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This robot may not look like much—it is, after all, just a cube—but despite its simple geometry, it’s capable of balancing, jumping, and even walking. Built by Mohanarajah Gajamohan at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, we came across Cubli earlier this year. But since, it’s become a little more advanced, and can…
This is how the Great Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda would look in the sky if it were bright enough. Sadly, its light is too faint. But imagine seeing that every night. Would you get tired of it? I know I wouldn’t. Unfortunately, it’s not that bright. But it’s a beautiful simulation anyway, one that gives…
OK, so you’ve spent the last week stuffing your face with the stuff, so now how about learning about it, too? In this video, the Science Show explains everything you need to know about chocolate. From where it comes from, though what its active ingredient is, to how it works, he explains it all. Including…
Door-to-door mail delivery might be on its last legs, but that isn’t stopping the US Postal Service from flogging the horse. Now, it’s testing a mobile point-of-sale system to reduce waiting times in its customer lines. The new technology, reports Postal News, is called Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS), and uses a modified iPod Touch…
Just a couple of months back Samsung launched the M7 streaming speaker, a device which was strikingly similar to a Sonos. Now, it has a smaller version called the M5, which is… also strikingly similar to a Sonos. With just three drivers inside rather than five, the speaker is somewhat more portable, and certainly easier…
A new year, and new sales taxes on Amazon purchases made in Indiana, Nevada and Tennessee. Sorry, folks!
One of the beauties of SoundCloud.com is the casual nature of much of its content. Musicians upload not only finished recordings but works-in-progress, which serve as windows into their creative process, arguably providing a more intimate, fluid, and digitally natural listening experience that do sites whose structure is more clearly modeled on the brick’n’mortar system…
Looking at this video, it seems like scientists at the University of Tokyo have mastered the Force and they’re now able to make things levitate and move in space. But magic this is not, young Skywalker—it’s the first time that anyone has achieved such a feat using sound waves. Given enough energy, they can move…
“All Together Now” is Chris Ware’s latest cover for The New Yorker and it offers, yet again, a pretty pitch-perfect perspective on our collective obsession with handheld tech; four years on, and we’re still seeing the world through our screens. You can read more from Ware about the latest cover here. [The New Yorker]
One of the great joys offered by an old library is stepping through the doors and being greeted by an overwhelming sense of stillness. Endless stories exist between the covers resting on the shelves but, until you crack open a title and start to read, it’s blissfully oh so quiet. England’s Bristol Central Library is…
Sure, light painting is awesome when you’re doing long exposure shots with a PixelStick or something, but that’s only one way to cover your world in glowing graffiti. Take, for instance, this LED-powered rainbow plane. Whipped up by Instructables user roballoba, the rainbow plane (planebow?) is a pretty involved process, but the results are worth…
Sure, we all know pollution destroys ecosystems, but, for better or for worse, pollution can create ecosystems, too. The billions of tiny pieces of plastic that are now floating in our oceans are exactly that: a novel ecosystem humans have unwittingly made by throwing away too much plastic. Microbes and insects that might have no…
We’ve been promised that touchscreen smartphones and tablets are the future of mobile gaming, but those of us who grew up with Game Boys and Game Gears know that physical buttons and joysticks are still the way to go. That’s not to say touchscreen devices don’t make for wonderful portable consoles, they just need a…
If you live in an apartment or condo in a big city, and have managed to find a little room on your tiny balcony for a modest garden, you probably don’t have much space left for the tools needed to toil over your cramped crops. So inventor Marc R. came up with this rather clever…
Giorgio Vasari’s “Last Supper,” catastrophically damaged by the 1966 flooding of the Arno River in Florence, has finally been pieced together again—with the help of glue made from sturgeons. That’s right: fish. The Getty Foundation in Los Angeles funded the dirty work, which was so complex it had been put on hold for nearly half…
Imagine an alternate world where our coins are graced not by unsmiling presidents but Frankenstein, ET, skulls, pirates—hell, even a butt. That’s the funny, fanciful world of Italian artist Paolo Curcio. Curcio has created some truly remarkable hobo nickels, an art form originally popular, as their name would suggest, among hobos during the Great Depression.…
The slow motion clips in this video by Simmon Hammond look like computer generated scenes from a superhero movie—the exquisite photography, the dramatic color, and the camera moves are just too perfect to be real. But it is real. And it feels magical. It may be a commercial for the Sony A7R cameras but I…
It may seem a little opulent, but a lot of us won’t leave home with at least our smartphone—maybe even two—and a tablet. And eventually one of them is going to need a battery boost, so instead of carrying charging cables and adapters for every single device, toss this single colorful USB adapter in your…
We here at Gizmodo enjoy a rich, vibrant history of tiny creatures riding Roombas. So naturally, we can think of no better way to welcome Baby New Year than with an actual baby. Riding a Roomba. Straight into 2014 and into our hearts. Our clean, dust-free hearts. [@hellogiggle via Kyle Wagner] https://gizmodo.com/turtle-on-roomba-5534458
I love rocket launches photos, especially when they are as awesome as this photo by Pat Corkery, featured by the US Air Force. The 45th Space Wing successfully launched a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the second Mobile User Objective System (MUOS-2) satellite for the U.S. Navy July 9, 2013, at Cape Canaveral…
