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I’ve never been more impressed by something as useless as Lytro’s incredible cameras. Let’s hope the company can actually find something useful to do with the magic before it expires. Right now, the company’s laying people off and going into survival mode. When we first saw Lytro’s “light field technology” back in 2011, I didn’t…
Back in 1974, the NSA started an in-house magazine called Cryptolog that served as reading material for employees of the top secret agency. In 2013, the agency declassified heavily redacted issues of the magazine dating up to 1997… and its design is actually pretty amazing. So much of Cryptolog reads as a kind of punk…
If you happened to visit Lenovo.com this afternoon you might’ve seen a random teen with an amazing haircut, wearing a headset, and posing for a webcam. This is no accident. It looks like the Lizard Squad hacked in and took over the homepage. It’s a pretty funny hack, honestly. As with any hack, it’s hard…
When Factory released their first Direwolf Puppy plushes, we were wounded innocents still in a post Red Wedding haze. But we’ve grown up, as has Game of Thrones – and thus, so must the plushie merchandise. https://gizmodo.com/heal-your-game-of-thrones-anguish-with-these-plush-dire-829401868 So far only Ghost from the surviving Direwolves has been elevated to adult-plush status (Poor Lady and Grey…
The ’80s were arguably one of the greatest decades in history to be a kid with an allowance burning a hole in your pocket, and a free afternoon to spend at a toy store. And decades later, toy companies have realized that all those kids buying the wonderful toys from the ’80s are all grown…
Did Edward Snowden actually damage national security? There’s no way in hell to tell from official documents released to the press—they’ve been thoroughly redacted to the point of uselessness. Well, that’s not true: They’re useful in showing that the government isn’t exactly eager to reveal concrete proof that the revelations about its surveillance abuses have…
Three Al-Jazeera reporters have been arrested in the wake of the drones of Paris mystery. It’s likely the reporters were using drones to film a poorly-thought-out segment on the mystery drones, not the original perpetrators of the problem. We have so many questions. What were the journalists thinking? The “unknown drones” story was big international…
Since Google acquired the artificial intelligence company DeepMind for $628 million last year, it’s put the software to hard work…playing Atari 2600 video games. But no really, learning how to play 49 different Atari games showcases the promises—and the weaknesses—of DeepMind’s software. A paper published today in Nature details how the AI learned to play…
Do you prefer your bat ears small, medium, or extra large? Not matter which way, Sideshow has you covered with their latest 1:6 Batman figure, which has more Bat-faces and Bat-Cowls than you can shake a bat-stick at. Sideshow’s ‘Gotham Knight’ figure is the latest in their long line of 1:6 DC figures, and is…
Oh, it is a VR headset. How the hell did you fit that in your pocket? It’s collapsible? Okay, we need to talk about this. There’s been a lot of talk recently about cramming your phone into a VR headset, but nobody’s talking about one of the biggest problems with that idea: Phones are portable…
The discovery of a bright spot on Ceres has given rise to lots of speculation. And now we’ve learned something new: it has a friend. The second spot is not quite as bright, but still weirdly reflective compared to the rest of the dwarf planet. The geological mystery keeps getting more interesting! Top image: From…
No one ever needs a live pet fish, three gallons of water, a fish tank, a heater, food, and various fish home accoutrements at a moment’s notice. And yet, at 11am on a Tuesday, I texted a stranger and told them I needed all of this, and yes, I needed it today. Three hours and…
An Italian neuroscientist who has been advocating for head transplants now wants to make one actually happen. He’ll be announcing a project at a surgical conference later this year. Here’s how the proposed human head transplant will work—supposedly. In 2013, Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group proposed that human head transplants could soon…
The United States has been waiting too long for federal law banning revenge porn. The wait will be over soon. In the coming weeks, Congresswoman Jackie Speier will introduce a bill that would make revenge porn a federal crime—finally. “Today it’s possible to ruin someone’s life with the click of a button, by publishing another…
Wow. We’re getting official Doctor Who Lego later this year, but I’m pretty sure not even Lego could top this remarkable replica of the 11th Doctor’s Console Room by Flickr User Thorsten Bonsch. https://gizmodo.com/doctor-who-lego-is-finally-happening-1683719412 Header Image Credit: Thorsten Bonsch. All images credited as such unless otherwise stated. Germany-based Bonsch, who goes by Xenomurphy online, actually…
Google Play Music just upped the capacity of it’s free music locker service from 20,000 songs to a whopping 50,000. Man Google’s really giving Spotify a run for the best online music service right now. https://gizmodo.com/google-just-gave-you-a-good-reason-to-quit-spotify-1661154549 Google Music’s storage locker powers is one of the biggest differentiators between Google Music and key competitors like Spotify.…
Cheaper plastics, terrible battery life, buggy software, and about a million different toys based on Disney’s Frozen? It’s about time that someone stepped forward and gave the toy industry a good shakedown. And who better than this tiny Playmobil version of Germany’s Martin Luther who was last seen nailing his latest theses to the main…
Having to wash and dry dishes by hand is a terrible chore, but it would be made even worse with a set of these patterned dish towels that will have you craving maki sushi, even right after eating dinner. Created by Jenny Pokryvailo, the same designer behind that Loch Ness ladle, the towels feature very…
As any boxer will tell you, jumping rope is one of the most efficient cardio workouts, one that hasn’t changed much since it was invented. Until now. Enter the Smart Rope. It sounds a little silly at first, but let me explain. The LED-laced, sensor-laden jump rope puts a twist on fitness-tracking. Like a wearable,…
Daniel Cheong loves digital blending—a post-production technique “that manually mixes multiple bracketed exposures in order to obtain the maximum dynamic range” without getting the everything-is-illuminated effect of overcooked HDR. His work is beautiful. His photos are sightly surreal, yes, but I love the results. That storm against the Milky Way photo above is a great…
