Psy’s Gangnam Style video has long been the most watched clip on YouTube. Now it’s forced a rethink of the site’s “hit counter.” The video recently passed the 2,147,483,647-view mark. Maths and computing geeks among us may already have spotted the significance of that, but for the rest of us, it’s all down to that […]
Washington State University staff are working on an equivalent to an alcohol breathalyzer to check whether people are driving while under the influence of cannabis. They say it will help innocent drivers as well as law enforcement officers. The test would be based on ion-mobility spectrometry, which uses an electric charge to force a material […]
European politicians have voted to break up Google’s business. The vote has no immediate practical effect but is politically symbolic. Strictly speaking the motion, which passed the European Parliament by 384 votes to 174, does not apply solely or specifically to Google, but rather all online search companies. However, with Google used for around 90 […]
If you bought a PS Vita in the US before June 1, 2012, you should be getting compensation from Sony. That’s because it has settled a Federal Trade Commission complaint accusing it of false advertising. The complaint centered on advertising relating to the Vita’s cross-platform features, particularly the implication that the features would work in […]
Officials in London are considering turning part of a street into a lengthy trampoline to boost fitness and even cut down commuting times for pedestrians. An official document from Transport for London notes: The Bounceway will be the world’s longest urban trampoline. This iconic and inclusive new public space in the heart of London will […]
Google is experimenting with a way for users to pay a monthly fee to hide ads from some sites. The participating sites will then get a cut of the money. Google Contributor will allow web users to pay $1, $2 or $3 a month to take part: it doesn’t appear the amount you pay makes […]
The Large Hadron Collider has helped staff spot two previously unseen particles. Both are known as baryons and are made up of three quarks. The two baryons have the somewhat uncatchy names of Xi_b’– and Xi_b*–. The existence of both had previously been predicted by the quark model, but they had yet to be seen in […]
A bus powered entirely by food and human waste will started running in the UK next week. It does 186 miles on a full tank of what’s literally gas. The bio-bus, which can carry up to 40 passengers, runs on biomethane produced at a local sewage treatment center. The gas comes from both food waste […]
Toyota is to sell what’s being called the first mass-market fuel-cell car. But it’s very much a luxury product for now and won’t be dominating the highways any time soon. The model is called Mirai, which translates literally as “the future” but has a meaning that might more accurately be conveyed as “the distant future” […]
One of the main writers of the Choose Your Own Adventure series has died aged 78. RA Montgomery was also the key to the books getting published. Although some obituaries are listing Montgomery as the creator of the series, that’s not entirely accurate. The idea itself is usually credited to Edward Packard, who developed the […]