Latest

Skype Video Messages Gives You Visual Voicemail

Skype has a new video messages feature. Through an Android, iOS, or Mac app, you can send other users three-minute recordings. Interestingly enough, Microsoft isn’t launching a Windows or Windows Phone app for Skype video messages just yet. These users can still see their these short visual notes, but they’ll have to follow a link…

New series Zero Hour is stupid, insane, and massively entertaining

Let me say this for Zer0 H0ur (or, as I will call it from this point on, Zero Hour, lest we all go mad from too many zeroes): It is fast-paced. Things happens quickly — the hour-long pilot zips from 1938 Germany to modern New York to the Arctic but also Bavaria — so viewers…

Here’s the Russian Meteor Entering Earth from Space

The European Meteosat-10 satellite captured the precise moment as the meteor entered Russian airspace over Chelyabinsk at 33,000mph. Here you can clearly see its vapor trail. [Meteosat] https://gizmodo.com/meteorite-explodes-over-russia-panic-spreads-5984476 More reading What would actually happen if the asteroid hit today Videos: Meteorite explodes over Russia, Panic Spreads This Is the Russian Meteor Impact Site

Haze: Turn Your Weather Forecast Into Psychedelic Art

The Weather Channel’s app has had you covered on the basics of your local forecast for eons. It ain’t pretty, but if you want to know what the chance of precipitation will be 3AM, it’ll give you a number. Haze takes that raw data and packages it into something simple and beautiful. Haze’s weather forecasts…

How serious does an asteroid threat have to be before we take action?

As the world waited for today’s close flyby of the asteroid 2012 DA14, a small asteroid broke up over Chelyabinsk Russia this morning, blasting in city windows with its sonic boom and injuring hundreds. Meanwhile, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program has revised the odds of asteroid 2011 AG5 hitting the Earth in 2040 to 1 in…

The Burden of Apple iOS

When Apple released the iPhone in 2007, they released iPhone OS (later known as iOS) with it. The device and the operating system necessitated each other. The two were birthed into the world together on the same stage. The industrial design of Apple’s new phone was a drastic departure from other mobile devices at that…

Harrison Ford to play Han Solo again; why does this make us sad?

Please take this with the same large portion of salt that you’ve taken all the other Star Wars rumors with, but Latino Review says — on Fox News Latino, no less — that Harrison Ford is getting close to signing a “major” deal with Disney that would see the venerable and extremely cranky actor return…

Weta’s FX reel shows why working on The Hobbit made Ian McKellen cry

Months before The Hobbit premiered, Sir Ian McKellen revealed an exceptionally personal (and completely understandable) moment about how working tirelessly for hours talking to imaginary beings in greenscreen can wear an actor down. In an interview with Contact Music, Gandalf explained how working in this environment eventually brought him to tears “In order to shoot…

Why were so many Russian dash cams already set up to catch the meteor? Horrible roads with rampant psychopaths, for one.

This Wire Brush-Weilding Robot Is Like a Roomba For Your Grill

It’s never fun when it finally comes time to clean that grill. The residue has been building up for months, and you have no choice but to whip out the steel brush, pull off the grate, and literally get your hands dirty. But how about if you could get a cute little circular robot pal…

How Many Twitter Lists Is Too Many?

Twitter lists are a very good organizational tool. They let you keep tabs on the people you don’t necessarily want to follow, and they can keep you on top of a very specific subject. I’ve made lists for things like rappers, people I know from college, and comedians. That way if I don’t want these…

Why we’ll probably never build a space elevator

As humanity slowly ventures out into the cosmos, we are struggling to overcome the challenge of getting all our stuff into space. Rockets are impractical for the long term as they’re prohibitively expensive, they require a ridiculous amount of fuel, and they’re an environmental menace. The panacea, we’ve been told, is the much heralded space…

There’s No Such Thing as a Fake Apple Product

By now, the year-old claim that Apple makes people work on fake products is well-known. How scandalous. To ensure the loyalty of new hires, the company puts them on “dummy” projects before letting them work on the real goods. Too bad it’s not true. https://gizmodo.com/apple-makes-new-employees-work-on-fake-products-until-a-5880510 Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica did some digging with sources…

The Carnival Cruise From Hell Refuses to End as the Passengers’ Bus Home Breaks Down

If you thought things couldn’t get any worse for the unsuspecting participants in Carnival Cruise’s new Lord of the Flies at sea program, you’ve underestimated the excessively vengeful god they’ve angered. Just as they were finally on their way home and ready to start their lives over, the ex-hostages found themselves once again stranded—this time…

Science makes rainbows dance to elevator music

This video combines the fascination of watching colors shift on the surface of a soap bubble with the old-fashioned enjoyment of watching laundry spin in a tumble dryer. But it’s more complicated than both. These are smectic films — although they look like soap, they are tiny liquid crystals along a thin plane. The film…

What if the world ended while you were at brunch? Watch It’s a Disaster

Check out the very first trailer for apocalypse comedy It’s a Disaster, starring Julia Stiles and David Cross doing what he does best (being insanely awkward). The movie asks, what if you had to spend the last hours of your life stuck in an uncomfortable brunch date with a bunch of 30-year-olds? Break out the…

Uhh, Bang With Friends Is a Sexiness Score for Your Facebook?

Even if it oozes the desperation of sex-starved C++ nerds, the theory behind Bang With Friends is genius. A service that helps people who know each other hook up—if and only if both parties are interested in getting jiggy. It’s funny! And as Mark Wilson at CoDesign points out, the service has lured in a…

40+ minutes of 30+ years of hilarious Star Trek bloopers

The word “hero” gets used a bit too much nowadays, but I think anyone who takes the time to find and assemble a 41-minute compilation video of every single Star Trek blooper and gag reel he/she could find may have genuinely earned the title. This video (which CBS/Paramount will probably not leave up too long)…

Microsoft Is Finally Merging Skype and Windows Live Messenger This Spring

Ever since Microsoft acquired Skype and confirmed the end of Windows Live Messenger, a merger has been a tiny dot off on the horizon. Now Microsoft has pinned down when the two will become one: this April. https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-microsoft-is-buying-skype-for-8-5-billion-5800329 Starting on April 8th, Messenger clients will start receiving updates that will upgrade them into Skype clients,…

Here’s How To Stop a Horrible Parody Twitter Account Before It Starts

Parody Twitter accounts are a pox on the internet. Comedian Jake Fogelnest, however, has done his part to prevent another one of these vile, unfunny things from becoming a thing. https://gizmodo.com/winter-storm-nemo-has-ruined-twitter-parody-accounts-fo-5982883 Just after the giant meteor hit Russia early this morning, Fogelnest rushed to Twitter to register @RussiaMeteor, so no one else could do it.…