Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Sure, brain wave-controlled robots, music, cell-phones, and games give us tech lust, but Toyota’s announcement that it’s developed a way to control a wheel chair—without the need for movement or voice—fills me with equal amounts of awesome. https://gizmodo.com/honda-asimo-creators-turning-your-brain-into-the-ultima-5191515 Seeing technology applied in a field that has the potential to help so many makes for a…
Remember the Neurosky mind-gaming headset we tried earlier this year? The one that actually worked? It’s getting a free SDK. https://gizmodo.com/neurosky-mindset-hands-on-brainwave-gameplay-5184287 This means both developers at large studios as well as dudes in their basement can make programs and games that do things with the data generated by the headset. And you generate data just…
Paul Fryer’s Vacuum Tube Chess set—one of only seven made—actually have pieces that light up when they’re plugged in to the board. Now you’ll know exactly when someone picks up a piece from the board. [Allvisualarts via MAKE via BBG]
We don’t know what the LED X found on the side of this Asus Blu-ray drive is supposed to symbolize to the people of Earth, but we aren’t ones to argue with pointlessly glowing aesthetics. The Asus SBC-04D1S-U External Slim is one of only a few USB-based Blu-ray drives that reads BDs at 4.8x, plus…
If we were to make a wireless doorbell from an NES controller, we’d actually take advantage of its eight different buttons and have each one make a different chime. Instead, the creator made all eight do the same thing. [TechEBlog]
Here’s what happens when you give a 13-year-old from 2009 a Sony Walkman—the tape kind—and ask him to figure it out without any outside help: incredible confusion. To the kid’s credit, he was able to deduce that the tape had two sides (took him three days) and that you could switch between two kinds of…
The good news: two models of Asus Eee, the 1101HA and 1005HA, are eligible for free upgrades to Windows 7. The bad news: your 1101HA needs to be preloaded with Vista Home Premium and your 1005HA needs to be preloaded with Windows XP Pro or Vista Business. As Lilliputing so eloquently put it, “I didn’t…
When you were in college, you spent your free time drinking tallboys of Bud Ice and playing Mario Kart 64 until 5am. These MIT students, on the other hand, built a shopping cart go-kart cart and dubbed it the LOLriokart. The LOLrioKart consists of a big stack of NiCd aircraft batteries and a 15hp brushless…
It’s June, and most of us reading this post are stuck at work instead of wasting a summer vacation away with lemonade and the dreaded "playing outside." And to make matters worse, there’s the ridiculously cool Heli Mission SWAT Truck. This thing is an R/C truck that can launch a freakin’ autopilot helicopter. Can you…
Here’s something I’d expect to see whipped up by MAKE Magazine on Martha Stewart: A paper speaker kit that comes with all the paste and paper you need to fold together your own mini ghetto-blaster. Seriously. https://gizmodo.com/make-magazine-on-martha-stewart-5270594 The Princeton PSP-NXT speaker unit series resonates sound throughout the paper and the surface you’ve placed it on.…
The sidecar always seemed like a precarious way to ride a motorcycle. So maybe it’s a good thing that this ridiculous yet awe-inducing “Snaefell” fit a whole 2-seater car on the side of a bike. It’s the product of 10 years and $20,000 worth of custom work, a combination of a Kawasaki 1000 RX the…
As of last weekend, Hulu no longer plays in the PS3’s Flash-supported browser. Neither Sony nor Hulu has come forth with an explanation, though the timing is linked to the PS3’s latest firmware 2.8 update and it’s hard to see the statement “the video is not available on your platform” as anything less than pointed.…
Good news if you’re a Windows Mobile user and were feeling left out the Mozilla’s Fennec mobile browser party. Today’s Alpha 2 release should now work with most devices using the Windows Mobile 6 platform. (Support had initially been limited to the HTC Touch Pro and some other “VGA phones”.) https://gizmodo.com/firefox-mobile-pre-alpha-now-available-for-vga-windows-5151218 Newly added treats include…
All those fly-catchers—the sticky ones, the glowing ones, the zappy ones—seem like such a waste. Surely there’s something to do with all those fly carcasses, aside from cringing at them. Enter James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau—insect nemeses. Their “carnivorous robot” prototypes are simple in concep: each gadget, be it a lamp, clock, or heretofore unnamed…
Well, this should make the Pirate Bay’s court appeal interesting. For the last couple of years, the guys have been working on an anything-goes, censor-free haven for online video sharing called VideoBay, and it’s now gone into “Beta Extreme.” https://gizmodo.com/pirate-bay-retrial-denied-after-judge-cleared-of-bias-a-5302520 “This will be an experimental playground and as such, subjected to both live and drunk…
Digging around on the FCC site can uncover some truly weird things. Exhibit A this morning: WowWee’s FlyTech Skyhopper (no, not that Skyhopper). The remote-controlled ‘hybrid insect’ toy has the same flapping wing design as company’s FlyTech Dragonfly, which we last saw waging war with cats and being snatched by Hawks. The manual claims you’ll…
This image was lost some time after publication. I never really took James J. Hill for a Malthusian, but this article in the January 28, 1909 Milford Mail (Milford, IA) certainly paints him as one. Hill’s argument was basically that there would be too few farmers for a fast-growing American population. To reflect on the…
The Dev Team has cracked the iPhone 3GS (as if there was any doubt). Trouble is, if they released it now it would do far more harm than good. You see, a firmware update, version 3.0.1, is inevitable, and will probably arrive from Apple sooner rather than later because Cupertino probably feels that it needs…
In his 1986 book July 20, 2019: Life in the 21st Century author Arthur C. Clarke discusses what sexual relations will be like in the year 2019. He envisions a world in which people “boldly state their desires, no matter how bizarre or specific.” While many of his predictions about sex seem pretty accurate, (assuming…
This image of “Mama’s Easter parade costume in 2000 A.D.” appeared in the February 26, 1951 Walla Walla Union-Bulletin (Walla Walla, WA). “Chicago fashion experts” predicted that women would carry around their own food, fuel and telephones in mesh bags. The food and telephones seem rather prescient, but I’m not so sure about the “fuel”…
