Tech News

You Used to Need a Court Order to Get Gmail to Unsend

This week we’re celebrating the arrival of an undo send option in Gmail. But one did not always simply unsend an email — in fact, just last year, Goldman Sachs had to get a court order before Google would unsend an email full of sensitive data that had mistakenly arrived in the inbox of the…

Intense Scifi Film Shot Entirely in Moonlight Looks Completely Alien

23.2 lightyears from Earth sits the Scorpius Constellation, where scientists are working on an artificial biosphere that can harbor human life. And perhaps some other forms of life, too. That’s the premise of the violent, action-packed scifi short Refuge, which was released yesterday and is being billed as “the first narrative film ever shot with…

The lung-on-a-chip honored by the Design Museum in London this yearisn’t a one-off design, but a versatile method that can be applied to lots of human tissues. To wit: the National Institutes of Health just developed a placenta-on-a-chip, combining fetal and maternal cells to study how they interact. Contact the author at [email protected].

Camera zooms can get so ridiculously close it’s scary

If you want to be a total creep and spy on things from miles away, just get a camera like the Nikon P900. The zoom is so ridiculous it’s scary. Check out the video by Fratila Angelo below that shows just how close you can get. It shows an excavator at work and when it…

Shooting Challenge: Living Shadows

The days are long, and the shadows are longer. For this week’s Shooting Challenge, be a kid again and photograph your (or someone’s) shadow. The Challenge Photograph a shadow. Let’s make ‘em human or animal rather than just buildings, etc. The Method The real secret to photographing good shadows—assuming you don’t just set up a…

This Might Just Be The Most Weirdly Specific Star Wars Figure Ever Made

Star Wars has a noted history for creating toys out of even the most minor character, or the smallest costume change. Guy with an ice cream maker on Bespin? Action figure. Blue George Lucas? Action figure. But this Boba Fett toy being made for Comic-Con is perhaps the most bizarrely specific Star Wars toy of…

The Guy Who Invented Cell Phones Thinks Apps Suck 

The inventor of the first cell phone thinks that someday we’ll all have tiny computers implanted behind our ears instead of phones. He also thinks apps are terrible. Motherboard interviewed Marty Cooper, the 89-year-old creator of the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, which was the first handheld mobile phone—and Cooper made some bold predictions about the future…

Watch a blacksmith masterfully forge a pair of tongs

It is an incredible amount of work to forge a pair of fireplace tongs. Like, this blacksmith should be awarded with a medal that lets everyone know that they should pat him on the back. Like he should think about retirement after shaping these tongs from metal. Watch the epic process of blacksmith Torbjörn Åhman…

Go Now, These 11 Historic Places May Soon Be Gone Forever

It’s that time of year again: The National Trust For Historic Preservation has published is annual list of of the most endangered places in the country. And as always, it’s pretty damn depressing. The list is a way for the National Trust to call attention to buildings and places that are close to being demolished,…

Watch the World Fly By, One Instagram Hyperlapse at a Time

I just watched the sun set on Russia. Pigs run around a farm in Denmark. Hundreds of New York City students graduating in cap and gown. These things just recenty happened in locations all around the world, and yet I saw them all in less than a minute. Hyperlax is basically just a website that…

The Best Stories About Scientists Working Together and Falling in Love

Two weeks ago, Nobel-prize winning cell biologist Tim Hunt created a storm of controversy when he made a comment about how he can’t work with women because he always falls in love with them, or they with him. But why does he think love in the lab is such a problem? Here are four stories…

Help Rid New York Of Its Unjust ‘Gravity Knife’ Law

In the last 10 years, 60,000 people in New York have landed in jail due to a ‘50s-era law banning “gravity knives,” the vague definition of which allows police and courts to prosecute people for carrying virtually anything sharp. 86 percent of those jailed were black or latino. And now you can help repeal it.…

Video: The serenity of nature in the mountains of Japan

Shugendo is an old religion in Japan that started in the 7th century that focuses on a spiritual experience or awakening of sorts with nature. There’s more to it then that, of course. But this film by Mathieu Le Lay explores that world and follows Yamabushi monk Kosho Tateishi during his prayer rituals. It’s a…

The “Death Row Granny” Who Was Both Diabolical Killer and Political Pawn

Yesterday, we got to know Leonarda Cianciulli, who turned her victims into soap and cake. Here’s another in our series on female serial killers: North Carolina’s Velma Barfield, the “Death Row Granny” who poisoned four and maybe more, including her own mother, and was executed in 1984 at the age of 52. https://gizmodo.com/the-superstitious-murderer-who-turned-her-victims-into-1713486930 Despite her…

Here’s How Men Make 200 Million Sperm Every Day

Human testes are masters of mass production, spitting out sperm at a rate of 200 million per day. But that doesn’t mean the process is fast–it takes 64 days to make a sperm. The organ keeps the count high with an assembly-line anatomy that scales up sperm development from a trickle to a flood. About…

The Fiendish Life of Jesse Pomeroy, Teen Serial Killer

Jesse Harding Pomeroy has few, if any, rivals for the title of naughtiest boy in American history. Other lads have wrecked trains, burned buildings, and done away with their friends in all sorts of cruel and imaginative ways. But Jesse makes them all look like dirty-faced angels “hooking” apples from a cranky farmer. Jesse was…

What Are All Those Weird Noises You Hear on an Airplane?

I used to work at Boeing and repaired the computerized part of the machines which put together 747’s. People not familiar with airplanes are scared because they are forced to be quiet and go along with acting normal while stuck in a tube hurtling through the air at 600 miles an hour, and 30,000 feet…

You no longer need a Facebook account to sign up for Messenger, the company’s standalone messaging app. Now you cansign up for the app with just your phone number and email address. The no-Facebook Messenger option is available for people in the US, Canada, Peru, and Venezuela. I can’t imagine there’s a big group of…

Nerf’s New See-Through Blasters Reveal How Their Firing Mechanisms Work

It looks like Nerf is the latest brand to find it hard to keep its Comic-Con reveals a secret. Yesterday it announced a pair of blasters from a new Doomlands line featuring clear plastic housings that make their firing mechanisms visible so you’ll finally know exactly how those darts get launched. Doomlands is also another…

Queen Elizabeth Meets the Future Queen Who Is A Robot And Not A Human

Everybody knows that futuristic robots are going to take our jobs. Jobs in food service, farm work, and perhaps most importantly, monarchy. Yes, it’s pretty much a given that a robot will replace the Queen of England one day. And earlier today Queen Elizabeth met one of the robots that will put her out of…