Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Decades before molecular gastronomists were hawking vodka mist and caviar foam, we had food that was just plain fun: Pop Rocks, Magic Shell, and countless other strange creations that required a science lab to invent. We took a look into the origins of these wacky treats, and what we found were lab experiments gone wrong,…
Rust is the worst enemy of any classic car owner, but it’s also evidence of nature in the industrial age—an urban rot with occasionally beautiful side effects. https://gizmodo.com/shooting-challenge-rust-514261946 WINNER: Sandstone Camera: Nokia Lumia 920 ISO: 100 F 2.0 Shutter Speed: 1/400 This is my first submission but I’ve been a long time reader of Gizmodo.…
Rich Lee has freed himself from the frustrations of misplacing or having to untangle his headphones ever again. How? He’s what’s known as a grinder: someone who experiments with surgical implants or body-enhancements, and he’s come up with a doozie. Implanted in his tragus—the stiff protrusion just in front of your ear canal—is a small…
NASA just has released this photo captured almost two weeks ago during spacesuit check tests at the Orion Crew Module mockup. I cannot stop staring at it in awe – it is almost the real thing, it gives you a heavy deja vu, because you saw such scenes billion times when you crawled through the…
The family of a Phoenix man who committed suicide this past September has filed a lawsuit against Fox News over the live broadcast of the event. Understandably, the family says that they suffered emotional distress after the broadcast, which was seen on TV sets and computer screens all over the world. Anchor Shepard Smith apologized…
Foursquare’s latest update to its iOS app now lets you check friends in, so you’re not all blankly staring at your phones and ignoring each other. Don’t worry, you’ll have to give your friends explicit permission to do so. Just check under the settings tab. [Foursquare]
The seven-year-old Emma Mærsk can carry more cargo than a 41-mile-long train and has a turning radius of almost a mile. Even compared to oil tankers, she’s more like a city than a boat—albeit a city that few people ever get to explore. But in 2010, a young photographer named Jakob Wagner became one of…
What is the saddest thing? For millions of people who fool around on the Internet all day while other people do the work, the saddest thing is a web video that’s slow to load. YouTube is on the case, and Gizmodo has an exclusive look at how online video will change forever.
According to The Verge, Microsoft’s Xbox Music service will launch in the form of a web-based version accessible across platforms next week. That would make sense given that Microsoft’s Build developer shebang happens, uh, tomorrow. Maybe more importantly, move makes sense given the big Xbox push the company is set to make at the end…
There is a moment between when you click on a video and when it starts playing. That moment is the worst part of your day. The agony of waiting! The torture of anticipation! YouTube understands that, and on a visit to YouTube HQ in San Bruno, CA, we got a look at what’s coming to…
By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The states with long histories of racism—specifically, the southern states where black humans were kept as slaves who could be legally bought, sold, raped and murdered—have had federal oversight since 1965 to protect minority voters. That’s over now. https://jezebel.com/scotus-declares-racism-over-strikes-down-section-of-vo-572129965 This…
When the Google Street View team rolled through Tokyo recently, a bunch of writers from a Japanese humor website were there with these eerie pigeon masks. The “human pigeons” then stood around gawking at the Google van, and here are the weird results.
Google’s latest Transparency Report is out, and in its latest incarnation, the document reveals data on its “Safe Browsing” initiative, which attempts to protect users from sites that are either phishing for data or installing malicious software. According to Google, it keeps 1 billion users safe and flags some 10,000 sites per day. Additionally, Google’s…
Full Throttle is a brand new roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California. But it’s not just any new thrill ride—it features the tallest vertical loop in the world. And this gravity-defying first-person perspective footage of the new loop de loop will twist your stomach into a Gordian Knot. What should you…
Didier Esteyne and EADS turned heads at the 2011 Paris Air Show when they debuted the the world’s first all-electric airplane, the single-seat Cri-Cri. Fast forward two years, and the miniscule Cri-Cri has grown into a sleek tandem-seat training craft that’s as green as it is acrobatic. Dubbed the E-Fan, this Light Sport Aircraft prototype…
A woman accidentally crushed her husband against a wall while backing up too far and fast, instantly killing him. She was fatally injured in the same maneuver as her head—which was out the car’s window—hit another wall to the left of the car. Sadly, the accident was witnessed by their 6-year-old daughter.
When you’re a parent, you’ll do anything for your kids. But there’s nothing wrong if that anything happens to benefit you too. So what if you’re traveling, or visiting friends, and your kids are in dire need of a place to play with their toy cars or trains? Just slip on one of these playmat…
We’d all love to be able to blast sound to the high heavens, but sadly, most of us lack the space and/or patient neighbors willing to put up with it. Well today, gaming gear giant Razer is announcing new software that it claims will be able to turn your ordinary headphones into a professional-grade set…
You can now share videos on Instagram. That means alongside your beautiful, emotive photos, there will be beautiful, emotive moving images. Right? Not so fast. While the Facebook-owned company has introduced a set of unique features to challenge the likes of Vine, there are a few reasons why Instagram might find that the inclusion of…
We already have autonomous robots that can drive, fly, swim—even operate in space. And now, thanks to researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, we’ll soon be dealing with bots that can tackle the final frontier here on earth—or should we say inside earth—with a self-burrowing robot that works underground. It’s hard to see…
