Tech News

Facebook for iOS now lets you send in-app video and voice messages—because voicemails weren’t annoying enough already.

Optical Illusion Turns Pretty Hollywood Actors Into Freaky Monsters

Not even Hollywood’s most beautiful are inmune to our brain’s faulty image processing. Liv Tyler, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Keira Knightley, Christina Hendricks—all of them turn to creepy monsters when you get them through this freaky optical illusion. https://gizmodo.com/this-freaky-optical-illusion-turns-people-into-horrible-5819584 Nicolas Cage doesn’t count. [Thanks Karl!]

Behind the Scenes at the New York Gift Fair

The New York International Gift Fair—a trade show for gifts, home goods and other stuff—has a crap ton of scarves, an entire floor devoted to candles, and loads and loads of items your mother would consider sticking in your Christmas stocking. But also? A lot of cool products that you’ll see popping up all over…

$32 To Add Internet To Your Dumb TV Is Your Deal of the Day

You’ve probably got a TV languishing unused somewhere in your home. Or you’ve got a beautiful modern dumb TV and no easy way to stream Netflix on it. Either way, it’s hard to find a less expensive way to add internet to your TV than this D-Link MovieNite Plus streaming box. Sure, it doesn’t have…

This Is What It Looks Like to Have a World-Class Memory

You probably juggle a phone number or two around in that skull of yours just out of necessity, but there are memorization experts out there who would put you to shame. At this year’s World Memory Championships, champion Johannes Mallow memorized a 2,245 digit number and the order of 1144 playing cards each in just…

Gravity-Controlled Pac-Man Is Now Available for iOS and Android—and It Looks Quite Fun

I thought Not Pacman—a version of Pac-Man that uses gravity to control the yellow hungry monster—was awesome and needed to be ported to iOS and Android ASAP. Gizmodo reader Pierre-Yves Gatouillat agreed with that opinion and he did just that. He sent this via email: https://gizmodo.com/gravity-controlled-pac-man-must-come-to-my-phone-asap-5975860 I read your article two weeks ago about Not…

Watch Five Huge Power Station Towers Collapse in Super Slow Motion

Few things are as satisfying as watching a building get demolished. Bonus points for if it’s a gigantic structure, like Texas Stadium, or, say, four water cooling towers for a power plant. Their crumble and fall was shown in slow motion by our old friends the Slow Mo Guys. [YouTube] https://gizmodo.com/what-its-like-to-stand-inside-an-imploding-stadium-upd-5517106 Update: Looks like there…

Instagram Is Emailing You When You’re Tagged in a Photo Now

Instagram just got a little more like Facebook and Twitter. The service has started sending out emails alerting you when you’ve been tagged in a photo. It’s a fairly small addition, but probably a sign that Facebook’s pushing some of its more in-your-face tendencies onto Instagram. [BuzzFeed]

Are These The World’s Most Comfortable Running Shoes? Maybe?

A year on, Nike’s Flyknit technology (a second skin, if you will) continues to permeate the company’s running shoe line. Today Nike announced the Flyknit Lunar1+, an ultra lightweight, all-purpose runner that combines a Flyknit upper with a cushy Lunarlon bottom. https://gizmodo.com/nikes-new-flyknit-technology-makes-running-shoes-even-m-5887118 By combining the two technologies, the Flyknit Lunar1+ is probably the most responsive…

Remember the Journal News’ map of gun permit holders in New York? Turns out it was highly inaccurate. Oops.

Why Facebook Will Fall Like the Roman Empire

John Naughton at the Guardian has a perfect—albeit obvious—observation: Despite their overwhelming dominance, Facebook and Apple will eventually fall. “History should teach us that for today’s technology industry titans, the only way is down.” That goes for Google, too. And Amazon. It’s inevitable. Naughton’s argument—familiar to historians and Guns ‘n Roses fans alike—is that nothing…

Go Get iOS 6.1 Right Now

iOS 6.1 is out now and ready for your downloading pleasure. It’s a relatively minor update, including LTE support for more carriers, Fandango ticket purchasing through Siri in the U.S., and the ability for iTunes Match subscribers to download individual songs from iCloud. Apple is also adding improved iOS 6.1 APIs for developers, making it…

Keep Your Beer Cold and Your Hand Warm With This Koozie-Like Thing Made of 100 Percent Patriotism

Nothing says ‘Merica quite like a cold domestic beer. And nothing screams ‘Merica!!!! at the top of its lungs quite like a cold domestic beer sitting in a koozie thing adorned with the stars and stripes of Old Glory herself, complete with an attached fingerless glove so you don’t drop it amid drunken stumbles and…

Pez Dispensers With Your Own 3D-Printed Face on Top Are the Best Pez Dispensers

You never knew it, but you want a Pez dispenser with your own head printed on top of it, just like the ones Hot Pop Factory, a 3D printed jewelry company, made for a client’s employees. You know, what the hell! The dispensers were created using doing scans of 32 people’s heads on Xbox Kinect.…

Win the Ultimate Survival Tool

If there’s even the smallest possibility you might wind up abandoned on a desert island (one can dream in this weather, amiright?) in the upcoming future, or if you just want to be able to fix anything, anytime, anywhere, then you should take the survey below, and possibly win a titanium 16-headed Leatherman multi-tool. They’re…

Tons and Tons of Security Cameras Are Wide Open to Hackers

Apparently security cameras are even less secure than we thought. Eighteen popular brands of cameras have been found to have serious flaws in their own security, leaving at least 58,000 unsecured, open-to-basically-anyone security cams out there. Security firm Rapid7 discovered how the widespread flaw is after reading a blog post by someLuser, detailing the failings…

Twitter Is the One Place the Number of Copyright Notices Is Actually Down

Last June, Twitter hopped on the transparency train and released its first report indexing information requests, copyright takedown notices, and removal requests from governments around the globe. Now the second report is out, with its own site and some new details on what the U.S. government in particular is doing. And weirdly enough, copyright takedown…

Microsoft is readying the new Office aka Office 2013 for a January 29 launch in NYC.

Following Steve Jobs’ Insane Fruit Diet Put Ashton Kutcher in the Hospital

Ashton Kutcher, method actor, truly goes the distance to capture the essence of a character. In the case of portraying Steve Jobs for the upcoming indie flick jOBS, Kutcher put himself on a diet of strictly fruits, nuts, and seeds, mimicking Jobs ‘fruitarian’ lifestyle. https://gizmodo.com/jobs-review-a-satisfying-experience-for-an-apple-fan-5979291 The results? Inspiration, insight, and one fucked up pancreas. With…

“Human Error” Made Dildo Porn the Top Video on Vine

Vine, Twitter’s new experiment in oddball video sharing, gave users a spook this morning: a video of a guy sticking a dildo in himself. Even more startling, it was the #1 “Editor’s Pick” for the entire app. What? How? Why? We can’t answer that last question, but we have a better idea of how, according…