Technology Category
Independent news, views, opinions and reviews on the latest gadgets, games, science, technology and research from Apple and more. It’s about the technologies that change the way we live, work, love and behave.
Facebook was born in 1976 – photo
FACEBOOK was born in 1976. Here’s that photo. (Click to enlarge.)
Posted: 24th, June 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment
For just $155, Excalibur Almaz will take you around the moon
FOR just $155, Excalibur Almaz will take you around the moon. They will also bring you back to Earth. No extras. It’s not Ryan Air. Although you do have to go to the toilet in your trousers. Excalibur Almaz might have the name of a Bond villain, but the firm based on the Isle of Man, are the good guys helping you live the dream of achieving space orbit without the need for a degree in science, slide rule haircut or a career in the armed forces.
The six-eight months trip you need $155 million. For that you get to use “six Soviet-era space vehicles: four re-useable re-entry vehicles and two Salyut-class 29-ton space stations, each with a capacity of 95 cubic meters.”
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Posted: 23rd, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Blow her hair with your car’s superwoofer (video)
THINGS to do with your girlfriend No. 981: Blow her hair with your car’s superwoofer. (This is how Wayne pulled Coleen):
Posted: 22nd, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Awkward Facebook photos
JUST because you have a camera does not mean you are a photographer, as you can see in this gallery of Awkward Facebook Photos:
Posted: 21st, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Why Facebook sucks at revenge – a waitress’s story
IS Facebook good for revenge? No. Should you put everything up on Facebook? No. One waitress who vowed to avenge a bad tip fell foul of the rules – click the image to enlarge (NSFW):
Spotter: 4Chan, via Reddit
Posted: 20th, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Would you prefer Zuckerberg or the KGB has your information?
WOULD you prefer Zuckerberg or the KGB has your information? I think this might be the worst business plan I’ve seen yet this year. Worse than the Harriet Harman Valentine’s Day Mask, worse than the Wayne Rooney version of Trivial Pursuit (that was not about Wayne, but limited to questions the authors thought Wayne might be able to answer). The Kremlin is to launch its own online network:
The Kremlin is planning to create its own Facebook-style social network, where users with personal accounts will be able to upload content and discuss the issues of the day.
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Posted: 20th, June 2012 | In: Money, Technology | Comments (4)
Kiss your dancing fears away with the robot Tutu
CAN’T dance? Have trouble doing a Conga?
Help is herre. Behold, Ninna Thorarinsdottir‘s robotic Dancing Tutu*. Never be embarrassed again, dancing dad. Slip on a Dancing Tutu and all your cares are gone.
* Daning Tutu is brand name and must not be confused with the Farting Tutu, Desmond Tutu and Kajagoogoo’s Tu-Tu Shy. Also available in eco-friendly wind-powered model.
The Dancing Dress, by Icelandic fashion designer Ninna Thorarinsdottir.
Posted: 13th, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
The troll hater song
THE troll / hater song with Isabel Fay… (NSFW.)
Posted: 8th, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comments (2)
Scientists invent glasses that make people shrink
IN the 1980s, the Japanese grew rich on making things smaller. This process was mostly confined to electronic gadgets and poems. But now the country’s boffins are shrinking people. Scientists at University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology have invented goggles athat trick the wearer into thinking the piece of food on the end of their fork, chopsticks or fingers is larger than it really is.
The goggles are linked to a computer screen that makes the food appear as much as 50 percent larger.
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Posted: 6th, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Chocolate and strapping helps rat walk again after spinal cord injury
WHAT you’re looking at is a rat experiencing “100 per cent recuperation” having had its back broken and then repaired with a treatment which helps grow new nerves.
The treatment involves chemicals, electricity and placing the broken rats in a special harness and encouaging them to make towards a piece of Swiss chocolate *. The movement “tricks” the body into repairing itself.
Chocolate can do that.
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Posted: 2nd, June 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Idiot complaints about Apple’s Foxconn
THERE are reasonable complaints one can make about conditions in the Foxconn factories that make all of Apple’s kit (and most of those for Microsoft, Dell, HP and so on). Excessive overtime, short holidays and so on.
Then there are truly idiotic complaints one can make such as this:
a living wage for Chinese workers, whom it says are paid half the salary of workers in Foxconn’s Brazilian factory,
Eh?
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Posted: 31st, May 2012 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Flashback: Tom Hancocks of High Wycombe invented The Segway in 1962
FLASHBACK: Tom Hancocks of High Wycombe invented The Segway in 1962
Posted: 28th, May 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment
FAIL: BBC article on bad spelling includes spelling error
THE BBC laments the “Poor spelling of ‘auto-correct generation'”, revealing the horror of a nation that has become reliant on technology to auto-correct text. We can no longer spell. The article is based on a survey conducted by vested interest group Mencap to promote its Spellathon Championships. Whilst Mencap just makes up words – spellathon? – to ensure its spelling is correct, the BBC tells us:
Ian McNeilly, director of the Natioanl Association for the Teaching of English, said: “I think it’s an easy, knee-jerk reaction – though an entirely understandable one – to blame technology for perceived declines in a whole variety of areas.
The BBC’s story was written by Ivor Typo (formerly of Anorak).
Posted: 23rd, May 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
How to park a car in Poland
FANS, neo-Nazi and vintage Nazis making the trip to see football’s European Championships are advised to park their vehicles in the aprpoved manner:
Posted: 21st, May 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Priscilla Chan’s guide to marrying a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg (photos)
PRISCILLA Chan is now what Americans call Mrs Mark Zuckerberg. 
. Husband and wife now both get to call Mrs Zuckeberg ‘mom’. Psychiatrists, take that and run with it. Can is, of course, the Harvard graduate who presented Zuckenberg with a list of dating rules when she moved to be near him in Palo Alto, according to Sarah Lacy’s book Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good. As the book told us:
One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment and definitely not at Facebook.
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Posted: 20th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Technology | Comment (1)
Man invents perpetual motion car
YAZOOKS! Tang Zhenping, a 55-year-old farmer living in Banjiehe, China, has invented the world’s first wind-powered car. When the electric car hits 40mph, the desk fan in the front spins, charging the engine and enabling Mr Zhenping to drive on for days.
He tells Sky News:
“I’m not doing this just for the money.”
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Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: Technology | Comments (2)
Canadian MP says everyone who eats is a copyright thief
COPYRIGHT is a big issue. And the debate involves all manner of idiots. Take Canada’s Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dean Del Mastro. In his mind, if you copy a CD – one you’ve bought – onto an iPod or any other MP3 player – you a thief. Yeah. Really. He actually says:
“It’s like going to a clothing store and buying a pair of socks and going back and saying by the way it wasn’t socks that I needed, what I really wanted was shoes. So I’m just going take these, I’m gonna format shift from socks to shoes and I’m not gonna pay anything because it was all for my feet.”
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Posted: 16th, May 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
The yellow Lamborghini Gallardo sandwich – video
Posted: 16th, May 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Smartphones: the fastest growing technology ever
ONE way of looking at the current economic world is that it’s a complete disaster. Slow to little growth (and don’t even start talking about Southern Europe), mass unemployment, a general dirge of it all being pretty crappy.
One the other hand, there are bright spots: what economic growth there is is in the poor countries, meaning people are moving from absolute, $2 a day type, poverty to the unaccustomed luxury of three square meals a day.
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Posted: 15th, May 2012 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Magnetic Dave Hurban turns himself into a mobile ipod and keys holder – photos
ALL hail Dave Hurban inventor of the strapless watch. Hurban, of Newfield, New Jersey, has imbedded magnets into his arm and stuck his iPod Nano to them. Ave is thus also the inventor of the handless saucepan, the mobile ironing board stand (take care with that one, Dace) and a great way to ensure you and your car keys are never far apart. All inventive stuff. But Dave is no “Magnet Boy”. Brazil’s Paulo David Amorim, raw animal magnetism means pots, pans, mobile phones, forks and dogs, should the pet’s collar be metal. Dave may also take care when passing through airport security – news is that al Qaeda’s dastardly killers have found way to implant bombs inside people. Pass the rubber gloves…
Posted: 14th, May 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Scumbag Steve’s open letter to Annoying Facebook Girl – meme to meme
BECAUSE memes are people too, Blake Boston – aka memeville’s Scumbag Steve – has reached out to the meme community and penned a letter to Annoying Facebook Girl. Her name, we do not know. But for now let’s call her Violet Elizabeth.
Boston is here to help. He understands his good fortune. You can spend an age concocting an alter ego that will turn you into a celebrity. Sacha Baron Cohen worked hard to create Borat and Ali G. He did well. So too did Steve Coogan with Alan Partridge. Barry Humphries gave us Dame Edna. But what of Hale & Pace, who in the pre-internet dark age created The Management, Rowan Atkinson was Mr Bean and Jim Varney launched Ernest on an unready world. All were horrible. All required the comic to be horrendously unfunny in a bid for fame and popularity.
It was pathetic.
Then Blake Boston slaps on a baseball and a dog’s bedding arrives, and in a trice he’s Scumbag Steve. And he’s a hit!
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Posted: 4th, May 2012 | In: Technology | Comments (4)
Crab-powered computers are now possible!
GOOD news! Crab powered computers are possible, Cancel the hamster wheel! Solar panels and wind farms are dead! Japanese researchers have a break through:
Yukio-Pegio Gunji of Kobe University in Japan and colleagues realised that when two swarms of crabs collide, they merge and continue in a direction that is the sum of their velocities …
They first tried the idea with simulated crab swarms … they then tried the logic gates for real, using swarms of 40 crabs. The crab swarms were placed at the entrances of the logic gates and encouraged to move by a looming shadow that fooled them into thinking a predatory bird was overhead. The results closely matched the simulation, suggesting that crab-powered computers could indeed be possible.
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Posted: 25th, April 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
Smuggling iPhones into China – the airtime plan piracy
THIS is a slightly weird case. A woman found smuggling Apple’s iPhones into China. When, erm, all iPhones are actually made in China:
A Chinese woman has been stopped at the border after trying to smuggle over 200 iPhone 4S devices from Hong Kong into the Apple-mad nation hidden inside empty beer bottles.
The woman was caught red-handed by customs officials at the Sha Tau Kok border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen and claimed she was taking the bottles to be recycled, according to MIC Gadget.
However, on closer inspection the bottles reportedly felt suspiciously heavy, and showed signs that they had been cut in half and taped back up. In total 216 shiny new iPhones were discovered, shoved in three to a 750ml bottle.
Obviously something weird is happening, as with PJ O’Rourke’s point that you can’t get Cuban cigars in Cuba. But here, with Apple, it’s not the stupidities of communism, it’s the way that mobile phones are generally sold. That is, with an airtime plan.
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Posted: 23rd, April 2012 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
My boyfriend @c*ntdestr0yer is a real romantic – Facebook lovers tell all
MEANWHILE on Facebook a woman tells the world that her lover is a sweetheart.
@cuntdestr0yer might be the nom-de-tweet of Valentine Mortensen.
Spotter: @Reddit
Posted: 23rd, April 2012 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
Hunter Moore down – who now holds No 1 Internet Bully title?
HUNTER Moore has relinquished control of his “revenge porn” website IsAnyoneUp.com, which featured photos of naked ex-lovers, their real names and how to find them on social networks. Most posts are of women. The people posting them were looking for revenge and to cause hurt – the stuff was submitted by exes and embittered friends. Although some of the photos might have been hacked or self-published in a bid for web fame and twitter followers.
You want a leaked sex tape? You can’t handle a leaked sex tape.
So. What of Moore? His site enjoyed the tagline “Pure Evil”. He became a cover story in the Village Voice. He said:
“I’m scared I’m going to get fucking murdered in my sleep if someone finds out where I live.”
Adding of the victims:
“We’ve all masturbated to you or laughed at you, and it’s done. It can’t get any worse.”
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Posted: 20th, April 2012 | In: Technology | Comment
