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The internet’s most-hated joke-stealing Instagram aggregator has been eating shit all week, losing a Comedy Central deal after getting called out for ripping off comedians online. Now, Josh “The Fat Jew” Ostrovsky is making excuses for his long history of digital plagiarism. Unsurprisingly, his excuses are terrible. Ostrovsky isn’t the only person building a career…
Google is finally doing its part to minimize its contribution to the scourge of bloatware. Has anybody in the history of owning a phone ever wanted a Google+ app? Shitty preinstalled apps like Google+ on Android and Stocks on iOS are called “bloatware” because they’re stuck on the phone before you buy it, and are…
Amazon Echo takes one more step to becoming the benevolent central hub (or Hal 9000) to your future smart home. After connecting with Belkin’s WeMo smart devices this past May, a web-cached blogpost shows Amazon’s Echo now controlling SmartThings devices, Samsung’s acquired smart home division. Neat. [TechCrunch]
Everybody (including this blog) freaked out a little bit yesterday when Spotify released a new privacy policy that asked permission to do everything from track your location to look at your photos. But Spotify is sorry. The company’s CEO just clarified that Spotify doesn’t want to spy on you. In a blog post boldly titled…
The ocean is filled with alien-looking creatures, a lot of natural beauty and a crap ton of garbage. There is so much garbage in the ocean that fully formed patches of our filth have spawned. In this fascinating visualization, NASA reveals how the ocean’s 5 islands of garbage came to be. You can see the…
Big tablets. So hot right now. Much like the “big smartphone” revolution from 2011, tablets seem to be undergoing something similar. Apple’s got its own in the works—which we’ll most likely see in a few weeks. But not to be outdone, Samsung’s planing to go bigger. According to the reliable rumor site SamMobile, the Korean…
It was sort of fun when Facebook started allowing users to upload animated gifs a few months ago, but now select advertisers get to experiment with the format. This could get ugly. TechCrunch reports that Facebook is testing animated GIF ads with a couple of brands. For now, it’s just Wendy’s and Kuat, a Coca…
Swimming from one end of a pool to the other in a straight line is a lot easier than trying to stay on track when swimming in a lake or open water. But a new pair of swim goggles can keep track of what direction you’re heading and help keep you swimming in a straight…
Construction equipment is cool as a rule. Comically-large contruction equipment? So much better. Get your fix with these YouTube channels devoted to these insane machines. Awesome Earthmovers is a 25,000-subscriber strong channel that’s filled with homemade videos of warehouse-sized dump trucks, bulldozer porn, big cranes, and excavators badly playing basketball. Here are some other clips…
The captain of this ship must be a master Tetris player or a savant when it comes to that time wasting iPhone parking game or at least, be the inventor of the three-point turn because his maneuvering of this tanker, the Galway Fisher, into the narrow Port of Galway is simply incredible to see from…
(Note: This article is best enjoyed with the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing in the background.) Does anything stir your inner-patriotism than seeing the old red, white, and blue blowing in the wind? Obviously not, so a couple of guys invented a flag frame that simulates that effect in your living room. To maximize…
You may not yet have stumbled across the Activity Log page in your wanderings around Facebook, but it’s worth exploring. It provides a blow-by-blow account of everything you do on the social network, and you can use it to take back likes or comments, find your favorite posts again, change your privacy settings and more.…
Are you an iPhone user with even a slight curiosity about The Dark Side? Because if so, Samsung has one hell of a promotion going on. Samsung’s ‘test drive’ will let you try a Galaxy S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, or Note 5 for 30 days, free of charge. The company will even throw in a…
In its continuing quest to amalgamate your entire digital life, Dropbox has introduced a new feature: you can drag and drop URLs into folders to save them for later, or share with other people. The feature is mostly neat because you can put everything relevant to a trip or project in one folder, rather than…
Forget all the technical details of trying to actually teleport: the fun stuff is imagining what you could do with your new-found superpowers. YouTuber Tom Scott has examined some of the potential logistical difficulties and opportunities that would go along with teleportation. For example, the surface of the Earth is moving at different speeds in…
Apparently the answer is pretty much never, despite the efforts of Apple, Google … and now, Amazon. The mega-retailer made the announcement this week in the “technical guidelines” section of its site devoted to advertising on Amazon. It will no longer support Flash content in advertising, which means Flash has now lost the support of…
A small village on the left bank of the river Tisza in Hungary hides one of the best-preserved industrial relics I have ever seen. If you wander along the flood prevention dyke near the village, you’ll see an old building with an enormous brick chimney towering above the trees: this is the old Tiszabercel water…
Update (10:46 am) 8/21/15: Spotify has clarified exactly how it’ll use its new privacy policy, and it’s not as bad as we initially thought. You need to give Spotify explicit permission to access your personal data. Read more about it here. https://gizmodo.com/spotify-clarifies-exactly-how-it-will-use-your-informat-1725609395 There’s a new privacy policy going into effect with the latest Spotify update,…
When Elon Musk published his plans for the ultra-high speed Hyperloop transit system almost exactly two years ago, he said he had no intention of building it. This spring, he changed his mind. Now, at least two independent groups are planning to have Hyperloop tracks underway next year. It’s not exactly a competition yet, but…
Turning old hardware into musical instruments is a time-honored tradition among nostalgic, tech savvy children of the ‘80s. But few have taken the idea as far as James Willis, whose floppy drive orchestra is so cleverly arranged I wouldn’t be surprised to see people DJing with these soon. Sixteen drives, synchronized by a myRIO and…
