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If planting bulbs, clearing weeds, and watering sounds more like torture than a relaxing pastime, maybe you’ve just been gardening with the wrong tools. A Nigerian man built his own remote control excavator that makes the prospect of maintaining a garden far more appealing. Fidellis Nwachukwu supposedly doesn’t have any formal mechanical engineering training, but…
Facebook is testing out a new, unannounced tool that allows you to search for all kinds of services in your area. Can Facebook finally kill Yelp? For all its foibles, Yelp has for years remained the defacto source of information about everything from where to go to dinner to where to get your hair done.…
Kids are great, aren’t they? But you don’t necessarily want them using all of the apps, viewing all of the websites, and tweaking all of the system settings that a grown-up has access to. Windows, OS X, and Chrome OS each have tools for creating child-friendly accounts—here’s how to set them up. Windows With the…
We got a brief glimpse at Hot Toys figures for Batman v Superman yesterday, but now the company has released a full look at the Dark Knight and Man of Steel, and—nope. Can’t do it any more. Have to say it. LOOK AT THE GODDAMN SIZE OF BATMAN’S NECK, HOLY COW. https://gizmodo.com/hot-toys-batman-v-superman-line-will-include-a-massive-1747890462 Seriously. I get…
When it comes to a “typical” day, most of us are too wrapped up in our own routines to think about what others might be doing. Thankfully, this fascinating visualization by statistician Nathan Yau shows exactly how America runs—right down to the minute. This simulation can be found at FlowingData, and it captures the representative…
The MV-22 Osprey is such a damn photogenic aircraft. It can be at night, it can be during the day, it can be in a rainbow, it can be on a commando carrier, it can be during cleaning, it can be any place and any time and the tiltrotor aircraft would always look good because…
As one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars universe, there is no shortage of Chewbacca figures to be found. But Chewbacca figures that include his luxurious coat of Wookiee fur? Thinkway Toys might be the first with its 17-inch tall Chewie figure that’s also completely animated. The interactive figure features authentic Wookie…
The star of any Batman movie isn’t the caped crusader, or the over-the-top villain he’s trying to defeat. It’s the Batmobile. The Dark Knight’s ride has seen countless design changes over the years, but it’s always been packed full of wonderful features that always make it the real star of the show. The Batmobile in…
It’s no secret that Quentin Tarantino is a voracious movie watcher that loves to pay homage to films that came before him. Other director do that too! But QT is so good at referencing other directors’ techniques and being inspired by previous films that he’s developed his own unique style in the process. With that…
A 21-year-old man has been arrested in the UK on suspicion of “unauthorised access” to a computer over the VTech hack, which saw the personal information of nearly 6.4 million children stolen from servers. The BBC reports that the man was arrested in Berkshire following an investigation by the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit.…
Navy photographer Eric C. Burgett pays homage to a classic 1949 Life magazine photoseries in this gorgeous shot of an MV-22 Osprey taking off from the Navy’s amphibious assault ship USS Boxer. Compare it to this 66-year-old masterpiece taken by Andreas Feininger for Life magazine: The Slinky-like light pattern was produced by a time-exposure of…
Your first computer is (kind of) like your first kiss: exciting at the time, deeply memorable later in life, and yet still potentially embarrassing when recounted in public. For those reasons, watching dozens of computer scientists recall their first (computer) in this video is oddly compelling. Computerphile has been asking every single interviewee it’s spoken…
You might think that because you use an expensive secure phone or encrypted messaging app like Signal your privacy is guaranteed. Sadly, you may have overestimated the abilities of the humans at each end, whose screw-ups when using the schemes can render them redundant. Technology Review reports that experiments performed at the University of Alabama…
Apple has opened a secretive laboratory in Taiwan to develop new LCD and OLED screen technologies for its devices, according to a report by Bloomberg. The new facility is said to be home to at least 50 engineers, and is situated in a “remote science park” with “no external signs of Apple.” The plant was…
When Star Wars starts screening for the masses later this week, the internet is going to be full of spoilers. Hell, after last night’s premiere, it probably already is. But don’t worry: this Chrome extension will keep you safe. Called Force Block, the extension will “block pages containing spoilers from Star Wars: The Force Awakens,…
Last month, Rdio unexpectedly announced that it’s shutting down service and handing over the keys to Pandora. Existing subscriptions are rapidly dying off, which means it’s time to lament all the poor life choices you made with Rdio’s help. https://gizmodo.com/rdio-is-being-acquired-by-pandora-1742863433 On a goodbye page, Rdio has provided a link to export your favourites, playlists, downloads…
New Zealand is in the closing stages of replacing its colonial-era flag with something a little more modern. After rounds of voting only slightly less exciting than the GOP primary, we’re left with one design, which will go head-to-head with the current flag in March. The new design, officially known as Silver Fern, is the…
Back when the Romans had the only good construction crews in town, it made some kind of sense that every road led to Rome. But in the modern era, how much does that hold up? Roads to Rome is a project that used a combination of OpenStreetMap data and some mapping tools to map the…
Current warfare seems ugly enough, what with the drones and Kalashnikovs. But add a dose of computerized efficiency, and the battlefield of the future could be one truly optimized—and terrifying—killing machine. Tom Scott has a succinct and depressing look at the kind of changes we can expect to see on future battlefields, if a U.S.…
Grooveshark was one of the last big illegal music services left when it was shut down by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) earlier this year. So it’s not all that surprising that a Grooveshark clone received similar legal treatment, although the size of the fine is something else. Days after the Grooveshark clone…
