Eric Limer

The Earth-Shattering DDoS That Wasn’t, Bill Gates’ Condom Challenge, Photoshop Jedi, And More

While there may not have actually been a Internet-threatening DDoS this week, there’s plenty more to catch up on. We’ve got soda-stealin’ tips, two flavors of photoshop magic, the reason you’ll wind up with a smart watch, Bill Gates’ condom plans, and all the people who suddenly owe Google $1,500. Check it all out below.…

8 Random Celebrities Who Are Getting Google Glass

When Google started its Glass-giving spree, it picked out some odd picks. It got so bad that some of those offers got pulled. But you can bet these celebrity winners will get their copies. https://gizmodo.com/meet-the-lucky-people-who-suddenly-owe-google-1500-5992617 Stanford computer science student Andrej Karpathy put together a handy-dandy script that trawls Twitter and spits out the winners in…

How Big Is the Tallest Mountain That Could Ever Exist on Earth?

We’ve got some pretty tall mountains here on Earth. Granted, even the best of ’em don’t hold a candle to what’s waiting on Mars, but they’re still impressive. Just look at the views Google got with its Street Mountain View shots. https://gizmodo.com/what-a-giant-martian-mountain-would-look-like-on-earth-5990962 But how tall could a mountain on Earth actually be, under the most…

Star Trek: Into Darkness Will Have a NASA Ad for Real-Life Starfleet

Star Trek is every thing we hope space travel can be someday. Maybe we could do without all the universe-threatening disasters, but we’re all hoping for a warp drive, or a tricorder, or a replicator. Until then, NASA is carrying the fire, and the 30-second NASA trailer that will play before Star Trek: Into Darkness…

Even Grandma Could Tell This Isn’t How Hacking Works

It’s a common little meta-game for those of us who are technically competent: keep your eye out in the movies for the most egregious technical misrepresentation you can find. And while its one thing to just keep tossing of reference after reference to “the mainframe,” this complication of hacktastic scenes put together by the folks…

The Most Accurate Map of Gay Marriage Support in America

Seen a few profile pictures change in support of gay marriage recently? The all-seeing eye of Facebook has seen quite a few, and from that ocean of data, it’s whipped up a comprehensive map of gay marriage support in the America. Facebook users switch up their profile pictures for no reason all the time, including…

Being Off-Key Can At Least Look Good With This Pretty Tuning App

The smartphone has all but killed the standalone tuner, but while most apps just emulate their old-fashioned counterparts, Tunable brings something new—and pretty—to the table. Available for iOS and Android, Tunable isn’t just about getting your sound-maker in tune; it’s about showing you what that looks like. When you’re tuning, or just noodling around, Tunable…

This Delightful Dragonfly Drone Swims Swiftly Through The Air

Not every drone out there has to have terrifying grabby arms or run on lasers. The BioniCopter is content to just cruise around like the insect that inspired it. No frills needed. https://gizmodo.com/just-what-we-need-drones-with-grappling-claws-5990586 Designed by Festo, the BioniCopter does have some subtle little tricks up its sleeve. Each of its four wings, for instance, has…

Are Hackers Heroes?

“Hacker” is one of the most loaded Internet words getting thrown around these days. To many (hi cable news), the label is inherently malicious, and goes hand in hand with threats to blow up the interwebs. Others who self-identify as such, will never ever stop whining about how it means just the opposite. But are…

Beautiful Collapsable Cubicles Are an Office Rat’s Dream Come True

The cubicle is a horrid monster of office design. While they might be functional, it’s never pretty to section off your office into endless false walls, resigning workers into their own little pockets of a giant ice cube tray. The designers at Taylor and Miller Architecture and Urban Design have a beautiful solution that even…

HTC One Teardown: Even Harder to Fix Than the iPhone

The HTC One is hands-down the most beautiful Android phone we’ve ever seen, so it should come as no surprise that it doesn’t come apart nicely. The folks over at iFixit gave it a shot and had One hell of a time getting the guts out so you won’t have to. And you shouldn’t try;…

Street View Hits Mars With This 4-Gigapixel Panoramic

There’s been no shortage of Mars pictures since Curiosity landed. We’ve got Martian mountains, rover selfies, the works. But thanks to a little image stitching by a clever dude back here on Earth, now we have Mars Street View, kind of. https://gizmodo.com/what-a-giant-martian-mountain-would-look-like-on-earth-5990962 Photographer Andrew Bodrov took a whopping 407 of the pictures Curiosity took with…

A Pretty Little Map of All The San Francisco Apartments You Can’t Afford

The Internet is a great place to look at things you can’t have, and this clever map that cross indexes San Franscico real estate listings with location fits snugly in that category. At least the nicer districts do. The “Median Rent” map by Stephanie May takes a half-year’s worth of listing data, and boils it…

Your friends send you a whole bunch of Dropbox links? Good news, from here on out they’ll get saved in a tab for you.

This Giant Mesh Wall Acts Like an Air Filter for Mexico City

The best way to deal with smog is to make less of it, but it’s too late to just do that. And when it comes to cleaning up your already polluted air, mesh structures like this one in Mexico City are a stylish way to filter a whole city’s worth of air. This porous wall…

Three Crazy James Bond Villains Were Caught Trying to Cut Through The Internet’s Undersea Cables

While the Internet at large was freaking out about an apocalyptic attack that wasn’t really happening yesterday, something nefarious was going down at the bottom of the sea. Egyptian authorites found a trio of divers down there attempting to sever a crucial submarine communications cable. https://gizmodo.com/that-internet-war-apocalypse-is-a-lie-5992652 Yesterday, Egypt’s Coast Guard stumbled upon a suspicious fishing…

Google’s Shopping Express, a subscription-based, same-day delivery service, just opened to the public in San Francisco.

Why Can’t All Matchboxes Look This Nice?

We all know the familiar, dotted pattern of a matchbox striking strip. It’s distinctive, but not particularly pretty. But with a splash of color and a little geometric variation, you can actually get something worth having out on the shelf. Developed by Danish design house HAY with help from Swedish designer Clara von Zweigbergk, and…

Google Street View Just Added Haunting Panoramas From the Fukushima Exclusion Zone

It’s been almost two years since the disaster at Fukushima, but the surrounding area is still off-limits, and will continue to be for who knows how long. The town Namie-machi has been vacant since its evacuation on March 11, 2011, and now Google’s uploaded Street View images of the eerie, hollow shell that remains. Once…

These Clever Packages Can Turn Crates of Coke Into Boxes of Life-Saving Medicine

It’s one thing to have life-saving medicine, but it’s quite another to get it delivered to where its really needed. And what better way to make sure it gets to the furthest reaches of the world than by packing it in with a truly vital necessity like Coke. In every crate of Coca Cola, there’s…