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After transitioning from an obscure curiosity to a ubiquitous annoyance in record time, fidget spinners finally completed the 21st century novelty toy cycle this month, becoming something that could potentially burn down your house. According to local news reports, at least two bluetooth-enabled spinners have now burst into flames while charging, may god have mercy…
Modern satellite technology lets us spot dangerous threats like extreme weather, giant icebergs, and even foreign militaries. But when it comes to sinkholes, all we can do is wait and hope that our cars won’t be swallowed by a sudden gaping chasm in a city street. So how do sinkholes form, and why is it…
Before the iPhone was released, there were very few iPhone takes on the internet. 10 years ago, that changed. Now there are lots of takes. Since Gizmodo couldn’t possibly write all the iPhone 10th anniversary think pieces we came up with, here are just a few of our favorites: Fuck the iPhone, the Palm Pilot…
YouTube’s Draw with Jazza, also known as Josiah Brooks, is a talented artist who occasionally challenges himself to only work with random office supplies. For his latest piece he worked exclusively with Liquid Paper, a white, fast-drying paint once used to correct mistakes on an ancient device known as a typewriter. What’s even more remarkable…
Those blockbuster Marvel movies only show our favorite superheroes when they’re out saving the world. If you want a glimpse of what heroes like Iron Man do the rest of the time, look no further than this incredibly articulated humanoid robot called TEO, who’s recently learned to iron clothing. TEO’s been in development at the…
Monroe MacKinney thought he had reeled in just another largemouth bass from his parents’ eight-acre pond. But after peering into the fish’s mouth, the Missouri fisherman realized he’d actually hauled up a Russian nesting doll of nightmares. MacKinney’s catch had apparently swallowed an Eastern Mole (Scalopus aquaticus), which are common throughout the eastern United States,…
The Islamic State has increasingly used drones and other robotic IEDs against American, Iraqi, and civilian targets in Iraq. And as the Coalition fights its way through Mosul, troops are discovering workshops filled with crude but deadly robotics used to bomb people sometimes dozens of times per day. Getty Images just published photos of an…
Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech mogul and high profile Trump supporter, was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011, a fact that only came to light back in January. But the politician in charge of granting citizenship at the time has now defended the unusual move, calling Thiel a “great ambassador” for the country. The New…
The $2000 Canon 6D Mark II is the first ever refresh to Canon’s cheapest full frame camera, the Canon 6D (now Canon 6D Mark I), and it might actually fix all the Mark I’s problems. The original 6D launched back in 2013, and, at the time, it was one of the cheapest full frame cameras…
“They are dumb,” Christopher Stracuzza tells the New York Times. “They are like the dumbest people in the world.” They, in this case, are the TSA agents who manhandled his gigantic lobster and went viral with a photo on the agency’s Twitter account. https://jalopnik.com/do-not-worry-giant-living-lobsters-are-officially-all-1796456783 Stracuzza hit the seafood jackpot on a trip to a market…
The Trump administration has kept airlines and nations on edge as it weighed a decision to expand an in-flight ban on electronics larger than a smartphone. On Wednesday, the administration announced that it will not expand the ban, and it will lift be lifted in countries that were already affected. But the terms of the…
Researchers in the UK used machine learning algorithms to analyze 1.6 million tweets in London during the infamous 2011 riots, which resulted in widespread looting, property destruction and over 3,000 arrests. According to the researchers, analyzing Twitter data to map out where violence occurred in London boroughs was faster and more accurate than relying on…
Summer’s here, the weather’s hot and sticky. What did you expect Tinder to do? It has needs… …It needs your money to stay afloat! In the infamous app’s latest scheme to get you to pay for the ability to swipe right on your future excruciatingly awkward first date, Tinder’s offering to let you peek behind…
It’s hard work being online these days. What with all of the “fake news” and “viral posts” corrupting the World Wide Web. So how are you supposed to know what’s real and what’s bullcrap, or rather, bull shark crap? When it comes to hoax stories about inland shark sightings, at least, the Kentucky Department of…
Uber laid out new details in a court filing today about how it learned the former lead of its self-driving car unit, Anthony Levandowski, took documents from Google, his former employer. The ride-hailing company has long maintained that it didn’t know Levandowski had allegedly downloaded 14,000 documents from Google’s autonomous vehicle unit before leaving to…
The ‘90s cyberpunk thriller Hackers is used too often to illustrate the fearful future of cyber security, but it’s popular for a reason. The film’s seemingly fictional scenarios keep coming true. Take this week’s global ransomware attack, for instance. It’s a plot twist that would make Matthew Lillard leer at the camera and cackle. On…
Researchers at Liverpool John Moore’s University have reconstructed the face of a man who lived in Dublin some 500 years ago. Incredibly accurate reconstructions like this are providing archaeologists with new way of studying the past—while also allowing them to visualize some of the most forgotten figures in history. Known only as SK2, the remains…
Despite selling $50,000 Android cellphones to rich and famous stars like Quincy Jones and Seal, the England-based company Vertu appears to be struggling with paying its bills and employees. What a shocking development. According to a juicy new report in the Telegraph, employees are worried about the future of the company after noticing that production had…
You think our galaxy is special? Ha. Our boring pinwheel of gas and dark matter might be a nice hangout for humans. But 750 or so million light years away, there’s an elliptical galaxy, Galaxy 0402+379, whose two supermassive black holes are orbiting each other from a distance of only 24 or so light years.…
On Wednesday, WikiLeaks released the latest issue in its ongoing Vault 7 series—a trove of secret or otherwise classified US Central Intelligence Agency files from 2013 to 2016 describing previously undisclosed malware and viruses. Today’s release includes documentation on “ELSA,” a purported CIA project for tracking human targets carrying wi-fi-enabled devices. The malware involved in…
