Tech News

Report: Leaked Documents Confirm Totally Obvious Non-Surprise Android Key Lime Pie Launch This Spring

Could it be that Google will announce the brand new 5.0 version of its Android operating system this spring? Considering that Google I/O-the event where it tends to make announcements like that-is in May, yes. And if that wasn’t a sure enough bet just based on the “well duh” factor, some leaked Qualcomm documents are…

Vladmir Putin Hired Boyz II Men to Sing Until Russians Make More Babies

Vladmir Putin is on a mission to raise Russia’s birth rate. Best way to do that? Hire Boyz II Men to croon the babies right into the bellies. Russia’s birth rate has been climbing in recent years, but only after Putin made a hard push to get the motherland knocking boots again. After years of…

Take Instant Photospheres With This One-Shot Omnidirectional Camera

Sometimes you want to take a picture of a thing, but there are times when you just want everything. So far, your options for comprehensive photospheres involve taking a whole crapton of pictures, or throwing some kind of crazy ball or something. This upcoming camera from Ricoh makes it a hell of a lot easier.…

How a Film Crew Captured Four—Count ‘Em Four—Simultaneous Volcanic Eruptions

A volcano erupting on its own is no big deal; they’re like earthquakes, no one cares unless it’s catastrophic. But to have four separate volcanic cones—each fed by separate magma sources—all erupting within 110 miles of one another simply doesn’t happen. Ever. This must be what witnessing Haley’s Comet was like. The Moscow-based Airpano film…

Amazon Scores Exclusive Downton Abbey Streaming Rights For Years and Years

Great news for those who can’t get enough of the Crawley family—Amazon cut a deal with PBS that will bring the British period drama to Prime Instant Video exclusively. So later this year, Netflix will lose Downton. Which is exactly what Lord Grantham has grappled with in the series. Starting today, seasons one and two…

This Must Be the Secret Backdoor to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude

Here’s the secret door to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Or its toilet pipe. Or just an awesome photo of an ice column in a tunnel carved in the rock, near Lake Tahoe. In any case, a beautiful image. [Full Frame Collective—Thanks Attila Nagy!]

How Stanford’s Million-Core, Five Dimensional Super Computer Will Silence Jet Engines

The modern day jet engine may be powerful enough to shuttle travelers across a continent in just six hours but it’s also unbearably loud—for both the ground crews that work around them and residents within earshot of airports. And while aircraft engineers are developing quieter designs, building and testing these hushed prototypes can run into…

There Is Blatant Racist and Sexist Language Hiding in Open Source Code

GitHub is an exceptionally popular open-source community where any developer can find code for pretty much anything. But there’s a problem—some of that code contains extremely offensive racist, sexist, and homophobic, language. A word of caution before you proceed, because these search results are very NSFW. You don’t have to look hard for to find…

What Kind of Maniac Watches Live-Streaming Super Bowl Ads Online?

There are plenty of people who claim to watch the Super Bowl “for the ads.” Well you can force those people to put their money where their mouths are. Once again Hulu is streaming the Super Bowl ads, and only the ads. God save us all. The whole thing is part of Hulu’s AdZone. Excuse…

Path is paying $800,000 for its little privacy debacle and will have forced privacy assessments for the next 20 years. https://gizmodo.com/paths-big-mistake-updated-5883395

Reminder: Being On Sale Doesn’t Make Something a Deal

One of Best Buy’s daily deals today is $40 off the Hipstreet Equinox 2. Normally retailing for $180, the 10.1-inch Android 4.0 tablet can be yours this very Friday for a mere $140, which is $40 closer to the roughly zero dollars it’s worth. Remember, kids: a sale and a deal are two entirely different…

Kim Dotcom’s Offering a Cash Reward If You Can Smash Mega’s Encryption

A few weeks into its existence, Mega is holding up pretty well. It’s fended off its first round of takedown requests and is still crouched safely behind its wall of protective encryption. In fact, Dotcom is so confident in that encryption, he’s offering free money to anyone who can break it. https://gizmodo.com/mega-passed-its-first-copyright-takedown-test-5979336 The €10,000 ($13,850)…

Verizon Serves Up Cheaper Prepaid Plans for Smartphones (Update)

Verizon just launched two cheaper prepaid plans with unlimited talk and text messaging. The $70 plan offers 2GB of 3G data and for $60 you get 500MB. Previously, Verizon only had an $80 prepaid plan, that offered unlimited talk and text and 1GB of data. More data for cheaper? Good! The only thing is that…

Fireworks Truck Explodes, Destroys Massive Bridge

A horrible thing has happened today in China’s Henan Province. A truck loaded to the gills with fireworks—intended for the country’s upcoming Lunar New Year celebration—fired off its wares on a busy highway, leading to six minutes of the most brightly lit, celebratory destruction in recent memory. How bad was it? According to the AP,…

First-Ever Incredible Footage of a Thought Being Formed

A team of Japanese researchers has achieved something incredible: they’ve captured, for the first time ever, a movie which shows how thoughts form in the brain. OK, so it’s a thought forming in the brain of a zebrafish. And OK, its the fish’s reaction to seeing food, so it’s probably along the lines of “HUNGRY!”.…

The Best Scientific Visualizations of 2012

Every year, the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge seeks to find the most visually striking scientific art and design. It’s just announced the 2012 winners—and there are some amazing sights to be seen. The first prize for an illustration went to Emmett McQuinn et al from IBM research, for the image above. It shows—though…

Motorola Job Listing Hints at Moto-Google X-Phone

It looks like Motorola’s finally about to prove its worth to Google, with the existence of the previously rumoured Android “X-Phone” confirmed by a job listing. Motorola’s hiring someone to manage this “Next Generation Smartphone Platform.” The job ad, which appeared on social site LinkedIn, is full of stacks of the usual meaningless puffery, so…

This Is What 5 Meters Too Much Water Looks Like

After heavy rains, the Limpopo river in southern Mozambique has burst its banks, causing floods that have driven more than 150,000 people from their homes and killed at least 38, according to a UN official on Tuesday. The inundation’s devastating sprawl is clear in these false-colour images of the town of Chokwé taken by NASA’s…

Sony: MiniDisc Is (Finally) Dead

While rumors have suggested it in the past, it’s now official: after years of complete and utter redundancy, Sony is finally killing off the MiniDisc. https://gizmodo.com/whats-most-surprising-about-sony-killing-the-minidisc-w-5819314 Sony has announced that it will ship its last MiniDisc player in March of 2013. The biggest question it raises, of course, is: who the hell is still buying…

Reuters claims that Dell buyout is coming real soon—and that a deal could be struck as soon as Monday. [Reuters] https://gizmodo.com/bloomberg-dell-founder-seeks-majority-share-using-pers-5980102