Tech News

Mean Tweeters Have Forced Incoherent Senator Chuck Grassley To Make His Tweets Boring and/or Sane

You may have noticed a certain indescribable gaping hole on Twitter over the past few months, and you’re not alone. BuzzFeed hunted down the root of the problem to Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley’s uncharacteristically coherent, and no longer seemingly-fever-dream-induced recent tweets. https://gizmodo.com/senator-chuck-grassley-is-the-worst-twitter-user-in-the-5796338 Now, Twitter’s poet laureate came to fame in a way most unusual for…

Old Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders Put to Innovative Use: Techno

Reel-to-reel tape machines are hugely outdated these days. Justifiable reasons to use them are dwindling. Unless you are like Wouter van Veldhoven, in which case you are a tape-machine wielding musical genius. The above 14-minute jam demonstrates four different tape recorder techniques that van Veldhoven uses to make what he calls “minimal techno”. It’s hard…

RC Mic Tanks Rearrange Studio Setups With Tactical Precision

To better their ability to perfect a mix, sound engineers sit at a giant board outside of a recording studio where it’s whisper quiet. And to avoid having to keep running in and out of a studio to perfect their mic placement, someone’s slapped a microphone on a remote controlled RC toy tank that promises…

Shopikon: Track Down Your Nearest Indie Shop

There was a time when you’d shop for things in person as opposed to online. Convenient. Which then made shopping in person pretty boring because, well, it’s all the same crap everywhere you go. Then the same thing happened to the Internet save for a few “indie” sellers on Etsy and some hipsters on Kickstarter.…

Why are Ferrari, McLaren, and Porsche hybrid-crazy? As our Jalopnik pals explain, they’re tech companies at heart.

Before Cassettes and CDs, Boomboxes Played Vinyl

MP3s, compact discs, and even cassette tapes made our music portable, but before they arrived, vinyl records were pretty much the medium of choice. And with a little help from Sharp, people were still able to enjoy those giant (relatively speaking) twelve-inch discs wherever they went with this impressive old-school vinyl bombox. This beast, known…

Custom Timbuk2 Messenger Bags Are Your Better-Than-Nothing Deal of the Day

Sometimes the deal world is plentiful, and sometimes there’s a lot of chaff. Among the discarded deals today: a 720p HDTV for $500, a non-sale on a great router, and a 10% price drop on a Razer scooter. But there is a little wheat—right now, Timbuk2 is offering 20% off their custom bags. We’ve featured…

Evernote: ‘All of Your Passwords Got Stolen So We’ll Hurry Up With That Better Security’

Evernote was forced to reset passwords for all its users over the weekend after noticing something fishy. Now, the company says it will adopt two-factor authentication to prevent further mishaps. Finally! https://gizmodo.com/evernote-was-hacked-and-your-encrypted-passwords-got-5988057 InformationWeek reports a statement from a company spokesman claiming that two-factor authentication was on the way all along. After the hack, the plans…

This Motorcycle Helmet Will Help Reduce Concussions

We’ve shown you 6D’s new helmet technology before – elastomeric dampers absorb the forces of low-speed impacts, an area where traditional styrofoam-and-shell helmets fail – now, that function is better explained in this new video. https://gizmodo.com/finally-an-actual-innovation-in-helmet-technology-5966412 This animation and these renderings are the product of boutique visual firm Related Grey, which took 6D‘s CAD data…

TSA has announced that it will soon allow passengers to carry small knives onboard planes. So, that should be fun.

If You Use Your Laptop as an Umbrella, You’re a Bad Person

College kids: your parents spent a lot of money on that new Facebook-browsing instrument, so at the very least, please don’t use it to shield yourself from weather. Otherwise, someone might take a picture of you and we’ll talk about how spoiled and thoughtless you are! The above shot was taken at USC, where it…

Good news Roku users: you can now access Time Warner Cable at no extra cost—if you’re already a subscriber, that is.

9 Vivacious Vines Made By You

Still photography will always be, but we can’t ignore the rise of motion, from the omnipresent gif to the latest in embeddable video, Vine. So for this week’s Shooting Challenge, you tried your hand at motion. Some results were amazing. https://gizmodo.com/shooting-challenge-vine-5987393 WINNER: Pencil, Paper, Sponge An example of 3D rendering with pencil & paper. Technique:…

Google Is Funneling Picasa Users into Google+ Without Any Warning

Over the last week, Google has been migrating web albums for its online photo service Picasa over to Google+. No you didn’t get any warning, and yes, it’s sneaky—if not exactly unexpected. If you head over to http://picasaweb.google.com, you’ll be sent over to your Google+ Photos instead. The only people exempt from the change are…

Watch the Wonderful Mechanics of a DSLR Shutter in Super Slow Motion

There are incredible feats of engineering going completely unnoticed all around us. The way a high speed camera shutter works is one of them. Luckily, the Phantom slow-mo cam—everyone’s best friend—exists to show us just how awesome camera guts are at 1920 frames per second. We’ve seen similar on a Canon 60D, but what we…

A Dumb Truck Makes Me Feel Like We’re Living In The Future. What About You?

Nothing seems very futuristic to me. Not my phone, not my tablet, not my computer, not my TV, not my watch. None of it. We don’t have flying cars and we have hoverboards that don’t hover. What sort of world are we living in? Google’s Glass is very futuristic but we’re still a long ways…

Fahrenheit 451 Is Easier To Burn With This Clever Matchbook Cover

If you haven’t read it, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is about a dystopian future where books are illegal and destroyed in an attempt to suppress the populace. And as the title implies: fire is the weapon of choice for eradicating literature. So artist Elizabeth Perez designed a new cover for the book that features the…

Canon imageCLASS Printers Will Save Your Work Life (and Your Life Life)

If someone were to ask you, “When was the last time you printed something?” You’d probably laugh. Printing? I haven’t… Wait… Ok, yeah, there was that one time I needed those worksheets for that presentation… Oh, and then my old boss likes reports printed out for some reason? And then, I do need hard copies…

The long-awaited Google Maps for iOS just got its first update with searchable contacts and suggested categories galore.

Plane Passenger Spots Mystery Drone Over Brooklyn (Updated: The FBI Has No Idea What It Is)

The classic Twilight Zone episode takes a 21st century turn—yesterday a man aboard an Alitalia flight preparing to land at JFK spied something disturbing outside his window: what appeared to be an unmanned vehicle in the sky. Update: The FBI is hunting for the drone and its operator. The sighting was confirmed by the plane’s…