Category Archives: Gadgets

Chemistry, Consumer, Engineering, Gadgets, Green, How To, Materials, Science, Technology

Throwable Fire Extinguishers: You Had Me at “Fire Grenade”

May 27, 2014 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

Fire is frightening and dangerous – that’s why they call it fire. So it’s a little strange that we have laws requiring us to stock canister extinguishers but not regulations requiring that we learn how, if or when to operate them. If you’re like most people, you probably don’t even know what kind of fire your extinguisher is rated for, and you likely have no idea when you last serviced or inspected the device, if ever.

Recently, a few companies have begun marketing new kinds of extinguishers, updated versions of fire grenades intended to make fighting fires as worry-free as possible. Lightweight and easy to use, they rely on the most basic of human skills: throwing. Which raises the question:

How do throwable fire extinguishers work?

Auto, Computing, Consumer, Culture, Engineering, Forensics, Gadgets, Internet, Law, Psychology, Technology, Top 10

The Internet of Things…that Go Bump in the Night

May 9, 2014 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

As sci-fi and techno-horror flicks are fond pointing out, the future is chock-full of things that want to kill us. Yep, our own technological progeny want to consign us to the great bit-bucket in the sky but, hey, at least we were warned, right?

Well, sure, if we had any intention of heeding these cinematic Cassandras. Think about it: The Terminator warns us about Skynet, so what do we do? We set to work on autonomous drones. Christine frightens us with a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury, so we get busy designing self-driving cars. It’s like we want to die.

And then there’s the Internet of Things: Trillions of everyday objects exchanging data, everywhere, all the time, with only the most basic human oversight. Can’t wait to see how that one turns out.

10 Nightmare Scenarios From the Internet of Things

Computing, Consumer, Engineering, Gadgets, Technology

Android Wear is Stalking You

April 9, 2014 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

The much-ballyhooed Moto 360, one of the flagship Android Wear smart watches. Photo by Chris F.

Personal assistants who know all of your business might be fine in the halls of Downton Abbey or stately Wayne Manor, but there’s something a bit unsettling about their 21st century equivalents, smart watches. Chalk it up to working-class roots or incipient techno-paranoia, but many of us balk at a networked device that tracks our every habit, secret and preference like a cybernetic Mrs. O’Brien, particularly one built by a company with a burgeoning robot army and a secretive barge flotilla. Then again, they’re kind of cool…

How Android Wear Works

Consumer, Electromagnetism, Gadgets, How To, Technology, Travel

Not-so-Final Destination: Landing at the Wrong Airport

January 14, 2014 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

“Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is the flight deck. Thank you for choosing Airborne Airways, where your destination is always up in the air. If you’ll look out your window, you’ll see…well, we’re hoping you can tell us. Anything look familiar?”

Yes, it’s preposterous, embarrassing and more than a little dangerous, but flight crews touch down at the wrong airfield or runway more often than you might think. Which raises the question: If GPS navigation can direct any idiot with a car to his or her destination, how can a trained flight crew with state-of-the-art navigation screw up so badly? In other words…

How Can a Plane Land at the Wrong Airport?

Auto, Biochemistry, Computing, Consumer, Engineering, Gadgets, Genetics, Green, Health, History, Imaging, Internet, Materials, Medicine, Neuroscience, Physics, Science, Space, Technology, Top 10

The Future: At the Corner of Close and Soon

January 3, 2014 Nicholas Gerbis Leave a comment

Somehow the future we get is never quite the one we were promised. Then again, sometimes the very ideas wrapped in the pages of sci-fi and Popular Science are right under our noses, in disguise. After all, we have hand-held sensor-communicators and miraculous supermaterials – they just take the rather mundane form of carbon-fiber-wrapped smartphones.

Maybe our blindness arises from our physical and electronic architecture. Has exchanging Googie buildings for Google caused us to overlook the flying-car equivalents that fill our everyday lives, or soon will? Read on.

Our 10 Favorite Replacements for ‘Where’s My Flying Car?’

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