Bob Sorokanich

Heartbleed, Bubble Porn, Game of Thrones Streaming Woes, and More

This week’s news was absolutely dominated by Heartbleed—what it is, how it’s affecting people, and how to figure out if you’re safe. We’ve got all of that, plus a computer that perfectly ages you, a time capsule house untouched since the Mad Men era, and a sneaky subway camera used to steal credit card info,…

Instagram Crashed and it Caused a Global Food Crisis

It’s a springtime Saturday, with the weather finally warming up for a lot of folks. Sounds like the perfect day for brunch with friends, right? Wrong. Instagram is down, and it’s causing a panic among aspiring food photographers. Just look at these poor lost souls. All of this is to say nothing of the people…

Instagram seems to be having some technical difficulties updating its feeds right now. Guess you’ll just have to share your brunch pictures sans filter. [Instagram]

God Can’t Get His Credit Report From Equifax

Dealing with credit agencies can be a real pain. A lot of times it feels like the credit bureaus just don’t care about regular folks like you and me. We’re not alone—turns out, even God can’t get an accurate credit report. Because Equifax doesn’t believe in Mr. God Gazarov. The New York Post brings us…

Robot Eyes Replace Your Blank Stare With (Fake) Human Expression

Coming across as a socially functioning human who expresses real emotions can be such a drain. If only there was a high-tech way to replace your flat, expressionless gaze with a digital approximation of human warmth. Well, search no more. AgencyGlass is here. Invented by Dr. Hirotaka Osawa at Japan’s Tsukuba University, AgencyGlass takes the…

Attenborough’s Next Amazing Nature Documentary Will Play on Oculus Rift

Sir David Attenborough is the grand master behind epic nature documentaries like Planet Earth and Blue Planet. His productions take us deep into entirely new worlds that few humans have ever visited. His next project will do that even more convincingly, powered by the amazing virtual reality powers of Oculus Rift. Just imagine Borneo on…

Our Favorite Android, iOS, and Windows Phone Apps of the Week

Rejoice, the weekend’s here. Whether you sprinted or hobbled across the finish line, we made it. Now let’s download some apps! Android Distiller We loved Distiller for iOS, and praise the heavens, now it’s here for Android. This handy app suggests a whiskey based on where or how you’ll be enjoying it, and helps you…

Trying Out a 3D-Scanner That Makes Helmets Custom-Molded to Your Head

It’s not hard to find a badass-looking helmet for your adrenaline-fueled hobbies. The trick is finding one that fits correctly. For decades, that’s meant buying a standard (S/M/L) size lid and rearranging the padding to conform to your noggin. Recently, I got to try out a much better way. Bell Helmets wants to bring helmet…

The Dizzying Work of Hand-Painting Ads Across New York City Skyscrapers

Walk around New York City, and you’re bound to see the work of these “wall dogs“—the men and women who paint billboard-size ads by hand, high above the city streets. Their work is exacting, and the places they paint are terrifying. Don’t watch this if you’re afraid of heights. Hand-painted outdoor ads aren’t exclusive to…

Twitter just revealed that pop-up interaction notifications will roll out in the coming weeks. Meaning that when you’re logged on via twitter.com, you’ll get notifications for replies, retweets, and faves—assuming you’ve tweaked your settings to display them. [Twitter]

Buying Pieces of the Space Race at Bonhams’ Space History Auction

This week, Bonhams hosted an auction of historical space items in Manhattan. The Space History Sale featured troves of objects and documents, both American and Soviet, dating back to the heyday of the space race. And Gizmodo got the chance to take a peek. As with the dinosaur bone auction we attended at Bonhams back…

Aereo to Add Chromecast Support for Ultimate TV Nerd Nirvana

What do you get when you combine Aereo’s anytime, anywhere, broadcast-TV-via-internet cloud service with Google’s Chromecast wonder-dongle? A confluence of TV gizmo delight—and that’s exactly what Aereo announced today. If you happen to live in one of the cities that supports Aereo, and you’re a proud Chromecast owner, starting on May 29th you’ll be able…

Never Forget Where Your Booze Came From With This Lovely Whiskey Chart

Our friends at Pop Chart Lab love tracing down the tangled, tortuous branches of the family trees connecting some of our favorite things. They’ve done it for beer, and now they’re switching to the hard stuff, with a lovely taxonomy of the world’s many types of whiskey. Like all of Pop Chart Lab’s creations, this…

Scientists Manipulate Genes to Make Old Organs Young Again (in Mice)

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh showed this week that they could teach an old mouse’s thymus to bounce back to a healthy, youthful state, simply by manipulating a single protein that controls gene expression. It’s the first time scientists have been able to regenerate a living organ by gene manipulation, and it could have…

Could This Be the Clean New Look For Android’s Built-In Calendar App?

The folks over at Geek.com got this sneak peek at a significantly updated test design for Timely, Google’s stock calendar app. If this is the final version that Android users will see, it’ll be a nice update. Over at Geek.com, Russell Holly got the chance to play with an Android device running this purported new…

YouTube’s Fun Fibonacci Easter Egg Will Make Math Nerds Giggle

The Fibonacci number (or sequence, or series) is the mathematical rule that defines the golden spiral, a beautiful growing pattern that appears in many places in nature. It also appears on YouTube when you search “Fibonacci,” and it’s just silly enough to make us smile. Watch closely; when you search Fibonacci, the results show up…

New Cheapo T-Mobile Plan Has Unlimited Talk & Text, 500MB Data for $40

Looking for a cheap smartphone plan that favors talking over browsing? T-Mobile just rolled out an entry-level plan that lets you talk or text all you want, but limits you to 500MB of high-speed data for $40 a month. The Simple Starter plan‘s 500MB of 4G LTE doesn’t follow T-Mobile’s usual practice of throttling users…

Physicists Make Real-Life Tractor Beam From Plain Ol’ Water

You don’t need to be a beach bum to understand waves: they move objects along with them, pushing boats and swimmers to the shore. There’s even a name for it, the Stokes drift model. But for the first time, physicists have figured out how to do the opposite, using waves to bring a floating object…

Your Decaying Corpse Becomes a Factory of Toxic Chemicals After You Die

What happens after we die? Spiritually, who knows. Physically? Your body becomes a festering production line, spewing out more than 400 nasty compounds that would be toxic to your body if you weren’t already dead, as Scientific American explains in this unsettlingly cheery animation. Sure, at the hands of a skilled mortician, your dead body…

A Powerful Chemistry Tool Inspired by Music Boxes Only Costs $5

Stanford University’s Manu Prakash, Ph.D., loves coming up with cheap, rugged scientific equipment, like his 50-cent microscope made of folded cardboard. Now he’s followed that up with another ingenious chemistry tool: A $5 device that uses the guts from a music box to control chemical reactions with super precision. Dr. Prakash’s hand-cranked chemistry set uses…