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How to Keep Commenting While Our Servers Melt

The interest in the tale of Apple’s next iPhone is melting our servers and causing some technical difficulties. As a result, we had to temporarily shut off our comments system. https://gizmodo.com/the-tale-of-apples-next-iphone-5520471 But we want to hear your thoughts, so here’s how to keep commenting while we fix things: Use our tagpages, such as #whitenoise, #broken,…

Project Natal Appears In the Wild

Oh hello, pretty. This appears to be Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal, complete with instructions, as seen by someone hired to test its speech recognition. There’s not a lot of new info to be found here, although it appears that the Natal unit will need to be plugged in to the wall rather than drawing power…

Proof That Rats Laugh When You Tickle Them

Now that we know octopi like to play with cameras, it’s time to investigate other forms of animal play. Did you know that rats laugh when you tickle them? This scientist has proof – and it’s pretty damn cute. https://gizmodo.com/octopus-steals-a-divers-videocamera-and-records-high-sp-5520327

Devon Tread 1 Watch Keeps Your Wrist Busy At All Times

Devon claims that their $15,000 Tread 1 watch, a motorized, belt-driven contraption, is “a big, bold sexy declaration of independence from the status quo.” The status quo, in this case, being affordable, legible, sensible timepieces. But all those belts. If your sense of what defines a good watch is how many moving parts it has,…

Enter to Win a $150 Gift Card to Spend at Brookstone

Take this survey, email the last question to [email protected], and you’ll be entered to win $150 to spend at Brookstone, the purveyors of cool shit you can’t normally afford, like remote-control indoor mini helicopters. Need one! [Rules]

Leonard Nimoy Retires From Acting, For Good This Time

The 79-year-old icon, Leonard Nimoy, is retiring from the stage and screen. He’s passing the pointy-eared mantle to Zachary Quinto, forever. Which means no more classic Spock in the new Star Trek — or William Bell — ever again. In an interview with the Toronto Sun Nimoy explained that he made peace with the Star…

No, George Lucas, I Will NOT Buy Star Wars on Blu-Ray

According to Lucasfilm, the Star Wars saga is slowly but surely making its way to the HD format. Are you really gonna pony up to own these films again? And again…and again? Since the advent of home video, the Star Wars saga has been released, and rereleased, enough times to make the head spin: at…

Is Science Fiction The Genre Of Weed?

Science fiction may be the most marijuana-friendly genre out there, argues MindFood. When people light up in SF movies and TV, they generally don’t get punished. Scientists and leaders smoke out. And many SF films make more sense stoned. [MindFood] https://gizmodo.com/the-best-scifi-movies-to-watch-while-stoned-into-orbit-5220214

Why Apple Couldn’t Get the Lost iPhone Back

It’s such an obvious question: Why couldn’t Apple track this phone down? As it turns out, they may have had two chances to get it back—and blown them both. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-apples-next-iphone-5520164 The timeline of the night goes something like this: On March 18th, an Apple engineer with a top-secret, next-generation iPhone prototype went to a bar.…

Gadget Deals of the Day

Did something happen yesterday? Sorry, we were too busy combing through deals to realize. Oh, say what? The volcano erupted again? LeBron scored 40? Wow. Was there something else though? We don’t remember. Anyway, here’s the latest deals! Top Deals: • 17.3″ MultiTouch Dell Studio 17 Laptop with Core i3 2.13GHz for $849 with free…

Also known as Radium Age science fiction.

“Dune” Started As A Nonfiction Article About Oregon’s Ecosystem

If you’re fascinated by Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, you’ll definitely want to read Scott Timberg’s latest article in the Los Angeles Times, chronicling the book’s origins and legacy. Plus there’s great commentary from Kim Stanley Robinson. Timberg writes: The novel was sparked when, in the late 1950s, Herbert flew to Florence, Ore., in a small…

iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 Is Here

The latest beta of iPhone OS 4.0 is ooout. Besides desperately needed bugfixes, wonder what else is new? [Apple]

The Last Word In Toilets

This is the Giovannoni Washlet. And while I don’t recognize exactly what each component of its feature set is supposed to do, I do know what awesome sounds like. And “tornado flush” sounds awesome. The toilet—pardon me, washlet—also has a “triple-jet rimless flushing system” and a “hygienic glazing” for its ceramic surface. To me that…

Last Day To Enter Robot Art Contest!

In honor of April’s Robogames, we’re sponsoring a robot art contest. Create a work of art on the theme of “we welcome our new robot overlords” and you could win fabulous prizes! We welcome images created using anything from Photoshop or special effects software, to traditional media. All the details of the contest are here.…

Boy Finds Boobs In Comic Book; Reporter Goes To $1 Store For Answers

In Utah, a 10-year-old boy found a nekkid lady in The Spectre 9, which came in a comic-book grab bag his mother bought him for Easter. Rather than ask for a $1 refund from Dollar Tree, mom called local news. When Sheldyn Conley spied a disrobed dame in a 1987 issue of The Spectre, his…

28 Ways Microsoft Could Market the Kin to Non-Hipster Demographics

For this week’s Photoshop Contest, I asked you to help Microsoft take aim at some demographics other than hipsters. And while technically these entries fit that criteria, I’m not sure how many phones they’d sell. Yikes. https://gizmodo.com/hey-microsoft-enough-with-the-hipsters-5516318

Leaked HP Slate Gets Tepid Hands-On Response

A Mexican site called Conecti.ca got some hands-on time with the HP Slate, and walked away decidedly unimpressed. The verdict: that the device is basically a keyboardless netbook. Well… yeah. If nothing else, the mini-review confirms the leaked specs we saw a few weeks ago: the HP Slate runs full Windows 7 on an Atom…

The Fastest Internet In the World? It’s In Berkeley

Just in case internet iPhone celebrity Jason Chen needed another reason to feel smug: his alma mater, Berkeley, has the highest internet speeds of any city on Earth. http://tv.gawker.com/5520655/complete-coverage-of-gizmodos-iphone-story-on-tv With the average speed at 18.7Mbps, Berkeley is top on Akamai’s list of worldwide data speeds. Second place is Chapel Hill, NC followed by Stanford, CA…

Thief Steals Man’s iPad and Pinky Finger

Bill Jordan’s recent iPad purchase turned nightmarish, in one of those delightfully grotesque ways that local news affiliates thrive on: a thief grabbed his shopping bag, tugging so hard that he took most of Jordan’s little finger with him. Gross. Apparently the iPad is in more demand than we thought. Fortunately, Jordan wasn’t so scarred…