Production Line

The last quarter of 2017 brought us some downright excellent smartphones. Between the iPhone X, Pixel 2, and Note 8, consumers have more fantastic options than ever when choosing a new device. It's now the perfect opportunity for Samsung to set the tone for 2018 smartphones wi ...more

If you have a taste for sweets, you have at least one thing in common with mosquitoes. While too much sugar is unhealthy for humans, a new product makes sweets deadly to mosquitoes. At a presentation at the 254th meeting of the American Chemical Society, in Washington DC, res ...more

Data for mapping and other applications is the lifeblood of machine-driven cars, and so far, Tesla has taken a definitive lead in information it has gathered ahead of other driverless players, including Waymo. But Tesla's position could be short-lived, if the world's largest ...more

User interfaces for computers have evolved over the years, from the introduction of the keyboard and mouse on the personal computer, to touchscreens on mobile devices, to natural voice recognition. However, the same cannot be said for robots or drones—until now. There are two ...more

What's in a sneeze? Quite a lot—dirt, mucus, and infectious germs—it seems. And sneezing the right way can reduce the germs you share with neighbors. It's just a sneeze right? Everybody sneezes. So if you share a few germs when you are sick (or not sick), it's not such a terr ...more

Google's former Self-Driving Car project, now graduated from Alphabet's X division as Waymo, has found a collaborator and potential new partner in Honda. This is an interesting turn of events given traditional automakers' reluctance to work with driverless-car startups over th ...more

Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! If you have been following this new Snort series, you know that Snort is the world's most widely used intrusion detection/protection system. Now a part of the world's largest network equipment company, Cisco, it is likely to be found everyw ...more

"It just ticked me off," he said. In March 2011, Neil Singh paid $50 to back the Hanfree iPad stand on Kickstarter. The project was funded at $35,000, but production stalled, and the delivery estimates kept getting pushed back. Eventually, the project's creator, Seth Quest, s ...more

Apple's special September event just wrapped up with the company unveiling several new products, including the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPad Pro, and the new Apple TV set-top box. In addition to hardware, Apple also discussed a couple of its latest software platforms, iOS 9 ...more

In recent years, Hollywood has taken a shine to hackers, with hackers appearing in almost every heist or mystery movie now. This can be both good and bad for our profession. As we know, whichever way Hollywood decides to depict our profession is how most people will perceive i ...more

Food labeling is a tricky beast. For instance, when I read the words "cage-free" on an egg carton, I think it means that happy chickens frolic in a sunlit meadow all the livelong day until they're gently herded into a clean, sweet-smelling coop to lay a few dozen eggs—which I ...more

Coffee! It's so amazing that J.S. Bach wrote a comic opera about caffeine addiction. Meanwhile, more than half of Americans 18 years or older start their day with a cup of the hot stuff. Most of us take coffee for granted, but it's a bean that can surprise you. Read on to unde ...more

Welcome back, my newbie hackers! Recently, I "upgraded" to Kali as my hacking platform, despite my preference for BackTrack. I did this reluctantly, primarily because new readers here could no longer download BackTrack from their site. I want to point out here that we all mus ...more

Americans consume over 1.2 billion pounds of potato chips each year, making it one of the most popular snack foods in the United States. If the entire population were addicted, it'd be about 4 pounds per person each year. Not everyone does, though, so it'd be more realistic t ...more

Not that long ago I wrote an article discussing what it would be like, realistically, if you were to accidentally travel back in time to the Victorian era. At the end of that article, I mentioned that the best thing you could bring with you on a time-traveling adventure is a K ...more

Apple is notoriously cryptic when it comes to the reveals of its new products, and as usual, they've kept us guessing about the release of the iPhone 5 (or "New iPhone?"). It's expected to be officially revealed on September 12, and rumor has it that sales will begin on the 21 ...more

If you're in the market for a new smartphone and want nothing but the best of the best, now's the time to act. Some of the greatest phones money can buy are being released as we speak, while others are still in their prime and will continue to be for most of 2024. Whether you ...more

Facebook's annual earnings call on Wednesday didn't come with any big surprises, that is, if you took everything at face value. However, if you read between the lines, and paid close attention to the very specific and intentional language the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, u ...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

The $35 Raspberry Pi is an amazingly useful single-board computer (SBC) with a good balance of price, performance, and connectivity options. But for some projects, it just isn't enough. Whether you need more computing power, a smaller size, or better machine-learning capabilit ...more

The iPhone X was released in November 2017, and the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus dropped right before it, but the hottest news right now revolves around the 2018 iPhone releases. The rumor mill regarding the iPhone X's successor started churning out speculations on names, cameras, disp ...more

Hello there, people. Today, I am going to show you how to extract the essence from a useful plant, using either alcohol or olive oil. This is how you take a plant and turn it into a useful (and preservable) medicine. For those of you who know nothing about herbal medicine, let ...more

Apple's iOS 15 update has some great camera features that can benefit professional photographers and casual users alike. And while many are exclusive to newer iPhone models, there are still some Camera app upgrades and additions that apply to all iPhones running iOS 15. 1. Im ...more

Adobe Audition, Audacity, and other audio editing software have tools to isolate vocals and instruments in regular songs so that you can get an instrumental track for karaoke, vocals for an a capella version, or solo drums, bass, keys, etc. that you can use to learn the song y ...more

Trying to figure out which music streaming service to subscribe to can be a difficult task when the playing field is so crowded. Each has its benefits, as well as downsides, so finding the right one for your needs and wants can take a lot of overwhelming research. But we've do ...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