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It’s Survival Week here at Gizmodo, and we want your tales of how you got out of life-threatening situations. Indefinitely Wild’s Wes Siler compiled an exhaustive guide to How to Survive Almost Anything, from avalanches to plane crashes to being forced to be your own doctor under dire conditions. I feel lucky in that I…
This is so fun and great that I wish it would never end. Burger Fiction stitched together this super long scene of phone calls from movies so that it looks like different characters from different movies are all talking to each other on the phone, like one never ending game of telephone that breaks the…
When will a neural network know who Donald Trump is? How long until one can come up with a joke on its own? How about recognize Yoda? It may not be much longer, with neural network models progressing at breakneck speed. But there’s still a long way to go, as demonstrated by an experiment by…
Man. These crocs come out of nowhere and attack with such a quickness that you don’t even know what’s happening until you’re already clamped down inside the terrifying and unrelenting jaws of the crocodile. National Geographic made some flotation devices that held cameras to capture exactly what it’s like to get attacked and be inside…
The most exhaustive part about maneuvering your car in and out of tight spaces in a crowded parking lot is the unending back-and-forth turning of your steering wheel. To make that easier, Ford is introducing something called Adaptive Steering that does most of the turning for you—at slower speeds. The new feature reduces the number…
We’ve all seen dark, noir photography. But what’s the opposite? Celebrate the light. For this week’s Shooting Challenge, I actually want you to overexpose your photos. The Challenge Take a photograph that’s purposefully overexposed, or blown out, or whatever term you want to use. The Method So the premise of overexposure is pretty simple. You…
In just a few weeks Lego Dimensions will be the latest video game/collectible toy line that will have you scouring store shelves for the sets you’re missing. And this new launch trailer, featuring cameos from the countless franchises included in the game, reveals why more is always better. Officially available on September 29 for the…
Today’s edition of Irrational Fear is Squishing Science left me pondering: What projects have you been working on that would get you hassled by the wire-fearful? And could you actually build a clock without looking up instructions? A depressing reoccurring theme in the United States is that students of colour should not attempt science or…
The phone is the political prop of the decade. Politicians hold them up during speeches to tell stories because it’s the ubiquitous little gadget that says, look, I’m just like you and I’m going to talk about Our Modern World™. Want to give a speech about tech innovation or the lack thereof in America? Hold…
It’s finally here, the full, stable version of Apple’s newest mobile operating system, and you can download it right now. Why should you even bother, you ask? Well, it may not be a huge visual overall, but it’s got enough little tweaks to make it worthwhile. The biggest one is battery. The iPhone can be…
If there’s one silver lining to the rage-inducing story of the teenager in Texas arrested for building a clock, it’s the mass show of support from scientists, technologists, celebrities, and hundreds of thousands of people online. Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed is a kid who loves to tinker, and was excited to show teachers at his Irving,…
Yes! Zune is still a thing. But whatever is left of Microsoft’s old music vestige will be getting shut down on November 15th. Microsoft stopped selling its Zune HD music player hardware years ago, but the brand has lived on in the form of Zune Music Pass, a subscription music service that came with 10…
Happy birthday! How did I know? Because humans are pretty predictable when it comes to having babies (also, data). In 2006, The New York Times published a simple table graph ranking every day of the year by how many babies were born on a particular day. The dataset included children born in the United States…
The Washington Post announced today that Amazon Prime members will get free, unlimited access to the newspaper’s National Digital Edition for six months, a $60 deal. After the half year is up, folks can still ride the Prime wave with a discounted subscription rate: Usually, the Post’s digital service is $9.99 per month, but Prime…
When a United Airlines flight made an emergency landing this summer due to medical situations on board, as the oxygen masks fell down, some passengers’ phone cameras went up. But psychologists say the instinct to snap a selfie in a near-death experience isn’t all narcissism—it’s also about survival and self-preservation. The ‘Survival Selfie’ Our friends…
The latest version of Apple’s mobile OS launched to much fanfare and showy new features. Side-by-side multitasking! A creepily efficient digital assistant! But the longer I use iOS 9, the more I’m noticing the tiny changes that make everything just a little bit better. https://gizmodo.com/ios-9-smarts-security-and-a-better-siri-1709837924 The most noticeable change is to the fast app-changer. Double-tap…
Remember when we thought that hologram stickers were an effective way to stop the proliferation of counterfeit products? Xerox now believes it has a far superior solution with a new type of printable electronic label that has encrypted memory built right in. Using technologies licensed from a company called Thinfilm, the labels can contain as…
Even though watchOS 2 got the green light to launch today with iOS 9, that’s not going to happen thanks to a software bug. Apple gave TechCrunch a statement saying the bug was significant enough to put the watchOS update on hold, but that it would be released shortly. iOS 9 is still go to…
AT&T has finally altered the way it handles subscribers with grandfathered unlimited plans on the network. The company is still—technically—throttling them, but now rather than slowing data down at 5GB, AT&T will let unlimited plans’ usage soar to 22GB before applying any brakes. There are a number of things that could’ve led the company to…
Whether you love the Donald, hate him, or merely find him perplexing, he’s certainly a whiz at stimulating debate. Now he’s inspired vibrator-makers Crave to offer a 50% discount on all their designs, but ONLY while today’s primary debate is raging. Use the code TrumpTrump at checkout to turn their negative feelings about the candidate…
