Tech News

Steve Ballmer’s Buying the Sacramento Kings and Bringing Basketball Back to Seattle

Steve Ballmer rules and now he rules even more because he’s supposedly about to buy the Sacramento Kings and move them back to Seattle. We’ll now open the floor to team name ideas. The deal isn’t finalized yet, but apparently a group led by ol’ Steve and hedge fund manager Chris Hansen are about to…

Photographs Look Even Better With 200 Years of Decay

The Library of Congress is brimming with flawless daguerreotype photographs that give us a pristine look into the state of things over the past two centuries. Now that’s great and all, but perhaps even more incredible are the ones that succumbed to the 200 years of damage and decay. According to The Public Domain Review:…

Hisense Transparent 3D: An Incredible Spectacle Even if it’s Pointless

Hisense’s “Transparent 3D” display technology creates the crazy effect of incorporating real-life objects into a video image. The 40-inch demo unit, in the image above, could be how you window-shop in the future. It’s so cool looking. I only wish there was something better to do with it. The panel works a lot like the…

Microsoft Wants to Turn Your Entire Wall into a TV Screen

Microsoft has an IllumiRoom project that projects images onto the entire wall of your room. It’s pretty crazy, when you’re playing video games, the IllumiRoom will show you what’s happening around you on the screen too. Basically, you get what giant wall TV for playing video games. As IllumiRoom is only a research project, we…

15 Shields Only Phantom Warriors Can Carry into Battle

What is good in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. How do you take what is good in life? By smashing some fucking skulls with these Papua New Guinean war shields that our friends at Oobject have assembled. Be sure to also check out…

iBattz Mojo iPhone Case Charger Hands On: Two Batteries For Double Endurance

Most of the time I carry a lightning cord in my bag because I just plow through my iPhone’s battery. What a pain, right? But iBattz’s new Mojo Refuel charging case will let me leave the cable at home where it belongs, because it comes with two extra 2500 mAh batteries. https://gizmodo.com/heres-your-iphone-5-battery-case-5974306 The batteries fit…

These God Games Are Your Strategically-Superior Deal of the Day

Today’s the last day that Amazon’s offering the 2k Strategy Pack for $20. This is an amazing deal because it includes Civilization V (with all the Game of the Year downloadable content), which is still selling on Amazon, Steam, and the Mac App Store for $30. That by itself makes this a good deal. But…

Potty Training’s Way Easier When Your Kid’s Distracted With an iPad

CTA Digital never fails to disappoint at CES. In past years the company has delivered some of the craziest gaming and iPad accessories, and this year they manage to both raise the bar and hit a new low with the iPotty. Dropping in February for $40, it’s a simple plastic potty designed for toddlers going…

Is It Possible For a Bike to Do Too Much?

The nCycle has a lot going on. It looks great and it’s super sleek, but it might be a little over-designed. Maybe. Modeled by Marin Myftiu, the bike’s feature set starts with handlebars that double as a lock, so you don’t have to carry one around, and goes from there. The nCycle has a retractable…

Yes, Nokia’s CEO Actually Said That the Company Is Open to Any Platform In the Future

This Monday we published Nokia’s boss Stephen Elop’s words on his company’s commitment to Windows Phone 8. Elop said that they are not ruling anything out, even while they are supporting Microsoft right now. https://gizmodo.com/nokia-boss-today-we-are-with-microsoft-but-anything-5973769 Elop’s explicit words caused some commotion across the internet, which prompted the Finnish company to contact us and other US…

Shooting Challenge: Figure Abstraction

Shooting Challenges are back for 2013, and our first of the year is a doozy. For this week’s challenge, you’ll capture beautiful human figures that blur into abstract art. An accomplished portrait photographer explains how. The Challenge Capture a long exposure of blurry, human movement. Paint a picture with the human figure. See exactly how…

What It’s Like to Experience New Technology After 25 Years in Jail

When I went to prison, in 1987, Motorola manufactured the large, gray cellphone that I used. People referred to it as “the brick.” It had the capacity to send or receive phone calls, but there wasn’t any text messaging back then.[jump] I also had a pager, but it could only transmit digits, as I recall.…

Google Maps Is Back on Windows Phone

After Google Maps disappeared from Windows Phone, Google announced it was working hard to solve the problem. Now Maps is back, so WinPho users can find their way with Google once more. https://gizmodo.com/google-maps-has-never-been-accessible-on-internet-explo-5973295 Verge reports that Google has re-enabled the web version of its maps for WinPho users. For a time, a redirect was put…

The Only Person North Korea Follows on Twitter Is This Goofy American Dude

North Korea’s led the charge in a lot of areas, fictional animal lair discoveries, for one. But South Korea’s crazy cousins to the north aren’t exactly known to excel at internet culture. So while it’s no surprise that their official Twitter account only follows three accounts, as Mother Jones discovered, it is, in fact, very…

Samsung’s 8-Core Exynos 5 Octa Processor: Your Next Phone Will Be Fast

Samsung’s Exynos processors have powered a lot of the faster devices out there, from the Galaxy S II, which was way ahead of everyone in terms of speed, to the newer Nexus 10. Now the Exynos 5 Octa Processor is here. Wait, octa? As in eight cores? Yep. Two sets of quad-core processors. In a…

Babies Start Acquiring Language in the Womb

If you and your partner are expecting a new addition to the family, now might be a good time to clean up your language. New research suggests that babies begin to pick up language from within the womb. Studies in the past have shown that babies of just a few months in age can distinguish…

The Complete BlackBerry 10 Video Walkthrough: Surprise, It’s Neat

This is the new BlackBerry 10, two weeks from its official release. And while visually it looks like a cross between Android and iOS—without any of the spiffiness of Windows Phone—RIM’s make-or-break operating system is surprisingly nice. Fast, with clever user interface touches, a centralized hub for all user activity and a good browser. It…

Social Media Butlers Are Unfortunately a Thing at the 2013 Inauguration and Beyond

Really, the only way to celebrate the 2013 inauguration is with a $47,000 vacation package. Right? Right. But Instagraming and Facebooking your every move can get exhausting when you’re galavanting about. Where is that social media butler? Oh. Here she is. As part of its “Inaugural Town and Country” package, The Madison Hotel is offering…

Australia Is So Hot They Had to Add New Colors to Their Weather Maps

It’s super-hot in Australia right now: there are massive bush fires happening spontaneously and it’s 95°F in Sydney at midnight. In fact, the Australian bureau of meteorology has recorded the highest ever known temperature in Australia—and as a result, it’s had to add new colors to its weather maps. The purple spot in the center…

Pakistan will finally be lifting its YouTube ban—as soon as it finishes work on a blasphemous content filter, that is.