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The New York Botanical Garden is packed with over 7.3 million specimens from all over the world. And when you’ve got that many plants, you need to get a little creative when it’s time to take their picture. It’s a high tech affair. Popular Science recently profiled the NYBG archival process and explained that the…
Ouch. That has got to hurt. Ice climber Mark R. was climbing up a mountain when he was sent plummeting down by a piece of falling ice that hit him. He then basically avalanches down the mountain side and hits every rock down the way. It’s like a scene from Game of Thrones but completely…
Who knew growing rice on a mountain could be so beautiful? The Ailao Mountains in Yunnan, China, have been carved into thousands of gradual steps, each a paddy growing red rice. The rice terraces stretch out over some 400 square miles of mountains and valleys. The Hani people moved into the area and began carving…
It’s Christmas Day. You’ve carefully wrapped the Beats headphones your daughter’s been dreaming of, and she’s just about to see that dream become reality. Looking on with glee, you watch as she tears the paper from her brand new set of cans only to find that these were cans of a markedly different sort. Tuna,…
The decrepit old visitor center at Stonehenge has been too small and too old for decades. In fact, it’s been described with typical Brit candor as “disgraceful” and an “embarrassment” to England. Finally, this month, a new, $44 million visitors’ center has opened—here’s a look inside. A lot has changed at Stonehenge since the 1970s,…
If you’ve watched with envy as the internet fills up with endless photo galleries of abandoned buildings in Detroit, perhaps now is your time to get in on the action: for the low, low price of only $45, you can buy a ticket and take locally-run “tours of abandoned factories, churches and schools.” A Detroit…
After admitting yesterday that some encrypted data had been pulled by the hack potentially affecting 40 million customers, Target has gone on to further confirm that the encrypted data stolen does in fact include PIN information. Whether or not the hackers will be able to extract the PINs from this data, though, remains to be…
It was an exciting year for time capsules! Am I allowed to say without getting my lunch money stolen and then violently stuffed into a locker? The oldest known message in a bottle was discovered in Canada. We finally found the long-lost Steve Jobs capsule in Colorado. And a time capsule even left the solar…
Post-processing is an important part of photography, and it becomes even more important with smartphone photos that may lack depth of color and and dynamic range. With the advent of Instagram and its imitators, filters have come to rule the day for most casual photogs, but many of us demand more control. Here are five…
Despite a recent ruling that it might be unconstitutional, a U.S. judge ruled on Friday that the NSA’s telephone surveillance program is in fact legal and does not violate the 4th Amendment. Legality is “ultimately a question of reasonableness,” said U.S. District Judge William Pauley. https://gizmodo.com/federal-judge-says-nsa-phone-spying-is-probably-unconst-1484358756 Pauley did admit, however, that the NSA bulk telephony…
Maps: Where would we be without them? This was banner year for beautiful, information-dense cartography, which provided a moment of self-reflection like a giant, geographic mirror. Here are our favorite maps from 2013 that helped us find our place in the world. A Map of Who’s Got the Best (And Worst) Internet Connections in America…
Google Play is celebrating the end of 2013 by giving away a bunch of free stuff — including Kanye’s latest album Yeezus and CHVRCHES’ The Bones of What You Believe. Along with the free albums, Google Play Music has a bunch of free “best of 2013” singles and free favorite songs that didn’t necessarily come…
While my own Verizon horror story did work out in the end (replacement phone received, $500 penalty avoided, woohoo), not many people have a globe-spanning soapbox like Gizmodo upon which to kvetch. Here are ten of the most stupendously terrible cases of customer service our readers have had to endure. https://gizmodo.com/my-own-personal-verizon-horror-story-1480291726 It should be noted,…
Tim Cook says that Apple has BIG plans for 2014. Everyone is assuming that it will finally be the fabled Apple TV set. Our friend Martin Hajek joined forces with Andrew Ambrosino to make this awesome curved Apple TV set which supposedly would reduce glare and reflection. Martin thinks that he likes the way Andrew’s…
Death falling from the sky: This unique video shows the warheads from a Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and hitting their targets at the Kura Test Range, located in northern Kamchatka Krai, a Russian Federation territory north of Japan. If real, the video shows phases 7 and 8 in this diagram: The graphic…
Two Russian cosmonauts have just begun a seven-hour spacewalk to install equipment on the exterior of the International Space Station. Watch them, live — because no matter what you do, their work day is way cooler than yours. Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy are performing scheduled ISS maintenance today, not related to the two emergency…
Despite being a great idea, public transit always seems to be fighting an uphill battle for public opinion. Atlanta’s MARTA subway system has been roundly criticized for, among other things, smelling like pee, and the transit line won’t take it sitting down: this month, MARTA began installing first-of-its-kind urination detectors in the subway’s elevators. https://gizmodo.com/this-animated-gif-perfectly-sums-up-why-no-one-should-e-1467819267…
Polar explorers Ben Saunders and Tarka L’Herpiniere of the Scott Expedition have successfully reached the South Pole—on foot. When Gizmodo last saw Saunders, he was here with us in New York City walking us through the expedition’s high-tech gear and looking ahead to where he and L’Herpiniere might be before the New Year. Just in…
I honestly can’t tell if this is a joke or the next Rebecca Black. Please let it be both.
These are the most photographed places in the world according to Google Maps’ Panoramio service, which collects geolocated images uploaded by Google users. Of course, many people take photos and don’t upload them to Google Maps but to other local services. In any case, it’s a very neat map. SPLOID is a new blog about…
