Tech News

An Electric Skateboard Controlled By Your Brainwaves

Electric skateboards are cool, in a dorky kind of way. We were impressed by the “Board of Awesomeness“, which was controlled by a wave of your hands via a Kinect. But here’s the future: a skateboard controlled by your brain. https://gizmodo.com/board-of-awesomeness-tops-30-mph-with-a-wave-of-your-5874648 Created by Chaotic Moon Labs, this follow-up to the Board of Awesomeness is referred…

Amazon Pulls 5,000 eBooks From the Kindle Store

Almost 5,000 eBooks have been pulled from the the Kindle Store because of a change made to Independent Publishers Group’s contract with the online seller. The move is a result of Amazon’s demand for upfront payment from publishers, required to host their books on the store. [Paid Content]

Launching Eight Phones on One Day Isn’t Impressive, It’s Indecisive

In the run-up to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, ZTE has just announced that it will be launching eight new phones at the event. I hate to be the one to break it to you, ZTE, but less can be more. Engadget reports that ZTE will be launching eight new handsets at…

Internet Giants to Adopt a Do-Not-Track Button

While many browsers already feature a “do not track” button, in truth they’re largely ineffectual, because advertisers and tracking companies hadn’t agreed to honor the system. Now, prompted by the Obama administration’s attempt to ensure our online privacy, that is about to change. https://gizmodo.com/can-obamas-new-consumer-privacy-bill-keep-your-data-saf-5887573 The Wall Street Journal reports that a coalition of internet companies,…

Can Obama’s New Consumer Privacy Bill Keep Your Data Safe?

Today, the Obama administration is to unveil a new Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, which it hopes to roll out in order to protect people’s privacy online. The question is, can it work? The bill sets out to give users more control: to police what data is collected, how it’s used and shared, even how…

Google Street View Is Coming to the Great Barrier Reef

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the largest natural coral formation on Earth and you’ll soon be able to see it in all its glory—from your desk. The Catlin Seaview Survey, a collaboration between Google, the University of Queensland, and the Caitlin Group, will perform a diagnostic on the reef system’s health via a panoramic underwater…

Google Translate Now Speaks Esperanto in the Off Chance You Do Too

I always viewed Esperanto, a politically-neutral artificial language created in 1887, as akin to Latin or Sanskrit—a good idea at the time but no longer relevant to the modern world. Google obviously disagrees, having added Esperanto as the 64th supported language in Google Translate. Esperanto was originally developed by L. L. Zamenhof as a means…

The Most Important Music App Nobody’s Talking About

In order for a technology to take off these days, it has to be simple. Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, Spotify – each can be summed up in a sentence or so and readily understood from the very first time you use it. Tomahawk is more complicated, but if you’re a music fan who listens to music…

Kraftwerk: Trans-Europe Express

The pioneering German electronic outfit Kraftwerk is playing an eight show retrospective at MoMA in April. EIGHT! Sadly tickets sold out in like three seconds flat and I did not get any. Instead, I will sit and listen to their entire discography in sad solitude. Kraftwerk’s shadow looms over everything from synth pop to techno…

YouPorn Gets Caught With Its Pants Down—Users’ Email and Passwords Compromised

It looks like the Internet sex site YouPorn just took one in the eye. A years-old coding error has exposed the emails and passwords of over a million of its smut-loving chat users. The YP site itself wasn’t hacked but rather its associated sex-chat site—which is run by an outside company—somehow left bales of unencrypted…

How to Quickly Open Saved Email Drafts in iOS

Here’s a tip for you iPhone users: if you want to quickly open your last email draft in iOS, just hold down the compose email button for a few seconds. Your last email draft will open up right away. Nice. For those who need things spelled out: Save an email as draft Hold down on…

OnLive Desktop Plus Hands On: They Put Windows on My iPad

How impressive is the Desktop Plus version of OnLive’s iPad software? For $4.99 a month it basically lets you run full Windows on your iPad, and at blazing speeds to boot. This is the cloud done right. Mostly. OnLive is a cloud-based gaming company, and what it has done is to take the same technology…

Stabilized Blimp Cam Provides Smooth Footage Of Everything But Hurricanes

Renting a tall crane to get a high-angle shot could soon be an expense filmmakers can avoid with this Balloon Camera designed to lift a remote control stabilized camera gimbal up to 985 feet in the air. Developed by the NHK, Japan’s equivalent of PBS or the BBC, the miniature blimp is actually best suited…

First Photos of China’s 298-Million-Year-Old Buried Forest

These are the first photos of some of the countless treasures found in the extraordinary 298-million-year-old forest discovered under coal mine in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, China. https://gizmodo.com/extraordinary-298-million-year-old-forest-discovered-un-5886774 The beautiful images show “the exceptional preservation of the fossil plants of the peat-forming swamp forest.” The research team has found entire plants and trees, allowing them to…

BuzzFeed’s Fake Twitter Campaign Wins Birthday Lobster Feast for Drug Felon

Did you hear about Robert Mills today? He’s a sad, overly-bearded man who capitalizes with desperation and demands free food from the internet. Viral meme uranium ejaculator BuzzFeed seized upon poor “Robster,” kicking off a social media campaign for the guy. Turns out, he’s a criminal! Robert Mills, who claimed he is “too poor” to…

How Much Does It Cost to Climb Mount Everest? More Than a Porsche

Alan Arnette has an excellent post on Outside detailing the costs of reaching Earth’s highest summit, Mount Everest. I’ve never thought about it before but it totally makes sense that there are a lot of things that go on to make that climb, right? And all those things cost a lot of money! Like $83,000…

Buzz Contacts for iPhone: A Faster and Smarter Contacts App That’s Better Than Apple’s

I was always confused at why Apple bothered making a contacts ‘app’ since it was nothing more than a shortcut for what was already inside the contacts tab in phone app. There was no imagination to it! Buzz Contacts is a contacts app that’s actually useful: it’s faster, better and looks reaaaally good. What does…

Buzz Contacts App Gallery

Is Google Plotting a FiOS TV Service?

When Google flips the switch on its forthcoming Fiber service later this year, a WSJ report indicates Kansas City residents might have the option to use Google as their cable tv provider as well. Just weeks after Google began laying fiber-optic cables for Google Fiber in Kansas City, the WSJ has uncovered a FCC filing…

This Is How Condoms Are Made and Tested

Condoms exist in that uncomfortable category of things we accept as part of everyday life, but don’t spend too much thinking—much less talking—about. That’s silly. To help break the ice, here’s a stimulating look at how Trojan condoms are made, because you really shouldn’t put anything on your (or your partner’s) junk without knowing where…