February

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our moderators and contrib ...more

This week's AON may be a little short, but the ones to come will be packed full with information. I am really hoping for the skies to clear so I can observe soon! Through March 2012—The Garradd comet is getting brighter! It will peak in February. Here's how to observe it! Jan ...more

Have you ever had the stomach flu, aka the 24-hour flu? Well, chances are high that you never had influenza, but an intestinal infection called gastroenteritis. While sometimes severe cold symptoms can be confused with the flu, the same is not true for the differences between ...more

Valentine's Day can seem like Singles Awareness Day if you're newly broken up, but that's all the more reason to treat yourself on this pink-and-red consumerist holiday. Whether you're happily single or bitter and bitchy, there's definitely something on this list of Anti-Valen ...more

By looking for the mechanism that allows influenza A to invade lung cells, scientists also discovered a treatment that might block the virus from taking hold there. An infection of the lungs is called pneumonia, which is caused by bacteria, viruses, and fungi that target alve ...more

Apple's iPhone lineup has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, captivating the world with each new iteration. As we eagerly anticipate the iPhone 15 series release, rumors, leaks, and speculations about the highly anticipated 2023 models are at full steam. ...more

I'm starting a series on the top astronomers, with probably about eleven astronomers that I will be covering overall. So, let's start out from the top, with the top most important astronomer. In my opinion, Galileo Galilei is the top astronomer. Galileo Galilei (February 15, ...more

During its presentation at Unite Berlin, Magic Leap gave attendees a crash course in developing experiences for Magic Leap One (ML1), we found out quite a bit more about how the device works and what we can expect to experience with the device. Alessia Laidacker, interaction ...more

Last week, we covered a new, open-source live wallpaper (LWP) called Muzei, and less than a week later we have no less than twenty beautiful add-on extensions to the app. Muzei uses subtle blur and dim effects to create aesthetically pleasing LWPs. The app takes free works of ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

The reveal of Magic Leap One: Creator Edition brought with it some insight into the path the device took from prototype to "final" design. By comparing notes with the Rolling Stone article on Magic Leap with other reports on comparable milestones, we get a clearer picture of ...more

Disengagement report numbers for self-driving car testing in 2016 on public roads in California were just released, and the biggest point we can make about them is that Waymo is very far ahead of their competitors in almost every metric. The California Autonomous Vehicles Tes ...more

So far, there have been some excellent entries to our WTFoto Stock Photo Challenge, but the battle is not over yet. You still have a couple days left to submit your best find to the WTFoto community corkboard for a chance to take the crown. Remember, we're looking for an absur ...more

Update February 25: The Nokia 9 PureView was announced at Mobile World Congress! Read all of the official specs and details at our full rundown of Nokia's latest flagship. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the Nokia 9 PureView is the flagship device most Nokia fans have b ...more

What could Apple be planning here? Are we going to see some revolutionary new features for the iPhone? Will we see mostly bug fixes and security patches? It's time to find out, as Apple just released the first developer beta for iOS 13.4. Apple seeded developers 13.4 dev beta ...more

In February of this year, the Higher Court of Berlin ruled that Facebook must follow strict German data protection laws, which Facebook's terms of services and privacy policies circumvent. It's been rulings like these and their call for internationally recognized rights to pr ...more

We've been so worried about volumetric scans possibly robbing celebrities and performers of their agency and right to control their image that, somewhere along the way, we forgot that scans may not always be necessary to produce passable holographic performances. That's the d ...more

For well over a year, Spotify's most requested feature was to add Chromecast support. While they left the request unanswered, it seemed that Spotify just didn't want anything to do with the $35 streaming stick. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, Google and Spotify announced ...more

In last week's guide, we covered the best places to purchase digital copies of computer games online. This week we'll cover another type of downloadable content: those available for video game consoles. Every major console out today either has or plans to have a DLC platform, ...more

Listen up, children, pregnant women, and lightweights: this particular KitKat variety is not for you. Well, with 0.8% alcoholic content per 2 KitKat bars, it's highly unlikely anyone will actually get drunk on these things. Still... The newest flavor of KitKat (or Kit Kat) in ...more

The mother of all games is almost here. Super Bowl XLVIII pits the Seattle Seahawks (or Seachickens, if you're from the Bay Area) against the Denver Broncos and regent exemplar of neck surgeries, Peyton Manning. Over the years, the Super Bowl has become one of the world's mos ...more

Upon Google's release of ARCore in February, the platform wasn't only playing catch-up with Apple and ARKit in terms of downloads, but it also lagged in capabilities, as Apple already had vertical surface recognition and image recognition on the way with ARKit 1.5 for a March ...more

The Galaxy S10 is one of the best phones in years from world's largest smartphone OEM. With its astonishing display, new UI, and top-tier cameras, there isn't much to complain about. The one major gripe we've had is the in-display fingerprint scanner and just how slow it is. T ...more

Obviously this is just a teaser, and who knows how soon we'll see something like this in real life, but just go ahead and watch the video first before you continue reading. Video: . I'm already at at least half-Keanu after watching this video that Microsoft dropped at a Super ...more

In a bold move, Samsung has decided to forgo the Galaxy S11 moniker and jump straight to the S20. Perhaps it's marketing for the new 20:9 aspect ratio and 120 Hz display, or maybe it's just the fact that it's releasing in 2020. Besides the number, Samsung is borrowing from Ap ...more

UPDATE (February 26, 2014) Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1123 with a 295-114 vote decision. The ruling repeals the 2012 Library of Congress (LOC) decision that limited the ability to legally "unlock" your smartphone (see below). This decision reins ...more

It seemed appropriate that we announce the winner of the first White Hat Award for Technical Excellence on the Academy Awards weekend. This is, in essence, our "Oscar" here at Null Byte. Remember, this contest began on January 4th, 2016 and just recently closed on February 15t ...more

The App Store has been around for almost 14 years now, and during that time, we must have seen over a million games come and go and stay and expand. But only a tiny fraction of those games have become blockbuster sensations because of the mighty App Store's reach on iPhone and ...more

Sorry, Galaxys S11–19, Samsung's jumping straight to Galaxy S20 this year. They're also going with essentially three base models before accounting for niche variants. Of these three models, it's clear which one's the best: the Galaxy S20 Ultra. We've rounded up all the specs ...more

Location-based gaming pioneer Niantic has offered a preview of its augmented reality cloud platform that could change the immersive content game yet again. Previously disclosed by Niantic CEO John Hanke in an interview, the Niantic Real World Platform for mobile apps enables ...more

Describing how and why the HoloLens 2 is so much better than the original is helpful, but seeing it is even better. Back in February, I had a chance to test the HoloLens 2 for a couple of extended periods, and I was very impressed. But I didn't have much in the way of first-p ...more

So what if he's right just 39% of the time? On Wednesday, February 2nd, when poor old Punxsutawney Phil crawls forth from his simulated tree stump in Gobbler's Knob, we'll be watching. After all, if an octopus can predict the outcome of the World Cup, we fail to see why a seda ...more

Oh, Mario. The guy that's been a part of our lives since as long as we can all remember. Well, Adam Ringwood and his friends did something pretty cool with one of Mario's most exciting games at the HackIllinois event in February 2016—they hacked a Chevrolet Volt's steering whe ...more

We've been expecting the latest Android Pie update for current Samsung flagships like the Galaxy S9 and Note 9 for some time now, but Samsung's running behind schedule in the United States. Thankfully, it appears that One UI has finally started rolling out for some lucky S9 ow ...more

After months of speculation and sifting through rumors, Samsung finally unveiled its Galaxy S7 and S7 edge flagships, and they're pretty much what we had been anticipating. But just because there weren't any major surprises doesn't mean that it's not still exciting. Let's have ...more

The economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt in practically every business sector. Now, as we look back at the top augmented reality investments of 2020, the AR industry has been no exception. While the overall dollar value of this year's top 10 investments wa ...more

You can view and hide iCloud contact groups on your iPhone, but Apple won't let you create or delete groups or add or delete contacts from any groups unless you're on a tablet or computer. Why Apple refuses to add a group management tool to Contacts on iOS is anybody's guess, ...more

In what's becoming something of a regular occurrence, Magic Leap has yet another internal, unforced error on its hands. Thankfully, this time it's not about legal skirmishes or theft, but a rather unusual break from company protocol that has been quickly swept under the rug. ...more

It hasn't even been eight years since Candida auris was discovered—cultured and identified from the ear canal of a patient in Japan—and now it's drug-resistant, setting up residence in hospitals, killing patients, and wreaking havoc across the globe. The yeast, C. auris, find ...more

Boston.com's The Big Picture posts 2009's most amazing Guinness World Record holders. My favorite fanatics below. "A base jumper leaps backwards off the Menara Kuala Lumpur Tower, Malaysia, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009. A group of base jumpers were attempting to set a Guinness Wo ...more

The private automobile has been an intrinsic part of our lives for around a hundred years. But over the last decade, car sharing has gained a very small but growing part of the mobility market. The more recent rise of companies like Uber and Lyft is witness to a more dramatic ...more

In the late nineteenth century, the advent of the motion picture wowed audiences with a new storytelling medium. Nearly a century and a half later, augmented reality is establishing a new frontier in film. At the 2020 edition of South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, kickin ...more

From Boston.com's The Big Picture, what a real-life version of the Green Hornet's gas gun might look like. Taken in Afghanistan in February of this year, an Afghan army recruit is pictured shrouded in a cloud of shocking green smoke as he participates in a graduation parade af ...more

For 2019, Sony is trying to shake its failures of the past and start fresh. Following the unsuccessful Xperia XZ series, Sony is changing the name of their flagship to a single number: Xperia 1. With the name change comes a few upgrades, one of which is its new look. Secondly, ...more

Even though the 88th Academy Awards have come and gone, there's a good chance you still haven't seen all the films that were nominated—or even those that won big. To help you play catch up, check out the links below to see all the places you can rent or buy 2016's Oscar-nomin ...more

While everyone was marveling at the latest drama over at Magic Leap involving employees last week, a major rumor listed in one of the reports, related to the company's flagship device, was mostly overlooked. "One current issue with the headset is battery life and charging; th ...more

Playing Super Mario Brothers for the NES is the first thing I can ever remember doing, at age 3 sitting on the carpet at my grandparents' house. It was a special game for an entire generation, including British youths Andrej and Adam Zamoyski. It inspired them to eventually be ...more

Before you bite into that beautiful tomato in your garden, the tomato fruitworm, or the Colorado potato beetle, might have beat you to it. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), researchers explained how microbes inside the gu ...more

Apple has already released iPadOS 18, but there still may be work to complete on iPadOS 17. That brings us to iPadOS 17.8. Is there one, and can you test-drive it on your iPad? Following the feature-rich launch of iPadOS 17, which first became available with iPadOS 17.1, subs ...more

Cable TV providers were dealt a pretty significant blow on Thursday, February 18th, 2016, when the Federal Communications Commission decided that customers should have a choice in what type of device they use to watch cable, instead of being forced to rent a set-top box. This ...more

Jeep has now jumped on the AR-retail trend with their introduction of the Jeep Compass Visualizer. Customers can now view and customize a Jeep Compass to their liking, all without a real Jeep even present. Customers will be able to use the smartphone to go in depth with a vir ...more

Google pushed a new kind of augmented reality walking navigation to the mainstream last year, and now startup Phiar is hoping users will use its AR app in the same way for driving navigation. The company is currently inviting the public to sign up for its private beta launch, ...more

LG got in on the action at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by unveiling its new G5 handset on Sunday, February 21st. It will be the first publicly available modular smartphone by a top tech giant. Video: . The Magic Slot The highlight of the G5 is undoubtedly the "Magic Sl ...more

Whether you're anxious to tune into this Sunday's Super Bowl 50 to see Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers take on Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos, or to see if you win some money on your silly prop bet, or just want to tune in for the commercials, there are a handful o ...more

With the Oscar nomination of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" and Banksys rise to global fame, street art is becoming more and more accepted into the global art establishment and mainstream culture. Shepard Faireys "Hope" poster is now one of the most recognized posters in the wor ...more

When I first found out about Nreal, back in the spring of 2018, the most interesting thing about the company's story was the founder's background. Chi Xu, the CEO and founder of Nreal, previously worked at Magic Leap as a software engineer. Earlier this year, when I met Xu a ...more

No more Internet Explorer 9 Beta. Not today. Now you can explore the web with Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC). It wasn't supposed to be released until tomorrow, February 10th, but it's been leaked a little early, WinRumors reports. Microsoft’s main ...more

The most recent premium flagship smartphones from Google — the Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel 6 Pro — are equipped with displays cable of 1440 QHD+ resolution. But they also come with a tool to downgrade to 1080p FHD+, which you may want to do in certain situations. QHD+, a higher res ...more