That’s what Takara Tomy’s promised us at this year’s Tokyo Toy Show in Japan. It had two very different maglev-powered toy sets to show off: an on the rails maglev train shuttle that apparently reaches up to 600km (well, in relative speed to its…
Technical
CloudFlare donates tech to stop politically-sensitive sites from being knocked offline
If protecting yourself from hackers wasn’t tough enough, there’s another crippling internet attack that knocks websites completely offline while you’re a target: a denial of service attack. That’s why a company called CloudFare has launched Project…
3D-printed corset turns see-through the more time you spend online
Corsets are typically used to squeeze torsos into shape, but designers Xuedi Chen and Pedro Oliveira had other ideas in mind. Instead of making another waist-pinching underwear, they’ve designed a 3D-printed corset that demonstrates how the internet…
WiFi tech lets scientists monitor your vital signs through walls
MIT’s CSAIL lab has just taken its very cool but kinda creepy WiFi motion tracking to a new level: monitoring your vital signs from another room. Last we saw, the same researchers bounced low-powered WiFi signals (100x less than a home router) off of…
Here’s what made Grim Fandango a legendary adventure game
When Double Fine said that it was reviving Grim Fandango for PlayStation systems, you may have been left scratching your head. Why remake a nearly 16 year old adventure game that many of today’s players would have never seen? Well, some of the…
SwiftKey’s Android keyboard is now available for free
Of the third-party keyboards available on the Google Play Store, SwiftKey is among the oldest and most well-known. And although it’s getting its iOS8 app ready for the fall, it certainly isn’t forgetting the platform that helped the $4 app get its…
Japanese carrier Docomo wants to move your phone’s SIM card into a wearable
The Portable SIM, as Japan’s Docomo is calling it, will combine your tiny mobile card with Bluetooth and NFC to make a standalone authentication device, allowing users to ‘wave’ the portable over tablets and smartphones to connect and login to phone…
Amtrak wants trackside WiFi that keeps you online for the whole ride
To put it bluntly, Amtrak’s current on-train WiFi sucks; even if you don’t mind sharing 10Mbps with hundreds of passengers, there are significant gaps in coverage. Relief may be on the horizon, though. The mass transit company is soliciting bids for…
Nano barcodes can trace bombs even after they’ve exploded
You may not pay much notice to product trackers like barcodes and RFID tags, but they’re absolutely vital in some fields; they cut back on bootlegging and help police determine the origins of bombs. Worcester Polytechnic Institute may have just…
This smart hoodie lets you message friends on the sly
You don’t have to be a forward-thinking fashion designer or scientist to produce tech-savvy clothing. Need evidence? Just look at the smart hoodie developed by New York University grad students Alina Balean and Rucha Patwardhan. They’ve integrated a…
International Space Station beams a video back to Earth using lasers (video)
In April, NASA sent special equipment to the ISS that’ll be able to test if laser beams can effectively transmit large amounts of data from space. Sounds like the project (called Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science) is going well thus far, because…
New film makes shatterproof phone screens a practical possibility
Sure, the screen on your smartphone is likely scratch-resistant, but it still won’t survive a drop to the sidewalk. However, that could all change if University of Akron scientists get their shatterproof touchscreen film into shipping hardware….
Razer’s CEO is sorry for ‘screwing up on anticipating demand,’ wants to do better
If you pre-ordered Razer’s new 14-inch Blade laptop the day it was announced, there’s a good chance you still don’t have it. Frustrated? Don’t worry — your voice has already been heard; Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan says he’s sorry. “We suck at this,” he…
Hubble’s latest deep field imagery is the most colorful picture of the universe we’ve ever taken
Want to feel amazed, isolated and inspired all a the same time? Look to the stars. Form here on Earth, space seems like and endless empty void — but anybody familiar with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope know things look a bit more lively from orbit….
OpenSSL bug allows hackers to see private communication
The world hasn’t yet recovered from the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL and now there’s news of a new bug affecting the popular open-source security package. This recently announced, and already patched, exploit could allow an attacker to see and…