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Your Decision-Making Processes Are a Lot More Random Than You Realize

For the most part, we make decisions based on our prior experiences. But what about those situations that are completely new or unpredictable? A new study suggests that when facing an excessively uncertain or challenging scenario, the brain chooses randomness as the best strategy. When it comes to making decisions, our brains are extremely dependent…

These Tiny Game Boy Headphones Are Wonderful, Even If They Sound Awful

When it comes to buying gadgets and electronics there’s always going to be compromise. To get the features you want, you’ll have to learn to live with things you don’t. Take these headphones, for example. For just $20 they probably don’t sound amazing, but the inline remote and mic is shaped like an adorably tiny…

This Mobile Dialysis Machine Will Clean Your Blood on the Go

The days of hemodialysis patients spending hours upon hours sitting in a hospital lounge while waiting for their blood to be cleaned could soon be a thing of the past—assuming, of course, that the world’s first wearable artificial kidney passes FDA muster later this year. Dubbed the Wearable Artificial Kidney (the WAK), this device is…

India Is Sending Us Snapshots From Mars And They’re Gorgeously Desolate

Having just arrived at the red planet, India’s Mangalyaan spacecraft is doing what anyone with that view outside of its window might do: It’s posting a series of quick snapshots back for all its friends at home. https://gizmodo.com/indian-becomes-4th-country-to-reach-mars-with-mangalyaa-1637844562 The picture above is the very first one the craft snapped from just 7,300 kilometers above, and…

What Is Ello and Should I Even Bother?

In the past week you may have heard people start to talk about something called Ello. Though it sounds like a cockney-accented greeting, it’s actually a new social network with one major selling point: It doesn’t have any ads. Ello is setting itself up to be the anti-Facebook, and apparently people are flooding it—it’s at…

Leak Shows HTC’s Alleged GoPro Action Camera Competitor

Last night, HTC showed a video teaser hinting at an upcoming camera-type offering. Today, we’ve got more details, and a few glimpses at what that camera could possibly look like. Meet what looks to be RECamera, a periscope-like mini-camera that seems squarely aimed at the GoPro. HTC hasn’t said anything official about the tiny cam…

Why the Bash Shellshock Bug Could Be Even Worse Than Heartbleed

Shellshock is newly discovered vulnerability in software that’s in computer systems we use everyday. It’s kind of like Heartbleed, the Open/SSL bug that scared everyone senseless a few months ago and remains unpatched on thousands of systems. According to some experts, however, Shellshock could be way worse, and it’s been around for decades. Shellshock affects…

Even as a figure, Deadpool manages to break the fourth wall

Sideshow Collectibles are kicking off their line of Marvel 1/6th scale figures with a new figure of the Merc with a mouth – and judging by the promo pictures, I’m not entirely sure there’s any fourth wall left to break after this. Deadpool’s preorders go live today, with each figure coming with a bunch of…

A Single Cosmic Ray Can Cause An Air Shower Of Billions Of Particles

Cosmic rays rain down on the Earth every day. Most of them don’t have that much of an effect, but some cause a chain reaction that makes an “air shower,” raining billions of particles down onto the ground. When a cosmic ray hits the atmosphere it is going to make a few changes, but usually…

The latest edition of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World reveals the geography that lurks beneath the ice in Antarctica and the Arctic. The new atlas shows canyons, lakes, trenches, and mountains, while highlighting the dramatic long-term decline of Arctic sea ice cover. Image credit: BAS

Chilling Sneak Peek Of Saturday’s Intruders: Mira Sorvino’s Dark Secret

What’s happened to Amy, the character played by Mira Sorvino on The Intruders? She seems to be hatching some big plans, judging from this exclusive clip from Saturday’s episode. No wonder James Frain looks terrified. Spoilers ahead… In last week’s episode of Intruders, there was a surprising revelation: Amy Whelan, the wife of John Simm’s…

The top ten makeup transformations in movie history

Good makeup is key to create believable fictional characters. That’s why moviegoers at Cinefix decided to pay homage to the best movie makeup artists by putting together this list of the best ten makeup transformations of all time: Here’s the full list: Mystique from X-Men (2000) Makeup Artist: Gordon Smith Tootsie (1982) Makeup Artist: Allen…

The Army Messes With The Wrong Robot Alien In This Great Short Film

Part E.T., part Iron Giant, and part just really good, “Envoy” is an excellent 10-minute short film by David Weinstein, which he hopes will work as a proof-of-concept video for a feature-length movie. It starts a little slow, but keep watching and you’ll be treated to a solid short with some damn fine VFX. I…

Ball-Balancing Robot Cheerleaders Make For One Heart-Warming Tech Demo

If you’re an electronics company that builds cutting-edge sensors the average consumer never actually sees in a device, how do you go about promoting your work? Japan’s Murata does so by building adorable little robots capable of impressive stunts—like riding unicycles or performing cheerleader routines while balancing on rolling balls—and then sending them to endless…

Short film: The alleged story of the cosmonaut who burned in space

The brothers Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia claim they recorded the voice of a Russian cosmonaut as her capsule burned in re-entry on November 1963. This short film contains that recording and dramatizes the events. No matter if it’s true or not, the short film is terrifying. This is the translation of the audio allegedly captured…

An iOS 8 Update That Doesn’t Bork Your Phone Might Take a “Few Days”

Yesterday, iOS 8.0.1 showed up and turned a whole bunch of new iPhones into iPod Touches. You can fix it now if you take the right steps, but the official patch from Apple might take a few days. From Apple’s support page on the subject, which also walks you through the revert-to-iOS-8 process: We are…

What Do You Wish You Had Been Around To See When It Debuted?

There are some advantages to coming on things late: You never have to wait for sequels to show up and you always have plenty of people to mull over any surprises with. Still, sometimes nothing can beat the excitement of being able to see something when it’s brand new and fresh. Maybe you would have…

Polar’s New Activity-Tracking GPS Watch Manages to Look Good, Too

Polar has made plenty of GPS exercise watches, an activity tracker, and even a GPS watch-slash-activity tracker, but this is the first time the company has made a wearable device that looks good and won’t break the bank. At $200, we could actually see the Polar M400 ending up on some wrists. The M400 is,…

Every Response I Got When I FOIA’d the Year’s Dumbest App

When the soul-crushingly simple, single-serving messaging app Yo hit the App Store this past summer, people couldn’t say enough about the app that said barely anything at all. But given our pseudo-surveillance state and similar apps’ privacy concerns, we wondered—could the government be spying on (or even just talking about) Yo? After submitting requests to…

Anti-Mutant Propaganda Video Leads Weird-Ass X-Men: DoFP DVD Marketing

Having done such a great job with the viral marketing leading up to X-Men: Days of Future Past, it appears Fox is continuing the job in advance of DoFP’s DVD and Blu-ray release with this mysterious video. But why are they bothering? According to the YouTube description, this is ostensibly a video from an anti-mutant…