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A Cheaper Non-Hovering Hoverboard Prop That Doesn’t Feel Like a Rip-Off

Back in 2012 Mattel decided to toss Back to the Future II fans a futuristic bone in the form of a hoverboard replica that looked exactly like the one Marty McFly rode in the time-traveling sequel. The one feature it lacked, of course, was the ability to actually hover. That made its $130 price tag…

Regal Yet Goofy Chinstrap Penguin Welcomes You To Antarctica

In this remarkable shot taken January 20, 2015, a Chinstrap penguin offers a close-up look at the distinctive marking that gives the bird its moniker. The waddling creature was photographed near the town of Villa Las Estrellas on Antarctica’s King George Island. AP Photo by Natacha Pisarenko

All the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Flavors in a Single Infographic

If you love Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, but can never remember what the heck is in Gilly’s Catastrophic Crunch or Spectacular Speculoos, go print out a copy of this infographic and tape it to your fridge right now. This handy ice cream key was created by designer Jishai Evers, a Ben & Jerry’s fan…

Anybody Remember The Long Lost  Cartoon Super Turbo Atomic Mega Rabbit?

It’s a shame that Saturday morning animation blocks are now extinct. Was there ever a greater anthropomorphic action cartoon than Super Turbo Atomic Mega Rabbit? Thankfully YouTuber Mr GeekyGod has salvaged the intro from an old VHS and posted it online for your viewing pleasure: What, don’t you remember Super Turbo Atomic Mega Rabbit? How…

Social Media Can Make Standardized Test Questions Go Viral

When standardized tests are shared nationwide—as they now are, under the Common Core system that’s been adopted in 46 states—cheating suddenly becomes a whole lot easier. Especially since teenagers now share just about everything on social media. As we’re all aware, platforms like Twitter and Instagram have a way of making illicit activities go viral.…

To Feed the World, We May Need to Hack Photosynthesis

One of the biggest challenges of the 21st century will be figuring out how to feed our rising global population. Now, some scientists are making the radical claim that growing more food won’t be enough—we literally need to hack photosynthesis. Humans have been breeding crop plants to grow faster and yield more for approximately 10,000…

This 3D-Printed Predicta Will Transport You to the 1950’s

Once upon a time, long before Twitter or Xbox live, you could turn on a TV that looked a lot like this and watch spacemen valiantly defeat their enemies with rayguns and plutonium-powered rockets. We can’t travel back to that simpler age, but we can re-create the experience using 3D printing. Especially since this two-inch…

Decoding All The James Bond Clues In The Spectre Teaser Trailer

The first teaser trailer for the James Bond movie Spectre was more subdued than we were expecting, but it was also jam-packed with hints about the movie’s plot. We went through and screencapped every important shot, and here are the secrets of Spectre that we were able to find. The Bombed-Out Remains Of The MI6…

Creepy Trailer Alert: “The Scariest Norwegian Film Ever” Has A Sequel

Director Pål Øie’s 2003 Dark Woods was voted “the scariest Norwegian film ever” by one of the country’s biggest tabloids. So it’s with no small fanfare that Dark Woods 2 is here, and thankfully has abandoned its predecessor’s reality TV framework for a much spookier setting: an abandoned hospital. Suggested double-feature, since the films look…

There May Be A Disease That Makes An Octopus Eat Its Own Arms

Here’s a horror with which to start your weekend. Multiple octopuses have been spotted engaging in autophagy — otherwise known as self-eating. They will consume their own arms, and no one knows why. Many animals, including the octopus, will engage in a behavior called autotomy. The animal will break off a limb as part of…

How long would it take to fall through Earth? For years, physics students have been told the answer is 42 minutes. But a new calculation, published in the latest issue ofThe American Journal of Physics, gives a more accurate travel time of 38 minutes. Over atScience, Adrian Cho unpacks the new equation.

The New City Of Babel

To an outside observer, the city of Babiru looked chaotic. But when the only direction a city can build is up, its inhabitants learn the history behind every single story. Concept art by Nivanh Chanthara from his project Babiru. Chanthara is collaborating with Fred Rambaud on Babiru, which focuses on the survival of the people…

The Best of Gizmodo This Week

Our favorite posts on Giz this week cover everything from the surprising history of brands to the human lab rats researching nootropics on Reddit. We fucked around with some gadgets, baked a laptop in the oven, and paid a drunk guy to evaluate our web design. Then we swung a hatchet around. Enjoy! The First…

What’s James Bond’s Darkest Secret? First Teaser Trailer For SPECTRE!

The first teaser trailer for the new James Bond movie, Spectre, raises more questions than it answers. What’s the secret that James Bond won’t share with anyone, because he won’t trust anyone? And why is James Bond venturing into the shadowy world of secret organizations?

All Hail Opportunity Rover, Future Martian Terror

Back in 2010, XKCD’s Randall Munroe devoted a surprisingly moving webcomic to Spirit, NASA’s ill-fated and ultimately abandoned Mars rover. Today’s comic is about Spirit’s twin, the apparently indomitable Opportunity, and its tone is markedly less sentimental. For those of you keeping track at home, NASA’s opportunity rover has now exceeded its projected mission duration…

Meet the Guy Who Makes Apps for Ghost Hunters 

We don’t usually think of talking to ghosts as a high-tech activity. But one guy is making a living off of ghost hunting apps, and his story from homelessness to app entrepreneur is actually pretty extraordinary. Over at Narratively, Robert Fieseler profiles Daniel Roberge, better known in some circles as the creator of SpiritVox. The…

What Do You Do With Your Old Books?

Whether your books are electronic or paper, it’s a problem every reader runs into at some point: What do you do with a book after you’ve read it? There are a lot of options. Maybe you hold onto it for re-reads until your shelf-space runs out, maybe you pass it along (or return it) for…

What Makes You Block Someone? 

People have varying thresholds of tolerance for putting up with ignorance, dickishness, and other crap online. What does it take for you to head straight for the “Block” button on social media? Each major platform has a slightly different concoction of options to let you digitally delete someone from your life. Twitter and Facebook both…

A San Francisco jury has ruled against all four claims of gender discrimination and retaliation by termination brought by Ellen Pao against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, in what many are calling a landmark case for Silicon Valley. Pao is currently the interim CEO of Reddit. [Valleywag]

DDOS Attack Targets Popular Anti-Censorship Projects on Github

Github is getting hammered by a huge distributed-denial-of-service attack. Looks like it pissed off the wrong pro-censorship group: The attack is aimed at two popular Github projects, Great Fire and CN-NY Times, that help Chinese citizens get around their government’s restrictive online censors to access blocked content. Who does that? The attackers are using China’s…