Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The poultry industry routinely takes heat for the densely-crowded conditions birds are subjected to. But what if the animals didn’t feel pain or suffer stress? One student thinks he has the solution—raise chickens like vegetables by lobotomizing the lot of them. Architecture student André Ford has presented a very radical solution increase the efficiency and…
While both Safari and IE collapsed under the pressure from hackers at last year’s Pwn2Own contest, not one person was able to crack Chrome. This year, Google’s sweetening the pot with a million dollars in prizes to successful exploiters. In fact, Chrome is the only browser in the contest’s six year history to not be…
I’ve had a Rubik’s Cube sitting on my desk for the better part of a year and still haven’t solved it. Marcell Endrey of Hungary needed less than a half minute to blow through his during a recent competition. Endrey turned in the record-breaking score during the blindfolded Rubik’s Cube challenge at this year’s Zonhoven…
The first winged roller coaster built on British soil is has begun testing ahead of its opening this Spring. The ride is apparently so violent that some test dummies have come back sans limbs. The Swarm is being built at Thorpe Park in Surrey. Being “winged,” riders’ legs will hang freely from their seats as…
Yahoo and Facebook used to be BFFs, with the social network driving a significant amount of traffic to both Yahoo’s Flickr and email client. So why is Yahoo suddenly accusing Facebook of as many as twenty patent infringements just ahead of its IPO? Yahoo made the announcement today via the New York Times. Facebook was…
For as ubiquitous a word as “dude” is, etymologists don’t actually know how or where it started. But that hasn’t stopped them from suggesting a wide array of possibilities. And the suggestions aren’t of the flattering kind. They range from dude being an abbreviation for “dudenkop,” the German word for “blockhead,” to it being the…
Mercedes-Benz has announced its plans to fully integrate the the driver’s iPhone as well as Siri assistant into future A-Class models. It’ll be like having your own personal, mildly-incompetent HAL. Mercedes announced the plans today. A-Class owners will first load the Drive Kit Plus app onto their phones. They’ll be able to access content—including Facebook…
Blu & Exile’s Below the Heavens makes me miss 2007. No special reason—it wasn’t that great a year, really—but it was a super-intelligent, emotionally honest album that just wedged itself exactly in that year for me. Weirdly, Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them, which was recorded in 2009, and released this…
There are plenty of things iOS can do that Android can’t—Siri and Facetime, for example. However, Android may soon be getting its own exclusive feature: P2P file sharing courtesy of uTorrent, the most-used torrent client in the Western World. BitTorrent, the parent company of uTorrent, is reportedly developing a mobile P2P file sharing client for…
According to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, Facebook going public could be very good to more than just investors and longtime employees. Their estimates have the IPO netting the state in the neighborhood of $2.45 billion from income taxes. Since Facebook hasn’t actually sold any stock just yet, California’s estimate is currently nothing more than an…
In the prime of his filmmaking career, French director Jacques Tati had an obsession with technology and modernism. More specifically, he was fascinated with the ways in which it was changing our behavior. Of his films that tackle these themes, 1958’s Mon Oncle is the one that really looked deeply at the increasingly significant role…
Animal has discovered the list of words that the Department of Homeland Security specifically target when they monitor Tweets and Facebook posts and it’s, um, comprehensive. Ever tweet about the weather? Or used ‘closure’, ‘cloud’, ‘home grown’, ‘bart’, ‘subway’ or hell even ‘social media’ in your posts? YOU’RE ATTRACTING ATTENTION FROM THE DHS!! The full…
As more and more small white dots are added to this black and white checkerboard in arrow patterns, your eyes are automatically drawn towards its center and you’ll start to start to think it looks warped. But it’s not. Excuse me while I go vomit. All those connect-the-dot puzzles I did as a kid must…
You know that free 3G connection on your Kindle that lets you download books from anywhere you are? Well a hacker named Andrew D’Angelo has found a way to tether to the ereader giving you free internet access on another device. Don’t get too excited, though, there are a few caveats to the hack. For…
Apple sent out notice to its developers today of a new initiative called Developer ID, which will combat malware on OS X alongside the new-to-Mountain-Lion Gatekeeper. It’s to keep us, the users, safe. But could it also be the next step toward a future where Apple decides what you can install on your Mac? Here’s…
If you’re any self-respecting music fan, there was probably a point in time where you wanted to make music yourself. And then you realized you didn’t have any talent. And then you realized you couldn’t afford the instruments. The Guitar Collection: George Harrison won’t solve your talent or instrument problem but at least it’ll let…
No—not an Onion article. A Washington, DC-area plastic surgeon is being hit with patients rendered so self-conscious by their video chatting visages that they’re asking for phone-specific facelifts. Technology is great except when it’s so, so awful. Of course it’s not fair to blame the tech alone, here—you have to include the horrible vain people…
If this month’s previous birth control terror wasn’t enough to scare you celibate, try the pharmaceutical industry’s latest screwup: this time the pills aren’t fake, they’re just assembled backwards! https://gizmodo.com/warning-those-morning-after-pills-may-be-fake-5834531 The FDA says packs of Glenmark’s “Norgestimate and Ethinyl Estradiol Tablets USP” (above) have essentially been put together in reverse—the last pill is placed first,…
This isn’t a scene from John Woo’s latest movie but are rather of real life security guards practicing their counter-terrorist plan in South Korea. It’s a run through of what could go wrong at the Nuclear Security Summit and how the security force would react: rappelling, spiderman webs, martial arts and more. I’d totally watch…
Until about 2004, most scientists believed that women were born with all the reproductive eggs they would have for the rest of their lives. Then a scientist named Jonathan Tilly published research that claimed women might actually replenish their supply of eggs throughout their lives. It was shocking. The previous school of thought was that…
