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If you’ve made the upgrade to Android Lollipop then one minor annoyance you might have come across is a blank avatar at the top of the quick settings drawer and everywhere else accounts are listed in the mobile OS. You don’t have to settle for this anonymous silhouette, but it’s kind of tricky to change.…
Apple has a new version of BootCamp,actually designedto work with Windows 10. If you’re already running it, look for the update in your Windows partition; otherwise, the update should be available soon. You’ll need an Intel-powered Mac running OS X Yosemite to take advantage. [MacRumors] Contact the author at [email protected].
There’s been some confusion over the size of today’s explosion in China’s Tianjin province, with some people mistakenly thinking it was the largest non-nuclear explosion of all time. It was not — that honor goes to the Russians — and you can partly blame our stupid system of measurement for the mistake. An explosion is…
Apple Pay’s fingerprint authentication is already miles better than the laughable magnetic strip on our credit cards. But to try and create the The Nymi Band is like a contactless credit card, which only works when you (and only you) are wearing it. It uses a sensor to record the electrical activity of the wearer’s…
Gizmodo’s favorite speculative industrial designer Martin Hajek is at it again. This time, he’s created something that could almost be true: an Apple flipphone for the Japanese market. Before doing these beautiful concept designs, Hajek asked himself what would happen if “Apple decided to do an iPhone for the Japanese market.” Speaking to Gizmodo via…
At this week’s SIGGRAPH design conference, I spent two days wandering among basketball players wearing Tron-like motion capture suits and CGI-rendered freeways. But I spent most of my time in a place called the VR Village, a dark, throbbing corner where I saw the awkward future. The most interesting part about the VR Village was…
The Renaissance. The Industrial Revolution. The Computer Age. Each era of history has produced its own remarkable inventions. What will history remember most clearly about our own epoch? Perhaps the many kooky ways we’ve invented to avoid walking to work. Yes, we’re living an exciting age for people challenging the conventions of traditional skateboards and…
Donald Trump will not be our next president. Neither will Bernie Sanders, Jeb Bush, nor Hillary Clinton. How can I say this with such confidence? Because none of these people have beards. And that was supposed to be the style for US presidents by now. At least according to one random magazine from 1966. The…
A study of new parents out of Germany makes the claim that having a baby is more hazardous to mental well-being than divorce or the death of a partner. The main goal of the study was to explore why the birthrate in many developed countries has dropped and remained low, and why there is often…
Hillary Clinton initially brushed off critics of her decision to use a private email server by saying it was more convenient. But now her “convenience” is derailing her presidential campaign. Yesterday, the former Secretary of State and current Democratic frontrunner agreed to turn over her personal server to the Department of Justice. Exactly how much…
Ferrofluid is a wonderful metallic goo that magically reacts to the presence of a magnetic field. To date it’s really only been used in mesmerizing desk toys, but Zelf Koelma has found a way to manipulate the material into an animated clock that perfectly represents the flow of time. Ferrolic is the kind of art…
After watching this wonderful time lapse of flowers blooming, I would forgive you if it made you think that flowers have their own personalities and feelings and lovable qualities. I believe it too! Look at that guy above preen and dance a little before opening up. It’s like a character from a Pixar movie only…
Asking for a friend. The truth is that I haven’t taken a proper vacation in years, and a lot of my travel tech is out-of-date. The last time I left the country, for example, it would’ve cost an astronomical amount to use an American-based phone abroad. But plans and options have changed, and it may…
Darwin probably didn’t expect basic principles of evolution to apply to machines, but here we are: Researchers have created a “mom” robot that independently reproduces “children,” passing beneficial features along to the next generation. The experiment was carried out at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with ETH Zurich, and the results were published today…
People like dawn because it’s the start of the new day and the illusion of opportunity exists as light breaks the night. I like dawn because when I see the sun rise it meant I had a great night. But dusk is more my speed, the world comes alive in a completely different way. In…
I was skeptical. Two cubes sat side-by-side, looking like stripped-down 3D printers. I sat in front of one as instructed, and reached my hand inside, toward a floating disembodied finger. Just at the moment I knew I’d stab through the illusion, I had the ultimate “E.T. phone home” moment—I swear I could feel the other…
“You don’t want to end up on the Wall of Sheep.” That’s the last thing my editor told me before I flew to Las Vegas to hang out at the infamous hacker convention DEF CON. A week later, I found myself standing in front of the wall, looking frantically for my name and password. Despite…
We all know the sad story of octopus sex, right? They live alone until it’s time to find a mate, they have sex a few times, then the males die. Females live a little longer to lay eggs, but die soon after they hatch. Turns out that the (still officially unnamed) Larger Pacific Striped Octopus…
Google has been working with NASA to test delivery drones in private US airspace, according to documents reviewed by the Guardian. While laws mostly prohibit commercial drones from such activity, NASA offers Google a convenient loophole. The drone experiments in question are part of the Google X delivery drone research program codenamed Project Wing. Operation…
They’re all around us, giving directions and telling us what to do. They’re our street signs. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge, photograph them. The Challenge Photograph a street sign (not a neon store sign, but something you might see on the side of a road or in a restaurant that’s advising you or telling…
