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$75,000 Swami Conversational Robot is a Very Expensive Psychic

Sure we’ve covered other robotic fortune tellers in the past, but none of them have cost anywhere close to $75,000. Now, to be fair, as far as robotic swamis go, this one looks amazing. Utilizing “cutting-edge” AI and over 30 facial motors, this swami can learn his own name, wink at you as you walk…

Sputnik Is Officially Old Fart Technology

Fifty years ago, the Space Age was born with the flight of Soviet satellite Sputnik, and with that came the age of Surveillance Paranoia. More Sputnik fetish photography available from your pals at NASA.

The Pantman F1

We’re pretty sure this has been around for a while, but we have to say that the name Pantman F1 is pretty much the best name for a pants press ever. It’s not just Pantman, it’s the Pantman F1—which brings smooth, pressed pants at F1 speeds. The thing’s only $149, which is a slightly high…

Verizon Hit With Lawsuit Hammer for Overstating FiOS TV Subscribers

It seems the FiOS TV subscriber numbers in the NYC region haven’t quite hit what Verizon has hoped—or has even said. An ad company’s suing Verizon for publishing allegedly inflated numbers of FiOS TV subscribers that lump in “pending” customers with current subscribers, allowing it to boost ad rates. https://gizmodo.com/why-does-japan-get-all-the-super-fast-fiber-optic-love-307203 In other words, according to…

Magic-Performing 1920s Chinese Automaton

It’s not quite Asimo, but this Chinese magician automaton (read: crappy wooden robot) does one thing and one thing only: make other wooden automatons appear and disappear from containers (we don’t count sporting a badass mustache as a thing). It’s going to be auctioned off on October 28 at Skinner in Bolton, MA, if any…

Why Does Japan Get All The Super-Fast Fiber Optic Love?

The New York Times just took a peek into the world of Japanese fiber optic broadband, which we all know is much faster and cheaper than ours. While we here in the States might view the Japanese broadband market as some utopia where entire HD movies can be downloaded in seconds, it’s not quite that…

Symantec Advertises Norton 360 Antivirus in Japan With Ultraman-esque Character

We’re not passing any judgment on Symantec’s Japanese advertising campaign where they take an Ultraman-like character and have it beat up several black “virus” characters on the street to hype their Norton 360 product. Why? Because it’s actually pretty awesome. Way more awesome than the crappy anti-virus ads we get here in the US, which…

According to a Sony spokesperson, an announcement regarding a possible price drop or a new model (or something) on the PS3 is imminent. [CNN via Kotaku] http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/ps3-price-drop-imminent-307115.php

iPhone Headed for Canada This Month?

Attention friends to the Great White North: the Apple iPhone is rumored to be coming your way by middle of this month. The leak is said to come from an insider at Canadian fashion specialty department store Holt Renfrew, and the 8GB GSM iPhone will reportedly sell for $799. If these rumors are true, and…

Instant Baby Machine (1930)

This scene from the 1930 film Just Imagine shows how babies will be made in the futuristic world of 1980. The clip directly follows the scene we looked at a few months back about meal pills. https://gizmodo.com/just-imagine-1930-512629681 Thanks again to Amy Macnamara for this paleo-futuristic classic that hasn’t yet been released on VHS or DVD.…

1mm Thick Flexible Plasma Display Debuts at CEATEC

Recently at CEATEC in Japan Shinoda Plasma Corp unveiled a plasma screen that tops out an an extraordinary 1mm in thickness. Plasma tubes aligned between film-form electrodes not only make the screen thin enough to be bent (as the image above demonstrates), they also make it extremely light. In fact, the 43-inch screen prototype weighed…

Bang & Olufsen Serenata Hands-On Video

Zara over at Shiny Shiny got her hands on the Bang & Olufsen/Samsung Serenata phone, which isn’t just a phone, it’s a "personal music system." Even after watching the video it’s unclear how the music UI capabilities outclass say, the iPhone, but the external speakers seem like they sound pretty great—it even has bass. Not…

Man’s Spare Room Filled With Almost Every Apple Model Ever Made

Click to viewThis is James Savage’s spare room, which contains one hundred Apple computers. He has more than 150 in his house and all of them are working perfectly, from an Apple II+ and a Lisa to the latest MacBook Pro. James sent us this image for our best computer rig contest, so we asked…

According to research done by some analysts, the best guess as to how many people voided their warranty by unlocking or hacking their iPhones is 150,000. That’s a lot of unhappy customers. [Fortune]

Man Stuff – The Best of Uncrate

This week at Uncrate: We do some droid decorating with Yumi Modal Statues, serve up some dogs from the Waring Pro Hot-Dog Griller, and wash them down with some fresh beer from the Heineken DraughtKeg. We also bring an urban feel to the dinner table with the Stoplight Pendant Lamp, relive the summer’s biggest laughs…

Razer Announces Scary-Sounding Lycosa Keyboard and Piranha Headset

Razer unveils its Lycosa keyboard and Piranha headset today, adding to its lineup of gamer-specific peripherals such as its impressive 4000dpi Razer 3G mouse teased last summer and shipping this month. The wicked-looking Lycosa keyboard has illuminated nonslip rubber keys and a 1000Hz polling rate that the company says takes just 1ms to respond to…

Hype Sheet: Sony’s Dead Serious Side

The Pitch On the eve of the new Bravia ad’s debut in the U.K., it’s worth taking a gander at one of Sony’s more prosaic creations. This commercial doesn’t hawk a specific product, but rather Sony’s entire lineup of high-definition goods—part of the company’s ongoing “HD World” campaign (a.k.a. the “Feel” campaign, a.k.a. the “like.no.other”…

X-Ray Hackers Show Tinest Crystalline Structure Ever Seen

What does this one-micron sized object look like to you? Despite what Freud would say, that boldly thrusting little guy is a microcrystal, once classified as a powder too tiny to be imaged using X-rays. But a bunch of European X-ray fiends have rigged up a special X-ray diffractor at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility,…

New Toshiba HD DVD Recorders Also Write HD to Regular DVDs

Panasonic isn’t the only one showing off high-def recording at CEATEC. Toshiba announced three new HD DVD recorders, including the new flagship Vardia RD-X7. All of them can convert MPEG-2 to AVCHD MPEG-4 on the fly, and can store high-def video on DVD-R (2 hrs) and single-layer HD DVD-R (6 hrs) discs. Pricing and availability…

Wireless Sensor Monitors Athletic Performance

Hang this gizmo behind your ear, and it measures your posture, gait and other biomechanical data, perfect for athletes who want to improve their performance. The scientists who created it at Imperial College in London also say it will also be useful to monitor orthopedic patients as they recover from surgery. It can measure step…