Latest

Mount Etna just had its first spectacular eruption in 20 years

Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, erupted into life this past weekend, sending lava bombs about one-meter-wide soaring into the sky for the first time in over 20 years. At 11,000-feet-high, Etna is also Europe’s tallest active volcano, whose history of eruptions has been traced all the way back to the days of ancient Greece.…

No, drinking milk won’t prevent poor bone health when you’re older

For years we’ve been told that teenagers should drink three glasses of milk a day or the equivalent in dairy foods to build up bone reserves that help prevent osteoporosis and bone fractures later in life. But a comprehensive new study throwing this conventional wisdom into serious question. The research, which appears in Monday’s issue…

Artificial Photosynthesis: Making Cheap Hydrogen From Water and Light

Hydrogen is one of the most promising fuels of the future but right now it’s expensive to produce in bulk. Enter the work of a team of Stanford researchers who believe they can make it as cheap as fossil fuels—using just some water and sunlight. https://gizmodo.com/this-liquid-hydrogen-uav-just-flew-for-two-days-straigh-504876691 Currently, to make hydrogen out of water and light…

If You Can Knit, You Can Make a Pair Of Adorable Lego Minifig Mittens

You can officially add another item to the list of things that make the winter more bearable. In addition to hot chocolate, roaring fires, and sledding, there’s now these wonderful knitted mittens that make it look like you’ve got a pair of Lego minifig hands at the end of each arm. You’ll of course first…

5 Eye-Popping Designs That Visualize Sound

You unlock this post with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension—a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a collection of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. The following designers have each transformed intangible, invisible audio—from orchestral scores to snipping scissors to Presidential…

Today, Amazon is rolling out pretty slick Goodreads integration to the Kindle Paperwhite. You might recall that just yesterday, Kindle Fire tabletsgot a very similar update. If you’re a Goodreads user, the update affords you handy features like the ability to share passages without leaving the page you’re on. If you’re not a Goodreads user,…

Get the first look at Barry Allen on Arrow!

And an X-Files alum is joining Arrow, too. Plus, a new photo of Jamie Foxx in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past is doing reshoots, and the fate of the Transformers movies hangs in the balance. And check out a clip from Doctor Who: An Adventure in Space and Time. Spoilers now!…

The Prettiest iPad Drawing App Now Has the Prettiest Stylus Companion

Have you used Paper by 53 Design? It’s that iPad drawing app that is so decked out in pretty, design-y, feel-good-ness that it makes all who use it feel like Matisse. Well, now its creators have put out an equally gorgeous stylus. https://gizmodo.com/paper-for-ipad-hands-on-so-this-is-what-microsofts-for-5897413 The appropriately named Pencil is a bluetooth stylus that pairs with the…

10 Old Sprint Phones Can Now Get Totally Free Voice, Texts, and Data

FreedomPop’s crazy free voice, text, and data plan is awesome, but the one catch was that you had to buy in with a (sort of meh) $100 phone. Not anymore. If you have an old Sprint phone laying around, you might be able to get on the FreedomPop train without spending one single cent. https://gizmodo.com/heck-yes-the-first-free-wireless-plan-is-finally-here-1429566597…

The World’s Tallest Waterslide Better End In the World’s Deepest Pool

Either that or there’s going to be a lot of squished people needing to be scraped off the tiles at the deep end. Currently under construction at the Schlitterbahn park in Kansas City, the Meg-a-Blaster slide will open in Spring 2014, dropping people from nearly 140 feet up. The current tallest waterslide in the world…

This Video Finally Makes Sense of Logarithms

If math brings you out in a cold sweat, then logarithms surely leave you in a sobbing heap. But no longer, thanks to the wonderful Vi Hart. This video uses the medium of Sharpie and notepad to finally help you make sense of logarithms, once and for all. Turns out, they’re not as complicated as…

Patent Reveals How Samsung Would Use That Three-Sided Phone Screen

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Samsung has plans to produce a phone with a curved OLED screen which wraps around three of its sides. Now, a patent reveals how Samsung would make use of that kind of hardware. https://gizmodo.com/bloomberg-samsungs-planning-a-three-sided-wraparound-d-1465070515 Filed back in May but just made public, the patent describes “operating functions of a portable…

According to a report seen by All Things D, the new PS4 costs $381 to manufacture—just $18 shy of its $399 retail price.

A Little Vitamin B Is All That Makes This Worm Glow Bright Green

This might look like the result of some wild nuclear accident, but in fact this worm is perfectly healthy. It just happens to glow bright green when exposed to certain wavelengths of light. A team of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California has discovered that it’s a humble splash of…

Obama Administration Tries to Ban Phone Unlocking, Claims to Support It

Slate is reporting that, while the Obama administration has long been making noises about trying to support phone unlocking, it’s also been busy readying legislation that would actually ban the practice. https://gizmodo.com/the-new-fcc-chairman-wants-carriers-to-allow-phone-unlo-1465010676 Derek Khanna trawled through the recent Wikileaks dump—which included a draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Treaty—and found some things he wasn’t really…

Selfie Is Officially the 2013 Word of the Year

Time to fire up Instagram and party like it’s, um, 2013, because ‘selfie’ has been named the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year. Fending off competition like ‘twerk’, ‘bitcoin’, and ‘binge-watch’—all good words!—selfie won out because of its huge surge in usage over the past twelve months. In fact, Oxford Dictionaries editors claim the use…

Yahoo is (finally) going to encrypt all the information that moves between you and its products by the end of the first quarter of 2014.

Moga Ace iOS Game Controller First Look: Cheap Fun, Huge Potential

Ever since Apple introduced reference designs and an API for iOS gaming controllers at WWDC, we’ve known some kind of officially sanctioned iOS hardware was on the way. The Moga Ace is the first we’ve gotten in our hot little hands on, and after playing with it for a few days, we can safely say…

US Army to get Iron Man suit for troops in just four years

This is not the first time that the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) has talked about their desire to get a real life version of Iron Man’s suit for soldiers, but now it’s giving a very specific timeframe: “The goal is to have a contract in place by next fall and have…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Horse on a Treadmill

Not bad, but lets see how far can it throw a cinder block. Part of Virginia Tech’s long-running “Invent the Future” football halftime commercials, Horse on a Treadmill has gained a cult following among students at the school. Not only does Horse have its own dedicated Twitter account, the student body has even begun petitioning…