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This is history’s greatest news article about someone shooting a shotgun full of peas

We’ve seen vegetables transformed into musical instruments, but we haven’t read nearly enough news stories about legume-based artillery. Thankfully, this blurb from the November 2, 1907 edition The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican satisfies our inexplicable craving for 105-year-old news stories about angry farmers shooting annoying children with peas on Halloween. To wit, from TWO…

Why “utility fogs” could be the technology that changes the world

Arthur C. Clarke is famous for suggesting that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. There’s no better example of this than the ultra-speculative prospect of “utility fogs” — swarms of networked microscopic robots that could assume the shape and texture of virtually anything. We may be decades away from this sort of…

Talk to the Outlook Engineering Team Right Here, Right Now

Have you switched to the fantastic new Outlook? Have some questions before you check it out? Having some problems after signing up? Microsoft’s dropping by Gizmodo at 1:30 pm ET for you to ask them whatever you want. https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-did-the-impossible-the-new-hotmail-is-fantas-5930358 Drop your questions, comments, complaints, or whatever below—they’ll be here for an entire hour to make…

As many as 30% of cats are stone cold killers

The cute, cuddly kitteh in your lap could be a ruthless killer. By attaching cameras to the collars of neighborhood cats, researchers with National Geographic and the University of Georgia have found that if your cat’s an outside cat, there’s a roughly one in three chance it’s a rampaging slaughter-machine. The L.A. Times’ Thomas H.…

Curiosity Opens Her Eyes for the First Time (Updated With Panorama Images)

Great news keep coming from the red planet. Curiosity has opened her eyes for the first time. She took a good look around her and decided that life is good in Mars—albeit a bit lonely. Updated: New images coming in, including panoramas and high definition images from the descent. The Navigation Cameras—the eyes that will…

The Weird History of Amnesia

This weekend, the Bourne series returns to theaters, and we’re all revisiting our memories of the original trilogy. Jason Bourne starts out as a man with very convenient amnesia — the kind that wipes out all your memories but leaves your ability to break out of an embassy intact. Could you really have a case…

Protect Your Last Piece Of Sushi With Nunchaku Chopsticks

Restaurants can be a dangerous place if you’re dining with a ravenous group of friends who are ready to steal a piece of food off your plate the second you’re distracted. But now you can fight back, with these clever Nunchop Chopsticks which double as a miniature set of Nunchaku. For just over $9 you…

Hawkeye isn’t thrilled he spent most of The Avengers as Loki’s meat puppet

A member of The Avengers feels left out! Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner) is not thrilled that he spent most of his screen time in The Avengers as a mindless, bow-wielding goon for Loki. The actor told the LA Times that he spent 90% of the movie as a character he didn’t sign on to…

This Lovely Lighting Perfectly Complements a Spiral Staircase

A spiral staircase is a gorgeous feature of this Beirut home. And .PSLAB has made the gem even better, by adding a modern circular chandelier above it. The curving white fixture seems to move in tandem with the steps, lighting your ascent like a lantern from the sky. Though it was added after the steps…

We need more NASA Curiosity rover toys, and we need them now

We want scale models of NASA’s Curiosity Rover, and we want them now. Apparently Mattel’s Hot Wheels will be releasing some replicas of the MSL later this year. We’ve included some pictures of the models below; and while they’re certainly better than nothing (they’re pretty darned adorable), we kind of wish someone would step up…

What’s on your 6-months-until-the-end-of-the-world bucket list?

So a giant planet-destroying asteroid is headed directly for Earth, giving everyone on the planet a death sentence, including Hank Palace, a workaholic detective who’s hell-bent on solving a mysterious homicide dressed up to look like a suicide — even though the world is going to explode and not one living particle will care whodunit.…

Mythological beasts, drawn in the style of old biology textbooks

Biology textbooks from the 1800s could be rather outlandish and gruesome, even when describing harmless animals. But artist/biology PhD student Simone Des Roches has taken things one step further and created a naturalist’s profile for mythological critters like dragons and unicorns, complete with requisite zoological jargon. https://gizmodo.com/this-gruesome-1889-biology-book-outlined-the-many-ways-5907479 Des Roches currently studies lizard populations in New…

Watch the Insane Special Forces Raid Against Kim Dotcom

The usual police response to copyright infringement is a stern notice and a fine. But if you’re Kim Dotcom, with the ire of the FBI against you, you get a raid bigger than the one that killed Bin Laden. It was all caught on camera. While he and his family were still sleeping, multiple helicopters,…

The X-47B Doesn’t Need A Pilot to Land on an Aircraft Carrier

As the role UAVs in the US military expands, the demands placed on these unmanned platforms grow as well. One of the most important new abilities these autonomous fliers must have is the ability to land atop a thin strip of tarmac rolling on the high seas. And that’s just what the new Northrop Grumman…

Hydroponic Garden Blends Into Your Kitchen For Year Round Herbs

If you’re not an avid gardener it’s hard to stay on top of keeping indoor plants like herbs and spices watered and cared for. So consider this Urban Cultivator like a personal gardener. It’s designed blend in with your other kitchen appliances, but it keeps a small herb garden alive and well all year long.…

DIY biohackers are turning themselves into cyborgs IRL. It’s even crazier than it sounds. Hello, future. [The Verge]

Bank of America has finally added check deposit to its iOS app. It’s about time! [PCMag]

The Army’s Gigantic 300-Foot Drone Blimp Is Alive Over New Jersey

The LEMV is a robot blimp the size of a football field, designed to spy across an entire battlefield for weeks at a time. It’s also looked like military vaporware—until now, soaring over the Jersey Shore. You won’t believe how huge it is. You might think a blimp—a concept militarized during WWI—is a strange choice…

Only select theaters will screen The Hobbit’s insane new high-frame-rate version

The infamous 48 frames-per-second version of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit is only getting a limited release. Are Jackson and Warner Bros. bracing themselves for a big-time backlash? Months ago, Jackson screened the first footage of The Hobbit at a super-high-resolution 48 frames per second, and the response was pretty terrible. Audiences compared the new look to…

Why You Really, Really, Really Need AppleCare on That Retina MacBook Pro

Apple’s retina MacBook Pro may well be the platonic ideal of a portable computer. It’s fast, it’s thin, it’s brilliantly realized. Oh, and as iFixit has discovered, it’s a gigantic—and expensive—pain in the ass to fix yourself. That Apple made the retina MacBook Pro a difficult nut to crack isn’t a new revelation; iFixit already…