Light Start – Tinder GIFs, SpaceX ‘chutes, a Surface phone, and too much Facebook

We’re sure this will be SFW – Tinder adds the ability to share GIFs 

Rather than being some sort of sarcasm, our take on the latest features for dating app Tinder are genuine. More or less. The swipe-left-swipe-right app is adding GIF support, potentially removing the need for forming actual words when talking to a prospective match (hint: don’t do this – we evolved language for a reason). You probably won’t wind up waving your wand (or having one waved at you), as the GIFs will have to be available on Giphy. That’s not going to stop some intrepid folks who really want their opening gambit to be their bits in motion but for the rest of us normal people, there will be cats, cars, assorted animals and cats. Because internet. Also on the way? Users will be able to upload photos directly from their phone instead of using Facebook as a middle-man.

Source: Tinder

SpaceX tests out another Dragon safety feature – Parachutes

This takes us right back to school days, when we watched all sorts of instructional videos in the media room. The kind of video narrated by someone with a serious tone. That’s what we’re getting with this NASA look at testing for parachutes for the Crew Dragon capsule which will be returning passengers from space. Of course, they’re not testing with the actual capsule, pushing a large weighted block out of a plane with parachutes attached to it instead. How do we get that job? The Dragon will be landing in the ocean initially, using the ‘chutes, but eventually SpaceX hopes to do a proper landing using those eight SuperDraco engines. There’s a mockup of what that might look like as well.

Source: NASA (YouTube)

So we might have that Surface smartphone after all…

Do us a favour, head on over to www.surfacephone.com right now. You saw that, right? The link redirects to Microsoft’s Surface page, as does the surfacecar.com URL. That’s all that was needed to start up speculation, again, that there’s a Surface-branded smartphone coming from the company. We don’t actually have anything else to go on, so take this with a huge pinch of salt. Microsoft have also gotten hold of the surfacelaptop.com domain, which means that if they’ve got a phone on the way then a new branded laptop, and possibly a car, could also be on the way. Or Microsoft might just be covering their bases against domain squatters.

Source: via reddit

Is 100 million hours of Facebook video a day too much?

Okay people, we weren’t going to say anything but it’s time for an intervention. You’re all spending entirely too much time on Facebook. How much time? According to Facebook, speaking during their Q4 2015 earnings call, everyone’s spending enough time on the social network to clock up 100 million hours of Facebook video. Per day. Not per month. Per day. Which is enough that Facebook are thinking of launching a standalone video channel. Because we don’t spend enough time glued to social media already. Ah well… time to update our statuses again.

Source: TheNextWeb