There’s no getting around it: Quarantine is making us weird. Humans did not evolve as social animals for thousands of years to sit alone in their houses, communicating solely by typing and talking through a series of small digital boxes. After almost a year of Covid lockdown, I’ve completely lost the ability to make small […]
Phone makers like Apple have increased the number of lens elements over time, and while some, like Samsung, are now folding optics to create “periscope” lenses for greater zoom capabilities, companies have generally stuck with the tried-and-true stacked lens element system. “The optics became more sophisticated, you added more lens elements, you created strong aspheric […]
I was expecting Real to be extremely skeptical about newfangled devices that use cloud-based AI to interpret biodata. After all, human relationships are much too complicated to benefit from these, amirite? But he surprised me right off by disclosing that he uses similar devices in his practice. “HeartMath has a gizmo called the Emwave,” Real […]
Consider the three-legged dog. Maybe you own one, or have seen them in the park or in any of the billions of Dodo videos about them. Lopsided yet resilient, they evoke a kind of fawning sympathy from us humans that’s unmatched by the typical quadruped canine. “People are drawn to specially abled pets,” says Rene […]
For well over five years, Google Photos has been one of the easiest recommendations in tech. It’s feature-filled, ubiquitous, whip-smart, easy to use, and, most importantly, has let you store infinite photos at “high-quality” resolution—a polite way of saying “compressed”—without charging you a dime. No longer. The Google Photos gravy train will leave the station […]
Avi Greengart, consumer technology analyst at Techsponential says that modular designs appeal to engineers more than the typical consumer. “You start with a base slab and then you can add things to it. But it doesn’t match how consumers purchase products,” he explains. “The phone itself needs to be something that they want to buy […]
It’s a sad truth that escapist pursuits are not truly separate from real life, and some even have a nasty tendency to exacerbate real-life problems. And while gaming offers a reprieve from thinking about dooms both personal and global, it threatens to bring at least one of them—climate disaster—closer to reality. What with plastic casing, […]
For the past three years, the world of running has been obsessed with one technology: carbon-fiber plates. The springy plates that help to push runners forward are now used by almost all running shoe manufacturers in their top-end shoes. But as sports companies have raced to embed the carbon plates in their running shoes, the […]
Smartphones have advanced in so many ways over the past half decade—but battery life isn’t one of them. Most phones still need a daily charge, and the easiest way to accomplish this tiresome chore is to make it a part of your bedtime routine. The trouble is, my wife and I often go to bed […]
Most of us know how delightful it is to hear a computer-generated song playlist that feels entirely personal. Now, Google wants to create a similar type of bespoke audio experience—not with music, but with news. The company is adding some new features to its existing news aggregation service called Your News Update, which gathers news […]