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Imagine being able to hear a great historical figure’s voice. It would add such richness to the facts and dates about her or his life. Starting today, Wikipedia will make that possible with the Wikipedia Voice Intro Project, adding short voice recordings to the online encyclopedia. And that’s truly awesome. https://gizmodo.com/listening-to-this-incredible-recording-of-einstein-will-1464557213 WikiVIP announced the program…
Helmets? Check. Breathing tanks? Check. Hoses? Ditto. Algorithms? Yep: the New York City Fire Department is using data mining to predict which of the city’s buildings are at highest risk of catching fire. Now that’s metadata we can get behind. FDNY officials are using a 60-facet algorithm to determine which department-inspected buildings pose the greatest…
Last Saturday, I asked you to name the one thing you keep searching for online, but can’t find. The question was inspired by my unsuccessful three-year search for a song I’d heard once on a college radio station. Serendipitously, I stumbled across it this week—and hearing it again sent shivers up my spine. Here it…
Whoa. Austin Motion Artists Group‘s computer-animated space warp is the grooviest 3 minutes you’ll witness today. It’s positively mesmerizing. Set to The Octopus Project’s song “MMKIT,” the video was animated by 14 teams, each working on an 11-second snippet of the song. Despite the disparate teams contributing to the project, the 3-minute end result is…
Holding out for a better price on an unlocked Moto X? Keep waiting until Monday—then scramble like your hair’s on fire, because Motorola’s cutting off-contract prices by $100 between 3 and 4PM EST on January 27th. https://gizmodo.com/moto-x-review-the-android-phone-for-everybody-1034784286 How’s that work? On Monday, January 27th, Motorola will have a registration form available at this link. Don’t…
From the serious and unexpected geopolitics of a kitchen gizmo to the utterly terrifying notion of a drifting boat full of cannibal rats, Gizmodo brought you some shocking, fascinating, and compelling stories this week. Let’s review, shall we? Why These People Want You to Boycott SodaStream You’d think that, as a company accused of fostering…
This week in Tech Reads: Twitter, YouTube, Her, and much more! New York Times film critic A.O. Scott recounts the weird turn of events when one of his tweets turned into an advertisement for Inside Llewyn Davis, and what happened next. [NYTimes] Ryan Graff explains how the New York Times’ most popular item of 2013…
So what if the East River is iced over and the mercury refuses to climb into the double digits? Commuting on your bike through snow can still be faster and more enjoyable than waiting on an overcrowded subway car. Here’s how make sure your two-wheeler is ready to face Old Man Winter. https://gizmodo.com/new-yorks-frozen-east-river-seen-from-pier-1-playground-1508445224 Clean It,…
This sci-fi electric unicycle is the RYNO, a future-badass alternative to the Segway that looks like it got beamed down from the year 2114. But it’s here, and it’s real, and I got to ride it. Self-taught engineer Chris Hoffmann began working on the RYNO concept in 2006, when his 13-year-old daughter sketched a one-wheeled…
The Wall Street Journal is hearing rumors that Apple wants to expand its mobile payment capabilities beyond iTunes purchases, moving into the space dominated by names like Square, PayPal, and Google. https://gizmodo.com/you-can-use-square-to-give-cash-to-friends-now-1446364218 With over 575 million registered iTunes users, it’s almost surprising that Apple hasn’t already given those users a way to pay for 3rd…
Cold fusion is a theoretical (and highly doubtful) reaction that makes huge amounts of energy. Last year, the inventor claimed his Energy Catalyzer fusion device could produce electricity at 1% the cost of coal. This week, a North Carolina company bought the rights to the tech. Did they get bamboozled? https://gizmodo.com/this-cold-fusion-reactor-costs-1-5-million-might-not-1472100751 Probably. As PopSci points…
The framing material is alternately sheer and grating, a haze of static, a thick brush through which the piano, slow and steady, occasionally makes itself heard — first some tentative notes, then a hint of a melody, then a sour note to emphasize that all is still not well. The development is not restricted to…
David Bowie enjoyed a number of flamboyant Rock-n-Roll personas during his musical career but none as well-known as Ziggy Stardust: the science fictional, androgynous, eyebrowless diva. Here’s Ziggy-Bowie shooting the lights out of Hammersmith Odeon theater in 1973 just before his big announcement See, Bowie had already produced two albums and gone touring using the…
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a…
All you see from your window might be ice, but from this screen you’re eyes will catch nothing but beautiful things. From the worlds of art, architecture, and design, here are the most lovely things we found this week. Don’t you dare go outside; it’s way too dangerous. A frozen Niagara Falls light show looks…
Oh hey, look at that! Another week in the bag. Whether it was a great one or a crappy one, it’s Friday, so you can celebrate/commiserate with a whole slew of brand-new apps. Download, upgrade, and thumb-swipe your way to the weekend. Android Motorola Gallery Motorola’s update to Gallery adds a timeline view alongside the…
Photogravure is a printmaking technique that requires a hell of a lot of prep, but the ghostly effect of the finished work is awesome: it’s like part etching and a bit charcoal drawing, with the spirit of an old timey black-and-white. German photographer Antje Hanebeck and artist Fanny Boucher of studio Atelier Hélio’g in France…
Somewhere 11,000 years ago, something weird happened to a dog. It got cancer—and the really damn freaky part is that the cancer could survive even outside of its canine host. That unknown dog is long dead now, but its tumor cells have improbably lived on, continuing to sprout on the genitalia of dogs all over…
Did you guys know there is a Gizmodo subdomain where you can go for all things photographic? Yep! It’s called Reframe, and it’s where you’ll find additional coverage of gear, techniques, news, and all kinds of great stuff related to the crafts of photography and videography. Here are this week’s best posts: 2014 Oscar Nominees…
Original recipes are one of those things coveted most in marketing. Remember how excited everyone was about Coca-Cola Classic after the New Coke fiasco? Well, sometimes spirits-makers want to get in on that action as well, whether that means a limited-edition release like Beefeater is doing with Burrough’s Reserve, or whether it’s a complete replacement…
