Tech News

NASA’s Soil Moisture Satellite Forges on Without its Radar 

With the failure of its active radar less than a year into the mission, NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive observatory is crippled but functional. Thankfully, the passive radiometer is still working perfectly, salvaging the satellite. Launch of the SMAP observatory on January 31, 2015 from Vandenberg Airforce Base in California. Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls The…

Record Snow Season Begins As Dead Emerge From Glaciers: What’s New Outside

By now, everyone knows El Nino means record snow this year. And it’s already started in Montana, where some mountains just received 16 inches. In mid-September. That and more in What’s New Outside. Anti-Bear Device: Run, hike or bike in a place with dangerous animals? The Robocopp Grenade weighs less than 1oz, but emits a…

Scientists Have Isolated the Human Stench of Death

Discretely disposing of the bodies of your enemies could be about to get slightly trickier, as scientists reckon they might have managed to identify the so-called “smell of death”. According to Science researchers writing in the journal PLOS ONE have identified the cocktail of chemicals emitted by human bodies after death. Which could now lead…

Samsung’s Fastest SSD Reads at a Face-Melting 2,500 MBps

Samsung has just launched its latest SSD — and it happens to be the fastest consumer drive it’s ever made, with read speeds of up to 2,500MBps and write speeds as fast as 1,500MBps. That is seriously speedy. The 950 Pro SSD is an update to its predecessor, the 850 Pro, and boy is it…

Mozilla has jut released Firefox 41 and it claims that the desktop version is the first browser to have a built-in instant messaging. Powered by WebRTC, it should let you IM if you use Windows, Mac or Linux.

Watch Five Minutes Solid of Louis C.K. on Mobile Phones 

Louis CK has a track record for amusing commentary about phones. Now, the A to Z Review has compiled a solid five minutes of it into one video. You will laugh, you will wince, you will question modern life. Louis is, of course, conflicted on cell phones: they’re miracles but he doesn’t want his daughter…

Waste Disposal in US Landfills Has Been Underestimated by 115%

The amount of municipal waste being disposed of in the US is more than double – 262 million tonnes (metric tons) versus 122 million tonnes in 2012 – previous estimates, our new study shows. We also found that the US has plenty of space to put it all – more than 70 years’ worth of…

Beautiful Video Describes How Tanzanian Hunters Turn Ecology Researchers

If you need to understand the depths of the wilds, there’s nobody better to turn to than someone that lives and breathes the environment. This beautiful video tells the story of an African hunter who decided to stop killing animals — and help scientists find them instead. It tells the story of Ruben, describing his…

T-Mobile’s Trade-In Program Gives You a New iPhone for $5 a Month

There’s all sorts of complicated economics surrounding when and how and where you should upgrade iPhones, but T-Mobile’s trying to make the math a lot easier: trade in an iPhone 6, and you’ll get a 6S for $5 a month. https://gizmodo.com/which-iphone-6s-should-i-buy-a-guide-1730054334 The low-price deal relies on you trading in an iPhone, and taking out and…

Don’t Buy The Bullshit This Indiegogo Campaign Is Selling

Batteriser is a crowdfunding campaign for a magical little sleeve you pop over your AA batteries, extending their useful life by ‘up to 800%’. Sound a little too good to be true? That’s because it 800% is*. The science behind the Batteriser isn’t actually pure crap. The premise is this: a new AA battery starts…

Drone Crashes, Hits Baby

The worst nightmare of every helicopter parent has come true: earlier this month, a 6.4-pound drone crashed at a movie premiere in Pasadena, hitting a one-year-old baby in the head. Spoilers: the baby was OK. According to the Pasadena Star News, a DJI Inspire 1 — a $3000 drone broadly aimed at professionals — crashed…

I Would Actually Go To This Converted Church Home

When I think of churches, it’s normally as places I spent vast amounts of my childhood counting stitches in knee cushions. But this ex-church, which has seven bedrooms and a climbing wall? I would attend the hell out of that. Designed by Linc Thelen Design and Scrafano Architects, it’s an old church in Chigaco that’s…

The Washington Post Will Publish Every Single One of Its Articles on Facebook

If you stopped reading The Washington Post when the newspaper declared war on your AdBlock earlier this month, Bezos and Zuckerberg might have just found a way to draw you back into the fold: Today, the Post announced that it’ll begin publishing 100% of its stories as Facebook Instant Articles. You’d be forgiven if you…

Boeing Wants To Harvest Electricity From the Roar of Your Plane Taking Off 

Jet engines are extraordinarily loud at roughly 140 decibels–and airports have struggled with mitigating their roar since the early days of commercial flight. An engineer at Boeing wants to make the cacophony more useful, if not silence it for good. For Boeing, patents seem like a way to publicize the company’s most futuristic R&D; recent…

23 Things That LA’s Broad Museum Looks Like (Including a Cheese Grater)

The newest museum in Los Angeles has been affectionately christened “The Cheese Grater,” even though there are at least two other buildings which look like they’d shred cheddar far more effectively. But what else does The Broad resemble? We demanded, you delivered. https://gizmodo.com/photoshop-contest-what-does-las-newest-museum-really-l-1731645811 Even though we clearly said NO CHEESE REFERENCES, you can’t do better…

The Moon’s Reflection Transforms this Awkward Spacecraft into Lovely Art

December 14, 1972: Admire a fleeting moment of scientific poetry: sunlight reflecting off a dusty ball of rock, the moonlight in turn reflecting off a fragile craft in the harshness of space. In this photograph, the Apollo 17 command and service module was preparing to mate with the landing module rising from the lunar surface.…

Incredible close up video shows how a ballpoint pen works

At the very tip of a ballpoint pen is, you guessed it, a ball that rolls around and basically stains the paper with ink. Imagine if you dipped your body in paint and then rolled around white carpet, that’s basically how writing instruments works. Here’s an incredibly up close angle of a ballpoint pen writing…

What’s Your Dream Tech Set-Up?

Let’s say you suddenly come into a ton of money and can only spend it on technology. What do you buy? I’m accustomed to searching for bargains and the best deals where tech is concerned, but a girl can dream. My main crush at the moment is on Samsung’s upcoming Serif TV (no word on…

Whitey Bulger’s Girlfriend Facing New Charges Because She Ain’t No Snitch

She may have been left completely out of Black Mass, but Catherine Greig was an important part of Boston gangster Whitey Bulger’s fugitive years from 1995 to 2011. And she’s still following her longtime companion’s particular code of ethics, facing new charges for, as CNN puts it, “refusing to snitch:” In November, U.S. District Judge…

The history of the treadmill reveals that it was basically a torture device

The treadmill is a time stopping torture machine that was made to remind us all of how we’ll never be in as good a shape as we want to be and how we’ll never be even half way good at estimating how many minutes have passed. And it’s okay because treadmills were basically made to…