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Taposé: The Ghost of the Microsoft Courier Lives In Your iPad

Unlike every tablet that looks like every other tablet that looks like an iPad, Microsoft’s Courier was bold, imaginative and different. Of course, it got killed and was never released. But the spirit is still alive! The Courier’s dual pane versatility lives on with Tapose. https://gizmodo.com/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet-5365299 What does it do? On the surface, Tapose is…

Jeff Bezos has located Apollo 11’s long-lost engines at the bottom of the ocean

After being lost for more than 40 years, the rockets responsible for launching the first humans to the Moon have been discovered. By Jeff Bezos. Yes, that Jeff Bezos. The founder of Amazon just announced on his blog that, with the help of some “undersea pros,” he’s managed to locate the long-lost rocket engines from…

Kindle Fire’s Software Update Enables…

Amazon’s pushing out a software update that has a few nice-sounding features like Book Extras, a reading view for Amazon Silk, movie rentals, and personal document storage on Amazon’s cloud servers. Parts of the list sort of read like an assortment of half-measures. Digital copies of textbooks laid out for print instead of Apple’s new…

The Case for Ending Medical Research on Chimps

Can we really justify doing medical research on chimpanzees that we wouldn’t do on people? The more we learn about chimps, the more we realize they’re like humans in many important ways — and a recent report by the Institute of Medicine shows why biomedical research involving chimpanzees is mostly unncessary. In this piece, prominent…

Jeff Bezos’ Exploration Team Just Found the Apollo 11 Rockets at the Bottom of The Ocean

A Jeff Bezos-funded team of sea explorers has located the Apollo 11 rockets that helped get man get to the moon. On July 16th, 1969, five F-1 rockets powered Apollo 11 off the ground with one and a half million pounds of thrust, and 32 million horsepower. A few minutes later, the first stage rockets…

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9 clips from Game of Thrones suck you back into Westeros

Get nine sneak peeks from the premiere episode of Game of Thrones right here, right now. Almost all of last year’s favorite characters are featured — including the baby dragons! Plus watch the first interaction between Tyrion and Lord Varys!

A Marvelous Introduction to the Largest Plant Collection on Earth

For over a decade, the Millenium Seed Bank Partnership has been working in collaboration with scientists from around the world to establish an insurance policy against the extinction of Earth’s plant species. By 2020, the project hopes to have safely stored 25% of the world’s plant diversity in massive, nuclear-bomb-proof underground seed vaults. https://gizmodo.com/haunting-photographs-of-the-worlds-seed-vaults-which-m-5849093 This…

Benedict Cumberbatch is a wizard. Was anybody surprised?

Today’s totally awesome fan art? This portrait of Benedict “Sherlock” Cumberbatch as a wizard, by artist Mike Puncekar. Somehow, it just seems fitting. [via Tor.com]

That New “Donda Media” Site Is Fake As Hell (Updated)

Everyone’s chattering about Whodat.biz, the new site claiming to be from Kanye West’s insane tech startup Donda. By everybody, I mean The Washington Post and Twitter, which went bezerker over it, and, well, us. But Whodat.biz? Oh come on, now. If this ain’t a hoax, I’ll eat Kanye’s doo-doo. https://gizmodo.com/this-cant-possibly-be-kanyes-insane-tech-start-up-can-5897185 Now, Donda is real. Or…

Under a microscope, the smallest animals on Earth become beautiful nightmare fuel

Biology student and photographer Daniel Stoupin takes animals — some of them so tiny they can’t be detected with the naked eye — and fires up his microscopes so that they get the extreme close-up they deserve. In Stoupin’s shots, the most mundane critters become a squirming menagerie of phantasmagoric wonder. Behold mayfly larvae, miniature…

Watch the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus go to war in the Rise of the Guardians trailer

Alec Baldwin plays a tattooed Santa Claus, who must team up with other bad ass “guardians” of the world (including Hugh Jackman as the Easter Bunny) to fight the fear that’s destroying the children of the world. It’s the trailer for the epically ridiculous Rise of the Guardians CG animated movie. But it’s kind of…

Researchers describe a new evolutionary theory: The Black Queen Hypothesis

Bacteria belonging to the genus Prochlorococcus are some of the wimpiest in the world. Left to their own devices, these microorganisms have an exceedingly difficult time just staying alive — which seems counterintuitive, given that they’re also the most abundant photosynthesizing organisms on Earth. Over the course of evolution, these wildly successful bacteria have lost…

A Blind Man Is Driving This Car

This is Steve. 95% of his vision is gone. He’s blind. And he’s behind the wheel of this car, travelling perfectly across his neighborhood. It’s an amazing feat. A technological miracle. Google’s self-driving car has now completed 200,000 miles of computer-led driving. Steve was part of that testing and he loved it: https://gizmodo.com/test-driving-googles-driverless-car-5662005 Here’s Steve,…

Glowing dryads caught on tape in Texas?

Over the weekend, a woman named Pam in San Antonio, Texas, filmed what can only be described as a floating faerie orb in her backyard. She writes: While filming in the distance saw what at first appeared to be possible feather fluttering in the wind saw due to its flight pattern it wasn’t— so removed…

Google Now Has Analytics-ish Reports for Your Personal Accounts

Curious how many emails you sent last month? What your most frequent search term was? What countries you logged in from? If you use Google for everything, it can now tell you all of those things. Google’s new Account Activity feature not only serves to answer your curiosities about how you use Google’s services, it…

Which Science Fiction Scenario is Most Likely to Happen in Your Lifetime?

Science fiction is full of fantastic and horrifying scenarios, many of which seem like they could come true any time. But which of them is really going to materialize — and which is most likely to happen in your lifetime? Vote in our poll for the science fictional scenario that you’re most likely to live…

The first trailer for Safety Not Guaranteed, that time-travel movie based on an internet meme

Here’s the debut trailer for director Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed, which takes an internet meme from 2005 and spins it into a wistful indie comedy. Here was our Sundance correspondent’s verdict on the flick, and I do wish they maintained the power mullet of the original illustration. Safety Not Guaranteed hits theaters June 8.…

Bottle Holding Garbage Can Ring Makes It Easier To Recycle

In many parts of the world it’s ok to drink in public, so this simple plastic ring provides a clean temporary place to store empty containers until they’re claimed by someone who wants to recycle them. Without the Pfandring—which translates to Pledge Ring in english—bottles and cans are either just tossed away, or left piled…

Let Wallace and Gromit teach your kids about science

At first glance, the idea of “Wallace and Gromit have their own science education show” seems a bit weird. Especially when you see Wallace, the claymation man with unmistakable sweater vest, sitting at a desk saying “Hello viewers.” But actually, Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention, which just came out on DVD in the U.S.,…