Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
While Google’s word definitions may literally be a little odd at times, the “define word” search command is incredibly convenient—and it’s now got a whole lot more useful, too. https://gizmodo.com/googles-definition-of-literally-is-not-the-literal-def-1143090535 An update to the search tool means that the define command now throws up a nice table of data about the word in question, not…
Samsung has been denied a new trial over the long-standing dispute of Apple’s ‘bounce back’ scrolling patent. Finally!
If you’ve ever wondered why certain foods taste great together—tomato and basil or, hell, peanut butter and jelly—then wonder no longer. This amazing visualization from Scientific American shows how flavors are linked, and explains why certain combinations work so well. In the fully interactive visualization, each blue dot is a food which sits in one…
Xerox is finally rolling out an update for those rogue copiers that mix up numbers.
So we might have found Biff Tannen. A guy in Wisconsin was texting and driving a Ford Mustang convertible when BAM… he crashed into a tractor pulling a trailer “full of liquid manure”. Yikes, that might actually be worse than Biff’s fate in Back to the Future. Police said that the crash occurred on Highway…
Be careful what you wish for, otherwise your three-hour tour could become a three-course meal.
This is what it looks like when a gun is pointing at you. It’s a terrifying view that I hope nobody ever has to see. With photographs captured by Peter Andrew, Simon Duffy and Derek Blais, the ongoing photo series Point Blank shows what different types of guns—Glocks, Desert Eagles, Uzis, etc.—look like up close.…
When you drop a burning ball of nickel onto the world’s largest gummy bear, the synthetic gummy bear surprisingly wins. There’s just too much gummy! But if you put that same burning ball of nickel onto normal sized gummy bears? No contest. Those little tasty fellers get destroyed and smoked and scorched and juiced and…
Well, that’s not supposed to happen. A SpaceX rocket exploded during a test flight in Texas earlier today. This was the second test for the three engine version of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket. There were no injuries. SpaceX told USA Today that, “an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system…
According to a Bloomberg report, Amazon has tested its own wireless network. As in a network that people would use to connect to the Internet. As in axing the middle man and essentially becoming a carrier or ISP on its own. As in potentially using a ‘Amazon Wireless’-type service to get on the Internet from…
Remember a few months ago when Pandora announced that it would impose a 40-hour listening cap on mobile users who don’t pay for a subscription? Well, it’s going away September 1st—just days before Apple’s iTunes Radio is expected to go live. Coincidence?
The food we consume as a child has a huge influence on how we eat throughout adult life. Monster-branded corn-syrup-infused puffs of starch and sweetener can start a youngster down a path of overeating, diabetes, heart disease and early death. But still, people miss their “Fruit Brute,” which is returning for Halloween! https://gizmodo.com/the-triumphant-return-of-the-most-terrifying-cereals-of-1185520573
Most people are just not very fond of spiders. So why don’t the humans join forces and use all their terrible weapons and poisons to destroy every last spider on the Earth? It’s a big job, but some people say the time to start is now. [Photo via Shutterstock.] https://gizmodo.com/why-isnt-science-doing-something-about-goddamn-spiders-1178733212
You could argue that dry ice is one of the coolest (heh) things on the planet and you wouldn’t be wrong. But other than seeing white smoke crawl around the block, what else can you do with dry ice? Grant Thompson, constant haver of household fun, cooked up five different pranks and tricks you can…
Do you know how much people spend on weddings? Way too much, that’s how much. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can have a great wedding that’s special and fun and all of that, without even going into debt for the rest of your life. (You already have student loans for that.)…
Lifehacker has a good—and depressing—guide on how we waste money. They offer some suggestions about how to save it, but they can be summarized in one: don’t spend it. Or reduce your expectations and don’t work so much to get money just to waste or—worse—to save it until you are too old to waste it.…
Look at the text message conversation between any two people in the 12 to late 20s age range and there’s a pretty decent chance you’ll get a deluge of brightly colored cartoon icons that, just a few years ago, would have seemed entirely nonsensical. Now they can tell entire tales. Yes, Emojis have taken over,…
Futurists are always talking about how flexible electronics will change our lives in amazing ways, but we’ve yet to see anything mind-blowing come to market. A team of scientists from the University of Texas in Austin, however, think they’ve found the key to changing that: ultrafast graphene transistors printed on flexible plastic. Graphene is amazing…
Kotaku’s Evan Narcisse says that “within two minutes of playing Thralled my chest got tight and my head started to throb.” The iPad game puts you in the role of a slave mother fleeing with her baby. He says it was so powerful that it made him cry. https://kotaku.com/i-really-need-this-creepy-game-about-a-runaway-slave-to-1184668918
Long before prison guards started carrying tasers, tear gas, and other non-lethal deterrents, they apparently relied on these cell door keys that also functioned as tiny one-shot pistols. They probably weren’t lethal, but there’s no doubt they packed enough of a punch to make an inmate very uncomfortable if they tried anything while a guard…
