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Remember when Superman smoked a dozen cigars at the same time?

Superman comics in the 1950s and 1960s were the apotheosis of the comic narrative, thanks to DC Comics’ willingness to throw any damn idea at the wall, no matter how stupid, offensive, or offensively stupid. https://gizmodo.com/remember-when-superman-turned-into-satan-5830713 http://io9.com/5819900/the-wrongest-scenes-from-the-time-lois-lane-got-zapped-with-a-weight+gain-ray https://gizmodo.com/the-10-most-baffling-moments-in-lois-lane-and-supermans-5897128 These comics offer the impression that the Silver Age DC Comics editorial office was an episode of…

Spotify is now available in the Amazon App Store, meaning Kindle Fire owners can get in on the action. [Amazon]

Oil and Alcohol Make a Stunning Slow-Motion Ballet

It’s an experiment that’s been conducted for over a hundred years now, but these days it’s incredibly easy to record and share the complex interactions of a drop of naphthenic oil as it plunges through a tank filled with isopropyl alcohol. The unique patterns and shapes that are created as the oil drop makes its…

10 Biggest Gadget Design Fails

A fair number of companies that read our product reviews tell me that they take our criticism to heart to improve their wares. That’s flattering to hear, but I don’t think the message is getting to the right people. How do I know? Companies continue to send us new laptops, tablets and smartphones that exhibit…

Want $50,000 Worth of Development for Your Brilliant App Idea?

BMW’s i concept vehicles are all about efficiency and sustainability — in vehicular engineering (who knew a battery could be integrated into the chassis?), design that makes their cars look like works of art, and more. They’ve even been building out apps to help make your driving experience more efficient and sustainable. Now you have…

Report: Underage Children Abused in Samsung Factories

A new report by a Chinese labor watchdog makes Apple’s Foxconn woes look like a game of spin the bottle, Laptop Mag reports. Untreated injuries? Check. Dangerous workplace? Check. Hitting children and forcing them to stand? Check. This is bad. The report chronicles the inner workings of HEG Electronics, which manufactures gadgets on behalf of…

Prisons Are Getting Fewer In-Person Visitors Because of Skype-Like Video Visitation

How close does a video call come to replicating actual human contact? What if that call is the only contact you have with the outside world while in prison—does that change the calculus at all? Apparently so, for inmates in the District of Columbia Department of Corrections. The department’s installed 108 video units, split between…

To Test A Satellite Dock, the NRL Built a 37-Ton Air Hockey Table

How do you test the functionality of a wholly new type of satellite docking system in the weightlessness of space, without shooting round after round of prototype into orbit? If you’re DARPA, you float the satellites—air hockey-style—on top of a 37.5-ton slab of granite. Conventional satellites to this point have generally employed specially-designed, one-off docking…

You Might Unlock Google Glasses With a Simple Eye-Roll

Google has earned a patent for screen unlock that uses eye-tracking information, meaning when you finally get your hands on a pair of its augmented reality specs, you could access them with an eye roll. Just don’t let your mom see you do that because she will be PISSED. Your eyes would follow a moving…

Samsung Exposes Its Blatant iPhone Jealousy

In the legal battle between Apple and Samsung, the latter’s fate rests on how much it can claim it never needed or wanted to plagiarize. But after reading memos like these, that’s going to be very, very hard to buy. AllThingsD relays some highly humiliating internal documents recently squeezed out of Samsung in court—and they…

Seven Reasons Curiosity Is the Baddest Rover Ever

While Curiosity was still flying through space, way before it landed on Mars, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were busy working with a clone rover back on earth. In a simulation area called the Mars Yard, scientists put the duplicate Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) through a series of experiments to perfect the rover’s software…

Science Proves Luke Skywalker Should Have Died In The Tauntaun’s Belly

It is one of the weirdest, wildest moments in Star Wars history. Han Solo picks up Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber and slices open the belly of his dead tauntaun and stuffs Luke in to to warm him up and save his life. But is this scene at all realistic? If you were freezing, would jumping inside…

Gorgeous Golden Gate Knife Packs the Same Steel as Its Namesake

Though it was crafted in France, Laguiole’s beautiful Golden Gate Bridge folding pocket knife was inspired the iconic red orange bridge spanning the San Francisco Bay. And in addition to a handle designed to look like it’s made of criss-crossing girders, the knife is forged from the same steel used in the actual bridge that’s…

Vancouver’s Finest R2D2 Art Installation

Albotas just featured this piece of awesome street art, created in 2010 in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Wheat paste is good for a lot of things, including (apparently) turning doors into giant representations of one of the most noble space robots of all time. See more pictures in wrk(less)’ photostream on Flickr.

Vintage Star Trek booze ads will class up your quarters

The best part about vintage booze ads is that they give off an air of old timey drunken sophistication. Crossbreed these ads with a little bit of Star Trek, and you’ve got yourself one classy inside joke. Now all you need is an android bartender you can order a Finagle Folly from. Make it so…

Curiosity’s first color photo of Mars is only its second-most exciting photograph yet

Behold, the Curiosity rover’s first color image of Mars. It’s beautiful. Dusty, but beautiful. And yet, it might not even be the second-most exciting photograph we’ve received from Curiosity since it landed. Here’s why. Let me start by saying that this photo is obviously fantastic; there is, by definition, absolutely nothing “meh” about any photograph…

20,000 AT&T workers have gone on strike in CA, NV, and CT. Three places that can surely do without the manpower. [LAT]

The First Color Photo of Martian Landscape from the Mars Curiosity Rover

Shooting a robot millions of miles from Earth and landing it on another planet is incredibly impressive and all, but it wasn’t a just an aeronautical physics experiment. We went there to collect data. Now we’ve got some: the first color images from Mars Curiosity. The image was taken by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager…

Tiny Toaster USB Hub Is So Adorable You’ll Want To Vomit

There’s seemingly an infinite supply of novelty USB flash drives and hubs for consumers to waste their money on, but none come close to the gag-inducing adorableness of this tiny toaster hub and accompanying anthropomorphized slices of toast. https://gizmodo.com/lets-figure-out-infinity-once-and-for-all-5932423 The hub itself is $28, but if you want to complete the set with all four…

The 1978 Doctor Who disco theme is pure hot fire

Almost every single science fiction theme that exists has received some manner of brain-detonating dancefloor remix, but one-hit wonder Mankind’s reworking of the Doctor Who theme in 1978 was actually solid. Pair it with “Doctorin’ the TARDIS” next time you invite some Ice Warriors over for, uh, Ice Warrior food. BONUS #1: “Doctor in Distress,”…