Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Self-driving cars spend a lot of time looking at their surroundings to know how they should respond to the road. But autonomous cars will likely spend some time looking at you to work out how they should behave, too. A team of researchers from Cornell University has been developing a new system which trains a…
If you’ve been using Microsoft Edge and hoping that all your private browsing was actually, you know, private, then think again. Turns out that it may be possible to reconstruct the site history of the browser, whatever mode it’s in. Beta News reports that Edge seems to record the browsing history even when a user…
Over the weekend, a thousand high school and college students congregated at Texas A&M University to pitch prototype design ideas for Elon Musk’s Hyperloop. The winning team from MIT will build a vehicle to be tested by Musk & Co. On the team’s website, it explains that its prototype has one major goal: “to demonstrate…
The are an archetypal pair of characters in the world of computing. But if you’ve ever wondered how they became so pervasive, you’re in luck. In this video, Professor David Brailsford explains that the pointy bracket first arrived on the scene to make Noam Chomsky’s hierarchy—now a fundamental tenet of computer science—a little easier to…
Samsung loves turning a phone launch into a literal song and dance, and it looks like the launch of “The Next Galaxy” will be more of the same. According to a teaser video just published, Samsung’s next phone(s) will be unveiled February 21st in Barcelona. The timing and location are designed to overshadow Mobile World…
After a century of pumping themselves full of all sorts of performance-enhancing (and other!) drugs, it appears that at least one pro cyclist has found an easier way to cheat: hiding a motor inside the bicycle frame. The Union Cycliste International (UCI), cycling’s governing body, confirmed reports today that it found a motorized bicycle being…
Depending on who you talk to, LTE-U—the term given to using cellular LTE technology to transmit in unlicensed airwaves—is either the future of communications, or a terrible idea that will wreck wi-fi. The FCC is studiously not taking sides in the argument, but is allowing further testing. https://gizmodo.com/hurricane-lte-u-don-t-let-wi-fi-get-blown-away-1740698386 A quick primer: LTE-U is a proposal…
Well, it definitely beats the hell out of a standing desk. Contact the author at [email protected].
18 year old German tourist Andrej Ciesielski got a view that few people get to see – Egypt from the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza. It’s an illegal climb, and he was caught by police when he reached the bottom. Ciesielski claimed that the trip up only took eight minutes, but another twenty…
Telephones got their start in the late nineteenth century, connected through exchanges. In the early twentieth century, however, Bell introduced a new dial system, and needed to tell callers how to use it. The new rotary telephones were a major departure from that of early phones, and would soon become widespread throughout the country. To…
The Cassini-Huygens mission released a stunning new picture of Saturn’s moon Enceladus at half phase. From the Cassini team: This half-lit view of Enceladus bears a passing resemblance to similar views of Earth’s own natural satellite, but the similarities end there. Earth’s rocky moon is covered in dark, volcanic basins and brighter, mountainous highlands —…
This is so cool: National Geographic has put together a neat video composed entirely of paper that gives you a brief primer of London’s history, starting 40,000 years ago. The video contains some really amazing papercraft, and it supports their article on the history of London in next month’s issue. [Neatorama]
It’s easy to fall for stereotypes when you’re thinking about Imperial Japan, especially when the Internet offers plenty of dreamy, romanticized, hand colored photos of geishas, samurais, craftsmen, and peasants, all wearing traditional clothes and posing in medieval scenes. This set of color postcards, all issued in the first decades of the 20th century, show…
This weekend, over a thousand high school and college students from all over the world have congregated at Texas A&M University to pitch their prototype design ideas for Elon Musk’s Hyperloop. And apparently US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx is totally onboard. The Verge is on the ground at Texas A&M’s SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition…
Mike Mezeul II took this incredible image of a storm in 2014 at White Sands National Monument. It’s a beautiful image that shows off the ferocity of nature. Two cloud-to-ground lightning bolts strike down over the mountains near White Sands National Monument while the Milky Way shines above and moon rays streak out from behind…
Lead poisoning the drinking water of Flint is the worst possible disaster. It’s a breakdown of urban systems that could’ve been avoided. It’s an instance of smarmy politicians lying to their constituents. It’s one of the scariest stories I’ve had to write about in some time. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust the water…
We’ve been hearing a whole lot about the Iowa Caucuses, but often with little context about how that process actually works. Vermont Public Radio has put together an entertaining short that explains the process, in Lego. For such an important event, it’s interesting to see just how much negotiation and goes into each meeting, especially…
After lead poisoned the drinking water in Flint, residents received filters they were told would make their tap water safe. Now, tests over the last 24 hours are showing that lead levels in some homes are still too high for a filter to handle. At a press conference this evening, Mayor Karen Weaver delivered the…
Hey, did you know that you can revive a spoiled wine by just dropping a penny into your glass? Well, at least according to the internet. The truth, though, is much more complicated. Welcome to Gizmodo’s Happy Hour. Substance abuse for nerds. The Trick The “penny trick” has been around for quite some time—so long…
If you guys didn’t know, the dinosaurs aren’t real in Jurassic World. Sorry. As for the rest of the movie née money printing nostalgia machine that didn’t have half the soul of the original, not much of it was real either. Here’s how ILM pulled off the visual effects in Jurassic World, you can see…
