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The Best Drone for Every Beginner

So, you want to learn to pilot a drone, but aren’t sure where to start? Gizmodo ordered a fleet of beginner’s drones and handed them off to a total drone newbie (me) to test. The best and worst of what I found—plus many, many crashes— is all ahead. If you want to find the real…

Here’s Your First Official Look at Civil War‘s Big Villain, Baron Zemo

Considering we’ve seen or heard of absolutely nothing since Daniel Brühl was cast in Captain America: Civil War as the long-time Cap foe Baron Helmut Zemo, it’s kind of surprising how incredibly nondescript this first-ever look at him actually is. Not even a purple face mask in sight. Yes, you’d be hard-pressed to imagine that…

Wait, What? Obi-Wan Kenobi Wasn’t Going to Die in A New Hope

Obi-Wan Kenobi being struck down—and becoming more powerful than we could possibly imagine—is a defining moment in the Star Wars saga. It informs so much of Luke’s journey from farmhand to Jedi Knight. It’s a chapter in the tragic tale of Anakin Skywalker. But in the initial script, it wasn’t going to happen. Chewbacca actor…

Stephen King’s The Mist Series Is Officially a Go at Spike TV

A TV series adaptation of Stephen King’s science fiction-horror novella The Mist has been in the works since at least September, and now there’s more news: it will be coming to Spike TV in 2017. Variety reports that the network ordered a pilot in February but ended up greenlighting 10 hourlong episodes of the series…

The Untold Story of the Teen Hackers Who Transformed the Early Internet

On October 12th, 1983, Bill Landreth called his friend Chris in Detroit to chat. Chris frantically explained that the FBI had raided his house. “Don’t call me anymore,” Chris said in what would be a very short conversation. Bill didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he did know this: If the FBI had come…

Microsoft Sues DOJ Over ‘Unconstitutional’ Secret Data Searches 

You might never know if police or FBI agents are reading your emails or files stored in the cloud, because the DOJ frequently issues indefinite gag orders that block companies from telling you. Microsoft argues that this secrecy is unconstitutional—and now it’s suing the government to stop it. If Microsoft receives a request for information…

This Is Why the Great Barrier Reef Is Dying

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the most celebrated ecosystems on Earth—and it’s dying. Months of extreme heat have turned thousands of miles of pristine habitat into an endless watery graveyard. This year’s coral bleaching event comes as a warning. If we don’t bring carbon emissions down fast, the Great Barrier Reef will not…

It’s About to Get Even Harder to Track Food Poisoning Outbreaks

Tracking food poisoning cases is laborious detective work, and sometimes the culprit is never revealed. Now the task of identifying sources of contamination could be even harder—and, paradoxically, it’s because of a test designed to diagnosis food poisoning faster and easier than ever before. The CDC and FDA issued a joint warning report today about…

When It Comes to Gaming, the iPhone Will Always Stomp the Competition

Okay. The great spring phone glut is over. The big manufacturers have revealed their flagship devices. Apple even joined in with a cheaper alternative to its flagship iPhone. I’ve spent the last few months benchmarking a lot of phones, and something has become exceedingly clear: All the CPU and GPU benchmarks in the world can’t…

Watch a Light Bulb Totally Disintegrate a Ping Pong Ball

Here’s a 500 watt halogen light bulb vaporizing a ping pong ball. The wimpy plastic ball starts melting and then completely vanishes in seconds, leaving behind no evidence that it ever existed in the first place. It’s like the coolest way to dispose of anything. You can see it in slow motion at the end…

Canada’s Mounties Hold the Keys to Blackberry’s Encryption

Blackberry—the financially floundering smartphone maker that prides itself on end-to-end encryption—may have finally met its match in the form of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Motherboard reports that the RCMP, as part of a criminal investigation, was able to intercept and decrypt more than a million Blackberry messages over the course of two years. The…

This Superman Poster Encompasses Everything Great About The 1978 Movie

The most recent Superman movies have been darker, meaner, more cynical than the old flicks. Some people love it, but others yearn for the Superman of old that was wondrous and optimistic. Here’s a poster that embodies that oceanic sentiment. Artist JC Richard allowed us to debut his latest print, “Son of Krypton.” It’s a…

HTC 10 Review: A Last Grasp at Greatness

When giants fall, they fall spectacularly, and HTC’s descent over the last few years has been remarkable to watch. After creating a trendsetting phone in 2013, it imploded just two years later with sluggish and poorly-reviewed follow-ups. Their newest phone, the HTC 10, is about crawling back from obscurity. While remnants of its old design…

We Could Have Seen The Hulk in Civil War After All (and We Still Might)

The saga of whether or not Mark Ruffalo would be joining almost the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Civil War has been long and tumultuous. First, Robert Downey Jr. apparently asked Ruffalo to be in on the fun. Then it was happening. Then it wasn’t—and yet rumors persisted. Turns out there was some…

Try to stay strong, but “Postal Apocalypse” is on a brief hiatus this week. It will return next Thursday, April 21, so go ahead and send your pop culture questions, life problems, and seemingly unsolvable nerdy mysteries to the postman here.

This New Movie About a CIA Reality Show Is So Ridiculous It Will Probably Become Real

What if the CIA created a reality show? That’s the premise of the upcoming movie For All Eyes Always. And it’s a ridiculous fucking premise. But it’s just ridiculous enough to be plausible in some perverted near-future that turns every subject imaginable into entertainment. I suppose espionage is the last remaining topic that hasn’t gotten…

Use This Website to Make Obama Say Anything You Want

Have you ever wondered how those clever YouTubers get Obama to sing and rap entire songs? They usually spend countless hours carefully splicing together individual words taken from footage of the president, but you can now do the same thing in just seconds with a new website called Talk Obama To Me. Using the app…

New ‘Time Slice’ Theory Suggests You’re Not as Conscious as You Think You Are

Our conscious perception of the world feels like a continuous and uninterrupted flow, but a new study suggests that it’s actually more like the frames of a movie reel running through a projector. There’s still a lot we don’t know about consciousness and how it arises in the brain. Even though perception—such as vision and…

You Can Upgrade a Macbook Faster Than You Can Boil an Egg

There’s one big drawback to Apple’s thin, svelte laptop: once you pull the trigger on a Macbook, you’re generally stuck with the specs for life. So when a company claims to offer an idiot-proof SSD upgrade, it’s worth checking out. OWC’s new Aura SSDs are designed to replace the stock SSDs in 2013-or-newer Macbook Pros…

UC Davis Tried Really, Really Hard to Erase That 2011 Pepper Spray Incident From the Internet

Remember the November 2011 pepper-spray incident at UC Davis? After video footage of a campus police officer casually blanketing Occupy Wall Street student protestors with pepper-spray went viral, the episode prompted mass outrage, sparked conversations about the militarization of police, and launched a thousand memes. UC Davis and Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, however, would prefer…