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In addition to protecting itself from your pirated content with its see-no-evil encryption, Kim Dotcom’s Mega service aims to stay on the law’s good side by playing nicely with copyright takedown requests and keeping that super important DMCA safe harbor status. So far so good, too; it’s responded to an early batch of requests with…
Sure, your phone can take a decent picture, but it’s not even in the same universe as the best camera the government’s got. At 1.8 gigapixels, the DARPA-developed ARGUS-IS the highest resolution surveillance platform in the world, and, when mounted to a drone, can single-handedly do the work of an army of 100 predator drones…
Joerg Sprave specializes in absurd slingshots with absurd ammunition, but now he’s reached what might be the pinnacle of abnormal ammo: chainsaw javelins. Where can you go from here? Launched from a mammoth slingshot bazooka that must be nearly seven feet in length, each chainsaw round is complete with a stabilizing metal rod on its…
46 years ago today, veteran astronaut Gus Grissom, first American spacewalker Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee were killed in a cabin fire during an Apollo 1 launch pad test. The first majorly fatal accident in NASA’s history, the fire was caused in part by the cabin’s pure oxygen atmosphere and a number of other…
Whenever something sketchy happens to your favorite social network’s TOS, there are always folks who say they’re packing up, taking their data and leaving. But backing up your social data doesn’t have to be a last resort. After all, who knows what might happen to the cloud. Do you back up any of your social…
Nokia launched its free, ad-free, Lumia-exclusive, and pretty sweet streaming music service “Nokia Music” in September of last year, and now it’s upping the ante with a moderately priced paid version that comes with all the fixin’s. https://gizmodo.com/your-lumia-phone-just-got-a-sweet-free-music-streamin-5940209 Nokia Music+ is pretty much like your paid versions of services like Spotify, but at just $3.99/€3.99…
If you’re watching the Winter X Games this weekend, you might see that insane Super Pipe course and wonder how they cut something that big (22 feet tall) out of snow and make it so perfectly symmetrical. The answer is the Zaugg Pipe Monster. It’s like a Zamboni for frozen half-pipes. Zaugg builds a lot…
Streaming video is the future. Well, it’s the present, but the future too. And as resolutions increase, it’s going to be a tougher and tougher proposition to pipe all that data to your screen of choice in a timely fashion. Fortunately, the new H.265 standard has been approved by the ITU and it’s here to…
The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is a beast. It’s the first of the new Ford-class supercarriers, and arguably the best aircraft carrier ever designed. And building these mammoths is a serious undertaking. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-what-makes-the-uss-gerald-r-ford-the-best-airc-5944380 Here we see the ships 555-metric ton island being lowered onto the deck. 60 feet long and 30 feet wide, the…
It seems that if you join the USAF you may become a superhero. But if you join the US Marines, you will turn into some kind of Peter Pan, like Sgt. Michael Murphy: https://gizmodo.com/if-you-join-the-usaf-you-may-become-a-superhero-5946372 Sgt. Michael Murphy, a reconnaissance Marine with Force Reconnaissance Company, II Marine Expeditionary Force, poses as he jumps out of a…
You probably don’t have the balls to go ski jumping. If you do, congratulations; I hope you’re reading this in flight. For the rest of us, this video is a great (read: less scary) way to get just the smallest slice of that action. A piece you can safely chew and swallow. Filmed at Vikersundbakken,…
I discovered Bear vs. Shark by accident. A college roommate had insisted I listen to Minus the Bear, and I wasn’t paying attention, so only the “Bear” part stuck. It proved to be a serendipitous little mistake though, because Bear vs. Shark is as awesome as the battle portrayed in their name would be. “Catamaran”…
Spaceships can’t pull in foreign objects with a almost-magical tractor beam yet, but researchers have been making progress towards that goal. Scientists have now shown that tractor beams are possible, and can actually work. For microscopic objects over microscopic distances at least. Researchers from the Czech Republic’s Institute of Scientific Instruments and Scotland’s University of…
Some people are out there using Vine for pretty dumb things. Others are capturing more interesting six-second snippets their actually interesting lives, or making stop-motion videos. And you can creep on all of them, one after the other, in a constant fire-hose of anonymous, random video with Vinepeek. https://gizmodo.com/the-single-dumbest-way-people-are-using-vine-5978709 The new site has a simple…
Paris may be the City of Light, but the City of Sin is looking to give it a run for its money. This pair of shots was tumblr’d (tumbled?) and tweeted by Colonel Chris Hadfield, who’s currently up on the ISS. At night, the city looks like some pool of molten metal, scalding the desert’s…
If you’re not claiming to be famous, normally people couldn’t care less who you say your are on the Internet. In fact, most people actively don’t care. Instagram isn’t in that crowd however. After its recent TOS update, it’s been harassing more and more users to confirm their identities with pictures of government-issued IDs. https://gizmodo.com/instagrams-new-terms-of-use-translated-into-plain-engl-5977053…
Since Aaron Swartz’s suicide two weeks ago—an incident largely blamed on the charges being levied against him—the ‘net has been grieving. And Anonymous has been doing that in its own special way: tearing shit up. In the latest of several attacks, they took down the U.S. Justice Department’s Sentencing Commission site and left behind a…
It’s the weekend! You made it! Treat yourself with a few of our most delectible posts of the week. On the menu we have a smattering of unsecured webcams, a tasty morsel of a GIF about how keys work, some sumptuous rumored Xbox Durango specs, some hot and spicy militarized laser technology, and more. Dig…
War dogs. They are equal parts badass and cute. And on top of that, they’re smart. They need to be to get the job done. In the interest of finding the cleverest canines for potential war-doggery, DARPA’s got a plan to start scanning puppy brains in an MRI machine. But rest assured, those brains are…
Already saddled with a 56-day premiere delay, your Instant Queue isn’t getting any younger—assuming you can even find something to watch. Here’s how to make up for lost time and keep your queue packed with Netflix’s (relatively) newest and best offerings. Only Watch the Good Stuff While Netflix prides itself on its recommendation engine and…
