Computers

Lenovo Horizon Hands On: A Desktop PC That Turns into a Gigantic 27-inch Tablet

This is at once pretty cool and also very, really, incredibly silly and dumb. But that’s not a bad thing! Here’s Lenovo’s Horizon desktop computer. It’s half Minority Report, half newjack board game. Oh, and also a full Windows 8 all-in-one computer. Lenovo’s all-in-ones have contorted down to be worked on horizontally for a while…

This Wind Tunnel-Cooled Computer Is Helping Conquer Cancer

Distributed, crowd-sourced computing platforms—doesn’t matter if it’s Indigogo or SETI@home—are only as useful as the individual systems connected to them. And for IBM’s World Community Grid, a single system can do a lot, especially when it’s a purpose-built 4.5GHz calculation-crushing super computer. Mike Schropp, the Total Geek behind the Total Geekdom website, built the Wind…

This Computer Is Cooled By a Wind Tunnel

We’ve seen plenty of extreme cooling systems in the past, but Mike Schropp has taken things to the limit: he’s built a computer that’s cooled by a wind tunnel. https://gizmodo.com/the-most-grotesque-fanless-cpu-cooler-ive-ever-seen-5961017 This assembly of medium-density fiberboard, lexan and aluminum—combined with a box fan—is capable of generating gusts of up to 30mph which charge through the computer…

21-inch iMac 2012 (Thin) Review: Looks Only Get You So Far

Gadgets get thinner. Apple’s gadgets more than most. That’s just the natural order of things. But while thin and light are two of the chief virtues of mobile, and prettier is always better, the new deskbound iMac has to prove it’s more than just a diet plan. Design The iMac’s new, thinner design is the…

A virus that reprograms your pacemaker to deliver an electric shock

What’s likely to become a health threat you never expected next year? 4Chan griefers could actually deliver death or injury from the safety of their forums with a virus designed to infect medical devices. Many of these devices, such as pacemakers, can be reprogrammed wirelessly. And that means bad guys could reprogram your pacemaker (or…

The idea that we live in a simulation isn’t science fiction

Physicist Silas Beane talks to New Scientist about the possibility that we are living in a simulated Universe, in an interview published earlier today. https://gizmodo.com/youre-living-in-a-computer-simulation-and-math-proves-5799396 Back in October, we told you about a paper — written by Beane and his colleagues — that explores how we might go about proving that reality as we know…

Will We Have Cognitive Computers That Feel And Smell in The Next Five Years?

At the end of each year, IBM releases its “5 in 5″—five technology predictions that IBM researchers foresee coming to fruition within the coming five years. These predictions are based on everything from emerging market trends to cultural and social behaviors to actual technologies IBM has incubating in its many labs. And if this year’s…

Short Battery Life Sinks First Windows 8 Notebooks

Confusing dual-mode operating system, no Start button, counterintuitive swipe gestures? None of these things spells doom for Windows 8. What will kill Microsoft’s newest operating system is the abysmal battery life of the systems on which it’s supposed to perform the best. For all of Windows 8’s strengths, its one major weakness might be something…

The Most Important Laptops of 2012

2012 was a big year for laptops. Windows 8 came along with its touch-centric worldview, Intel kept plugging away on its ultrabook crusade, and Apple finally started pumping out Retina MacBooks. Here’s our list of the most important machines of the year. 10. Acer Aspire S7 11-inch https://gizmodo.com/acer-aspire-s7-review-this-is-how-windows-8-should-fee-5952833 This is a statement of intent from…

Johnny Depp Plays a Computer in His Next Movie, Yes, Seriously

If you’re tired of endless Depp roles that are just an excuse to parade him around in makeup and tight pants, here’s some insane, welcome news: his next role will be that of a brain uploaded to a computer. Transcendence, which is a movie that actually will exist according to The Wrap, will be directed…

Feel Free To Spill Whatever You Want On This Waterproof PC

You can be as reckless as you want with your bottle of Moutain Dew around Stealth’s new fanless WPC-525F computer. As the name implies it relies on its aluminum chassis as one large heatsink to dissipate high temperatures. So besides near silent operation, it’s also sealed making it completely waterproof and dustproof. The $1,595 base…

How Do Computers Understand Speech?

More and more, we can get computers to do things for us by talking to them. A computer can call your mother when you tell it to, find you a pizza place when you ask for one, or write out an email that you dictate. Sometimes the computer gets it wrong, but a lot of…

Those Skinny New iMacs Go on Sale November 30

You might want to make an addendum to your Christmas list. Those impossibly slender new iMacs go on sale November 30. Announced in September at Apple’s iPhone event, the latest desktop machines are just 5mm thin. The base 21.5-inch model has a 2.7 GHz quad-core processor and starts at $1,300. The 27-incher starts with a…

The next Raspberry Pi mini computer will offer a 5-megapixel camera and run Minecraft, too. Wowzer. [Raspberry Pi]

These Polaroids Might Be the Oldest Pictures of an Apple Computer

In 1976, Apple products were far from the thin, glossy blades they are today. Apple’s humble beginnings started with the Apple I, hand-built by Steve Wozniak himself, and sold for $666.66. When Paul Terrell, owner of the Byte Shop, purchased 50 of the machines for sale way back then, he took a few pictures with…

Mac Mini Review: Apple’s Tiny Computer Is Finally Worth Your Time

The Mac Mini has always been that runt you might buy if you couldn’t afford any other Apple computer. Which is to say: it was the Apple computer you bought when you should’ve picked up a budget Dell or something. No longer. The 2012 model is a fantastic, affordable, and small. In models past, the…

Just how inaccurate were the hacking scenes in Skyfall?

Skyfall, the latest Bond flick, wasn’t just a fun movie — it also featured the only Bond villain who used evil cyberhacking as the main weapon in his arsenal. Of course movie hacking is rarely accurate (except for that shining moment when Trinity used nmap in The Matrix Reloaded), but it’s still fun to pick…

Why does Hal sing “Daisy” in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

You might already know this, but it’s news to me. Arthur C. Clarke went to a Bell Labs demonstration in 1962 or 1963 featuring an IBM 704 singing the song “Daisy” (or, more properly, “Daisy Bell”) and it made a huge impression. This was also the first real-life example of a singing computer. Strange Horizons…

Obama’s Campaign Ran Millions of Virtual Elections to Predict the Future

Nate Silver, King of Math, predicted President Obama’s victory using repeated virtual elections. But inside Obama HQ, Barack’s elite data-crunchers were doing some pretty crazy things with computers. TIME has a nifty rundown of the campaign’s heavy reliance on data analysis, and the confidence that computers and pure math would be able to predict the…

The 12 Weirdest Hybrid Gadgets of the Last 40 Years

The Microsoft Surface arrives today. It’s been touted as the perfect compromise between laptop and tablet. (From what we can tell, that’s not quite the case.) But hybrid gadgets have a checkered past. Most seem to fail at first, and yet some find success later. So all hope might not be lost for this quirky…