Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Before you get too excited at the prospect of conveniently spraying hot coffee or other beverages directly into your mouth, this $16 insulated water bottle masquerading as an aerosol can is actually lacking any kind of propellants. So what could have been a revolution in refreshment, ends up being nothing more than a novel way…
Kindle Touches are now out of stock. Hot new front-lit version on the horizon maybe? [Engadget]
Manning the turret atop an armored vehicle is among the most essential and dangerous assignments in a military convoy. Gunners must stand exposed through a hole in the vehicle’s roof while laying cover and engaging targets. To reduce gunner casualties, the US military designed a Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, a joystick-driven killing machine called…
When that little blue “Sign in with Facebook” button first appeared, it was a little creepy. Who wants Facebook to know about every single service or app they are using online? Well it turned out to be an amazingly convenient tool—or some of us see it that way. No more forms! But, uh, it seems…
Purported iPhone 5 parts just keep on leaking out, and this time around, photos from Apple.pro are showing what could quite possibly be a front-facing NFC chip. https://gizmodo.com/iphone-5-the-complete-rumor-roundup-5930100 Positioned next to the front-facing camera, the new piece of hardware revealed in the shots are suspiciously NFC chip-shaped, and are located exactly where NFC chips appear…
This is what happens when a (gigantic) dust devil forms over reddish orange soil and the light is just right: a red dust devil so vivid and tall that it looks like a cartoon. I wonder if the Tasmanian Devil is inside. Dust devils are not uncommon. You can seen them in the summer, especially…
The Wall Street Journal reports that working conditions are getting better at the embattled Foxconn manufacturing facility where 150,000 Chinese workers assemble iPhones and iPads for the rest of the world. According to the report, wages have been raised by 16 percent and the probation period before entry-level workers are accepted as permanent has been…
Conventional refrigeration does an incredible job keeping food fresh. But that technology hasn’t helped desert dwellers without steady electricity. A more recent development in refrigeration—the Zeer pot-in-pot refrigerator—only requires water, sand, and a hot, dry climate to preserve produce through evaporative cooling. Here’s how to make the simple gadget. Materials and Tools Required two terra…
Amazon’s $79 per year Prime delivery service has passed its totally free Super Saver delivery in popularity. That’s, well, kind of a big deal. Amazon Prime has been the best deal in tech for a while now, even while Amazon loses about $11 per year on each customer. But it’s kind of amazing that more…
Public transit is a great way to reduce traffic and gridlock in a crowded city. But do those benefits still apply when the streets are filled with 100 foot buses like the Fraunhofer Institute’s AutoTram Extra Grand? Forget tight corners; this thing might not even make it through a green light. The AutoTram Extra Grand…
Last Friday, Samsung got punched in its collective corporate throat by Apple’s legal team and a jury of its peers. Apple chief Tim Cook immediately celebrated… with a memo! Samsung’s memo was less fun. Much less fun. But hopeful! https://gizmodo.com/read-tim-cooks-blisteringly-cheerful-memo-to-apple-empl-5937837 The Samsung memo is pretty much the corporate legal equivalent of Bill Pullman’s presidential speech…
The New York Times sold About.com for $300 million. Kind of like selling your old SparkNotes printouts for beer money.
If preparing a bowl of Ramen Noodles maxes out your culinary capabilities, you might want to consider a trip to the Tokyo Institute of Technology to enhance your skillset in the kitchen. Researchers there have developed a cooking simulator complete with virtual vegetables that can actually burn, and a force feedback frying pan that lets…
We’d heard Apple and Samsung’s responses to Friday’s lopsided decision in the pair’s patent scuffle fairly quickly. But there was a third party that felt the impact every bit as much as the two litigants: Google. And it had been quiet as a dormouse, until late last night. https://gizmodo.com/read-tim-cooks-blisteringly-cheerful-memo-to-apple-empl-5937837 The Verge reports that Google, with…
There are probably a lot of you out there who’ve already seen this movie, but it’s worth mentioning for those of you who haven’t. It’s great. As an added bonus, a lot of you have probably seen The Dark Night Rises recently and Christian Bale’s character is so wildly different in The Fighter that it’s…
If you need a song to get you revved up and ready to go, look no further; Adebisi Shank has you covered. This Irish trio puts out some seriously upbeat math-rocky craziness, and Genki Shank from their album This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank is a great introduction. A bit…
Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco had something of a problem with loud customers being all “hipstery” and annoying the neighbors, so they posted a notice kindly asking hipsters to shut the hell up. Only a few days later, the sign had to be amended to include another forbidden act which had suddenly become popular:…
Solar panels are a great way to generate sustainable electricity. They’re not as great at looking pretty. This spherical-lens solar energy generator designed by André Broessel, on the other hand, is strikingly sleek. By using a ball lens, and positioning it just right, Broessel was able to create a generator that’s not only awesome-looking, but…
Mankind has been able to accomplish some pretty impressive things, but some of them were around long before we figured them out. Ants, for instance, hunt for food in a way that’s basically the same as the Internet’s Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and they were doing it long before the Internet was around. It all…
Your smartphone can do a lot, but how much would you have to pay to get that same kind of functionality out of traditional, single-purpose gadgets? The Next Web did the math on it, and the answer is: A lot. If you were to buy gadgets to replace all of your phone’s built-in features (a…
