Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The momentum inherent in the title of EGA’s “Northward” is not undermined by the track itself. The piece by the Bratislava, Slovakia, musician has a methodical, forward-pushing sense of movement — a track with a purpose. Its steady, slowly insistent pace doesn’t just suggest motion — so, too, does the track expand as it proceeds,…
An earth-grazing fireball skimmed through the atmosphere 63 miles above South Carolina late last week, leaving a bright trail for 290 miles before burning up over Tennessee. The entire 20-second event was captured by a NASA telescope. On May 15th at just after 8:30 pm central time, a lump of rock roughly 10 inches in…
Vanagons and peyote—they’re a match made in psychoactive heaven. Antonio Vicentini animated this bubbly and delightful short based on original artwork from Jesus Cardenas. Just remember to keep your eyes (however many you think you now posess) on the road.
Available streaming on Netflix and Amazon, “Mile…Mile and a Half” isn’t about the most epic adventure on the planet, it’s about one you, too, could go on. If you have a month to spare that is. More info here.
Meet makeup artist Elsa Rhae. Also known as a White Walker. Or Captain Planet. Or the Grinch. Or anybody, really. Rhae can transform her face into pretty much anything in the world because she’s simply incredible at what she does. She uses make up and face paint to bring characters to life in the real…
Fix anything, anywhere. That’s the multitool promise, but buying the wrong one can leave you stranded. Here’s how to get the right one, the first time. Step One: How Will You Carry It? You’re hanging out at the beach when the screw falls out of your prescription eyeglasses, again. Don’t worry, your multitool’s got the…
It’s more than just one thing, of course. But Spielberg’s masterful use of the long take is one of the things that make him so great. While most directors would use the long take as a way to teleport the viewer into another world and show off their skills, Spielberg tries to uses the trick…
Lauren Wade at TakePart re-imagined famous classic paintings to fit today’s “standards” by Photoshopping the subjects in the paintings to look like magazine cover models. That basically means: impossibly skinny waists, thinner arms, basically no joy of fat whatsoever but still have bigger breasts somehow. It’s quite embarrassing to see how starved our definition of…
When faced with a scene in real life, it seems obvious that this is a massive landscape, or a microscopic view under extreme magnification. But when you capture that view and place it out of context, the difference between a pebble and a boulder is quickly lost. Epidote thin section under cross-polarized light. Image credit:…
The mythos of Game of Thrones draws theories from fans like moths to dragon flame, and scientists are not immune. It’s Okay to be Smart pulls together the various theories about different aspects of science within the lore in one tidy video covering everything from orbital dynamics to chemistry. Host Joe Hanson starts with trying…
According to RatedRR, the “XS1 is the largest-caliber Precision Guided Firearm available today.” This video demonstrates how its automatic targeting system works over 1,123 yards. That’s 0.6 miles (one kilometer.) This is the kind of stuff we only imagined in science fiction movies only a few years ago. The rifle’s automatic targeting system—Tag Track Xact—can…
Man, this looks like some end of the world type weather. It’s the type of thunderstorm I’d see in a movie and think the CGI was too fake. It’s the type of supercell I’d see in real life and think it’s all over for everybody. It remind us how small we are, how incredible (and…
1930: A woman sitting in a proposed child’s nursery of the future, at the Ideal Home Exhibition in Olympia, London on March 24th. If you’re in New York, be sure to check out the ideal futuristic home of today at Gizmodo’s Home of the Future — May 17-21 at 268 Mulberry Street, near Houston Street…
These images may or may not correspond to a refueling incident between a KC-135 Stratotanker and a French Air Force’s Rafale jet fighter, but I don’t really care because they are just an excuse to say that this is perhaps the coolest, most space-invaders-looking jet flying today. A French fighter aircraft rolls left away from…
I knew magnetic putty is a hungry gross thing that likes to eat stuff, but this doesn’t look like magnetic putty at all. This looks like a hungry alien monster blindly looking to suck on some food (a giant magnet.) A 100-pound magnetic putty monster.
Checking out Emoji use on Twitter is nothing new, but new web app Silicon Feelings is the first we’ve seen to pull the tweets’ geolocation data, too. The result is absolutely mesmerizing. Created by Bradley Griffith, the site actually pulls its data from Emoji Tracker, though it only displays a) the most popular emoji and…
Our bodies aren’t perfect. Every time a cell reproduces, it makes about 120,000 mistakes in the replication of its DNA, introducing mutations that can lead to uncontrollable division. What we know as cancer. But, if this happens all the time, why don’t we all have cancer? Here’s the answer. SPLOID is a new blog about…
Canada’s space program is understated — it has only a handful of astronauts, lots of suitcase satellites, and no photogenic rockets. But it excels in remote robotic arms, creating the iconic Canadarms. More than cranes, these arms delicately grasp and manipulate all the things an astronaut needs. A sliver of light highlighting the Canadarm and…
For many people who live in cities, dish-drying racks are an ugly necessity. You can find some decent-looking ones and some that you can fold up and hide. But this bendy silicon skyline of a dish rack would look terrific on any countertop. https://gizmodo.com/a-structural-dish-rack-makes-you-forget-youre-doing-di-590040414 Designed by Francesco Dompieri and inspired by Christopher Nolan’s Inception, this…
Rejoice, for the first fully functional, 1:1 scale R2-D2 is at last a reality. And it’s amazing. As amazing as this video of Darth Lily—the cutest girl in the galaxy—hugging him. L3-G0, as it is called, started as a CAD project in August 2013, when Shawn and Lara Steele decided that it was time for…