Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The future looks bleak for humans who like working, and car factories are the most cliched example of efficient robots replacing fat unionized humans. Unless the factory in question is Mercedes, which has recently replaced some machines with good old-fashioned people. According to a Bloomberg report, Mercedes is on a trend of replacing fixed robots…
If you enjoy fried things, and don’t enjoy gaining weight, then this picture represents the first stirrings of a science that might one day help you. It’s a picture of the structure inside a sliced potato as it’s being deep fried. Scientists at the University of Illinois have used a technique called X-ray micro-computed tomography…
Right before we all inevitably enter the gates of hell, you can bet we’ll pass by a large pile of smoldering, filthy, and recently ablaze hoverboards. Luckily, such a collection was recently seized by British officials, so we now know exactly what the end looks like. Last week, trading standards officers in Surrey, England snapped…
There’s another Republican debate tonight. And it’s important, if only because it’s the last one before Super Tuesday, the day that thirteen states hold their Republican primaries and caucuses. Here are the essential details pertaining to tonight’s televised circus, formerly known as the American political process: The debate starts at 8:30pm Eastern, 5:30pm Pacific, 10:00pm…
Pitting molten or superheated metal against everyday objects has very much become a genre of internet videos, and hot metal is not to be fucked with. You expect it to win, and you kind of hate it for winning, like the Yankees, or death, or cops. Once in a blue moon though, something comes along…
Popcorn Time is the revolutionary app that’s been continuously dubbed the Netflix for torrents. But after aggressive legal action by the Motion Picture Association of America, the original site Popcorntime.io, shut down indefinitely. But after week of mystery surrounding its sudden reappearance, anonymous developers are declaring that illegal Netflix is back, baby. Previously reported by…
Before you call fake, know that both you and this custom built computer are being tricked in two very clever ways. Those of us who had to deal with floppies will recall that a standard 3.5-inch disc only had about 1.4mb storage after being formatted. However, the metal shutter is exactly the right size to…
Apple just took its next swipe in the fight over unlocking a terrorist’s iPhone: a court order to vacate. The company is invoking the First and Fifth Amendments to argue that the court order it received to create a back door for the device is unconstitutional. The motion is embedded below. As you may have…
Meet two parkour superstars who bring the Mario brothers to life in this spellbinding display of ninja-like gymnastics. As you can see, no CGI Koopa Troopa is safe. The video was made by the folks at Dark Pixel, a YouTube channel that released a similar video three years ago. This sequel is just as awesome…
After being accused of tweaking data to make it seem like a larger percentage of its New York City hosts were innocently renting out their personal homes, Airbnb admitted yesterday that it did indeed remove “roughly 1,500” listings from its site before making the information public. In a letter to the New York State Assembly…
A couple of years ago, scientists in Japan watched in amazement as three male sand martins tried to have sex with a dead bird lying face down on the ground, which they later learned was also male. Surprisingly, “homosexual necrophilia” is actually a thing among birds, but for sand martins, there’s a very reasonable explanation…
It might seem like remote control cars are where all the real fun’s at, but it’s hard not to be completely wowed by this flawless miniature recreation of a Felbermayr heavy-lifting crane that itself is capable of hoisting over 80 pounds of cargo. Where as most remote control cars simply have four wheels that spin…
A week after the ruptured natural gas well near Porter Ranch, California was officially sealed, we have the full damage report. And it reveals that this was easily one of the largest environmental disasters in US history. All told, the leak released 97,100 metric tons of heat-trapping methane over 112 days, equivalent to the annual…
Injuries are common in the fossilized remains of dinosaurs, but the recent discovery of a severely roughed-up skeleton in Arizona establishes a new record for the most bone injuries sustained by a single theropod. This guy got wrecked. The dinosaur in question belongs to a species of theropod called Dilophosaurus wetherilli. These creatures lived about…
The Black Lives Matter movement has shed light on the racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality experienced by the African-American community across America. But apparently some of the employees at Facebook’s notoriously white, bro-centric Menlo Park, California office don’t agree. In a private memo posted on a company announcement page for employees only, Mark…
An Owensboro, Kentucky man was sent to the hospital for second-degree burns last weekend, when his e-cig battery exploded like a firework in his pocket. And he hasn’t been the only one with such luck. Surveillance footage from a Shell gas station’s security camera caught the incident on tape Saturday morning. The man was about…
Scientists from China have made history by taking a cell that’s not a sperm cell and then used it to create a live animal. A similar technique could be used one day to treat infertility in humans. Researchers from Nanjing Medical University created functional primordial germ cells—cells that get passed down to the next generation—from…
Driving to work in a crowded city sucks. Traffic sucks. Finding parking sucks. But with a fifth-scale replica of a Jaguar XK120 that’s small enough to squeeze inside an elevator, suddenly you’re not limited to just driving on roads, or finding parking in a busy garage. This isn’t some fancy electric go-kart, though. The eight-foot…
As you already know, ice is brittle stuff, which makes it bad for applications like stabbing fruit or beer cans. Add a little wood pulp, sawdust, or in this case, toilet paper, and you’re cooking with a whole new substance called pykrete. Pykrete, despite mostly being ice, has some odd properties—notably a slower melting rate…
Uh oh. Has ISIS been reading Gizmodo.com for hot tips? Because intelligence leaders are blaming the press for encouraging ISIS and other terrorist organizations to “go dark.” At a House Intelligence Committee hearing today on global threats, members of Congress spent ample time asking FBI Director James Comey what was up with the FBI and…
