Eric Limer

Inside the Classroom Where the Air Force Teaches Drone Pilots

Flying a drone for the Air Force is like any other skill; you have to learn it. The Atlantic got a rare look inside the classroom where that instruction happens. It’s a lot like most classrooms you’ve probably been in, except the word problems they’re working through involve killing people. The Atlantic’s Corey Mead sat…

AMD’s New FX Chips Have Integrated Graphics Great for Gamers

It’s Computex time, and that means new guts. While Intel’s trotting out Broadwell for a spin, AMD’s swinging back with its newest batch of mobile APUs—dubbed Kaveri—including the new FX-branded laptop-brains, which offer kick-ass integrated graphics that are bar none for gaming. Intel’s integrated graphics game is getting better, but it’s still AMD’s bread and…

ASUS Has a New Pair Of Slim, Slick 4K Ultrabooks

Straight out of Computex, ASUS has a pair of pretty little laptops that boast fantastic 4K screens, while still coming in pretty damn slim. The new ultrabooks come in two different flavors. First there’s the Zenbook NX500, a 15.6-incher with a 3840 x 2160 screen, 4K UHD screen. And to push its pixels, it packs…

Razer Junglecat: A Slide-Out iOS Controller You Might Actually Use

The quest for button controls on iOS that don’t suck is an unending one. Touchscreen buttons suck, and the hardware out that works with the iOS controller API so far is fine, but it’s big and sort of annoyingly deliberate. Razer’s Junglecat, though, is a solution that feels right. The Junglecat’s advantage is in its…

Your Reminder That Internet Balloons in the Sky Can Also Fall Down

Filling the sky with a flock of internet balloons sounds like an interesting if also sort of insane idea on paper, but in real life it’s not quite so fancy-free. And Google’s dealing with that first hand now that one of its internet balloons has crashed and caused a power outage. Yup, one of Google’s…

Two of the Best iOS 8 Features Apple Didn’t Talk About

There’s plenty of great new stuff coming in iOS 8. You’ll be able to remote control your phone from your computer to send text messages. There’s soon to be an army of new keyboard options. It’s a brave new world. But Apple didn’t even mention some of the best new features on stage. There are…

Apple’s new desktop operating systemOS X 10.10 Yosemite will be available as a public beta this summer, and just like Mavericks before it, it will be free.

Yes, the Start Menu is back coming to Windows, but when? If you were hoping for “soon” you might be out of luck; sources tell ZDNet the menu isn’t coming back until 2015.

The FCC Gets the Premium Cable Takedown It Deserves

The death of net neutrality is a looming catastrophe that the FCC thinks it can slip past you, while you just twiddle your thumbs and fail to notice how much of a farce the whole process is. And if that hadn’t hit home just yet, John Oliver’s explanation from last night’s Last Week Tonight is…

A Motion-Stabilized Cloverfield Is Awesomely Unwatchable

I bet I can guess the first thing that comes to your mind when I say Cloverfield: “SHAKY CAAAAAM!!” It’s so excessive it can be a little bit of a problem, and some endeavoring internet hero tried to fix it. The result is a Cloverfield that’s unwatchable in a completely different way. This can’t be…

Dear and the Headlights: I Just Do

Ugh, love songs are so sappy, right? Usually! But every once in a while there’s a glorious exception. Something full-to-bursting with a vital vibrancy. Something earnest and cute without being lame. Dear and the Headlights’ “I Just Do” is one of those songs. Off the band’s fantastic 2007 debut Small Steps, Heavy Hooves, “I Just…

What the Synapses in Your Brain Actually Look Like

Without synapses, your neurons wouldn’t be able to communicate and your brain would be little more than a ball of meat. Exactly what synapses look like has been a mystery until now, and it turns out that even though their job is simple, they’re complicated as hell. You have trillions of synapses in your brain,…

This week in tech reads: What really happens when you shock a dead brain with electricity, the real science behind the summeriest sci-fi movies, ex-Lulzsec hacker walks free, and more! Danny Yadron talks to the man behind the first computer password, and digs into how this whole password thing got so out of control. [WSJ]…

Do You Ever Snoop on Friends’ Phones?

If you’ve ever disabled the PIN on your lock screen (hi, hello), or lent your phone to someone, you know the feeling. Oh shit I left my phone in there with them! I hope I don’t have anything embarrassing on there. Shit, did I leave that tab open? It’s OK. I can trust them, right?…

Google’s Stealthy Logo Update, Beats by Apple, Pink Slime, and More

WWDC is on the horizon, and we’re waiting with bated breath about what iOS 8 might bring. But in the meantime Google tweaked its logo ever so slightly, Apple bought Beats f’reals, we tried out the Surface Pro 3, pondered pink slime, and saw some new self driving cars. Check out all that and more…

One Man’s Crazy Quest To Build a Tiny House on the Moon

There’s no end to fantasies about living on the moon. Actually possible moon bases, fictional Nazi moon bases, insane Newt Gingrich moon bases. Swedish artist Mikael Genberg has a more modest goal: one, tiny, uninhabited lunar house by 2015. Of course it takes a whole lot to make that possible. First there’s the matter of…

Just a year after starting it up, Google’s shutting down its Texas-based Moto X assembly factory, citing weak sales and high costs. The decision to close this plant was apparently unrelated to Google’s plans to sell Motorola off to China-based Lenovo. But whatever the reasoning, it sure is a bummer.

Report: Oculus Is Helping Samsung With Its Own VR Headset

We’ve heard rumors that Samsung is working on a VR headset, which should really come as no surprise. What is a surprise is that, according to Engadget, Samsung has help from the big guys: Oculus VR. Engadget’s unnamed sources say that the project is a co-op job in which Samsung will handle the hardware, while…

What’s the Most Expensive Thing You Can Find on Amazon?

This week, Amazon added (absurdly expensive) commemorative coins to the long list of things you can buy at from its sprawling online bazaar. And while none of us is going to go drop a couple mil on a coin—even with free shipping—it got us to thinking: what’s the most expensive item on Amazon? http://www.amazon.com/b/?tag=gizmodo08c-20 We…

The Galaxy Gear is getting a big update that replaces its entire operating system. The update, which started rolling out today, lets users switch their Galaxy Gear over to Tizen, offering a few new features and better battery life. It also makes the “Galaxy” part of the name a misnomer, but you can’t change that…