Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Lia Vega, a 2-year-old girl, has been pretending to be a real life superhero by cutely wearing a towel as a cape. Why? Because she saved her mom’s life by making a phone call no one knew she knew how to do. Lia’s mom, Larissa Taylor, had collapsed one night while washing Lia’s bottle and…
The charming rural scene pictured above actually contains 50 tons of discarded water bottles and sandwich containers, which were blended up and refashioned into this 90-foot-long plastic bridge. According to maker Vertech, which assembled the project with the help of teams from Rutgers university in the US and Cardiff uni, the bridge took a total…
When you think of Facebook you don’t exactly think ‘environmentally friendly’. All those data centres burning through electricity, powering your virtual social lives. Facebook’s first push out of the US might be a tad kinder to the environment, using Arctic cooling. Facebook’s first non-US data centre will be built on the edge of the Arctic…
Looks like Google’s latest flagship Android phone is slightly less awesome than we thought it was — no Corning Gorilla glass, just ‘fortified glass’. Of course Samsung didn’t actually speak about the glass originally, we just hoped-and-wished it was furnished in Gorilla. [Twitter via Phandroid via Android and Me via Engadget via Gizmodo UK] Our…
Sony-only phones are coming back as predicted. The Japanese electronics giant has announced that it will acquire Ericsson’s share of Sony Ericsson partnership, bringing it into the Sony ‘platform of network-connected’ products. Sony will be throwing Ericsson around $1.45 billion for their half of the company, as well as ownership of a bunch of patents…
Between Amazon, iPods, and various external hard drives, my music collection is spread far and wide over my digital footprint. But it doesn’t really matter where the media is coming from, the Pioneer Music Tap will play it. Designed for use as either a table top stereo or as a smaller satellite player to accompany…
Finally, E. coli is good for something other than making you regret not washing that lettuce better. Boffins at the Imperial College London have employed the bacteria as living Boolean logic gates—potential building blocks for bio-computers of the future. The research team, led by Baojun Wang, created the AND gate within a bacterial host using…
Google published its biannual Transparency Report yesterday showing US Law Enforcement and courts requested the removal of 757 items from Google’s servers—mostly Youtube videos depicting acts of police brutality. Check out the full list of American requests—plus those from other countries around the world—here and further analysis at The Register.
Removing tumors at the base of the skull have traditionally required going in through the facial area—sometimes with disfiguring results. However, a doctor at John Hopkins University has figured out how to reach the back of your head using the skulls natural openings. “I looked at the ‘window’ that already exists in the skull, above…
The Nokia 2110 was somewhat unremarkable on the surface when it first appeared in 1994. It wasn’t impossibly pint-sized, nor did it have an overly complex industrial design. But it had something that no other phone at the time had: software. The software UI was more advanced than any other available cellphone. And with each…
The recently-assembled super-committee tasked with saving the US from financial disaster by year’s end wants to trade dollar bills for dollar…coins? Wait, don’t we already have some of those that nobody uses? This controversial plan has been floated before but has met with a tepid response from most Americans and strong lobbying efforts from both…
Richard Stallman is leader of the free software movement and father of GNU. Naturally, he’s in demand as a speaker. And so NATURALLY he has a completely ride-the-orangutan insane tour rider. It starts off relatively normally. It tells you how to pronounce GNU, gives some brief biographical data, and basically gives you a run down…
The ESNET security company is reporting that the Tsunami Trojan originally developed for Linux systems has been ported to OSX. The Trojan is designed to hijack an infected system and use its network connection in DDoS attacks or to automatically download more malware. More details are available at MacWorld.
Instead of a silent drive motor that focuses the lens with barely a whisper, this faux Nikkor AF-S 55-200mm lens packs a speaker cone and the requisite electronics to play your music. It’s also officially bumped the Nikon 1 off the top of my Christmas wish list. https://gizmodo.com/nikon-1-a-tiny-camera-with-interchangeable-lenses-that-5842350 Like the Nikon and Canon mugs and…
This is getting too easy. Do you like tasty food? Butter? Candy? Yes? Yes, of course. Do you like spastic, flashing GIFs? If not, leave and don’t come back. What about microwave radiation? Yes, God yes. Combine them, internet. Behold: Microwhat is a website of GIFs, each one showing a rapidly flashing transition between pre…
Americans are occupying more than Wall Street, and some cops are clamping down way harder than those in Manhattan. In Oakland, riot police attacked with tear gas, rubber bullets, and, most vividly—flash bangs. Meet the M84 stun grenade. The M84 is the Army’s friend. You’ve probably played with a virtual one in games like Call…
Once he was the insurmountable apogee of Jeopardy excellence. Then IBM devised a machine that defeated him. Today Ken Jennings posted a photo blasting IBM. The dethroned champ is casting his lot with the OWS crowd in protest of Watson. Ken Jennings is pissed. Understandably so! IBM poured millions into building Watson—a machine!—to beat him.…
Your fancy new iPhone deserves a fancy new case lest it get dinged, scratched or covered in unsightly fingerprints. But Miniwiz thinks you’d be better off wrapping it in discarded rice husks and plastic bottle caps, some of the ingredients that go into its completely recycled Re-Case. The rice husks are reclaimed from farmers who…
As long as you’re not chugging hydrochloric acid, your fragging thirst quencher of choice shouldn’t be able to fry the impending AZiO’s Levetron Mech4. The look’s not for everyone (MechWarrior fetishists notwithstanding), but the spill proof guts sure are. Even if you’re not trying to shoot someone in the face, the odds are decent that…
Flickr is a shell of what it used to be, Instagram makes everyone’s pictures look the same and Picasa isn’t really ideal for browsing great pictures taken by a great community. 500px, on the other hand, seems to only have great pictures. Their iPad app is an extremely elegant way to browse them. What’s it…
