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We humans have shockingly malleable tastes. Studies have shown that we are more likely to prefer something if we think it’s expensive (even if it isn’t). It stands to reason, then, that a cocktail costing $1,210 should be roughly 80 times more delicious to me than any I’ve ever purchased for myself. So, when Trader…
Throw a pebble into a still pond, and the shockwaves from the disturbance will ripple out in all directions in nearly perfect concentric circles. But disturb the fine mesh of a window screen that’s soaked with rain or morning dew, and the shockwave will ripple out with a unique, four-pointed star pattern. Backyard Scientist’s Kevin…
In the final months before the 2016 election, Donald Trump and his son, Donald Trump, Jr., both received an email containing a link and “decryption key” for Wikileaks files, CNN reported. The implication, of course, is that the email was another bit of evidence that the Trump campaign was secretly in cahoots with Wikileaks during…
You might have scoffed at the “fuckin’ magnets, how do they work” line from the Insane Clown Posse song “Miracles,” but if we’re being honest here, magnets are pretty nuts. Take any old bar magnet and cut it in half and it will still have a North and a South pole. Keep cutting, you’ll never…
Once America’s queer capital, San Francisco (and the entire West Coast with it) is being reshaped and remodeled by Silicon Valley’s wealthy residents. Spiking rents and exploding gentrification are financially crippling even those working full-time and pushing out longtime residents of LGBT havens like the Mission and Castro. Within this groundswell is the controversial launch of…
If you’ve ever watched a prime time crime drama like CSI, you probably recall a scene in which a forensic analyst used a computer to troll through thousands of snippets of DNA, looking for a match between a crime scene and a suspect. Real life doesn’t happen quite like it does on television, but the…
As the Supreme Court mulls over the case of Carpenter v. United States, which may have far-reaching consequences for police who track suspects without a warrant via their cellphones, four engineers at Princeton University have revealed a brand-new method for identifying the location of a cellphone user. The result of their ingenuity is as remarkable…
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Earlier this week, representatives from automotive and airline companies, big banks, software companies, and the military met to learn the basics of quantum mechanics at NASA. And that was only a small part of it. Quantum computing software startup QCWare hosted the first quantum computing for business, or Q2B conference, at NASA Ames.…
Apple’s iOS is a walled garden that gives the company total control over what can be done with its device. For years, jailbreaking your iPhone was easy and allowed all sorts of custom freedom. It’s been a while since a simple jailbreak has been released. But this week, a Google researcher made an announcement that…
This is the year. As much as we’ve postured about 4K TVs getting almost cheap enough and 4K content getting almost easy enough to access, this is the year that it’s finally happened. You can buy an excellent 4K TV with HDR support for less than $700, and find stuff to watch on any streaming…
YouTube—perhaps the largest repository of free music on the planet—plans to introduce a paid music subscription service in March. What could go wrong? Bloomberg reports the project, named “Remix” internally, may be an attempt to quell tensions with the recording industry. Publishers, labels, and artists alike have long accused YouTube and other services of hurting…
Over the past four years Patreon has grown to become the de facto funding model for independent creators online—a platform where supporters pledge small monthly recurring donations that better support an enduring career instead of the need Kickstarter or GoFundMe’s per-project setup fills. But an overhaul of its fee structure announced yesterday has creators furious…
An unabashedly bro-y YouTuber who makes money by posting videos of his dumb bro-y antics nearly killed himself in his latest dumb video. Jay Swingler teams up with his friend Romell Henry to post videos under the name TGFbro. While TGFBro is known for videos of the two men, both in their early twenties, playing…
With powerful Santa Ana winds gusting as high as 80 miles per hour, firefighters are bracing themselves for another challenging day in Southern California. Over the course of the week, destructive wildfires in the state have forced the evacuation of more than 230,000 people, destroyed hundreds of homes, and torched over 80,000 acres of land.…
When it comes to satisfying the needs of the PC master race, there’s no such thing as too much. That’s why Nvidia went and created the $3,000 Titan V, which the company is calling the most powerful graphics card ever created. Then, Nvidia went and painted it gold, so you wouldn’t confuse it with any…
Researchers in the UK recently made a children’s toy repeatedly squawk “twat” to point out its security flaws. To which I say, perhaps consider getting your child a dumb toy this holiday season. The aforementioned toy, the Teksta Toucan, is a smart device from Genesis Toys. Security researchers from Pen Test Partners found that the…
There are some typing enthusiasts out there who are very, very picky about their keyboards. They’ll go to great lengths to customize every last feature and function so it feels perfect under their fingers. Or, in the case of Lego master builder Jason Allemann, they’ll instead use the world’s most famous plastic bricks to create…
You are going to find yourself idling on a fine website like Gizmodo or wandering through some store like Target or Best Buy, and you are going to remember you need to buy a gift for a loved one. You are going to remember, one time while you were at Outback housing a Blooming Onion…
In the latest episode in a twisting and grotesque teen sexting case, an appeals court has reversed a lower court’s ruling related to the case a 17-year-old boy who was asked to strip, then masturbate in front of police officers in Virginia. A district court previously ruled that the estate of the lead detective, who…
Hackers were able to lock down several servers of a county government in North Carolina with ransomware this week, locking local officials out of computer systems that manage inmate populations, child support, and other social services. But despite the outages, the county isn’t planning to pay the $23,000 ransom demanded by the hackers. “I am…
