Tech News

The Way Kids Used Machines 100 Years Ago Is Shocking Compared to Today

Kids these days, swiping and tapping away at iPads, have absolutely no idea how to fix a mechanical spindle. But until around the Great Depression, children were free to work in factories alongside adults. It’s nothing to get nostalgic about. In the early 20th century, with a lack of child labor laws and limited safety…

Why Does LG’s Leaked Nexus Phone Have a Sparkly, Bedazzled Back?

These are alleged leaked photos of the new LG Nexus device, which fits snugly alongside rumors that multiple carriers will carry a Nexus phone this go-round, and previous leaked phones from other carriers. It looks about right, but the only question is… why does it have sequins? The backplate seems to be bedazzled with shiny…

Firefox 16 arrives today! And you probably won’t notice the difference, unless you’re a dev. [TechCrunch]

Here’s a Humongous New 8 Terabyte Thunderbolt Hard Drive

Western Digital is really getting in bed with Thunderbolt. It already has a 2TB 10,000RPM monster, and now it’s got an 8TB external drive with Thunderbolt. The MyBook 8TB is the largest consumer level Thunderbolt drive, and it works with RAID 0 and RAID 1. It comes with a Thunderbolt cable, too, which is nice.…

Installing This Axe Shelf Looks Incredibly Easy and Dangerous

With a brilliant design incorporating two axes, Köln International School of Design students Yanik Balzer and Max Kuwertz have created a shelf that makes installation an absolute breeze. You just need to find an open space on your wall, wind up, and hope that at least one side of the axe heads makes contact with…

Control Your Smartphone—Not Your NES—With This Bluetooth Power Glove

It may not have been a runaway success for Nintendo, but a company called B.i.Tech is hoping there’s still some interest in the Power Glove concept. Its BEARTek gloves wirelessly connect to your smartphone or MP3 player over Bluetooth providing full control of your device with simple fingertip taps. A series of silver pads located…

Which of These Five Brilliant App Ideas Will Win the $50K App Challenge?

Over the past month, submissions for the App Challenge came rolling in, and the five best ideas inspired by BMW’s i concept cars have been chosen. Check them out, and check back in the coming months to find out who will win $50,000 in services from Detroit Labs to help bring it to life. Here’s…

Using an iPad to Animate a Print Ad Is a Huge Waste of Time

If you happen to stumble across the ad for the 2013 Lexus ES in your favorite magazine, you’ll be able to bring it to life using a technology the carmaker’s ad agency is calling CinePrint. But ‘technology’ is a generous description since all it does is use an iPad placed under the page to play…

Twitter Might Host Its Own User-Uploaded Videos

A couple of years ago, Twitter began giving users the option of using its own servers to store photos as an alterative to the likes of TwitPic and Lockerz. Now it has become the de facto standard. According to AllThingsD, Twitter is interested in doing the same thing for video. Of course, having its own…

The Army Finally Put a GIANT LASER CANNON on a Truck

It’s been 114 years since HG Wells first described the nefarious “Heat Ray” in The War of the Worlds. And finally—finally—the US military is on the cusp of deploying a mobile high energy weapon of its very own. Luckily, ours is designed to fry incoming artillery and mortar threats, not the whole of a freshly-conquered…

New App Puts Old iOS Google Maps Back on Your iPhone—Sort Of

There’s a new app out called ClassicMap that offers a half decent fix for anyone who’s looking for an alternative to Apple’s maligned Maps app, but really just wants things back the way they were. ClassicMap is built as basically the exact same app as Apple’s new Maps, but you can switch over to a…

Lytro’s Innovative Light Field Camera: Now With Manual Controls!

When the Lytro light field camera made its way into the hands of consumers earlier this year, it did something no camera had previously done: absorb all the light rays in its field of view, making it possible to refocus the image anywhere the photographer desired. But its controls were (perhaps intentionally) simplisitic, which meant…

OKCupid Wants to Match You With a Roommate You Bone Once and Never Speak to Again

One time I went on an OKCupid date with a guy who ordered hot wings, licked his fingers, and wiped a fountain of sweat off his forehead with a paper napkin. Needless to say, I never went out with him again. It was a very dark time. And if you’re at an equally low point…

Flight of the (Robotic Spy Drone) Bumblebee

Harvard researchers have spent the past five years developing a robotic bee, and while it may never serve as a backup for whatever’s wiping out colonies across the country, it could serve as an inconspicuous alternative to spy drones. Particularly now that they’ve figured out how to steer the tiny winged bots during flight. As…

How the Hard Drive Crisis Forced a Cloud Company to Buy Up 5.5 Petabytes of Costco Storage

Flooding in Thailand made getting a hard drive a lot more expensive late last year. It wasn’t a huge deal to most of us, but for a small cloud storage company, it was almost death. Staying alive took creativity. And Costco. About a year ago, the 3TB internal drives that Backblaze—which sells unlimited cloud storage…

Dyson’s New Vacuum Attachment Equals No More Hairballs

Crazy cat ladies, rejoice! Dyson’s new hairball-sucking vacuum attachment should slurp all the loose strands out of your carpet without choking on a tangled mess of its own creation. Dyson’s Tangle-free Turbine tool attachment avoids typical entanglements because it doesn’t have any brushes. Instead, a pair of counter-rotating flexible thermoplastic polyurethane heads sit in their…

You Need a Tactical Chopstick Holster When You’re Serious About Sushi

If sashimi and maki are subjects you take very seriously, check out this over-the-top chopstick holster from Brandon, the incredibly talented 17-year-old behind Vanguard Armament. It ensures your personal set of chopsticks is always close at hand for those quick draw dining situations. The holster is made from Kydex, a thermoplastic acrylic material that can…

NetZero Still Exists, Wants You to Buy Friends With Data

NetZero, a brand left over from from the dialup days that refuses to die, has a trick up its sleeve to encourage you to buy one of its WiMAX data hotspot devices: it gives you 1GB of data every month to give away through Facebook, so you can buy friends with downloads. These friends—fictional or…

Anyone Else Having iOS Buyer’s Remorse?

Despite the problems I had with the HTC One X, I find myself missing it. More specifically—and I never thought I’d hear myself saying this—I find myself missing Android. The widgets, specifically. I just had that thing so damn dialed in. Anyone else? https://gizmodo.com/htc-one-x-after-4-months-weird-batteries-and-wimpy-gor-5931430

The LED As We Know It Is 50 Years Old Today

Fifty years ago today, Nick Holonyak, Jr. proudly demonstrated the world’s first visible light-emitting diode (LED) at General Electric. In the process, he changed the world of lighting forever. In the early 1960s, LEDs were only capable of emitting infrared light. Nick Holonyak suggested using a mixture of gallium arsenide and gallium phosphide to create…