Tech News

Get Lost in the Swirling Green Seas of a Massive Algae Bloom

The summer of 2015 will probably be remembered as one of fire, drought, and hot, hot weather. But it’s also been a summer of frightfully voracious, microscopic life forms. From Lake Erie to the North Atlantic, tiny green algae are multiplying like crazy. And there’s no better way to appreciate the sheer immensity of these…

Why We Can’t Stop Seeing Aliens on Mars

A crab! A spoon! A crashed UFO! Clearly, the Curiosity Rover is busy excavating the remains of an alien luau, and NASA totally didn’t tell us. The proof is right there! Except not exactly. You see, there a much simpler explanation for those infuriating alien artifacts that keep cropping up on the Red Planet. It’s…

Man Spends 14 Hours Riding the Longest NYC Subway Route

New Yorkers aren’t exactly known for taking leisurely strolls, but leisurely subway riding? The concept is as foreign as ketchup on pizza. That’s why most city slickers will have no idea that the longest non-repeating subway route is 155 miles and includes over 54 transfers. Why should they? Who on Earth is ever going to…

LG’s Watch Urbane Luxe Is 23-Karat Gold Bonkers

Android Wear watches are cool and all, but none of them are especially fancy. (Even the new Moto 360, with its flat tire screen.) Until now, at least. An alligator leather wristband, 23-karat gold plating, and a $1000-plus price tag mean the LG Watch Urbane Luxe is a particularly niche geek accessory. The only chance…

Intel’s New Skylake Processors: What You Need To Know

Stop. Don’t buy that new Windows laptop or tablet. Don’t pull the trigger unless you’re getting a truly amazing deal. Because today, Intel’s launching its latest processor—Skylake—and you may want one in your next PC. Why? Let me count the reasons. And afterwards, I’ll help you understand how to tell a Skylake chip apart from…

My Eyes Can’t Handle the Insanity of the Philips AmbiLux UHD TV

The Philips AmbiLux UHD grabs your eyeballs by the…er…balls and puts them through some sort of kaleidoscopic interdimensional warp hole. Despite the glitzy launches and top flight devices, it’s all been a bit, well, safe at this year’s IFA, especially around televisions. While other manufacturers focus on 4K delivery systems and HDR standards, it’s taken…

You Can Snuggle With a Sith Lord Thanks to Star Wars Pendleton Blankets

I know! You didn’t buy anything for Force Friday because you’re practical: You were holding out for something really useful when it came to Star Wars merch. When winter comes and your bedroom is as cold as Hoth you’re gonna need a blanket. Why not have it be one of these Star Wars Pendletons? Just…

Someone Hacked Open Sphero’s BB-8 To See How It Works Inside

If you were lucky enough to find one of Sphero’s wonderful BB-8 toys on Force Friday and are curious how it works, the folks at uBreakiFix were kind enough to hack theirs open to explore its inner workings—so you don’t have to sacrifice yours. There aren’t too many surprises inside BB-8, though. His spherical body…

The four year evacuation of the Japanese town of Naraha has officially ended. All of the town’s 7,400 residents were sent away in 2011, after the nearby nuclear disaster at Fukushima. Today, the government says radiation has fallen to safe levels within the town. But it’s still unclear whether former residents will feel the same.…

Huawei Mate S Hands-On: Force Touch is Great, But With One Big Problem

You’ve got to hand it to Huawei. Just a week out from Apple’s iPhone 6S launch, it’s revealed the Mate S, which has almost certainly stolen a bit of the Apple phone’s thunder by including its iOS rival’s expected lead feature. The Force Touch control exclusive to the top-of-the-line 128GB Mate S is of course…

New Horizons Restarts Sending Pretty, Pretty Data Home Today!

It’s coming, it’s coming! The New Horizons space probe starts its intensive data downlink phase today! You know what that means? New, never-seen photos of the dwarf planet are coming right at us! Squee!! New Horizons has tens of gigabits of data from the Pluto flyby which will be downlinked via the Deep Space Network…

Check Out These Fantastic Urban Makeovers Documented By Google Street View 

Everyone loves a good before/after image, whether it’s a house flip or themakeover montage from Clueless. A group of Brazilian urbanists are expanding the genre to include public space transformations—as documented by Street View. It’s called Before | After, and it’s an ever-growing collaborative database of urban spaces that have been dramatically improved by shifting…

The Best of Gizmodo This Week

This week saw the debut of some exciting gadgets — a new Moto X, Intel’s latest processor, Google’s wifi router — but the Star Wars BB-8 toy droid stole the show. We reviewed it and found it to be the Best Toy Ever. Here are the highlights from this week. Ashley Madison Code Shows More…

Here’s How Acer Plans To Consume Your Gaming Hardware Budget

Acer doubled down on gaming at the IFA tech show in Berlin, unveiling a barrage of new gaming gear including a Predator tablet and phone, 15- and 17-inch gaming laptops with Intel’s new Skylake processors, and powerful PCs—plus a 200Hz ultra-wide curved display. Powerful New Predator 15- And 17-Inch Gaming Laptops Acer’s new Predator gaming…

How Could Google’s New Logo Be Only 305 Bytes When Its Old Logo Was 14,000 Bytes?

The old logo uses a complicated serif font which can only be created using bezier curves. All together, it has 100 anchor points, resulting in a 6 KB (6,380 bytes) file. When compressed, the size comes down to 2 KB (2,145 bytes). A simplified version of the new logo, on the other hand, can be…

We Tried LG’s Roll-Up Tablet Keyboard

In the middle of the throng at LG’s IFA 2015 booth, one little gadget got a surprisingly large amount of tech geek attention. The compact, portable and aptly named LG Rolly Keyboard is a super-convenient contrivance for tablet and smartphone typists. We all know that sending long emails, responding to briefs or writing stories can…

A Beginner’s Guide to American Gin

Gin is a divisive drink. It has been for centuries. Responsible for an early booze-fueled crisis in England, the botanical-infused distilled spirit was once seen as scourge on society. Three hundred years later, it’s become the elegant answer to vodka and, increasingly in the US, an artisanal concoction. Regardless of your own history with juniper-laced…

What’s New With Parrot’s Zik 3.0 Wireless Headphones?

Parrot just revealed the third generation Zik headphones. The Zik 3.0 will look very familiarif you’ve ever seen the Zik 2.0, since the design remains largely unchanged, it’s just available in some gaudy new styles. But a couple of tiny tweaks like wireless charging and USB audio make them even more futuristic. Like its predecessor,…

Sony Xperia Z5 Compact Hands-On: Small But Mighty

Sony’s smaller version of the Xperia Z3, the Xperia Z3 Compact, was a fantastic phone. It was the first time we saw a major manufacturer pack all the high-end goodness of a flagship phone into a smaller form package, and we liked what we saw. It offered the kind of specs you’d like to see…

Let’s Talk About Whatever You Want Right Now

TGIFF! That’s two Fs given for #ForceFriday. Some of us have been up all night gathering alllllll the new Star Wars merch: the good, the evil, the items more expensive than the price Jabba put on Han Solo’s head. I have to admit, the one thing I am super excited about is the fact that…