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The Biggest Thing That Yo Got Right Is Hiring Its Hackers

Yo is a borderline-offensively useless (if amusing) app, but its founder Or Arbel made a shrewd decision by hiring one of the Georgia Tech students who hacked into the absurdly simple service last week. https://gizmodo.com/yo-review-yo-1593276009 Arbel’s dumbass novelty app should never be replicated, but it’d be a boon for everyone if his attitude towards hackers…

Our Google I/O 2014 Liveblog Starts Right Now

Today, Google will kick off its annual I/O developer’s conference, likely replete with goodies like Android Wear, Glass for the everyman, and maybe some updates on that modular phone and those self-driving cars. We’ll be there covering it all for you live. While we’re not expecting anything quite as dramatic as the Great Glass Skydiving…

How Orphan Black Filmed That Big Multi-Clone Scene From The Finale

The Orphan Black second season finale gave us one big scene featuring multiple clones. It looked impressive on the screen, but how did it look during filming? Just don’t watch if you haven’t seen the finale. The visual effects company Intelligent Creatures brought us the Orphan Black Clone Club Dance Party, and it looks like…

Google’s Getting Ready to Sell You Domain Names

Google just announced a new service called Domains. It does exactly what you’d imagine it would: Helps you buy and manage domain names. Google Domains also helps you build your site, set up email addresses, and manage hosting. In effect, you can run an entire website without ever leaving the Google ecosystem. This sounds both…

Slingshot’s Designers Say You’re Using It Wrong

Facebook’s new app, Slingshot, is confusing. The premise behind it is that you can send images to your friends—but they won’t be able to see your image until they send one back to you. As a messaging service, it’s flawed. But, according to the app’s designers, it’s not a messaging service. It’s something entirely different.…

Why a “Sense of Impending Doom” Is an Actual Medical Symptom

Ever felt an unaccountable sense of fear and futility? Turns out you should have been even more terrified than you were. A “sense of impending doom” is an actual medical symptom for some very serious conditions. The Sweats and Impending Doom Europe had quite a few problems during the late Middle Ages. There were wars,…

How LED Flashlights Are Designed And Manufactured

Atlanta, Georgia-based FOURSEVENS has been on the bleeding edge of the LED flashlight revolution for the last decade. We talked to CEO David Chow about what makes his lights so bright and where flashlight technology is going. https://gizmodo.com/win-six-foursevens-led-flashlights-1595371088 FOURSEVENS is one of our favorite flashlight makers, producing the kind of lights that live up to…

Our Drones Are Crashing At An Alarming Rate

A yearlong investigation by the Washington Post reveals that more than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed around the world since 2001, due to mechanical breakdowns, human error and bad weather. The report is certain to raise concerns about allowing drones to fly in U.S. airspace. https://gizmodo.com/the-u-s-has-designated-six-sites-for-testing-commercia-1491722114 The Post’s investigation is based on records…

Wooden Vases Show Pencils Have Other Artistic Uses Than Just Drawings

Grade school is an opportunity for budding artists to finally shed their cumbersome crayons and try their hand at making a masterpiece using the subtle shades of a box of colored pencils. But artist Tuomas Markun Poika must’ve missed that class, since he instead uses pencils to create wooden vases with unique patterns made possible…

A Clinic In San Antonio Gave Women Fake Birth Control

Just when you think you’ve uncovered all the possible types of unethical human experimentation ever done, history throws a new wrinkle at you. In the early 1970s, a birth control clinic in San Antonio gave indigent women fake birth control as part of a medical study. There are probably about ten people walking around today…

There’s Finally a Jailbreak for iOS 7.1.1

iOS 8 is just around the corner (and as all updates, potentially unjailbreakable), but for folks who have found themselves stuck on the more recent 7.1.1 and unable to jailbreak, there’s finally an option. Thrown together by as-yet untested Chinese developers Pangu, the untethered jailbreak is Windows only, but works for all devices that can…

Inside the Disaster Housing NYC Is Testing For City Emergencies

More than eight million people live in NYC. And when a natural or human-made disaster strikes, there’s a good chance it’ll leave some New Yorkers without homes. That’s why this summer, NYC’s Office of Emergency Management is testing out a fast, cheap, and comfortable solution: Meet the Prototype. Technically, it’s called the Urban Post-Disaster Housing…

Are High Energy Neutrinos from Outer Space Really a Big Deal?

It may seem as though every new day brings an announcement of a scientific breakthrough of the highest order. Should you freak out about every new record-breaking neutrino? In this week’s “Ask a Physicist,” we’ll find out. Image: The IceCube detector under Aurora Australis. Courtesy of the IceCube Collaboration. If you’re a regular reader of…

A Double Red Rainbow at Sunset

These double bows at sunset are a study in red, a gorgeous pair of rainbows, and a lesson in optics. This is photograph is something special. Captured at sunset on April 27th, 2014 by Manolis Thravalos from Samos Island, Greece, the sun was behind the camera. The list of optical phenomena is substantial: rainbows, red-tinted…

Rare 1980s UFO Abductee Interview Is a Slice of Fringe Science History

UFO abductions were all the rage in the 1970s, and by the 1980s there were dedicated UFOlogists and even some scientists who were studying the phenomenon. And now you can take a peek at that era, when alien abductions were a new idea, in this rare interview with UFOlogist Budd Hopkins and an alien abductee.…

The ISS Is Getting an X-Ray Machine That Works in Space

Human bodies are of course not built for microgravity. We’ve long known that astronauts lose bone mass, but studying the process in space is tricky. The International Space Station is getting its first medical X-ray to examine on-board lab mice and rats. But making a space X-ray machine was no easy task. The Bone Densitometer…

If you take the plunge and trade in your MacBook Air for a Surface Pro 3, Microsoft will give you up to $650 for it. It’s never been clearer that Microsoft is gunning for the Air, but whether or not it’s a trade you need to make is a different question entirely.

Every national anthem in the world mixed into one single song

They should make this the anthem for the World Cup or the Olympics: The national anthems of all the countries in the world—193 of them—mixed in one song. It doesn’t sound that bad at the beginning and then it starts getting crazy. Finally, it gets scary when all the final crescendoes ramp up simultaneously. According…

Tracking Brooklyn’s Rapid-Fire Gentrification With Google Street View

Open any issue of The New York Times, and you’re all but guaranteed to hit a passing reference to the mecca of all things gentrified and hip: Brooklyn, New York. But the real testament to the borough’s changing face lies not in trend pieces, but in the nearly unrecognizable streets and buildings themselves. As Manhattanites…

Report: The Genius Behind the iPod Is Now In Charge of Google Hardware (UPDATE)

If you’re curious about the future of Google hardware, just look at Nest. That’s according to the Verge and the Information, which published a piece today claiming that Nest CEO Tony Fadell has been put in charge of Google’s consumer hardware division. Fadell, it bears mentioning, was the lead designer of the iPod. Fate is…