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Netflix Just Staked Out New Ground in Fight for Your Kids’ Eyeballs

Starting next year, Netflix will begin showing exclusive shows starring characters your children are already intimately familiar with. The collection will include nearly 300 hours of programming, and it could end up being a more important chip than a dozen Arrested Developments. The collaboration is with Dreamworks, vendor of kid-friendly franchises like Shrek and Kung…

14 High-Tech Farms Where Veggies Grow Indoors

In the 21st century, a significant change is underway in the food industry: farming is moving indoors. The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in the basement of a Tokyo high-rise, in an old warehouse in Illinois, or even in…

Could another DC Comics superhero reach movie screens by 2015?

The huge commercial success of Man of Steel has reportedly made Warner Bros. excited to build its universe. Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer discuss what’s next for Superman. Joss Whedon drops a ton of Avengers 2 hints. Plus the latest from the sets of Amazing Spider-Man 2, Transformers 4, and Ninja Turtles. Spoilers! Top…

According to an unnamed TechCrunch source, Facebook is getting ready to launch video sharing on Instagram at the end of the month. The announcement could come at this Thursday’s Facebook press event so get your fun compounds and portmanteau’s ready. InstaVine? Snapstagram? MyFaceTube?

Apple Discloses US Government Spying Details

Apple says that the government obtained data from 9,000 to 10,000 devices as part of investigations on “robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide.” The company also claims it doesn’t chat messages or videoconferences. https://gizmodo.com/apple-says-exactly-what-and-how-much-the-nsa-took-513757537

Samsung’s Giving Away a Million Copies of Jay-Z’s New Album

Jay-Z’s modestly entitled Magna Carta Holy Grail drops on the similarly nondescript Fourth of July. But despite his clear lowering of expectations for the album, he’s somehow found it within his heart to muster up some publicity by letting Samsung give away a million copies for free three days early. Galaxy owners only need apply.…

Even Car Enthusiasts Loved The First Woman In Space

Yesterday the whole world celebrated the 50th anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova’s historic space adventure. The solo flight of the Soviet’s Vostok 6 spacecraft on the 16th of June 1963, aboard the first female cosmonaut, was a really big hit in the communist countries. Even the Hungarian weekly car magazine dedicated its cover to the brave,…

Apple Details What the NSA Took–And How Much of It

The impact of the NSA’s secret surveillance through PRISM and other means has sent reverberations through out the tech industry and the world at large. The latest ripple: Apple’s full accounting of its interactions with government spies in the past year or so. Here’s what went down. https://gizmodo.com/what-is-prism-511875267 In an open letter entitled Apple’s Commitment…

This Is the Dumbest Miss USA Pageant Answer Yet

According to Deadspin’s Timothy Burke—who reportedly has never wore a swimsuit and high heels on a catwalk—Miss Utah gave the worst answer in a Miss USA beauty pageant since Miss South Carolina: “Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on…

SHAD: The Old Prince Still Lives At Home

Honestly, I don’t know. I just feel like some nights you have to shake it up, and SHAD definitely agrees. The most incredible thing to me about “The Old Prince Still Lives At Home,” released in 2007 and rereleased in 2009, is how accurately the video recreates the Fresh Prince theme video. It’s pretty shot…

In The Tragicomedy That Was Your Childhood Who Played Your Dad?

People seem to have strong feelings about TV dads. They round them up and rank them. And no one ever really got over the whole Danny Tanner situation. But which TV dad is your dad? If it’s not immediately obvious (mine is definitely Bill Nye) then you may need some help. And it exists! This…

See how a lost city was rediscovered with lasers from the sky

This ten-minute video details the rediscovery of Mahendraparvata, a lost city that once thrived in the mountains of Cambodia 1,200 years ago. Hidden for centuries by the country’s dense, remote jungles, the city was only rediscovered with the use of everyone’s favorite archaeological tool: airborne lasers. Archaeologists from Australia’s University of Sydney used LIDAR —…

A Lethal Slingshot That Shoots Metal Oreos

A few months ago Joerg (I feel like we’re on a first name basis with him at this point, right?) got the idea to try and shoot Oreos out of a pump-action slingshot. It was a fun time, but not as deadly as he would have liked. So round two of the Oreo challenge involves…

Martian chemicals are great for microbes, possibly toxic to humans

Last year, NASA’s Curiosity Rover confirmed something discovered by multiple previous Martian landers: the surface of the red planet is full of reactive chlorinated hydrocarbons known as perchlorates. That’s great news for the search for life on Mars, but it could be a disaster for any new life hoping to travel there. As Leonard David…

A Self-Sustaining Hut For The Modern Hermit

If your world is feeling overwhelmingly and counter-productively materialistic it may be time to downsize and move into a hut. That’s normal, right? And for all your sacrifice your minimalist hut can be built by celebrity architect Renzo Piano. Intrigued? https://gizmodo.com/beautiful-glass-shard-spire-set-to-dominate-london-skyl-5345826 Adding to the list of bomb diggity buildings on the Vitra Campus in Germany,…

GPS maps reveal where cats go all day

The mysterious comings and goings of our feline friends just got a little less mysterious. Researchers at the Royal Veterinary College loaded a group of cats in Shamley Green, Surrey, with cameras and GPS trackers to figure out how roaming house cats spend their days. Professor Alan Wilson, a research scientist and veterinarian at the…

See The Glass Half Full In This Underwater Mirror

Joe Doucet’s circular mirror isn’t water-logged for nothing. He designed it as a reminder of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in lower Manhattan (where his studio is) and generally on the east coast. The transition in the mirror from clear to blue is refracted slightly so part of whatever is being reflected repeats, mimicking…

What if Pixar remade Flash Gordon and other pulp classics?

We’ve seen Andrew Stanton’s vision for John Carter of Mars, but what if Pixar made CG animated versions of Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and other pulp stories? Phil Postma has been making incredible images of imaginary Pixar movies by dressing up existing Pixar characters. We’ve fawned over his Pixar-style superheroes, but we’d love to see…

These weird stories prove that extraterrestrials love Russia

Americans and Europeans like to imagine that aliens will land in London, New York, or Washington, DC, but Russian history is filled with mysterious events that many have claimed to be the work of extraterrestrials. Here are a few of the freaky tales that have left many Russians watching the skies. Tunguska Event, 1908 Russian…

The NSA Can Afford To Store Data From Years Of Phone Calls

There’s been a lot of talk about the NSA and its data-gathering policies. The news sounds kind of scary. But you might be thinking that the NSA can’t have literally every foreign and domestic call made in the U.S.. That would be a crazy amount of data right? Well, yes it would be, and it…