Category: Tech news

A federal appeals court has upheld a contempt citation against the founder of the defunct secure e-mail company Lavabit, finding that the weighty internet privacy issues he raised on appeal should have been brought up earlier in the legal process. The decision disposes of a closely watched privacy case on a technicality, without ruling one way or the other on the substantial issue: whether an internet company can be compelled to turn over the master encryption keys for its entire system to facilitate court-approved surveillance on a single user.

“Rate” is a clever lighting concept that’s invisible–but only some of the time.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Mustang, Ford recreated a publicity stunt it pulled in 1964 when it placed a Mustang convertible on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

Anki Drive, the artificial intelligence-assistanted toy car game that debuted last fall, is back with new cars, new tracks, and new ways to play.

Neuroscientists devised an experiment specifically meant to induce frustration in participants, in order to scan their brains and understand frustration. But the final conclusions of the study are very frustrating themselves. In other words: HULK FRUSTRATED BY FRUSTRATING BRAIN SCAN STUDY.

  You’re sailing from the Spice Islands across the open ocean to the South American port of Guayaquil, your financial motives rooted somewhere along a broad spectrum of morality and lawfulness. Several months have passed, and food stores and morale are low. Fortunately, you know a spot that will save the day, a cluster of […]

Captain America’s shield is made of a strange substance called vibranium, which has the ability to absorb energy into its molecular bonds. As physicist Rhett Allain explains, this essentially turns the shield into a gigantic star-spangled supercapacitor.

It used to be simple to weigh myself. I’d climb on my bathroom scale and my current weight would appear in an inch-wide window. But times have changed.

 Hold on to your hat. The Tesla Model S is about to get more breezy thanks to a drop-top conversion by Newport Convertible Engineering. Both hard and soft top conversions are now available — they don’t come cheap, though. A soft-top conversion costs $29K and a hard-top $49K. Plus, the buyer has to supply the Tesla Model S. But, once converted, there’s no question that you’ll have the raddest… Read More

 In the midst of reports that Facebook could be about to get into financial services, one of the startups it’s rumoured to have talked to, the European P2P money transfer service TransferWise, has hit a major milestone today: Its platform has processed £1 billion of customers’ money. Read More

 A string of big acquisitions, public offerings, and a pipeline of growing young startup companies has venture investors saying “I love L.A.” The recent acquisitions of Maker Studios and Oculus VR, as well as the planned public offering for TrueCar that’s finally going through, all point to a healthy investment ecosystem, but there’s still one industry that rules over Tinseltown: that’s… Read More

Zeebox, the app co-founded by former BBC iPlayer exec Anthony Rose, has rebranded and relaunched its social TV app for consumers as Beamly. The new version of the app still has all the same live-chat functionality and screen sync technology that came with Zeebox, but the team has enhanced Beamly to be relevant to users even when they’re not watching their favorite shows. To do that, Beamly… Read More

 How was your last voting experience? Smooth? Perhaps not. The Open Source Election Technology Foundation wants to change that by making voting simpler and more transparent. Its chief effort, called TrustTheVote, is a push to develop airtight, open-source vote casting and tabulation software that can be paired with off-the-shelf hardware. Open source code and off-the-shelf plastic mean that… Read More

 The Galaxy S5 (or S 5, if you ask Samsung) is the company’s latest flagship phone and sure to be a swift seller. The phone is, in its own way, beautifully designed and the materials, while clearly plastic, are durable and should maintain a luster over time. Is this an iPhone replacement? No, but it is a replacement for the S4 that should please shoppers already predisposed to Samsung and… Read More

 “Let me tell you about my new startup. It’s basically [some popular startup] but for [some completely unrelated thing].”

If you’ve ever been to any startup event, you’ve probably heard it 14 thousand times.

Now it’s a Cards Against Humanity black card. The bad news? You’ll probably never see the card in person, because it’s crazy rare. Read More