Mario Aguilar

Blackmail DDOS Attack Takes Out Major Online Chat Service

The popular group chat system Campfire is currently being nailed with a DDoS attack. Turns out some blackmailing hackers are trying to extort money from the provider. They’re refusing to negotiate. 37Signals, the company behind Campfire, Basecamp and other products posted the following to its blog: Criminals have laid siege to our networks using what’s…

Panasonic Has a 4K Action Camera and It Is Super Goofy

Panasonic has officially announced the HX-A500 wearable action camera, the real-world version of the prototype we saw back at CES. It’s dustproof, waterproof down to 9.8 feet, and it straps to your head like some weird kind of Universal Soldier head piece. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-panasonics-future-4k-video-micro-four-thirds-c-1496612281 The HX-A500 is the first wearable camera that shoot 4K footage at…

Report: Apple Is Negotating a Streaming TV Deal With Comcast

The WSJ reports that Apple is currently negotiating a streaming TV deal with Comcast that would use an Apple set-top-box—ahem, Apple TV refresh—and Comcast’s position as the company that controls a ton of the United States’ broadband infrastructure. https://gizmodo.com/the-one-thing-apple-tv-needs-to-take-over-your-living-r-1547314110 According to the report, negotiations are in very early stages and any deal would be all…

Le1f: Boom

Man, New York-based MC/producer Le1f doesn’t do it quite like anyone else, which is probably why I like his latest single “Boom” so much. It’s a banger, but the first time I watched the video, I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Well, I get the the smoking weed and dancing in a…

Girl Uses Classic iPhone Prank on Mom to Hilarious Results

A few years ago I told you about an amazing prank you can pull on your friends/co-workers/family. This girl just executed it with beautiful precision on her mother. https://gizmodo.com/ios-5-shortcut-feature-enables-a-hilarious-prank-5855293 Here’s how it works: Go into someone’s iPhone settings and change their shortcuts so that some normal term they would type then automatically changes to something…

Watch This Great Documentary Series About the Radio Voices You Love

Radio is so wonderful that the ancient medium has managed to slip through the technological cracks, and survive even in our screen-saturated world. This short documentary series about storytellers that keep us trapped in our driveways is really beautiful. Produced by Andrew Norton in partnership with the radio resource Transom.org, “This Is Radio” launched a…

What Is the Laziest Thing You’ve Ever Ordered From Amazon?

Amazon Prime might be getting a tad pricier, but the truth is that it’s still an incredible deal. I would keep it just for the free two-day shipping, even if it didn’t come with all of those nifty extras like a huge streaming video collection. Why? Because I am the laziest human alive. https://gizmodo.com/amazon-prime-is-still-the-best-deal-in-tech-1542971643 Things…

How Much Longer Do I Have to Wait For My Wonderful Self-Winding Swatch?

It has been nearly a year since Swatch announced it’s remarkably innovative Sistem51 watch. It’s a self-winding timepiece that has only has 51 parts. Forget smartwatches, get this simple dumbness on my wrist right now. https://gizmodo.com/swatch-sistem51-finally-mechanical-movement-on-the-ch-486228057 Every so often I take a 10 minute stroll from our offices to the nearby Swatch store. And every…

Why It’s Taking Satellites So Long to Find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Today, we’re hearing yet another report about a satellite that has spotted “potential objects,” which might be floating wreckage from the vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Today, those images come from France. Yesterday, the images came from China. Last week it was an Australian bird making discoveries. https://jalopnik.com/chinese-may-have-spotted-piece-of-malaysia-airlines-fli-1549348653 Now, there’s no telling whether the French…

Behind-the-Scenes of a Crazy Drone Video Shoot

The video for electronic music act Booka Shade’s new single “Crossing Borders” is a mind-bending collage of imagery. It looks polished and glossy, a bit like the song. But the behind-the-scenes video from the production company and drone operators shows just how hard making something that polished can be. The video for “Crossing Borders” was…

Musician Builds a Robotic Instrument That Reads the Tattoo on His Arm

Moscow-based artist Dmitry Morozov aka “vtol” has built a robotic system to read a tattoo on his arm like a musical score. The sounds this thing makes are pretty gnarly. Called “Reading My Body,” the work consists of a machine that uses sensors which move up and down a set of rails reading Morozov’s specially…

Report: Apple Is Negotiating an On-Demand Music Service Like Spotify

Billboard reports that Apple has been talking to record labels about potentially launching an on-demand music service that would compete with Spotify and Beats Music. According to the report, the talks are in very early early stages, and as we know, these licensing talks with the major labels can take years—if they materialize at all.…

The Onion Explains Where All “The Teens” Leaving Facebook Are Going

The wonderful thing about internet communities is that it’s very hard to artificially build them, but they arise organically in the strangest ways. And sometimes The Teens, those rapscallions, find the strangest places to commune online. This little farce explores the weird places we decide to talk online. But is it really so far-fetched? [The…

Microsoft Snooped on a Blogger’s Email to Hunt Down a Windows 8 Leaker (Updated)

An indictment filed in federal court today reveals that Microsoft snooped through a blogger’s Hotmail account trying to plug an internal leak of pre-release Windows 8 software. That sounds like an outrageous violation of privacy because that’s exactly what it is. Microsoft claims they had the legal right under its terms of service. BI reports…

150 Megapixel Image Sensor Won’t Power Your Nikon, Might Save Your Life

Two Chinese companies, TowerJazz and Gpixel, have teamed up to develop the GMAX3005, a new massively high-resolution 150 megapixel CMOS image sensor. The goal is to use it for medical and industrial applications, so don’t expect it to see it in your next DSLR. Admittedly, we don’t have a lot of reference points for evaluating…

Moto 360: This Is Motorola’s Slick Android Wear Powered Smartwatch

We just learned about Android Wear for the first time, and now we’re already getting inundated in new hardware. Here’s a hot piece of gear from Motorola, the Moto 360. Billed as a more contemporary smartwatch than the clunky wrist-bricks we’ve seen before, the Moto 360 will supposedly be available this summer. https://gizmodo.com/android-wear-heres-the-future-of-android-smartwatchwe-1546388688 The Moto…

Android Wear: Here Comes the Future of Android Smartwatches

Google just announced a new project called Android Wear, and as that name implies, it’s an “at-a-glance” variation of Google’s OS tailored specifically for wearables. So far, LG and Motorola have already announced Android Wear smartwatches, and they’re just the first in a slew of Android-powered wristables coming this year. According to the announcement, Google’s…

Sonos’ wonderful wireless music system is getting a long-overdue app refresh, beginning with a new Android controller which should pop up in Google Play today. New features include a cleaner UI and universal search that lets you look through all your connected services for the tune you desire. The iOS, Mac, and Windows apps will…

900 Megapixel Portraits Turn the Human Face Into a Crazy Landscape

We’ve seen stitched together “gigapixel” photos made of a billion pixels before, but they tend to be reserved for huge landscapes. Photographer Daniel Boschung has taken absurdly high resolution methodology and applied it to a much smaller area: The human face. https://gizmodo.com/can-you-spot-the-hidden-easter-eggs-in-this-20-gigapixe-1509297350 Boschung’s “Face Cartographies” are captured by a robot that’s been programmed specifically for…

Twitter Is Reportedly Testing a “Fave People” Timeline…For Your Favs

TechCrunch reports that Twitter is experimenting with a new version of timeline that allows you to browse a stream of tweets from your favorite accounts. If real, the new “Fave People” feature would mirror a similar feature on Facebook—and makes a lot of sense for helping you filter out the noise in your timeline. The…