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From the right angle, Josh Carmody’s Legless Bar Stool looks like it’s one leg shy of safely resisting the pull of gravity. But it’s just an optical illusion made possible by some clever woodworking, and in reality it has all the legs necessary to remain upright. The stool’s unique form factor isn’t just eye-catching, though,…
Yesterday we reported on a troubling policy at the University of Massachusetts of Amherst. The school banned Iranian nationals from enrolling as graduate students in several engineering and natural science programs. After much uproar and protest, U. Mass has backed down, and will admit Iranian students again. https://gizmodo.com/umass-will-no-longer-admit-iranian-students-to-engineer-1686322842 Corey Robin, who broke the story about…
The FBI is going to remarkable lengths to hide information about its surveillance program that intercepts calls and texts with equipment called Stingrays. If you’ve never heard of Stingrays, that’s what the FBI wants. They are stealth devices used by local and federal law enforcement all over the US to gather location data and intercept…
There was a time in my life where, when I needed something, I’d pop on down to the local big box retailer and pick it up. Now I don’t. Now I have Amazon Prime. It’s been years since I’ve bought shaving soap in person. Is that weird? What have you stopped buying in person because…
The cover of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures is famously graced with the radio pulses of a dying star. Its origins, however, have always been unclear. But now, Scientific American’s Jen Christiansen has followed the rabbit hole to the very end—to an obscure 1970 PhD astronomy thesis and the guy who wrote it. Joy Division fans…
Going outdoors is an intense reminder that we’re part of something larger. In moderation, drugs can enhance that connection, help you enjoy the sights and sounds and feelings even more, and help you push reset on all the craziness involved in modern life. Want to try them sometime? Here’s how to get started. https://gizmodo.com/a-beginners-guide-to-doing-drugs-in-the-outdoors-1686617842
Your next Samsung Galaxy smartphone could have a neat trick up its sleeves. Just place your phone next to any ol’ credit card reader, and press a button to pay. That’s because Samsung just announced that it’s buying LoopPay—a company that figured out how to trick magnetic stripe readers to accept your money wirelessly. Does…
Going outdoors is an intense reminder that we’re part of something larger. In moderation, drugs can enhance that connection, help you enjoy the sights and sounds and feelings even more, and help you push reset on all the craziness involved in modern life. Want to try them sometime? Here’s how to get started. If you’re…
In the days and weeks before Chinese New Year, some 700 million people—twice the entire population of the U.S.—cram onto trains, buses, planes and boats to go home. This mass migration is the largest annual movement of humans in the world, and now it can be tracked by smartphone. For the past couple years, Chinese…
There is a new Peanuts movie coming on November 2015. I don’t know if it’s going to be good or not, but technically it looks like a pretty nice translation of Schulz’s graphic language into the 3D world. The trailer below just seems like the classic Snoopy and Woodstock fantasy silliness. It seems to me…
This year the European Organization for Nuclear Research (aka CERN) made a surprising appearance at the Rio Carnival, held at Rio de Janiero’s Sambadrome. Two hundred people from the Unidos da Tijuca, last year’s winning samba school, represented CERN’s particle accelerators crossing the border between France and Switzerland. And this was not the only beautifully…
Every morning, amateur Nostradamus impersonator and otherwise horrible human Pat Robertson answers your questions about keeping the faith in a world gone to hell. One way to do that? Stop posting ultrasounds on Facebook, lest “some cultist” or “coven” curse your unborn child through the awesome powers of social media. Zuckerberg what have you wrought.…
If you’ve always wanted to dabble in cryptocurrency speculation but you were just waiting until you could acquire some Bitcoin that you knew was FOR SURE used in digital drug deals, I have some good-ass news for you: the United States Marshals Service is auctioning off 50,000 Bitcoins seized from Ross Ulbricht’s personal computer. Last…
It’s tempting to think of Microsoft as some aging dinosaur. But it’s wrong. Change has been building for almost a year now. Yes Windows 8 was a mess, and the Xbox One’s early days were embarrassing, but Microsoft’s been sharpening its game with impressive speed. And now it is once again, hands down, the most…
It’s taken a while, but between the additions to The Force Awakens’ cast and the excellent Sabine and Hera on Star Wars: Rebels, the Star Wars universe is starting to improve its roster of female characters – alas, the same can’t be said for the toys, and judging by Hasbro’s latest PR gaffe, that might…
Unless you’re just wandering off into the wilderness for a week, there’s often a lot of waiting involved when traveling—whether it’s for a flight, a hotel room, a taxi, or even dinner. So for all those times when you’re stuck in line with no place to sit, the Bagobago might actually be the best traveling…
For players who can’t bear the thought of being away from their favorite board game, there’s a Portable Edition of Settlers of Catan that’s been around for years now. But it comes packed in a flimsy cardboard box full of tiny cards and pieces that are easy to lose. That’s why this new Compact Edition…
We’re a few months early to our biennial Deluxe Comfort Girlfriend/Boyfriend Body Pillow update, but big things are happening in disembodied-lovers’-torso land. Some might even say, swole things. Yep, your quarter-human boyfriend body pillow has been working out. And he’s got the nipple to prove it. Unlike the Deluxe Comfort Boyfriend Body Pillow, the Muscle…
Have you heard? HTTP/2 is finally finished. That means that pretty soon webpages will load faster; connections will last longer; servers will respond to requests with more content. What’s not to like! But hold on a sec: What the heck is HTTP/2, again? Put simply, HTTP/2 is a very overdue upgrade to Hypertext Transfer Protocol,…
Usually when you hear “sex” and “Trojan” in the same sentence, it means someone’s being safe. Not so much in the most recent jack-off site hijacking: People checking out RedTube, one of the most popular porn sites, are in danger of identity theft. Hackers have infected the site’s source code to redirect to malware used…
