Tech Boys

The holiday party season is in full swing and is set to hit its annual crescendo on December 31. And that means that many of us will enjoy a hearty New Year's Eve celebration with cocktails and Champaign, then spend the first day of the new year hungover.  In Asia, partiers have been using hangover prevention remedies for years. Some of those remedies that use the same key ingredients have found their way to the U.S. and two Business Insider reporters, both of whom tend to easily get hangovers, bravely decided to put two of these remedies to the test. We tried  Morning Recovery , an herbal drink developed by Sisun Lee,  a former Tesla engineer, in conjunction with Dr. Jing Liang, a USC scientist who is studying  herbal hangover remedies . He discovered the drinks during a visit to South Korea but when he returned to the US, he couldn't find any that he thought worked as well. So he developed his own. We also tested Flyby , which are herbal pills t...

Apple has a new iPhone on the way that looks incredible, is faster than ever, and ... is outrageously expensive. The base model costs $1,000. One thousand dollars! But there's good news, friends: There's a far better iPhone out there right now , and it costs less than half the price of the absurdly priced iPhone X. That phone is the iPhone SE — Apple's best iPhone. Here's the deal. SEE ALSO:  9 reasons you should buy an iPhone 8 instead of an iPhone X DON'T MISS:  15 apps for your iPhone that are better than the ones Apple made 1. The iPhone SE is remarkably affordable, at just $350 to start. Millions of people will excitedly plunk down a full stack for the iPhone X. It's more than just a phone — it's a status symbol. I get it. It's a much more affordable version of a Ferrari. Fine . But I'm a Honda Civic kinda guy. I want something affordable, powerful enough, and long-lasting. I'm not trying to impress anyone, nor am I the kind of pers...

Japan has a sex problem. The country's birthrate is shrinking year after year, to the point where deaths are outpacing births. Simply put, Japan's population is decreasing. But let's be clear: Population change is a complicated subject affected by many factors. Western media often correlates the decline in Japan's population size with recent studies of Japanese sexual habits and marriage. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan, for instance, found that "almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship." But just because people aren't in relationships doesn't mean they don't want companionship , of course. And that's where something like Gatebox comes in. Yes, that is an artificially intelligent character who lives in a glass tube in your home. Her name is Azuma Hikari, and she's the star of Gatebox — a $2,500 Amazon Echo-esque device t...

The 15 Second Horror Film Challenge is an annual competition run by a nonprofit (you have until Oct 2018 to get your entries in for next year ). This year's top twenty has some entries that literally made the hair on my neck stand up, especially Luma Films' Good Night , which is an especially good take on a recurring horror theme. More of my favorites below. ( via JWZ ) (more…) from Boing Boing http://ift.tt/2q7nVnk via IFTTT

When Washington State legalized recreational marijuana three years ago, it created a licensing regime that was supposed to protect and encourage small growers, but the data shows that marijuana growing has consolidated into a few large suppliers, even as the price per gram has fallen -- and that the industry's embrace of exotic derivatives like edibles and concentrates is capital-intensive and inaccessible to small, independent providers. (more…) from Boing Boing http://ift.tt/2q3DcFR via IFTTT

I bought the iPhone 6S Plus when it came out in September 2015 for $800+ (with taxes), and I couldn't be happier that I saved $800+ in 2016 and 2017 by not upgrading to the iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 Plus, or the iPhone X. Don't get me wrong — Apple's newer iPhones are great and objectively better than the iPhone 6S Plus. They have faster processors and better cameras with dual lenses, which makes for beautiful photos. Those two features are arguably the main reasons someone should upgrade to a new smartphone. That said, the upgrades to the camera and processor simply weren't enough to warrant the dent in my bank account that a new iPhone would have caused. Here's why: SEE ALSO:  These are the best iPhone X models to buy if you want the flexibility to switch to any carrier The iPhone 6S still looks like the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8. The iPhone 6S looks nearly identical to the iPhone 7, save for the redesigned and less visible antenna stripes. The plastic stripes m...