Tech News

Is the USB End of Your Lightning Cable Getting Stuck In Your Computer?

Cnet says that iPhone 5 owners are complaining about the USB end of their Lightning cables getting stuck in their computer. And apparently, Apple is willing to replace the cable. Has this been a problem for anyone else? [Cnet]

How Jack Daniels Still Hand Crafts Every Aging Barrel

In a world where automation and assembly line robots have driven craftsmanship to near extinction, it’s nice to see a facility where humans still play an important role in production. Birth of a Barrel is a beautiful look at the factory where Jack Daniels’ employees are very much still involved in the creation of the…

Facebook and Dropbox have extended their relationship to include file sharing within Groups, for you personable types.

13 Sad Robots

Like gods on earth, we created humanoid robots in our own image. Or at least tried to. Our creations make for pathetic humans. These poor, poor mechanized bastards. Look at this robot demonstrate her “emotionless, neutral posture.” It’s actually called that. How hilarious and cruel. Photo: Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Meet two-foot-tall NAO. He’s just taking a…

Flip Torch Zippo: All the Light, None of the Burning

For a different kind of light in your pocket, swap out your official Zippo for this lookalike that has the flint wheel and wick replaced with a set of ultra-bright white LEDs. It will never get even remotely hot enough to light a cigarette, but should help you find a more reliable source of fire…

Is Putting Pictures of Missing Children on 404 Pages Effective?

In Europe, a group called NotFound.org is replacing 404 reports with pictures and information about missing children. It’s a smart way to occupy that real estate, especially considering in the U.S. alone, 800,000 kids go missing every year. But could this method actually help? Are there any negative side-effects? And aside from being used as…

What It’s Like to Shoot the Fastest Cars on Earth

If Miami is good enough for LeBron and Will Smith, it’s good enough to be the answer to our latest Intel-Inspired Ultrabook™ Shooting Challenge contest. So if you picked Magic City as the place where we sent photographer Douglas Sonders, you could have won an Ultrabook™ of your own. Phase One camera in hand, Douglas…

Concrete Wallpaper Perfects That Cozy Cold War Bunker Look

If you grew up at the height of the Cold War and remember spending many nights in your family’s fallout shelter, perhaps warm colors and relaxing patterns just don’t feel homey to you. If stark gray walls are the only thing that says ‘home sweet home’ this faux concrete wallpaper turns any room into an…

The 233-Foot Tall, 4600-Ton Crane That Builds Aircraft Carriers

Aircraft carriers are, how to say, big. Building them is a lot easier if you have a really, really big crane. Meet Big Blue. She’s the largest crane in the western hemisphere, and she’s hard at work piecing together the new Ford-class aircraft carriers in Newport News, Virginia. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-what-makes-the-uss-gerald-r-ford-the-best-airc-5944380 Big Blue is a gantry style…

Why You’ll Be Seeing TI’s OMAP Chipset in More Cars and Fewer Smartphones

Texas Instrument’s OMAP4 mobile chipset is quite good. In fact, you’ll be seeing it in the Kindle Fire HD. But despite the technical proficiency of that piece of silicon, the company has bigger plans for its technology than just tablets and smartphones: it wants to be in cars. According to Reuters, the company is not…

The 20 Most Common PINs Are Painfully Obvious

We already know people are really bad at picking passwords, but they’re also god awful at choosing obvious, crackable credit card PINs. In fact, the most common four-digit code is not-so shockingly, 1-2-3-4. Come on, people. Privacy guru Nick Berry crunched the numbers from previously exposed pass codes to find the 20 most popular and…

This Vintage Reverb Amp Lets You Wail Like It’s 1982

Reverb on some songs is like a cowbell—once it hits your ears, the only answer is more. You’ll have as much echo as your tape deck can handle with this $89 Sansui RA-700 reverberation amplifier. To top it off, this Japanese unit has a rainbow LCD display—a trippy visual punctuation to show where your reverb…

Gorgeous Cameras and the Nerds Who Love Them

Biannual photography trade show Photokina took place last week in Cologne, Germany. It was a gathering of companies, journalists, and enthusiasts, all there to swoon over the latest camera gear. If you couldn’t make the trip, gaze upon this symphonic ode to camera lovers everywhere. Camera Geeks is a wonderful little creation by famed DSLR…

The Best SSD: Corsair Neutron GTX 256GB vs. Samsung 840 Pro 256GB

The pace of development in the SSD world is staggeringly awesome, as each generation of SSD controllers has delivered substantial increases in performance and reliability, while at the same time we’ve seen flash prices drop like a stone. It’s a great time to be storing and accessing data, for sure, but we’ve also seen the…

See-Through Solar Panels Are a Window To Wider Usage

New technologies have a greater chance at being accepted and embraced when they’re easy to adopt. And to help the spread of solar power Sharp has developed a new see-through solar cell, allowing them to be used as architectural accents that blend into a building. So instead of having to cover a roof or fill…

Java Vulnerability Could Affect a Billion Macs and PCs

Every currently supported version of Java is vulnerable to a new exploit, according to Adam Gowdiak, a security expert who is known for finding Java exploits. That could include up to a billion computers, according to Oracle’s instillation statistics. Gowdiak has sent the source code of the vulnerability, which can be used to install malware…

The New Apple: It Doesn’t Just Work

Some people willingly overpay for half-baked features in obscure gadgets. These are the early adopters of the world, and they know full well that the things they buy will not work perfectly. Hiccups and glitches are just part of the contract, the accepted trade-off for being first. Apple’s customers are not these people—iPhones are the…

This Is the Closest View of Mars Yet

The Mars Curiosity Rover has touched a Martian rock for the first time. And, in the process, it gave us the closest, most detailed view of the Red Planet (a tiny part of it) yet, using her Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at ten, two and one inches from the rock. The target was…

Kindle Fire HD’s ad opt-out will include getting rid of Recommended items on the home screen after an upcoming patch.

This Trotter-Shaped Bench Looks Good Enough to Eat

There are few things more pleasant in life than having a nice comfortable sit down. Apart, perhaps, from pork. So why not combine the two? That’s exactly what Portuguese designer Fernando Brizio did by creating pé de porco—literally, pig foot—which is simultaneously a porcine trotter and comfortable bench. Made from cork oak sourced from the…