Tech News

Tons of Hackers Are Hanging Out in Old Soviet Cyberspace

The Internet is a huge place. Some parts of it are awesome, but others are…less so. And falling squarely in that latter category is the ancient .su domain, once the cyberhome of the Soviet Union. It’s not exactly well maintained, or well policed, which is why more and more online criminals are using it as…

How to Conquer Your Inbox Once and For All

If you find a feeling of helpless despair descending upon you every time you open up your email inbox, help is at hand—you can get on top of your messages without hiring a personal secretary, and we’re here to show you how. Offering a prescriptive, step-by-step method that’s going to work for everyone seems a…

The Kickass Processors That Will Power Your Next Computer

Bits and pieces of info about Intel’s brand new 4th generation processors have been dripping out for months now. Good graphics, crazy battery life. Exciting stuff. Finally, though, we’ve got a full view of guts that’ll power most of next year’s computers, and they’ll be available starting June 4th. The future looks very, very bright.…

Security Camera Paintings Are an Art Project for Big Brother

There are security cameras all over the place, and as we creep ever forward into a technological utopia distopia future, there are going to be even more, gazing at you from the street corners, in stores, and who knows where else. But all that footage doesn’t have to be pure surveillance; you can turn it…

The Only Lego Set You Will Enjoy Destroying More Than Building It

I guess this had to happen sooner or later: Lego’s latest and greatest Star Wars megaset is not an awesome spaceship, a short astromech or a moon-sized metal ball that makes death. No, my dear friends, this $250 1,990-piece set is the Ewok Village. https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-the-new-gigantic-lego-imperial-shuttle-5565333 https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-lego-r2-d2-is-the-lego-set-you-must-get-this-5894057 https://gizmodo.com/3-800-piece-death-star-diorama-is-coolest-star-wars-leg-5018137 For that price, you get to build “a…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Swear Words (NSFW)

God bless America, every mother fucking one of us. Kids & Explosions, the “boy who makes songs by stealing other people’s songs and making them worse,” explores America’s rapidly shifting cultural values—away from apple pie and baseball, towards camel toes and baseheads—through the sampling of everyone from EAZY-E to Cyndi Lauper to Radiohead in his…

The TSA Has Finally Removed All of Its Naked Full-Body Scanners

The TSA has announced that the “naked image” full-body scanners at airports that have caused so much controversy are no more. The scanners have been removed from all of America’s airports. Replacing it are machines that show ‘generic images’ of the human body. TSA Administrator John Pistole wrote in a letter to the Homeland Security…

How Big Would an iPhone Be If You Combined All the iPhones Ever Sold

Very, very big. Like way bigger than the new World Trade Center big. Like almost double the world’s tallest tower big. If you combined all the iPhones ever sold into a single gigantic monolith of a phone, it’d be 5,059 feet tall and 2,846 feet across. Ridiculous! In Animal’s very silly series Stupid Calculations, Josh…

Google won’t approve any Google Glass apps that use facial recognition software. Well, for now. Google said, “we won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place”. Strong privacy protections aren’t in place right now, I guess. [Google]

This Week’s Top Comedy Video: Jon Lajoie’s Get Rich Kickstarter

Kickstarter campaigns can be awesome. Or sometimes be invigoratingly useful like Veronica Mars. Or be revealingly sad like Zach Braff’s. Or what about ridiculously blatant like comedian Jon Lajoie. Lajoie, who stars on FX’s The League, mocks all Kickstarter campaigns by asking people to donate to his cause by making him rich. Because people with…

A Map of Which State Had the Most Electricity in 1921

1921 must have been a weird (read: terrible) year to live in the United States. They were getting out of World War I but not quite in the Roaring Twenties yet. They were beginning to suffer through Prohibition and judging by this map of electricity users, if you didn’t live on the East Coast, you…

This Space Invaders 404 Page Is the Funnest 404 Error Page Ever

Few things are worse on the Internet than reaching a 404 Error page. It’s soul sucking, cable checking, life wondering, browser refreshing, absence inducing, mortality questioning bad. And it doesn’t always have to be! Some 404 Page Not Found Errors are hilarious. A few are entertaining. This one has to be the most fun. https://gizmodo.com/the-internets-best-404-error-pages-5865931…

Most Beautiful Items: May 25 – May 31, 2013

The weather is beautiful. But you know what else is quite ravishing? The beaucoup pieces of design, art, and architecture we had you feasting your eyes on this week, from a plan for New York’s collapsing harbors to LED wallpaper. Here are some of our favorites: Even Boring Weather Is Stunning Through a Satellite’s Eyes…

Unique Photo Shows the Ridiculous Size of America’s First Spaceships

One of the things that always shocks me when I go to the Kennedy Space Center is the tiny size of the Mercury (left) and Gemini (right) capsules—the missions that jumpstarted the American space exploration program. This unique photo clearly shows how ridiculous these tin cans are. It also shows how big the astronauts’ gonads…

Jamstar, Real Racing 3, and More

Regretting that you never had time to pursue your rockstar ambitions? What about childhood fantasies of being a race car driver? Interior designer? Well, whatever your secret dreams may be (well, assuming they’re one of the above), this week’s slew of Android apps want to make them become a reality—a virtual one, but a reality…

Musyc, iHeart Locket, and More

Maybe it’s the warm weather or maybe it’s just the fact that we’re finally out of winter hibernation, but this week’s iPad apps are all about creativity on your terms. Whether it’s a song in your heart, in your fingers, of one you just want to keep all to yourself, we’ve got you covered. Musyc:…

Postcards, Tall Chess, Analog, and More

It may have been a (thankfully) short week, but the app gears were turning just as hard as ever. So relive the glory days of the long weekend of yore, and kick back with a bundle of apps that aim to make your life just a little bit easier. Or at the very least, a…

An Interaction Designer Creates a Tactile Comic Book For the Blind

Comic books and visual novels are difficult to translate into Braille; Usually, they’re novelized or retold in audio formats. But is it possible to tell a visual story using tactile means alone? A Berlin-based interaction design student named Philipp Meyer thinks so. Working with a blind collaborator named Michael and NOTA, a Copenhagen-based institute for…

Sex on a Pile of Cash Sounds Great Until Your Online Date Robs You

Imagine this: You set up the perfect kinky hook-up on the Internet. You found a hot partner who wants to have sex with you, provided this sex happens on top of a pile of cash. So you find the pile of cash, you show up at the appointed time to get lucky, only to find…

This Clever Spray Scrubber Almost Makes Up For Not Having a Dishwasher

Are you dishwasherless and trying to find a way to streamline meal cleanup without resorting to paper plates and disposable cutlery? If so, your search is over. This easy to use kitchen accessory from Jokari snaps over your sink’s sprayer, adding a ring of stiff bristles letting you scrub and blast dirty dishes clean. As…