Decrypting copyrighted materials is, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an illegal act. Yesterday, the Library of Congress issued a set of exemptions to the DMCA’s decryption ban, which many outlets, including Gizmodo, hailed as “victories” and “big wins.” They’re not. At best, the new rules allow…
Today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began safety hearings with a proposed bill to reform the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That bill contains a provision which completely outlaws car owners from hacking their own cars. Which a giant mistake.
Much of the cough syrup on the shelves today owes a little something to the US Navy and the CIA. One of its main effective ingredients was developed by a project funded by both agencies. Learn why.
Sometimes, you’re typing when you get to a word that you cannot, for the life of you, spell. That’s when you turn to Google, counting on the Internet to correct your spelling. Vocativ used Google Trends to pinpoint each American state’s most googled word.
The fictional worlds we love wouldn’t be the places they are without the fictional technologies that populate them. Here, author Ian Tregillis explains just why it’s so important for fiction to catalogue those technological deviations, and why fiction and technology are so inextricably linked.
The term “patent troll” wasn’t coined until the late 20th century, used to describe someone who filed a patent in order not to manufacture products, but to collect licensing fees. But more than 100 years ago, a patent attorney was a proto-patent troll, exploiting the system to profit off of the burgeoning auto…
Fluoroantimonic acid is the strongest acid in the world; it can rip through most materials easily. But a chemical that you've got around your house will stop it cold.
We all know that the homes we believe belong to us are actually varied landscapes in which billions of creatures live, but we usually try not to think about our microbial roommates. Find out why your bathroom is the ultimate bacteria battleground, and why cleaning it can sometimes make it worse.
The remains of Richard III were recently reinterred after the Plantagenet king was discovered beneath a car park. And this year, researcher announced that they may have discovered the remains of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes. But when a corpse has been missing so long, how do you identify the remains?
Smartphones were once a boutique item, but now they're essential. Still, we all remember a time before smartphones — at least, the time before we got our first one. How old were you when you got your first, and what year was it?
Referring to a single person who may be of any gender in English can be tricky. It can be awkward to use words like "one" or phrases like "he or she," and many a grammarian hates using "they" as to refer to a single person. How has English gotten this far without such a convenient pronoun? Actually, it hasn't.
The Skin Effect isn't what it sounds like, but it can help us understand what happens to a human being when they're exposed to different microwave frequencies. It also explains why your food comes out cold on the inside.
Every time New Year's Day rolls around, people fall all over each other to make resolutions about losing weight, stopping smoking, being better people, and other nonsense. But what about what's really important — namely, your continued pop culture education?
Probably not, unless you're well over 100 years old. In the 1800s, arsenic began being marketed as a health supplement, even though it had been a known poison for thousands of years. So why were people suddenly eating it on purpose?
Starting today, Americans will engage in the county's annual combat ritual: Holiday Travel Season—a brutal tradition pitting travelers against the monolithic security and transportation apparatus in a race to their respective destinations. Believe it or not, it's possible to make it through with your dignity intact.…
On Monday, the state of Maine reached a settlement with a nurse who's been fighting the quarantine restrictions being placed on medical workers who have had contact with ebola patients. With quarantine all over the news these days, could a legal challenge to the practice actually succeed? Probably not.
Normally, our pupils dilate in response to changing light; as it gets darker, our pupils get larger. But they expand in size for other reasons as well, including when we're sexually aroused and when we're performing complex cognitive tasks. But it's also known that certain medications — including illicit drugs — can…
Welcome to Reading List, Gizmodo's Sunday afternoon roundup of the best writing from around the web. This week, we've got great stuff from Wired, The Washington Post, and more. Let's dig in!
They're both white powders. They're both used in baking. Both substances are leavening agents, substances that release gas bubbles and puff up dough so it's fluffy instead of flat. Both have the same look and texture, but they are used differently. What's the chemistry behind that?
Coaxial wiring—like what runs into your cable box—revolutionized data transmission by drastically widening the wire's data pipeline. Two years ago, a research team from University of Southern California accomplished the feat using a vortex of lasers. Now, that same team is back with a means of coiling radio waves…
