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Riding a motorcycle isn’t enough. Surfing waves isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to surf your motorcycle to get your thrill on. That is you have to gun your motorcycle to over 50MPH and then try to stand on the deathcycle while balancing yourself as if you were on a tightrope, only if the tightrope was…
We are apparently so desperate as a civilization for news of the next iPhone that there are Apple diviners who specialize in predicting when it will come. Now the best of these diviners, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, says he’s convinced the new iPhone is coming in August. Over at Business Insider, they are taking…
Since the State Department’s taking its time making public information public, The New York Times just released about a third of Hillary Clinton’s private, Benghazi-related emails. Read up because it’s transparency America’s been denied—plus it’s just fun to read politicians’ private correspondence. Below you’ll find 349 pages from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s old inbox, pages…
The wonderful ‘80s flick The NeverEnding Story wasn’t exactly a blockbuster when it hit theaters decades ago, and that means that finding memorabilia from the film these days isn’t easy. There’s an army of crafters on Etsy that are happy to scratch your nostalgic itches, though, it’s just too bad that GameGuardians only opens orders…
History isn’t certain if Kate Warne, America’s first female detective, had that career path in mind when she walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency. It’s possible she was applying to be a secretary. But she so impressed Allan Pinkerton that he hired her as an agent — a job she proved unusually well-suited for. This…
You know you spend a lot of time on your smartphone, but what are you doing with it? It’s a question QualityTime (Android 4.0+) attempts to answer, monitoring activity on your handset and revealing the apps that you just can’t pull yourself away from. Here’s how to get the app up and running on your…
The first road-legal autonomous truck made a splashy debut earlier this month. The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is shiny and new, but it will not be good for everyone. Autonomous trucks will destroy jobs, Scott Santens points out at Medium, killing the truck stop as we know it. Even if you reserve no particular nostalgia for…
They’ve teased it for a very long time, but it’s finally here: Bandai have revealed their Figuarts Hulkbuster, and they’ve really pushed the boat out. Scaled in line with the other Avengers: Age of Ultron Figuarts, the Hulkbuster stands at around 10 inches tall, and is packed with the amount of crazy hyper-articulation you’d expect…
The crowdfunded watch, Pebble, which became a darling of Kickstarter success stories, may be facing serious financial problems, despite raising a staggering $20 million on the site. Sources say that the company is getting a bit too big and can’t support the success. It has supposedly taken out a $5 million loan with an additional…
Not every building set has to be made from colorful plastic bricks. If you’re looking for something a little more challenging—and rewarding—than Lego, Hermann Böhm has created this gorgeous stainless steel and brass stirling engine kit that will take you about three satisfying hours to build. And of course it’s fully functional once assembled. The…
A security firm has revealed that a simple mistake in a Linux device kernel could be putting millions of Wi-Fi routers at risk. SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab has discovered the flaw, which Ars Techinca refers to as “amateurish,” in a driver referred to as NetUSB. The driver, as its name suggests, is installed on routers…
Amazon’s one-hour delivery service now includes local businesses—including D’Agostino, Gourmet Garage and Billy’s Bakery—in Manhattan. For $8, you can be feasting on groceries, cooked meals and cupcakes within the hour.
Well, this is awkward. Flickr’s seemingly impressive image recognition system is making some embarrassing slips when identifying black people and concentration camps, according to the Guardian. The newspaper explains that the new algorithm, which is designed to tag and then filter images by content, is “misfiring frequently.” It describes how a portrait of a black…
It’s a good day for innovative space technology. The Planetary Society’s technology demonstration of solar sails to propel microsatellites hitched a ride into orbit with the launch of the secretive X-37B space plane. The LightSail project is testing solar sail technology for a mission in 2016. https://gizmodo.com/the-air-forces-mysterious-space-plane-is-going-into-orb-1704817585 Top image: Artist’s concept of the LightSail microsatellite.…
The health insurer CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield has announced that a cyber attack has stolen 1.1 million records of both current and former members. The insurer, which operates in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, has a total of 3.4 million users. In a statement made yesterday, it admitted that 1.1 million of those records…
“The Moral Molecule.” “The Cuddle Hormone.” If you’ve been paying attention the past few years, you’ve heard about many of the near-magical effects of the hormone oxytocin on the brain. It makes people more altruistic. It reduces anxiety and increases trust. But it’s not the only chemical that affects the brain that way. Image: Shutterstock…
Horseshoe bats’ unique noses and big, flexible ears make them nature’s most dynamic sonar arrays. Engineers built a mechanical version, and they’re testing it on a quadcopter drone. The sonar prototype, designed and built by Virginia Tech mechanical engineering professor Rolf Mueller and his team, doesn’t look like anything you’d find on a warship. It…
The observatory atop the 1,776-foot World Trade Center finally opens next week. But the view from the tallest building in the US (for now) is not the only stunning vista that will greet visitors. Although there are plenty of observatories in supertalls, 1 World Trade features some cool technological advances that help orient visitors once…
We know that, over history, humans have eaten each other. But we now know more about how ancient cannibals liked to dine: They spent lots of time prepping elaborate feasts with actual recipes calling for exotic ingredients. Over 2,000 years ago, people living around Mexico City grilled or boiled other humans, seasoning the cooked meat…
You can get over 1,000 free programs from NASA, thanks to the second release of NASA’s online software catalog, which debuted last year. The catalogue includes every piece of software that NASA built for itself, ranging from project management and inventory programs to design software for rockets and crewed spacecraft. https://gizmodo.com/nasas-about-to-release-a-mother-lode-of-free-software-1558491761 “This is all stuff…