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​It’s Been A Bad Week For Strong Female Characters

I think I’ve finally discovered what caused my mysterious, unknown apocalypse. I believe the illness known as “con flu” — in which one sick person at a con basically makes every attendee sick — mutated in some way to affect everybody that even thought about Comic-Con this week. Because I feel like shit. But not…

​It’s a Miracle WWI US Naval Destroyers Managed to Hit Anything at All

When you’re on a destroyer steaming full speed through the North Atlantic firing at an enemy ship 15,000 meters away that’s trying its best to sink you, you’d better make well sure your shot hits first. To ensure our sailors stood a fighting chance during WWI’s intense naval engagements, the DoW built and outfitted America’s…

When Los Angeles Was Test-Bombed, They Decided To Throw A Party

In the early 1900s, airplanes were a novelty and a spectacle, but some people were already thinking of what other uses could be made of them. This is why there were thousands of people in Los Angeles running out into the streets to be “bombed.” Roy Knabenshue had both a name and life that sound…

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Has One of the Best Displays Yet

The key element for a great tablet has always been a truly innovative and top performing display, and the best leading edge tablets have always flaunted their beautiful high tech displays. With its third-generation Surface Pro 3, Microsoft has produced an excellent professional-grade high-performance display for Windows. In fact, based on our extensive lab tests…

A Nest of Copper Foam Lets This Tiny PC Run Silently Without Fans

You eventually tune it out, but the constant whir of a desktop computer’s cooling fans can take a toll on your psyche. It’s like a buzzing mosquito that never strikes, and never stops. So the folks at a German company called Silent Power have created a compact desktop PC that trades noisy fans for a…

How Ford’s Top Interior Designer Puts the Future in the Front Seat

Amko Leenarts is the Director of Interior Design for Ford Motor Company, creating the interior look for Ford’s products worldwide. He spoke with Gizmodo about the design influences, technology, and safety considerations that go into future designs, and later today he’ll be in Gizmodo’s comments section answering your questions. Amko has been with Ford since…

A Shonen-Flavored Webcomic About Monsters Made Of Negative Emotions

Baron Bones is the protagonist of Dan Ciurczak’s webcomic Vibe and a monster fighter. When too many negative emotions well up in a person’s body, they can turn into nasty monsters, and it’s Baron’s job to deal with those bad vibes. Baron hasn’t seen his sister Brigitte in five years. During that time, he’s been…

Talking Motorcycles With The Checkered Flag

John, from The Checkered Flag reached out to ask me some questions about motorcycling. You can read the interview here. https://checkeredflagblog.kinja.com/interview-with-wes-siler-of-indefinitelywild-part-1-1611408939 https://checkeredflagblog.kinja.com/interview-with-wes-siler-of-indefinitelywild-part-2-1611839629

Animated GIFs Have Finally Invaded Street Art

If you had to pinpoint one single reason the internet became such an integral part of our day-to-day lives, the obvious answer would be animated GIFs. They’re what make staring at a screen all day long completely worth your morning commute. But now, a couple of artists have finally found a way to put animated…

Every Martha Stewart Tweet About Drones

A Map Of The U.S., If There Had Never Been A Mexican-American War

In 1846, President James Polk, driven by a belief in Manifest Destiny, waged a war to seize land from Mexico and expand the nation’s boundary from Texas to California. But events could have plausibly gone very differently, resulting in a map of the U.S. that would be significantly unlike the one we have today. When…

Sprint’s New Facebook-Only Data Plan Is a Sad Internet Future

Do you love experiencing the internet only through the foggy, noisy lens of Facebook? How about only reading things on Twitter or peeping links on Pinterest or stalking friends on Instagram? Then you’re going to love Sprint’s new hyper-focused data plans. For $12 a month, you can use one of the services as much as…

Which Of Today’s Technologies Will Most Mystify Future Generations?

When new technologies come out they can be awe-inspiring, and then a few generations go by and yesterday’s shiny new toy is today’s stunning inconvenience. Today we want to know about the technologies that will most make future generations go: “Really?” It might be something that will puzzle archaeologists thousands of years from now. Or…

These Maniacs Cooked Steak With Molten Lava and Lightning

What have you grilled on this summer? A propane burner? A charcoal fire? Maybe even a fire pit? How about A RIVER OF LAVA? That’s exactly how the gastronomical adventurers at Bompas & Parr recently cooked up two huge steaks—and then they used lightning. Bompas & Parr, you may recall, make their living doing crazy…

The Awesome Sight Of 14,465 Pounds Of Freight Being Lifted Into Space

Earlier today in French Guiana, the ESA successfully launched an Ariane 5 rocket into space as part of its fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle mission. The vehicle is headed for the International Space Station where it will deposit its precious cargo. The launcher, called Georges Lemaître, is the fifth ATV built and launched by…

Guardians of the Galaxy Review: Shut Up and Go See It

Let’s not mince words here. Guardians of the Galaxy is awesome, hilarious, super fun, and you should go see it. [This review will contain ZERO spoilers, because spoilers are dumb.] My disclaimer is that I’d never read the comics and was going into this completely blind. Although given that the title it’s based on isn’t…

Attack on Tor Has Likely Stripped Users of Anonymity

Tor, the network used specifically for privacy and anonymity, just warned users of an attack meant to deanonymize people on the service. Anyone who used Tor from February 2014 through this July 4 can assume they were impacted. This is very bad news for Tor, which is heralded for its ability to conceal users from…

Square’s New Reader Works With the Smart Credit Cards of the Future

Magnetic strips are an outdated credit card tech. In the future, we’ll hopefully all be on chip-based smart credit cards that help prevent fraud. To that end, Square’s got plans to push out a new version of its mobile credit card reader that can read the EMV smart cards that will be adopted by banks…

5 Smart Playlists That Make iTunes Worth Using

One of the few advantages iTunes (and Winamp and Windows Media Player) has over Spotify, Rdio and other streaming services is support for smart playlists. Thanks to the wealth of metadata stored by Apple’s digital content behemoth, you can juggle your tracks around in all kinds of ways. To set up a smart playlist, open…

The Lifespan Of All Of Doctor Who‘s Doctors, By Screentime

I admit, when I first saw this graph I was hoping someone figured out how many years each incarnation of the Doctor had been puttering around time and space, but this — which shows exactly how long every single Doctor was on the air — is pretty cool too. Not surprisingly, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor…