Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
You’ve heard of math savants and chess geniuses, but Barnaby Dixon might be a young prodigy when it comes to designing puppets. His latest creation is easily the most detailed and animated finger puppet you’ve ever seen, and Dixon spent two entire months refining and perfecting its design. The performance he puts it into the…
Let me get this out of the way: the trillion dollar F-35 fighter jet program is an embarrassing mess. But it’s hard not to marvel at the very expensive technology’s promises. This conflict squeezed my brain this week, when the Air Force stopped by Gizmodo’s office with a $400,000 F-35 helmet in hand. They even…
To help alleviate long lines at Atlanta’s airport, Delta spent more than a million dollars to install a pair of new high-tech security lanes that can handle more passengers simultaneously. When even the airlines, who are happy to charge passengers extra to sit next to their family members, thinks the TSA is doing a bad…
Among his many accomplishments, Tony Hawk is probably best known for landing the first 900 during an official competition at the X-Games. But watching him attempt countless skateboard tricks while floating in zero gravity in a vomit comet is yet another reason to be impressed with his skills. Especially since he appears to keep his…
If an afternoon spent lounging on the beach is part of your long weekend plan, you’ll need to make sure you bring along all the snacking staples. That includes sodas, hot dogs, burgers—and thanks to this over-the-top cooler with a dedicated freezer section—even microwave pizzas, ice cream, and frozen turkeys? To keep all your frozen…
If you think you had a hard time filling out pages of algebra at school, spare a thought for the three mathematicians who have just published the world’s largest ever proof. It takes up 200TB of storage space. Nature reports that the team—from the Universities of Texas at Austin, Kentucky and Swansea—made use of bounteous…
There is no escaping Facebook’s advertising reach. The social network has announced that it will now be foisting ads on to every single person who uses third-party sites that are signed up to its advertising scheme, regardless of whether the user has a Facebook account or not. Until now, Facebook showed ads only to its…
Lian Marrero has an unusual job. When a customer arrives at his studio, he takes their photograph in whatever they happen to be wearing. Then, he fires up phot0-editing software, so his subject can leave looking smarter in print than in person. According to AP, many people in Cuba want to look presentable in their…
If you’re hard up and in the market for a tablet-come-laptop, you might be interested in the latest additions to Acer’s Switch range: 10-inch tablets with plug-in keyboards that are pretty damn cheap. There are two new models in the range: The Switch V 10 and Switch One 10. Both of them hide quad-core Intel…
It was a big deal for the people of Vietnam when the President of the United States visited their country earlier this week. But sadly, posting about the event on Facebook proved rather difficult. Reuters cites sources from two activist organizations—Access Now and Viet Tan—that both claim Facebook was “restricted and at times blocked” in…
It’s a big sweeping question that can’t possibly have an answer. Is it the story? Is it the characters? Is it the cinematography? This examination by Now You See It attempts to break down what makes a movie elevate from good to great, and focuses on a few things: the impact it has on filmmaking…
We all love watching cooking videos, and we all gasp and drool over food documentary videos. We simply can’t stop ourselves. But the truth is, this trend is totally silly and a lot of is treated way too seriously. It’s just food, after all. This parody video of those food videos that populate the Internet…
The world of Westeros in Game of Thrones is so impressively detailed, and the history of its characters is so well crafted, that it’s amazing George R.R. Martin could even come up with something so imaginative on his own. Of course, as we know, that’s not the case. Game of Thrones is heavily influenced by…
You may have noticed a subtle change on your food ingredients list. Big, bad sugar is being replaced by the fresher, greener sounding evaporated cane juice. But how does this ingredient differ from sugar? It doesn’t, says the FDA. In a subtle but biting takedown, the FDA directed manufacturers away from the term “evaporated cane…
Google just won a major court battle with software giant Oracle over Google’s use of elements of Oracle’s Java programming language. If Google had lost, it could have held major ramifications for the ways in which almost all software is developed. Oh, and Google would have had to cough up $9 billion in damages. For…
It’s simple physics really: The faster a car is going when it hits you, the more likely you’ll be killed. But there’s a correlation between the speed of the car and the likelihood you’ll be killed, especially when you take age into consideration. Just 5 mph can make a dramatic difference in whether you live…
Here’s a fun and interesting look at how Hollywood ages actors with make up and prosthetics versus what they actually look like when they get old. Some of the movies get it very close (Marlon Brando in The Godfather), while some movies are way too liberal with the wrinkles and the balding and end up…
Investing in undersea internet cables has been a big part of data strategy plans for tech giants in recent years. Now Microsoft and Facebook are teaming up for the mother of all cables: A 4,100-mile monster that can move 160 Tbps, which will make it the highest-capacity cable on Earth. The cable even has a…
Google is pissed—or at least that’s what it sounds like when you read Bloomberg’s look into the company’s relationship with smartphone manufacturers. According to the report, Google is aggressively addressing Android’s biggest problem: fragmentation, or the fact that few of Android’s 1.4 billion users are using the latest version of the operating system. While Apple’s…
To test the sticking power of the glue used inside its Gokiburi Hoi Hoi roach traps, a Japanese pest control company called Earth Chemical created a human-sized version and then made a scientist, athlete, and sumo wrestler attempt to get from one end of it to the other. They all failed miserably. But watching the…
