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We Could Get to Neptune and Back in 5 Years for a Mere $4 Trillion

Manned spaceflight is an expensive and impractical proposition. But what if we had all the funds we wanted at our disposal? What could we do? Quite a bit, it turns out. Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory recently did a study that examines what sorts of missions we might be able to undertake in the latter…

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Donald Glover for Spider-Man: The evolution of a meme

Late last week, we wrote about the idea of Sony casting a non-white Peter Parker for their Spider-Man reboot. Then…a thing happened. And suddenly, Community actor Donald Glover has rallied the internet to his cause: getting him an audition. https://gizmodo.com/the-last-thing-spider-man-should-be-is-another-white-gu-5549613 If you’ll recall, the original post asked the question: In the face of such underwhelming…

Canon PowerShot SD4000 IS Review: No More Noisy Nights

The Canon PowerShot SD4000, the company’s first compact with a back-lit CMOS sensor, achieves an elusive point-and-shoot camera feat: crisp, clean nighttime photography. And it’s not even that expensive. If you already own a DSLR, you probably don’t think twice about snapping shots in low-light conditions. But as most point-and-shoot camera owners can tell you,…

How You Can Live Like A Vulcan Without Bleeding Green

You can’t be a Jedi, because the Force isn’t real. You can’t be a Na’vi, because your hair isn’t magic. But you can do a pretty good job of living like a Vulcan from Star Trek, and here’s how. And let’s face it – Vulcans are way cooler than Jedi or Na’vi anyway. (At least…

The United States of Supercomputing Against the World

Without counting secret machines, this is the state of supercomputing in the world: The United States’ government, companies, and universities have more computing power than the rest of the world combined. Each square within each country represents one supercomputer. The first position goes to the 1.75-petaflop-per-second Cray’s Jaguar, housed at the Department of Energy’s Oak…

Android Head: Updates Coming Once a Year Eventually

Andy Rubin—Google’s lead Android—gave a brief interview with the San Jose Mercury News that yielded one big nugget: at some point in the not too distant future, Android updates will scale back to once a year. That might seem like a step backwards, but it’s actually likely in the best interest of the platform. It’s…

Gadget Deals of the Day

Another reason why three day weekends are awesome: the four day work week. If skipping Monday doesn’t bring a smile to your face, then these latest deals should. Dealzmodo is bringing tons of savings today. Check them out! Top Deals: • 1TB Western Digital Elements WDBAAU0010HBK-NESN External USB 2.0 HDD for $69.99 with free shipping…

Can Your External Hard Drive Make a Latte?

Neither can a Seagate GoFlex drive—but you can save all of the recipes you want on the world’s most upgradable portable drive. Reliable, secure storage, plug-and-play design, remote content access, and the ability to use it on both Mac and PC are just a few reasons to check out the GoFlex drive family. Meet some…

A leaked first look at J.J. Abrams’ new spy show Undercovers

The purported first twenty pages of Undercovers — J.J. Abrams’ married spy thriller debuting on NBC this fall — were leaked to the Italian website Il Post. What’s the show about? Sexy espionage action and unsexy married life. Spoilers on. The leaked script — which is credited to J.J. Abrams and co-creator Josh Reims, and…

Play Top Trumps With Valuable Artworks Using the Tate Museum’s iPhone App

You remember the Top Trumps games right, where you have to outdo your opponent with a stronger/faster/leaner/meaner dinosaur/footballer/celebrity/poo? The Tate museum of London has created a decidedly more high-brow version, in the form of a free iPhone app. It’s a fun and interactive way to make visiting the Tate museum more entertaining, with various games…

Spot the IT Guy

Okay, time to play a little game. Looking only at the profile pictures—and not the job descriptions—which of these Deans Property employees is the IT guy? Hint: it’s definitely not a trick question. [Deans Property via Buzzfeed]

How to make your setting a character in your dystopian novel

Science fiction writers and literary agents have been blogging the past few days about how to make your setting come alive. And young-adult author Beth Revis explains why this is doubly important in a novel about a future dystopia. One of the most important things that separates a dystopian novel from all the rest is…

Microsoft Isn’t Worried About This Android Tablet Nonsense

Android tablets? Sure, Microsoft exec Steve Guggenheimer’s heard of them. That doesn’t mean he thinks they’re worth a toot, at least not in this WSJ interview. A bold stance! And one that doesn’t really hold up. Guggenheimer was speaking at Computex, and may have just been flush with excitement the announcement over Asus’ Windows 7…

HP’s New 30″ ZR30w Display Can Show Over a Billion Colors

HP’s new ZR30w S-IPS LCD display has a color resolution of 30-bits per pixel, resulting in some 1.07 billion displayable colors. If you’re keeping count, that’s about 64 times as many as you can see on an average LCD. The ZR30w has a 2560 x 1600 resolution—over 4 million pixels in all—though it’s targeted towards…

Guess who else is coming back for Resident Evil: Afterlife?

We already know a few Resident Evil alumni cast members will be popping by to kick some Umbrella Corp. ass, hopefully in a tiny tank top as the trailer suggests. But new images and twitter posts reveal more! https://gizmodo.com/first-resident-evil-afterlife-trailer-brings-back-a-fe-5508931 Milla Jovovich, or Alice as we all like to call her, twitter revealed this little bit…

Smokescreen Converts Flash to JavaScript On the Fly

Now this is interesting. Smokescreen, written by Chris Smoak, is a “Flash player written in JavaScript” that takes Flash objects and converts them to JavaScript in real time. What’s that mean? Well, it means it can allow Flash to work where it isn’t supported, such as on the iPad. Here’s how it works: It runs…

What will physics research look like after the Singularity?

Over at the Physics And Cake blog, there’s a great discussion of exactly how machines will replace theoretical physicists, with their only goal being to create a perfect model of the universe, and no ego at stake. I feel that the best way to do Physics is to build machines to do Physics for us……

168 Gizmodo Reader Self-Portraits

For this week’s Shooting Challenge, 168 of you were brave enough to not only share your photography, but to share a little piece of yourself with it. The results are sometimes funny, sometimes haunting and sometimes beautiful. https://gizmodo.com/shooting-challenge-self-portrait-5548426 Lead Shot Black backdrop behind my head 2 Costco cat food containers on either side of my…

Shooting Challenge: Self-Portrait Gallery Part 3

My trusty Canon PowerShot SX200 IS @ ISO 800, f3.4, 1/8th of a second. No flash. -Steyn De Klerk I am submitting this entry in behalf of my 2 year-old daughter Elizabeth. This photo perfectly captures my daughter’s yearning to be a beautiful princess. D300 18-200 @ 18mm 1/40 sec f5.6 ISO 400 -Lance Sugden…