Tech News

Where’s the Straight Line Piece for These Tetris Tater Tots?!

Anyone who’s spent any amount of time playing Tetris knows how vital the straight line pieces are. And that’s why it seems almost absurd that Monarch decided to omit them from its new Tetris-shaped Totris tater tots. In a pinch you could probably use a french fry, but it’s just not the same. That being…

7 Dead Websites That Should Be Brought Back

Last week, we asked you which dead or long-ignored website you want dusted off and brought back to life. You answered the call—all 433 of you who commented—and the result was a tour of the best sites of the 90s and early 2000s. Here are the seven sites you miss the most. Let’s surf the…

LittleBits Now Lets You Build Your Own DIY Smart Home

We’ve known and loved littleBits for some time, and now, they just got a lot more useful with the introduction of cloudBit. CloudBit is a module, a.k.a. bit, that brings internet connectivity to anything. With the rest of the littleBit library, you can now effectively create your own internet of things, no fancy Google products…

The Amazon Prime Music catalog has been expanded by hundreds of thousands of songs, including some previous glaring absences. Time to get your Kendrick Lamar and David Guetta on.

Master Mobile Gaming With This Upgraded Bluetooth NES Controller

Touchscreens are fine for solving puzzles and flinging birds, but for action-based mobile games nothing will ever beat a physical controller in hand. The makers of the FC30, a Bluetooth controller that paid homage to the original Nintendo Famicom, are back with a new and improved wireless gamepad that now hearkens back to the NES.…

William Shatner’s Not a Fan of Facebook’s Celeb App, Mentions

Not for the first time, William Shatner found himself embarking upon a brave mission into the unknown. His destination this time? Facebook’s trial of the Mentions app, designed to help the famous super-followed keep on top of their social media presence. Shatner’s lengthy review of the app ends with the conclusion that it’s not hugely…

Indian company wants to kill Nemo and destroy the Great Barrier Reef

Nemo survived an ordeal in the movie but, according to Greenpeace and UNESCO, he won’t be able to survive human greed: Indian coal giant Adani wants to dredge and dump 3 million cubic meters of sea-floor in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area to make way for a new coal terminal. Obviously, Greenpeace is…

Motorola’s Digital Tattoo Unlocks the Moto X With a Tap

That blotch on the man’s arm there isn’t a bruise from where he was restrained by the police last night, it’s a digital tattoo. A thin electronic film that sticks on and lets you securely unlock your phone with a tap of your arm, neck or wherever you stick it, using NFC. The tattoos have…

Nightmare porcelain figures for evil grandmas

It seems that Danish artist Maria Rubinke makes classic porcelain in the greatest European tradition—until you see the gore details and blood over them. They would be perfect for your grandmother—if she were a vampire, a werewolf, or a psychopath. Images via Maria Rubinke’s Facebook SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…

Amazing trees produce 40 different types of fruit

When Sam Van Aken found out that a New York state orchard—with varieties of stone fruit 200 years old—was about to be abandoned in 2008, he bought it to save those species and to experiment: Grafting from the existing trees he created the magical Tree of 40 Fruit, which produces over 40 types of fruit.…

8-bit game version of The Avengers would be so much fun to play

I don’t know which Avengers character I would love playing the most in this game. Would it be Iron Man so I get to use his crazy ass suit? Thor, for his long locks and hammer? Captain America’s super shield? Ah, who am I kidding, it’d definitely be The Hulk. SPLOID is a new blog…

Here are 10 of the most awesomest movie stunts in film history

CineFix has cooked up a list showing off the top 10 movie stunts of all time. They’re all fantastic and involve groundbreaking scenes where actors fight and jump off buildings, stuntmen fly, cars flip over and everyone defies death. They’re all ridiculous stunts that are epically unreal in scale but manage to make your palms…

All the most amazing supernovas ever photographed

NASA has revealed spectacular, newly reprocessed images of four of the most amazing supernovas ever captured by a human science instrument—the Crab Nebula (top), Tycho, G292.0+1.8, and 3C58—to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Chandra observatory. I decided to go one step further and collect them all. We have detected other supernova, but I have…

The Best Movie About a Racist’s Head On a Black Man’s Body Ever Made

You’ve probably never heard of The Thing With Two Heads—much less actually seen it. In which case, believe me, you have not lived. The premise is relatable enough—your impending death prompts you to develop a wildly unprecedented technique for transplanting your head onto another human’s body so you can ultimately take over that body’s entire…

Soltero: Communist Love Song

Radiolab’s latest episode on the Galapagos is a real doozy: tortoise sex, Judas goats, and blood-sucking maggots. But if you’re a journo nerd like me, you might be paying attention to the name of Radiolab’s reporter, Tim Howard—not the U.S. Secretary of Defense (sorry, folks) but the same guy behind a much cherished song of…

Yep, Microsoft Killed the Surface Mini. For Real.

In an earnings report released today, Microsoft confirmed what many of us had already accepted into our hearts: The Surface Mini is dead. Under the headline “Computing and Gaming Hardware,” the company’s lengthy report confirms the kill in one toss-away sentence: “Current year cost of revenue included Surface inventory adjustments resulting from our transition to…

The Bat-Chart of (Nearly) Every Bat-Villain Batman Ever Beat

Batman turns 75 this year, and over that time he’s defeated so many baddies, even Alfred probably has trouble keeping track of them all. ZAP! Here’s a pulp-inspired chart from Pop Chart Lab that chronicles (nearly) every crim banished from the streets of Gotham. This uber-detailed chart breaks down major and minor villains alike by…

The Sun Emits a Plasma Arc So Big You Could Fit 25 Earths Beneath It

The sun is big. Really, really big. It’s so big, every feature on it is mind-boggling huge. Last week it spun out a massive prominence arcing out into space so ginormous that a mischievous fireproof Titan could’ve used it as a hoop to dunk the Earth in a game of cosmic basketball. How big was…

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel in 2000

PayPal Chief Executive Officer Peter Thiel, left, and founder Elon Musk, right, pose with the PayPal logo at corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Oct. 20, 2000. [Associated Press] Factually is Gizmodo’s new blog of fun facts, interesting photos, and weird trivia. Join us on Twitter and Facebook.

Cruise Ship Cabins Are Built on an Assembly Line Just Like Cars

Ever wonder how cruise ships are built? Well, Royal Caribbean just released a new video that sheds a little bit of light onto the process, specifically how the cabins are manufactured. It’s surprisingly similar to how your Ford got built. The short video takes you inside the factory of Meyer Werft, a German shipyard founded…