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Shiva Ayyadurai believes a lot of odd things. Most memorably Ayyadurai thinks of himself as the inventor of email, and to that end has sued publications—Techdirt and Gizmodo’s former parent company Gawker—which have claimed otherwise, despite a wide consensus that electronic mail was created by computing pioneer Ray Tomlinson. Ayyadurai also thinks he has a…
These days, it seems you’re nobody if you’re not working on a way to merge machines with the human brain. Earlier this year, both Facebook and perpetual moonshot-enthusiast Elon Musk announced plans for brain-computer interfaces that could allow us to read the thoughts of others and improve our capacity for learning. Today, the US Defense…
A long time ago, in a smartphone scene much different from today’s, you could tell Android and iOS apart from a distance. Nowadays, it’s not quite as straightforward, given the number of features and ideas these two powerhouse mobile OSes have borrowed from each other over the years. There are still some crucial differences between…
A driver in Ontario, Canada, recently discovered that crashing your minivan into a power pole can have bigger repercussions than just higher insurance premiums. Enraged at nearly getting toppled, the utility pole started spewing fire balls down the line like it was some kind of video game baddie. As the video below shows, the local…
Want to know which companies stand up for user privacy and which ones will hand out your data when the government asks for it? The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s seventh annual “Who Has Your Back” report is out today, ranking tech companies on their privacy practices. When scoring companies, EFF looks at their published policies about…
Remember when Bill Clinton was president, and Amazon was just a website where you could buy books? Those were the halcyon days. Now, the world’s biggest store runs brick-and-mortar shops, builds affordable hardware, operates artificial intelligence, and soon, it will hire out humans to help you set up your gadgets. Why? Because if it’s possible…
In the caterpillar-versus-plant fight, the winner might seem obvious. One side sits motionless in the sun, while the other feasts on it. But the tomato plant has a nefarious defense strategy. In some encounters with herbivores, it winds up relatively unscathed, while the caterpillars wind up eating each other. Researchers have long known that plants…
Video games like Super Mario Bros. and Tetris included some of the most catchy background music ever put on a cartridge. But would you recognize those same classic video game themes played backwards? An artist created an album featuring four memorable game themes performed in reverse, and we can’t stop listening to them. “Sorb Oiram…
The Moon is the Tango to Earth’s Cash, the Hall to our Oates, the Lennon to our McCartney before they hated each other. Simply put, our planet and the Moon are soul mates: except, of course, if something were to happen to one of them. Like, I don’t know, what if we just blew up…
One of humanity’s worst decisions has to be the pairing of darts with bars full of drunk patrons making terrible decisions. Throwing tiny pointed spears when you can barely stand once seemed like a dangerous way to have fun, until the lads at How Ridiculous decided to play darts off a 150-foot-tall observation tower. From…
Have you seen this viral photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin? It shows the authoritarian leader in the middle of an intense discussion between other world leaders at the G-20. But it’s completely fake. And the fakery has even inspired a meme. Putin supporters have been circulating the image to make it look like the…
In what’s either the best art project, the best business move, or both, someone has made what I presume is a bot that’s churning out thousands of unique iPhone cases for sale on Amazon. Pretty much all of them are masterpieces. Bots mocking up one-off products in the hope that just the right person comes…
We’re gradually learning that smart home devices can be quite valuable for police. Following a recent case in which Amazon handed over data from its Echo device to police investigating a murder, a smart device called the police when a couple was allegedly involved in a violent domestic dispute. [See correction below] According to ABC…
The morning after the Washington Post published a story claiming that Russians were responsible for cyber-intrusions into the business systems of American energy companies, Donald Trump addressed the cyber. He has a plan. https://gizmodo.com/obama-authorized-cyberstrikes-against-russia-through-se-1796367710 “Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded,”…
Because any trip to see a Soviet shuttle is worth it as long as no one’s wearing handcuffs at the end. A group of YouTubers going by the name Exploring the Unbeaten Path traveled to the middle of nowhere to get a look at some space shuttles from the suspended Soviet-era Buran programme. Located at…
Housing in the Santa Clara region of California is insanely expensive. Tech companies have taken to building modern day versions of mill towns just so their employees have a place to live. The latest solution to pick up traction in the area is to build on top of disused landfills and regulators are warming to…
While fighting climate change and providing health care are both just too economically burdensome for America, members of the House believe there’s still enough cash to fund a space army that would fight off… the space enemies? https://gizmodo.com/military-officials-say-we-need-to-prepare-for-space-war-1793774231 The idea of preparing the US for war in space has found supporters off-and-on for several decades.…
Diamondback moths may be a mere half-inch in length, but their voracious appetite for Brussels sprouts, kale and cauliflower make them a major pain for farmers. This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved a potential solution: moths genetically engineered to contain a special gene that makes them gradually die off. A field trial slated…
Anteaters are very good animals. They somehow pull off the whole “slurp up ants with their sticky, noodly, bendy straw tongues” so confidently you forget how weird that is. And scientists agree that, yes, anteater tongues are weird. But they’re also understudied. A team of Brazilian researchers is therefore spending its time trying to understand…
Ötzi the Iceman—our favorite Copper Age corpsicle—is the gift that keeps on giving. A recent analysis of the metal found in the Neolithic hunter’s copper axe suggests a point of origin in Southern Tuscany, which is far from where Ötzi’s frozen body was found. This suggests a long-distance trade route might have existed between central…
