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Once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, getting an email or a weather forecast popping up on a smartphone felt like magic—but now the technological novelty of these alerts has worn off. We’re growing sick of the constant interruptions. Mobile notifications are undoubtedly useful, but you need to make them smart. Unfortunately there’s no…
Uber has made a lot of questionable decisions behind closed doors, and today, yet another one emerged. According to The Information, between 2014 and 2016, Uber used secret software called “Hell” in order to track drivers from its biggest rival, Lyft. The report claims that Uber was able to monitor detailed information about Lyft drivers,…
In a behavior never seen before in an insect species, predatory ants were observed to retrieve wounded comrades on the battlefield and then bring them back to the nest for recovery. Sounds noble, but these ants—who spend their days attacking termites—are simply being pragmatic. The sub-Saharan Matabele ants are specialized termite predators. Anywhere from two…
Filmmaking is a long and arduous process, sometimes requiring days of shooting just to get a single shot. Even a nine-minute short film can usually take weeks to film—and that’s the easy way. Director Paul Trillo, however, wanted to do something else, so he filmed his latest short film, At The End Of The Cul-de-Sac,…
The Autonomous Space Agency Network (ASAN), an independent advocate of DIY space exploration, has a message for Donald Trump and they’ve launched a weather balloon into the stratosphere to send it: “@realDonaldTrump LOOK AT THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH.” It’s honestly not as confrontational as it seems at first glance. https://gizmodo.com/rip-apollo-14-astronaut-edgar-mitchell-the-sixth-man-t-1757382904 The Overview Effect…
The temptation to use the anonymous online commenting for the purpose of telling other people how stupid they are is strong. But one judge in England has learned the hard way that giving yourself a pseudonym doesn’t mean that no one will ever find out who’s talking shit. https://gizmodo.com/new-york-judge-who-jailed-everyone-in-court-for-a-ringi-327380 Jason Dunn-Shaw was a judge (called…
You might think you’re a good driver. But you’ve got nothing on a nameless 8-year-old hero from Ohio. This past weekend he and his 4-year-old sister waited for their parents to fall asleep, stole their car, and then drove to McDonald’s to chow down on some McMeats. The future is looking bright. WJW-TV reports: Officer…
The walled garden Apple uses to meticulously control every element of the iPhone can really suck. It prohibits you from replacing the battery, adding third-party storage, or using an iPhone to tinker around and build new, weird projects. The creator of the YouTube channel Strange Parts is determined to tear down that wall. He spent…
On Tuesday, I asked Gizmodo readers why they’re still using Microsoft Word. And a lot of people answered the call. Like, hundreds of people expressed some rather powerful opinions about the aging office tool—so many that I had to share some of the best. Before we dig into readers’ thoughts and scoldings, let’s get one…
Us Earthlings are quite lucky to be living at around standard temperature and pressure. Life has evolved to comfortably handle the shapes in which most molecules have arranged themselves under temperatures of about 32 degrees Fahrenheit and atmospheric pressures of an average day at sea level. But on other planets, at other temperatures and pressures,…
Just hours after launching, Burger King’s new smart home ad campaign is already crashing like the goddamn Hindenburg. On Wednesday, the company released a weirdly intrusive 15-second spot designed to intentionally trigger viewers’ Google Home devices. In theory, the devices would then read back a list of the Whopper’s ingredients from Wikipedia. Anonymous online vandals,…
Most of the time, when people talk about the cutting edge gene editing technology CRISPR, they are actually talking about CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR, you see, is just one half of the genome editing tool, the programming that instructs where a DNA edit will actually be made. The other part consists of proteins that actually do the…
There are a lot of reasons to game on a PC instead of a console. The ability to upgrade your game machine on your own time and in accordance with your own budget is a big advantage. The improved performance—due to the sheer power of new PC hardware—is another. According to Gamasutra, Kevin Gammill, Group…
Touring around the pages of the web isn’t always the one-way street you might think it is: most sites are eager to leave a calling card or two on your local machine in the form of cookies. Here we’ll lay out what’s being saved in your browser, why it makes a difference, and what you…
It’s hard to know how smart animals are for the simple reason that they’re not able to come right out and tell us. Scientists have developed various methods over the years to assess animal intelligence, but a simple new body-awareness test involving elephants may be a promising new tool to add to the arsenal. A…
Alan Charig was a dinosaur superfan long before Jurassic Park. The gregarious paleontologist and curator at the British Museum of Natural History studied and described all sorts of new creatures, and brought them to the world through his writings and on his BBC Television show in the 70s. Charig died in 1997, but scientists are…
Adam Johnston and Scott Spriggs may well go down as Ohio’s cleverest inmates. The pair were incarcerated at Marion Correctional Institution, a low-security, 2,500-capacity facility which used inmate labor to recycle old computers as part of the non-profit RET3 program. Spriggs and Johnson managed to squirrel away dozens of RET3 parts and construct two new…
Prey animals are capable of defending themselves in an amazing of ways, but when it comes to mounting a sophisticated biological counter-attack, sea urchins have taken it to another level. When attacked by predatory fish, these humble echinoderms release a hostile cloud of tiny jaws that act independently of the urchin itself, attacking the fish…
It’s a rare treat when we get to read some wholesome news about shrimp—living ones that aren’t being carefully placed around a cocktail glass. It’s even better when that news involves a feisty little shrimp getting a badass name from some cool science dudes. A new study published today in Zootaxa details the discovery of…
Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, who wants to ensure the US doesn’t invest a single dollar in protecting humanity from climate change, nonetheless wants to use the agency’s limited funds to protect himself from other humans. Last month, President Trump released a draft federal spending budget requesting $2.3 billion in cuts to the EPA.…
