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A Look Inside Afghanistan’s Almost-Apple Store

Fake Apple stores are nothing new. China has a slew of them, all polished and shiny, appearing almost as if they are the genuine article at a glance. Quartz dug up some details on Afghanistan’s (fake) Apple store, and though it’s a bit more frumpy than most, it still gets the job done. https://gizmodo.com/fake-chinese-apple-store-looks-amazingly-real-5822918 Located…

Incense flowers and magnet trees

This is what you see when you light a stick of incense, you just don’t know it. A project sponsored by the Czech Ministry of Education makes smoke into flowers and creates trees out of magnets — and then photographs them all. All you need is smoke, a light to illuminate it, and a very…

Children of the 1980s Build Their Cities of Tomorrow

When I was in second grade I made a diorama of a city of the future. This was the early 1990s and the diorama was supposed to represent the year 2000—somehow still lightyears away for a young kid during the George H. W. Bush administration. My little diorama city had cars that ran on a…

This jaw-dropping water simulation is the most realistic yet

Simulating the complex ebbs and flows of liquid in real-time is not easy, but this jaw-dropping new demonstration from PhysX shows we’ll eventually get there. This new system is called Position Based Fluids (pdf), and it works off a previously developed model called Position Based Dynamics. The new algorithm reduces water to a large series…

A Pushing Daisies star will be the villain in Guardians of the Galaxy!

Shane Black explains why the Mandarin is the “über-terrorist” in Iron Man 3. Dan Aykroyd is excited again about Ghostbusters 3, and this time the Higgs boson is involved. Matthew McConaughey has some more cryptically chill things to say about Interstellar. There’s tons of info about the Arrow season finale. Spoiler alert! Top image from…

Splitsider Presents: A Place to Buy Awesome Comedy Where the Artists Actually Get Paid

The push towards DRM-free distribution has come in fits and spurts; Louis CK helped pioneer and popularize the model, but to date there still hasn’t been a centralized hub where you can buy high-quality comedy, for a little bit of money, that the artist gets to keep. https://gizmodo.com/louis-ck-spent-his-own-stupid-money-to-stream-his-new-s-5866889 Splitsider Presents, a new offshoot of internet…

Apple’s announced its Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off June 10th in San Francisco. Brace yourself for news.

Booze-Tracking Bluetooth Breathalyzer Counts Down Your Return To Sobriety

An experienced imbiber has a pretty good idea of when they’ll return to the land of the sober based on what type, and how much hooch they’ve consumed. But if you need a more detailed ETA on when you might be able to drive, walk, or even stand again, the BACtrack breathalyzer connects to a…

Reddit co-founder (and new author!) Alexis Ohanian will be answering your questions at noon. – Sponsored

NASA Drew This Giant Penis on the Surface of Mars

Apparently, this drawing of the male genitals etched into the surface of Mars—which has popped up on NASA’s website—was just an amusing accident. Either that, or a very dirty-minded individual got hold of the controls of NASA’s ageing Opportunity Mars rover. As if it wasn’t bad enough it got replaced by Curiosity and left on…

Nokia’s Asha 210 Is a Social QWERTY Phone Two Years Late

Just over two years after HTC released the Status—a QWERTY phone with Facebook integration that never even really mattered at the time—Nokia has decided to roll out its own version: the Asha 210. https://gizmodo.com/the-facebook-phone-review-lets-just-pretend-this-isnt-5821278 Nokia’s social phone does at least take into account current trends: in the West and Latin America, it will have a…

Why Time Travel Is Confusing

Actually, time travel is confusing on many levels—what the hell did happen in Twelve Monkeys exactly?—but it’s the simple things that can cause the biggest headaches. Especially, as the mouse-over text in XKCD points out, the countdown: “T-minus 10… 11…”. [XKCD] https://gizmodo.com/a-flow-chart-explaining-all-time-travel-in-movies-5994682

This Radeon HD 7990 Promises to Spit Out any Game in 4K

AMD has released the specs of its latest monster graphics card, the Radeon HD 7990. It not for the casual gamer, sure—but by the sounds of things, if you’re minded to buy one it will tear through your games with some fairly insane processing power. The HD 7990 has a lot going for it. It…

Panasonic Lumix G6 : A Micro Four Thirds for Video Junkies

Panasonic has announced a brand-new mid-range Micro Four Thirds camera, the Lumix G6. It offers up a solid list of specs—and should appeal to fans of shooting video in particular. The camera packs a 16-megapixel sensor, that can grab images at 7fps in burst mode and offer up a maximum sensitivity ISO 25,600. Elsewhere, there’s…

Swype’s Keyboard Is Now Out of Beta and in the Play Store—For $1

Swype has finally dropped its Beta tag and gone official—which means it’s now in the Play store, easy to install, and no longer free. Developers at Nuance—the company which purchased Swype in 2011—clearly deem the latest version of the Android Keyboard, 1.5, finished and ready for full public consumption. In reality, aside from a little…

Sony HX50V: A Massive Superzoom Camera Dressed Like a Skinny Superstar

Really exciting point-and-shoot cameras only come around every so often, and last year’s Sony RX100 was one of them. It blew its pocket compact competitors away. It also cost $650, which is pricey for an enthusiast camera. The new scaled down Sony HX50V mimics the RX100’s covetable aesthetics, and packs some attractive, beginner-friendly features into…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Adventures of Christopher Bosh in the Multiverse!

Whaddya mean you didn’t know Chris Bosch was an inter-dimensional warrior of justice and Heat teammate Mike Miller, an inter-dimensional werewolf? Do you not watch basketball or something? [Deadspin] https://deadspin.com/this-chris-bosh-film-is-better-than-all-of-the-drugs-478109116

Superhero Tourists Will Love Sony’s Awesome Combination Binoculars and 3D Camcorder

You’re looking at the Sony DEV-50V, an overhauled version of the pricey multi-gadget Sony announced at IFA a few years ago. Meet the new and improved Swiss Army goggles. They’re part 25x zoom digital binoculars, part sophisticated 3D camcorder, and all kinds of crazy expensive. https://gizmodo.com/sonys-3d-binoculars-cost-too-much-for-the-average-bird-5832466 The DEV-50V set has a brand new weatherproof design…

‘Self-Proclaimed’ Leader Of LulzSec Arrested

The Australian Federal Police have confirmed that they have arrested the alleged leader of notorious hacking group Lulzsec in Sydney. The alleged leader of the group, which spent its time breaching the CIA, Sony and News Corporation lives in Point Claire, NSW. He was arrested yesterday and is being charged with hacking offenses. Federal Police…

Report: Twitter Will Release Its Two-Step Verification Soon

Wired is reporting that Twitter has a two-step verification system currently undergoing internal testing that Twitter hopes to roll out to its users “shortly”. A two-step verification system would help prevent Twitter hacks from happening, like what happened today with the @AP. https://gizmodo.com/why-that-ap-tweet-about-the-white-house-explosions-is-d-5995276 There aren’t any details on how the two-step verification system would work…