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When you see a 15-piece orchestra full of trumpets, violins, and cellos, you’re probably expecting to hear a little Chopin, or Mozart. But the Rundfunk-Tanzorchester Ehrenfeld (or Radio Dance Orchestra of Ehrenfeld, in english) plays a near perfect rendition of Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger in this delightful clip. And if you’re wondering what…
You want the very best in 4K gaming, so how do you go about getting it? Unfortunately the answer is not quite as simple as it should be, and all the available choices can be tremendously confusing. So let’s try to cut through all the marketing terms, hype, and numbers to get at what “4K”…
Evolution has already solved many of the challenges engineers are confronted with on a daily basis. Think about octopuses, for example. We frequently report on soft robotics here at Gizmodo. Octopuses are essentially brilliant, eight-armed soft robots. So when it comes to solving other underwater challenges, like adhesives staying sticky underwater, a team of researchers…
On Tuesday, prosecutors and defense lawyers submitted memoranda ahead of the June 22nd sentencing of Pizzagate gunman Edgar Welch, who pled guilty to weapons charges after firing a rifle inside a DC pizza restaurant last year. With fewer facts to work with, Welch was previously portrayed as either the manifestation of internet vigilantism, or a…
Bird enthusiasts will be disappointed to know they were born millions of years too late. Paleontologists from Flinders University in Australia have discovered five extinct megapode birds—among them, a giant brush-turkey called Progura gallinacea. The big bird was roughly the size of a kangaroo and weighed about eight kilograms yet it still managed to fly.…
Shimon—a four-armed marimba playing robot—has been around for years, but its developers at Georgia Tech have recently taken this futuristic musical machine to the next level. Using deep learning, the robot can now study large datasets from well-known musicians, and then produce and perform its own original compositions. Shimon was originally developed by Gil Weinberg,…
Look, I’m a straight woman with the maturity level of a 13-year-old boy. I am willing to admit that maybe—maybe—I sometimes see phalluses where they don’t exist. But this thing totally looks like a dick, right? Amazon announced today that it had erected the “largest Times Square advertising installment ever,” which is actually a 79-foot-tall…
Do you ever sit down at your desk and wonder why the elevated surface doesn’t have more sensors to record and analyze data about your movements and habits? Well, wonder no more, my ergonomically-minded friend. Herman Miller, the manufacturer behind the Aeron chair, has invented a solution to the problem you never knew existed. That…
According to Twin Galaxies, the official high score for the arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man belongs to Abdner Ashman, with 933,580 points. Or at least it did, before an artificial intelligence developed by Microsoft achieved the maximum possible score for the game, 999,990. Playing the Atari 2600 version of the game (which explains why the…
On Wednesday, Michigan’s Attorney General announced it will charge Nick Lyon, the Health and Human Services Director, with involuntary manslaughter for his role in the Flint water crisis. During the crisis, caused in part by substandard water treatment, 100,000 residents were exposed to elevated levels of lead, a dangerous neurotoxin, and were at elevated risk…
The country woke up to scary news on Wednesday. A gunman had opened fire on a Congressional baseball practice, injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and several others. A catastrophic fire in London had killed at least six people. And Twitter sponsored trending section had decided to promote a very unfortunate hashtag: #HappyDeathDay. Oh, there’s…
The US Department of Defense is struggling to get its arms around all of the new security issues that have come with our current technological explosion. One unexpected consideration on the table is placing stricter limitations on investment capital from China flowing into American companies that are working on artificial intelligence. https://gizmodo.com/russias-attack-on-the-us-election-was-apparently-much-w-1796051136 Technology is the…
Sprint has lagged behind its competitors in a dismal fourth place for quite a while and it appears that it’s getting desperate. Though the company isn’t advertising the offer, Sprint is willing to give Verizon customers a free year of service for abandoning the network. https://gizmodo.com/which-unlimited-data-plan-is-the-best-1792476535 According to Bloomberg, Sprint has been targeting Verizon customers…
When House Republicans passed a draconian healthcare plan back in May, Donald Trump rushed to the Rose Garden to celebrate this “very, very incredibly well-crafted” plan. But that was a long time ago. Today, Trump met with Senate Republicans about the new bill that they are attempting to put together, and he reportedly urged them…
Attorney General Jeff Sessions must be feeling like a tattered Keelber elf piñata after being smacked around so beautifully during his appearance Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Speaking loudly and sternly, Sessions denied ever personally colluding with any Russian officials during the 2016 campaign whilst serving as a surrogate to then-candidate Donald Trump. Obviously,…
Leaked audio from a Tuesday all-hands meeting shows that Uber, still struggling to win back the public’s goodwill since the company was accused of widespread misogyny and sexual harassment earlier this year, can’t help but continue on its path of self-destruction. The ostensible purpose of the long-awaited meeting was to announce CEO Travis Kalanick’s leave…
Most city dwellers would agree that pigeons are sentient garbage. They eat pizza off the ground and defecate with abandon, sometimes on pedestrians’ heads. Worst of all, they don’t seem terribly bothered by humans—they’ll flap their filthy wings in our faces and move on as if nothing happened. But today just so happens to be…
The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a rare cybersecurity bulletin linking North Korea to a series of attacks that have targeted US businesses and critical infrastructure since 2009. The alert focuses on a malware strain called DeltaCharlie, which DHS and FBI say was used by the North Korean government…
Even though E3 has only just gotten underway, most of the biggest companies have already made their biggest announcements, and amazingly, Microsoft’s offering already feels like a miss. I say “amazingly” because Microsoft was the only company to debut major hardware at the show. Normally when a company announces a brand new console and 22…
Emulating spiders and bugs, and using drinking straws as basic building blocks, a research team from Harvard University has developed a type of semi-soft robot capable of standing, walking, and even striding across a liquid surface. Say hello to the “arthrobots.” “Once you have a Lego brick, what kind of castle can you build with…
