Tech News

This New Vampire Dinosaur Will Haunt Your Dreams Tonight

Look at this bastard. What an ugly freaky critter. And small, too. “Punk-sized,” according to its discoverer, a paleontologist and professor at the University of Chicago. The name of this new dinosaur species is Pegomastax africanus (“thick jaw from Africa”) but I will call him Velocichicken. Velocichicken punkus. Because, I mean, look at this goddamn…

Berlin Hyper-Lapse Is Almost More Stunning Than Visiting It In Person

If you’re getting bored of the traditional timelapse tour of a major metropolitan city, this hyper-lapse run through Berlin should reinvigorate your passion for virtual tourism. Its frantic crash zooms and warped panoramic shots are the video equivalent of HDRI photography. Except, you know, not horribly unappealing to the eye. Shot with a Nikon D7000…

How Digg Was Saved in Just Six Weeks

The last time Digg was something worth thinking about, Iraq was in the midst of civil war and Justin Timberlake was on the radio. The site went to ruin. It sold for pocket change. And now, with no warning, it’s back—and it’s beautiful. And the team that pulled it off isn’t sure what to do…

Pixel Ruler Ensures Your App Doodles Are Perfectly Proportionate

Though the ultimate destination will most likely be an LCD display, many apps begin their lives as nothing more than concept sketches on paper. And the next time you start doodling your brilliant app idea, this Pixel Ruler will ensure the various elements in its user interface are perfectly in proportion. Along one edge of…

Steve Jobs Wanted Google Search Eradicated from iOS

Bloomberg Businessweek’s analytical dissection of Apple post-iPhone 5 launch is mostly full of things we already knew: Tim Cook is different than Steve Jobs. Apple is still doing really, really, phenomenally well. Everyone hates Apple Maps. But one thing that stood out was the fact that Steve Jobs was so incensed with Google that he…

This Sweating Rooftop Sounds Like a Terrible Idea

A team of researchers at ETH Zurich has developed a rooftop mat made of a five-millimeter-thick polymer that can absorb water when it rains. The material changes properties along with the temperature—the mat becomes hydrophobic as it warms up, and the water is expelled, extracting heat from the building in a process the researchers compare…

How the US Navy Uses the Largest Hospital Ships In the World to Help Everyone

This is the USNS Comfort next to a Nimitz-class supercarrier, the biggest war ship in the world. Together with its twin, the USNS Mercy, they are the largest hospital ships on the oceans, the second largest hospital in the US and the fifth largest on the planet. Their labor is admirable, helping tens of thousands…

This Year’s Best Halloween Costume Is Cheap, Easy, and Awesome

Last year around this time, a NASA JPL engineer blew us away with a Halloween costume that used two iPads to create the illusion of a gaping hole in his chest. Cool, if you could afford two iPads. For the 99 percent of us that couldn’t, he promised that his 2012 costume would be equally…

This Espresso Maker Is the Most Beautiful Thing You’ll Ever Wake Up To

You’ve been spoiled by the five-buck cup of exotic single-origin pour-over coffee. It’s time to upgrade your home equipment. At this rate, your caffeine addiction is cutting into your cocktail budget. Forget the primitive French press, or a fantastic newfangled countertop machine. Have the best of both worlds—and unshackle yourself from the baristacracy—with this chrome…

Whoa, An Actually Useful Way to Use QR Codes (Or: A Lazy Parent’s List of the 20 Most Popular Christmas Toys)

So Target has done the impossible. It’s used QR codes in a way that is so useful that it actually outweighs how goofy, unwieldy, and ineffectual they are. It does this by, essentially, by simplifying something even worse: Holiday shopping at Target. The idea is that the 20 most popular toys for kids will all…

Wanna Pay for Things Using Square’s Smartphone App? Here’s Every Business That Will Let You Do That

Square Wallet—formerly Pay With Square; formerly Square Card Case; formerly something else probably—is a platform agnostic alternative to Google Wallet, Apple Passbook and, soon, Microsoft Wallet. It allows you to pay for goods using only your phone. But knowing which businesses actually support this technologically-advanced method of mercantilism can be harrowing. Lucky for you, Square…

Subliminal Flickering Extends TV Ads To Your Phone

The idea of an interactive TV experience where additional information about a show or a product could be simultaneously accessed on another device has been tossed around for a while. But Fujitsu’s new subliminal transmission technology might finally make it an easy and unobtrusive reality. Instead of visual cues like on-screen QR codes which can…

T-Mobile and MetroPCS will merge, boosting T-Mo from the fourth-largest operator to the…fourth-largest operator. [LAT]

Your iPhone Gets Google Maps Street View Back Tomorrow

Google Maps isn’t really gone from iPhones in iOS 6. You can still get it through the vastly inferior mobile version of its browser-based web app. Tim Cook even suggested you try it if you’re dissatisfied with Apple Maps. In a recent video about Google Maps, Señor Walt Mossberg notes that the company will be…

Birdcage Vases Make Your Plants Even Prettier

These cage planters are utterly gorgeous. Made out of a combination of concrete and wire, each with a walnut base, the pretty pots were just shown at the London Design Festival. The designer, Seung-Yong Song of South Korea, describes them better than anyone else can: Lightness and heaviness, lines and lumps, smoothness and roughness, coldness…

NHK’s 8K TV Spawns a Pair of Virtual Hi-Def Binoculars

NHK’s Super Hi-Vision 8K technology certainly makes for breathtaking demos. But you can do more than just melt eyeballs with a resolution of 7680×4320. Since that’s exactly 16 times as much resolution as a 1080P signal, NHK has cooked up a pair of prototype virtual HD binoculars that let users zoom in on ultra hi-def…

How Makers Are Desktop-Fabricating a Revolution of Things

When I was in high school in the late 1970’s, we had workshop class as part of the “Industrial Arts” curriculum. It wasn’t quite clear why this was a required credit—we lived in suburb of Washington, D.C., and there were no factories around and most of my friends’ parents were lawyers and government workers. But…

Nokia Brings a Very Dull Knife To the Smartphone Fight

Nokia has managed to sidestep ruin with its Lumia smartphones that are doing surprisingly well in a market that’s already saturated with iPhones, Android handsets, and Blackberries. They’ve successfully carved out a small niche with devices that genuinely have something new to offer in terms of UI and capabilities. So why has it pegged its…

These Goggles Film Your Daring Deeds From Right Between Your Eyes

While most adrenaline junkies love the GoPro, here’s a point-of-view camera solution that never gets in the way: a pair of goggles that shoot 1080p video and 8 megapixel photos, from right between your eyes. Made by Colorado-based Zeal, the iON goggles pack a 170-degree wide-angle camera lens to shoot… well, whatever you want to…

Sony’s Playstation Mobile store is live with tons of games and one lonely app for Vita and PS-certified Androids. [Sony]