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The Amazon Fire Phone isn’t great. But its first software updatemeans that it now does multi-tasking, allows you to organize apps in folders, lets you pin apps to the home screen, and last longer on a charge, too. Still not good, but catching up.
It’s not all about Google Fiber: Cincinnati Bell is now offering gigabit internet to customers in its home town, too.
CineFix says these 10 scenes are the best improvised scenes in film history. They include the best of Judd Apatow, the insane brilliance of Apocalypse Now, Bob Downey doing his Bob Downey thing and movies from the master of improv, the late Robin Williams. Do you agree? The list: Bridesmaids Apocalypse Now Iron Man The…
Love Reddit? Love your XBOX One? This is your lucky day. Microsoft is launching ReddX, a dedicated Reddit app for the XBOX one, which will allow users to submit their own links and upvote and downvote content by — you guessed it — just screaming at your TV (Kinect required). The app, according to XBOX’s…
Many smart TV platforms are less than perfect, so you’re almost always better off adding some kind of streaming device. Now Roku is cutting out the middleman completely, by releasing TVs with Roku baked right inside. Synergy! There are two OEMs making Roku TV, TCL and Hisense. The TCL sets go on sale today via…
Tanks are Goliaths. They’re covered with layers and layers of thick armor for protection, which makes them huge and slow-moving. Now, DARPA wants to change that. For the last 100 years, the ability of weapons to punch holes through thick armor has advanced faster than the armor’s ability to withstand protection, says a DARPA release.…
This video, from Claire Thomas, shows off the versatility and all around awesomeness of eggs. It’s close up shot after slow mo shot after food porn shot of that beautiful yellow jello orb that, when added to anything, makes everything taste a little better. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on…
Few people make killing people look as entertainingly graphic and creatively brutal as Quentin Tarantino does in his movies. All of his films, from Reservoir Dogs to Django, are notorious for violent deaths that sometimes number in the hundreds. Watch them all in this supercut by Jaume R. Lloret. It shows every death scene in…
Etna and Stromboli are a pair of Italian volcanoes currently gurgling away with glowing red lava flows and fingers of smoke. Astronauts Reid Wiseman and Alex Gerst cooperated for a bit of photography teamwork to capture both volcanoes in a pair of photographs spanning night and day. Admittedly, the lineup isn’t exactly perfect — the…
Here’s a recipe for fun: Go up to the 48th floor of a skyscraper in London. Enjoy a beer at the rooftop bar. Change into your base jumping gear in the restroom. Make a beeline for the balcony and jump into the heart of London. Illegal? Probably. Fun as hell to watch? Absolutely. Two anonymous…
The most valuable stamp in the world is a red smudge, but the coolest postal payments just might be these itty bitty stickies from 1970s Bhutan. They’d legally get your letter where it needed to go, and play the country’s national anthem (yes, really!). Bhutan—a somewhat isolated (and very happy) kingdom bordered by India and…
The former Microsoft head-honcho and now owner of the Los Angles Clippers sportsball club took to the stage for the first time since dropping $2 billion on the team. There was fanfare! There was Ballmer Yelling™! Personal contact information was revealed! Wait what? https://gizmodo.com/29-new-ballmer-friendly-logos-for-the-la-clippers-1622214009 According to multiple sources, Steve Ballmer revealed his email address so…
The first time I heard Diplo, it was on a mix CD burned for me by a boy I liked in the 11th grade. I remember thinking “what is a Diplo,” and searching Kazaa furiously for more songs by this person or people. Now the dude is everywhere. In the 10 years since Diplo’s first…
Android Police reports that Google’s forthcoming subscription version of YouTube will be called YouTube Music Key. And even if there are tons of streaming music services out there, this YouTube offering sounds like it could be different in some exciting ways. YouTube’s supposedly had a subscription streaming service in works for a long, long time,…
“PFFFFTTTTTT! WE ALREADY KNEW THAT!” was a common response from some people when last summer’s Snowden leaks revealed that the NSA was monitoring American communications. And in some ways, they were right. We already knew a lot thanks to PBS documentaries. So what PBS documentary will we point to when we learn that the eye-in-the-sky…
If you have not yet witnessed the wonder of an octopus changing color instantaneously, then you should go do that right now. We humans are only slowly playing camouflage catch up. A new color-changing sheet that adapts to the light it senses brings us a tiny step closely to octopi. The device, presented this week…
Solar-powered flashlights consistently suffer from one glaring problem: They’re ugly as hell. But that’s nothing that a multidisciplinary creative collective from Japan can’t solve. Enter Graf. This Osaka-based team is made up of a range of experts, from an architect to a chef to a furniture designer. The collective designed an LED flashlight for the…
Charles and Ray Eames were the archetypal design power couple, who each brought their own distinct kind of creative genius to the personal and professional partnership. When they visited NBC’s daytime Home show in 1956 to debut their (now-iconic) eponymous lounge, Charles introduced themselves thusly: “Ray is a painter. I am an architect.” Host Arlene…
There are over 1 billion cars in the world, and the vast majority of them use batteries made from lead. As lithium batteries replace these old timers, eventually there may be many of the lead suckers sitting in landfills. Which is why MIT wanted to find a way to reuse them—by turning them into a…
While terrestrial humans tolerate stinky, sticky garbage trucks, our astronaut brethren opt for something much more beautiful for their disposal runs. This streak of fire across the night sky is the burning of the Cygnus spacecraft, dirty laundry, and other junk. On the flip side, garbage day is a lot less frequent. Top image: Cygnus…
