not be everything you dreamed of. Here’s a guide to figuring…

Drones and Swarm Bots Working Together Is an Adorable Preview of Mankind’s Downfall

Up until now the divide and conquer technique was mankind’s best approach to quelling any robot uprisings. But now that self-assembling swarm bots—scary in their own right—are teaming up with eye-in-the-sky drones to tackle tricky obstacles, we’re pretty much screwed. Demonstrated by a team of researchers at the 2012 Intelligent Robots and Systems conference, this…

You Don’t Own the Books on Your Kindle

On a dark and stormy night, an employee of your local bookstore strolls into your home, starts tossing books you’d purchased over the last few years into a box, and – despite your protest – takes them all away without saying a word. Thankfully that’s not what happened to Linn Jordet Nygaard. Well, not exactly.…

This Emotional Dimmer Switch Guilts You Into Living in the Dark

Designer Danny Taylor created this smiley/frowny dimmer switch concept to help teach kids about responsible energy use. When the lights are off, the dimmer switch expresses its approval with a big smile across its face. But when the lights are on, a disapproving frown will be staring at you until you stop your wasteful ways.…

Photographing Bikini-Clad Surfers in Paradise Is a Tough Job, but Someone’s Gotta Do It

Costa Rica isn’t just a Central American nation whose chief exports include coffee, electronic components, and utter relaxation — it’s also where we sent pro-skiier-turned-photographer Scott Rinckenberger as part of our Intel-Inspired Ultrabook™ Shooting Challenge. So if you picked this land of surf and sun, you could be the big winner of our final Ultrabook™…

Skype 6 is here for Windows and Mac, with retina support, better Facebook integration, and just as many awkward chats.

This Tracker Torpedo Keeps Social Tabs on Sand Tiger Sharks

Sand Tiger sharks have been patrolling coastal waters worldwide for more than 250,000 years. But with only a pair of pups born every few years, this placid apex predator is succumbing to human pressures. Part of the problem is that we still know virtually nothing about their habits—we can’t help them if we don’t understand…

The Grand Canyon Is About to Get Google Street View

A team of Google employees is currently hiking through the Grand Canyon collecting the images for what will eventually become a Google Street View map of the park. (Man, working at Google sounds terrible.) The panoramic photos for the map are being collected using that funny-looking Street View camera mounted on the human being above.…

This Is the iPad Mini You Should Get

The iPad Mini is just a shrunken down iPad 2 in a lot of ways, but it is a different device with uses that will be somewhat different. So what do you need in an iPad mini? We think we have it figured out. https://gizmodo.com/ipad-mini-everything-you-need-to-know-5953978 For Almost Everybody It’s the 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad Mini,…

Elevator Shelving Means You’ll Never Have To Reach Again

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but this time it was actually the mother of Canadian inventor Shlomo Shwartz. When he saw her using a stool to grab something from an out-of-reach shelf, he was inspired to come up with a safer solution. And so the Shelevator—an elevator for shelves—was born. The contraption…

Why the Moon Looks Bigger on Some Nights than It Does on Others

The moon looks HUGE some nights, right? Well, yes, sort of, to you—but only because your tiny human brain contextualizes it as larger sometimes than others. It’s never actually any closer. It’s just a confluence of a few different optical illusions screwing with your head. So here’s what happens. First, the moon seems larger, usually,…

If You’ve Shopped at Barnes and Noble Recently, Your Credit Card Info Is at Risk

Barnes and Noble just posted a notice informing customers that PIN pads in 63 stores across the country have been tampered with. The compromised PIN pads could have recorded your PIN number. Not good. If you’ve shopped at a brick and mortar Barnes and Noble over the last couple of months, keep a closer watch…

Mapless Globe Plays the Sounds of the Earth When You Spin It

Yuri Suzuki has been traveling the world, using a dictaphone to collect local sounds of different countries since 2009. With these audio field notes, he’s turned a globe into a record that plays these sounds when it spins for a 30-minute audio tour of the world called “The Sound of the Earth.” The artist engraved…

Laser Cutting Table For Amateurs Slices What You Sketch

In the not-too-distant future home manufacturing will be as commonplace as home printing. Devices like the Makerbot will fuel the revolution, but only when they become as easy to use as this Constructable that precisely cuts materials based on doodles made with a laser pointer. https://gizmodo.com/the-makerbot-replicator-2-prints-a-bigger-more-detaile-5944706 Users don’t have to master computer-aided design software in…

The Placebo Effect May Be Genetic

The placebo effect seems to make little sense: get ill, take a dummy pill, and you’ll recover in much the same way as someone taking real drugs. While there have been many theories bandied about over the years to explain how it works, new evidence suggests that it may be genetic. https://gizmodo.com/we-could-have-evolved-the-placebo-effect-to-save-energy-5940942 A team of…

The Lowly Button Gets a Brilliant Upgrade

There should be a special Nobel Prize set aside for geniuses who find ways to improve the simplest things in life. And this year’s award would go to Shapeways user OliveBird, whose Button 2.0 turns any shirt into a convenient headphone wrangler. It’s not to say that the traditional button design isn’t useful. It’s just…