Eric Limer

This 18-Year-Old’s Invention Could Make Your Future Phone Instacharge

While you are hanging out on the Internet (in your underwear, maybe?) on a Saturday, kids that are smarter than either of us are out there getting ready to change the world. 18-year-old Eesha Khare (left), for instance, not only invented a supercapacitor that could someday be a phone battery that charges in just a…

Someone Animated Patton Oswalt’s Epic Star Wars/Avengers Mashup Rant

Not too long ago, Patton Oswalt riffed on his idea for a great plot for the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII film on Parks and Recreation. Now, it’s got a whole bunch of…”digital effects” that turn it into the film we all deserve. It’s alright JJ, we’ve got this one on lock. But thanks for…

How Much the Starship Enterprise Costs, Google I/O Goodies, And More

It’s been a big, big week. Google I/O hit this week, bringing along a whole bunch of Android updates, if not a new version or any actual hardware. And aside from all that jazz, we’ve got an ode to Chris Hadfield, (a wild guess at) how much it would cost to build the starship Enterprise,…

Watch This Badass Pilot Save the Day With a Ballsy No-Wheel Landing

Last night, the pilot of US Airways Express Flight 4560 was having some bad luck. The landing gear on his turboprop twin-engine plane just wouldn’t go all the way down. So with some quick thinking and righteous piloting skills, he went in for a wheelless, sparky touchdown, and pulled it off without a hitch. After…

This Table Designs Itself With a Corrosive Chemical Dance Party

There are all kinds of ways to design a table, but most of them don’t include resonant frequencies or specially-designed abrasive enzymes, much less both. Bonus Table 571 isn’t most tables though, and that’s exactly how it gets its very specific pattern. Engineered by Colleen & Eric and shown off at NYC Design Week 2013,…

The World’s Fastest Wi-Fi Puts Your Sluggish Router to Shame

For the most part, we’re all happy if we can get Internet that’s fast enough to stream some HD video. But faster is always better, and a new, world-record setting network developed in Germany is so blazing fast you wouldn’t know what to do with it. It can deliver multiple HD films in a second.…

Start Your Day Right With a Daft Punk Laser Bubble Rave

Lasers, bubbles, edge-tracking, and Daft Punk are all pretty awesome in their own separate ways, but put together, they can put one one hell of a useless, random, but awesome show. Messing with his Etherdream DAC laser to no end other than real craziness, Memo Akten of the group Marshmallow Laser Feast whipped up this…

Earth’s Atmosphere Is Slowly Escaping Into Space

Take a deep breath. You’re lucky to be able to. Without a handy blanket of atmosphere gases to swaddle us all, we’d be no more than a twinkle in evolution’s eye. But that wonderful blanket of gas is slowly escaping, molecule by molecule, and there’s not much we can do about it. As MinuteEarth explains,…

How Much Would It Cost to Build the Starship Enterprise?

So you want to build the Enterprise. Don’t we all! Well good news: according to some quick, messy, napkin math, it’s possible. Kind of. The bad news? It’s going to be stupid expensive. But not unfathomably so! Start scrounging up your space-pennies. One little constraint Since we can’t predict the future, or even come close…

iPhones are now military equipment, kind of. The Pentagon just cleared Apple devices running iOS 6 for use on all its networks, so iPhones are officially joining the ranks of BlackBerrys and Samsung Android devices. Windows Phone 8 fans are still out of luck.

Turns out Nvidia’s Shield is available for pre-order today instead of May 20th as originally announced. Still $350 though.

A Self-Lighting Candle with a Dimmer Switch Is Uselessly Awesome

Candles are low tech by definition. We’ve been using them for thousands of years. But designer Zelf Koelman put a more modern spin on them by whipping up an auto-lighting candle rig that even has a dimmer switch. It’s as neat as it is totally absurd. As a practical gadget, it’s both ridiculously over-engineered and…

A Tropical Storm Making Ripples in the Ocean Like a Pebble in a Pond

Normally, we see storms as clouds and rain, but there’s invisible power lurking inside. This amazing satellite shot shows that hidden chaos in the form of gravity waves, blasting out from a storm’s center like ripples in a pond. Tropical Cyclone Mahasen, which you can see off to the right there, is heading through the…

A Human Stem Cell Has Been Cloned For the First Time

Almost two decades ago, scientists succeeded in cloning Dolly the sheep. Now, the same process has been allowed scientists to clone embryonic stem cells from fetal human skin cells for the very first time. There are no more barriers between us and creating human clones. Cloning in and of itself has been within our reach…

Watch This Annular Eclipse Send a Stunning Halo of Fire Across the Sky

There’s nothing quite like a total eclipse (of the heart), but an annular eclipse is a close second. Especially if you’re into rings of fire. And after you watch this incredible video from one that took place in Pilbara, Australia last weekend, you’ll be a fan. Put together by Photographer Colin Legg with help from…

Google Play Games Just Made Android Gaming Awesome(r)

Gaming on Android just got a way more legit. Google’s just announced its new “Google Play Games” app and service at I/O today, and that comes with a whole bunch of features from achievements to leaderboards to matchmaking, multiplayer, and even cloud saves. https://gizmodo.com/google-i-o-whats-new-in-android-chrome-and-beyond-506734952 Any serious gaming platform nowadays has its own social network to…

Syria Dropped Off the Face of the Internet Again

Last week, Syria completely disappeared from the Internet, and not for the first time either. Since then, it poked its head back out into cyberspace, but not for long; Google’s Transparency Report is showing that it’s gone again. https://gizmodo.com/syria-is-completely-cut-off-from-the-internet-again-494724786 What’s going on over there is anyone’s guess. According to Renesys chief technology officer James Cowie,…

A Cellphone Plan That Helps Make the World a Better Place

It’s pretty safe to assume that your cellphone bill is bigger than you’d like it to be. With the help of a new service provider called GIV Mobile, you can slice a little chunk off every month, but it’ll go to charity instead of your pocket. GIV Mobile is a MVNO operating on T-Mobile’s 4G…

According to The Verge, Xbox Points are finally going to die. Rumor is that Microsoft will move to a gift card system not unlike iTunes. The system’s said to work across Windows Store, Windows Phone Store, and Xbox, with a launch as soon as E3. We’ll see.

HP SlateBook x2: An Android Notebook With Sweet Tegra 4 Guts

On the heels of its very first Android tablet after a long affair with webOS, HP’s just announced its second device running the Google operating system, and it’s ushering in that Android notebook fad we’ve all heard whispers about. Enter the SlateBook x2, the first Tegra 4-powered, 10-inch Android convertible. https://gizmodo.com/hp-slate-7-hands-on-a-better-way-to-do-android-5986538 We only got to…