Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
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…
Once I became a parent, I noticed for the first time that the products I was buying came with pre-addressed postcards. These postcards ask you to send in your contact information, so you can be informed if the product you bought is later deemed unsafe and recalled, so you don’t, for example, get killed by…
Waymo and Uber have reached an agreement in their ongoing legal fight—Waymo will drop the majority of its patent infringement claims and Uber will promise not to resume development of its defunct, allegedly infringing lidar device, Spider. The patent claims have been a bit of a distraction in Waymo’s lawsuit against Uber, which also accuses…
Serbian photographer Nikola Olic lives and works in Dallas, Texas, but he also travels the world with a keen eye that’s always looking for unusual angles on buildings and other structures. The result is a collection of architectural photographs that look more like impossible optical illusions. https://gizmodo.com/10-optical-illusion-architecture-photos-from-major-us-c-1699187431 Olic’s abstract shots make the world seem like…
As apex predators, orcas can prey on whichever marine animal they choose—large or small. During a recent expedition off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, scientists captured rare footage of orcas attacking a 40-foot-long minke whale. Fair warning, people—this footage is graphic and disturbing. They’re called “killer whales” for a reason, and this clip is…
Throwing things out of anger is never a smart move, but it can also lead to more serious consequences. Especially when you’re at an airport and what you’re hurling at the ground is an explosion-prone lithium battery. This week, a man traveling to the UK caused a scene at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, when he…
The pitch was Pokemon Go meets Call of Duty. I couldn’t quite fathom how that would turn into a cool as hell game, but it involved augmented reality, a key feature of Pokemon Go, and laser tag, and those are both very fun things. Then I sat down with the team from Skyrocket and got…
If you don’t live in a country where high-speed trains are common, you might not realize how fast they can really go. Traveling at just shy of 200 miles per hour, this TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) train in France was able to keep pace with a fighter jet during an inaugural run of a…
Good news for drone hobbyists who were noble enough to register their aircrafts but could really use $5 right about now: The US Federal Aviation Administration is refunding registration fees and removing names from its registration database. The FAA first started requiring drone owners to register small aerial vehicles on December 21, 2015. The registrations…
Millions of years ago, unlucky animals settled in the sticky resin of trees, only to be trapped and preserved until we humans found them. Fossils of the distant future, however, will probably be a whole lot weirder than bugs in tree sap. An engineer 3D-printing this honeycomb structure was surprised to find a bug had…
With the introduction of iOS 11 and a development tool called ARKit, Apple is betting that augmented reality could be the next revolutionary feature for smartphones. At the very least, it’s facilitated a secret feature that lets iPhone users pretend they’re giant monsters stomping through a tiny city. https://gizmodo.com/ios-11-all-the-cool-new-features-coming-to-your-iphone-1795826183 The feature was discovered by developer…
Nokia’s smartphones have long been known for having great cameras. Classic devices like the N95 (2007), 808 PureView (2012), or Lumia 1020 (2013) all had industry-leading camera tech on board. But will Nokia’s upcoming Android smartphones be just as great now that HMD Global is manufacturing them? This week, HMD Global announced a partnership with Zeiss…
On Thursday, researchers at Stanford University introduced the latest thing in AI diagnostics: an algorithm that can sift through hours of heart rhythm data gathered by wearable monitors to determine whether a patient has an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia. The algorithm, the researchers say, is not only as good as a cardiologist at correctly diagnosing…
President Donald Trump and Russian president Valdimir Putin aren’t scheduled for a sit-down meeting until 9:30am Eastern this morning at the G-20 summit. But we have the first video from their meeting thanks to Facebook and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Tools like Facebook and Twitter have changed the way that news breaks. And governments, politicians,…
The world is fascinated with a newly discovered photo that claims to show Amelia Earhart being held by the Japanese in 1937. That’s supposed to be her in the photo above with her back to the camera. The only problem is that experts at the US National Archives aren’t so sure about key assertions made…
Vice President Mike Pence made a big mistake during his tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center yesterday. He touched a piece of critical space flight hardware in the Orion clean room, despite the fact that there was a sign that clearly read, “DO NOT TOUCH.” So, of course, the photo is now a meme. The…
It’s increasingly difficult to do anything on your phone nowadays without sharing your geolocation information. Certain Snapchat filters, Facebook status updates, Instagrams, and even text messages are all potentially tied to geolocation data. It’s relatively simple for app developers to build in geolocation functionality—and many services require users to opt-in to sharing location data. But…
Using strong magnetic fields and radio waves, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines let us peer inside the human body as if it were sliced into thousands of layers. The same effect has been achieved here, letting you fly through the massive Sofa Hotel in Istanbul. But do they make MRI machines that big? Obviously not.…
