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There’s a commonly held view that kids using SMS abbreviation is going to be the ruin of the English language. But what if all that typing is actually just great practice? Randall Munroe muses on the fact that some of the most celebrated writers didn’t write in a way that their elders may have approved…
Search on Facebook sucks so hard it would be funny if it wasn’t frustrating. Now it looks like Facebook is finally doing something about it, so allow me a minute bounce around my living room in joy. The social network is testing a feature for its mobile app that lets people search through old posts…
Google Authorship—the thing that told you who wrote each article you saw when you searched—is being killed off. The reason? People just don’t use it.
If you’ve ever despaired with a piece of ropey LG software, you’re not alone. But it’s not just pure chance that’s rendered it so bad—it’s practically corporate policy. In a feature about how LG screwed up its webOS acquisition, GigaOM unearthed a fascinating nugget of information about the way software development was incentivized at LG:…
If you haven’t tried out Autodesk’s fabulous Pixlr, a capable photo editor in the browser, you should. It’s good. And now, it’s available as a free desktop program for Mac and Windows. Just like Pixlr’s web version, the desktop edition offers all the basic tools for easily cropping and resizing your images, as well as…
You can start streaming 4K content from Amazon Instant Video as soon as October — but only if you have a Samsung UltraHD aka 4K television set. The announcement comes from Samsung, which has been eager to start pushing 4K content for its UltraHD televisions, which isn’t surprising — not only there isn’t a whole…
I just came from Vienna and I have to admit that I loved it. Part of it was the great company and the other part was the architecture, food, and wine—the Viennese are such hedonists! This time-lapse video of the imperial city in the style of House of Cards* gives a perfect idea about how…
Though we know funny movie maestro Edgar Wright uses a ginormous arsenal of visual tools and tricks when he’s directing a movie, one of his trademarks is his use of close up shots. They’re quick, they’re snappy and they’re so fun to see on the screen. James R. Lloret stitched all of them together in…
What’s more gross than a fungus gnat larva? Thousands of fungus gnat larva swarming together to look like a giant blob snake. From afar, it just looks like a rotten log or snake trying to slide by on the sidewalk but when you get up close, the horror, the horror. Here’s some more videos of…
After rumbling at us all week with unconfirmed subglacial eruptions and tormenting volcanologists to debate will it or won’t it erupt, Bárðarbunga belched forth a fountain of lava. The eruption was both gentle and short-lived with no ash, boding well for air travel. https://gizmodo.com/another-volcano-is-rumbling-under-the-ice-in-iceland-1624326524 https://gizmodo.com/icelandic-scientists-mobilize-monitoring-for-uneasy-vol-1625759095 Bárðarbunga started erupting just after midnight local time with a…
It’s a cruel job being destroyer of childhoods but CinemaSins loves to ham it up when they poke fun at universally loved movies from our past. This time, their target is Toy Story, a movie that’s not just awesome but also responsible for so much more awesome in the Pixar movies that followed it.* *The…
This looks like a scene from a sci-fi game or movie, but it’s actually a photo from one of the latest tests of the X-47B unmanned combat aircraft on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The US Navy is getting really close to the future, people: Combat drones launched automatically from motherships. The Navy’s X-47B completed…
Stunning photo of a lightning striking an Boeing 777 that seems to be in the middle of a perfect rainbow, taken by German photographer Birk Möbius. The image was captured yesterday from an aerodrome in Taucha, Germany. Check out the zoomed image to see the plane being hit by the lightning. SPLOID is a new…
Coral Jade is a street performer that’s pretty much mastered the art of hula hooping. She can twirl them on every part of her body, use them to create mind bending warps and dance with 30 to make it look like she’s being teleported in a JJ Abrams-era Star Trek Transporter. And hey, there’s even…
In 1982, irrepressibly goofy comedian Steve Martin starred in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, a film noir with a whole cast of cinematic heavy hitters. Humphrey Bogart! Cary Grant! Bette Davis! Veronica Lake! All these stars helped popularize the dark genre, but this black-and-white was a affectionately silly spoof, with a twist; each of those…
Remember when Tenacious D came back and dropped Rize of the Fenix back in 2012? Maybe you’re like me and you forgot. Well we’re both terrible because god damn is its first song good. Earlier today I was listening to an episode of the (excellent) Comedy Bang Bang podcast featuring Jack Black and Kyle Gass…
The largest companies consume a shockingly huge amount of the world’s natural resources. Ikea, for instance, uses 17.8 million cubic yards of wood a year. When it comes to cotton, there’s VF Corp., a relatively unknown corporation that owns some of the best-known clothing brands in the world. In a fascinating NPR report about the…
The Atlantic reports that Google’s skunkworks Google X team has spent the last two years working on a secret program. More than a loosely sketched concept like the teaser Amazon pushed out earlier this year, Google appears to be serious about delivery in the air—getting products from the warehouse to their destination in about two…
Where is the internet? This map might explain it better than any statistics could ever hope to: The red hot spots show where the most devices that can access the internet are located. This map was made on August 2 by John Matherly, the founder of Shodan, a search engine for internet-connected devices. Matherly, who…
You can head out into the wilderness for a week of camping with nothing but a love of nature and your outdoor skills, but that’s no way to spend a vacation. There’s nothing wrong with bringing a few creature comforts along, so Stanley has created a Thermos that disassembles into a pot for boiling water…
