Tech News

Keep Your Feet Dry Year-Round With Stalwart Hunter Boots

We haven’t gotten a white Christmas in the Northeast, but winter weather is upon us. If you’re trudging through the snow, Hunter Boots are a great way to keep your feet warm and dry. http://www.amazon.com/s/?tag=gizmodo08c-20 And in fact, they’re really wonderful rubbers for any time of the year. But in the winter you can get…

5 Tools to Cope with Those Horrible Last-Minute Shopping Lines

So you’ve done it. You’ve successfully procrastinated gift-buying until the last possible second. Those carefree days of laziness come at a cost, and you’re about to pay it by standing in line forever. Here’s are some things that might ease your suffering a little bit. But just remember: You asked for this. The Flask Tie…

Reminder: Companies Aren’t Your Friends

Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. All of them wonderful ways to bring together people you know, care about, or just want to stalk. But it’s easy to confuse connecting friends with friendship. Don’t. All social media companies want is to make money off of you. They’ll never stop trying to. And that’s okay. When Instagram changed its…

Big Boi Reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas Is the Best

I love the How the Grinch Stole Christmas. My mother used to read it to us every year at Christmas. But you know who’s cooler than my mom? The rapper Big Boi. Therefore, this video of Sir Luscious Leftfoot aka Daddy Fat Sax aka is just fantastic. Watch it once. Watch it twice. Make it…

Treasure in the Basement

Basements can be magical places, or they can be junk heaps. You always hope for the magic, that amidst the moldy clothes and Christmas ornaments, you’ll find treasure. So when my mother-in-law mentioned that her father’s old Leica was packed away somewhere in her home, I left behind a me-shaped puff of smoke in the…

There’s a Class Action Lawsuit Against Instagram Because of Course There Is

Because it’s the holidays and people will sue anything and everything is horrible, a California Instagram user has filed a class action lawsuit over that terms of service kerfuffle last week. Needless to say, this is dumb. https://gizmodo.com/stop-whining-about-your-personal-data-on-instagram-you-5969221 While Instagram likely overreached by claiming it could receive compensation by selling your photos for companies who…

This Isn’t a Christmas Decoration

This isn’t a trippy Christmas decoration. Nor is it some form of modern art take on a flower. In fact, it’s the result of something much more technical—and it’s even won an award for its beauty. You’re actually looking at the result of a scientific experiment performed by engineer Hoi Dick Ng from Concordia University…

11 People Who Already Hate Their Christmas Gadgets

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all over Twitter, a bunch of stupid assholes are already pissed about the crap gadgets they got for Christmas. iPad? Dumb. iPhone? Lame. Anything and everything? Screw you mom. Image credit: Shutterstock/altafulla

8 Awesome* Teched-Out Christmas Sweaters

*These are awesome in the sheer sense that they are so terrible. You would think nothing could make them any less terrible. But the thing is, they all have some unusual, surprising use of technology. It may get lost in the hideousness, but it is definitely there—a little LED, a video display, or some musical…

Here’s Enough iPad Christmas Magic To Warm Anybody’s Cockles

The unfortunately named iSimon has gracing us with iOS-inspired magic tricks for some time now, but there’s always room in our hearts for more digital prestidigitation. Especially when it’s so topical. Here’s a healthy dose of iPad Christmas magic to get you through the holidays. https://gizmodo.com/hang-out-with-these-cats-and-watch-a-little-ipad-magic-5932007 At the very least, it beats your uncle pulling…

How Third-Party Apps Are Taking Over iOS

Third-party apps have started to become the best-in-class in iOS. This is good for third-party developers, users, and in the short-term, Apple. It gives third-parties, like Google, additional exposure and revenue. It provides better apps for users on iOS devices. And it helps sell more iOS devices for Apple. In the long-term, however, it may…

Game Of Thrones Was 2012’s Most Pirated Show

If you spend any time on the internet at all, this shouldn’t shock you: Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of the year. Dexter, last year’s number one, fell to second place because dire wolf enthusiasts downloaded a single episode of GoT 4,280,000 times. Also because Game of Thrones is awesome. Winter is…

These Machines Eat Forests

At the turn of the 20th century, the logging industry relied on armies of lumberjacks swinging axes and band saws to fell a forest. These days, we just send in Harvesters. A Harvester is a multi-function forestry machine used to fell, de-limb, and stack trees for transport to processing. Development of what would become the…

Get Organized: 15 Storage Products for Less Than $40

Holiday season is a great time to organize your house—you’re cooped up inside, and you actually have a few days to get things done. There’s an explosion of storage and organizing products to help you get things in order. We looked past the fancy stuff (someday, you luxurious custom closet solutions!) and instead collected a…

What the Future Looked Like 100 Years Ago (And 5 Predictions That Came True)

In the early 1900s, Ladies Home Journal thought the future would bring a lot of things. The predictions sound funny and old timey, sure, but you know what? Even though we haven’t eradicated flies and mosquitos (yet!), a lot of them came true. Including these five: Hot and cold air from spigots: Suck it, past.…

Report: Nokia’s Windows RT Tablet Will Have a Surface-Like Keyboard Cover

According to a report from The Verge, Nokia’s going to out its own Windows RT tablet early next year. That’s fine; it would be weirder if they weren’t. But what’s a little less expected is that the company’s elves are hard at work on creating a keyboard cover of their very own. Rather than clopping…

You Won’t Be Able to Buy the First Decent $100 Tablet

According to the WSJ, Acer’s going to build the world’s first tablet that manages to break the $100 barrier without being a glorified cheese plate. That’s the good news. The bad news? You probably won’t get the chance to buy it. According to the WSJ report, Acer’s $100 Iconia B1 won’t be in the same…

Sesame Street is so good at making apps for kids, it created a free how-to guide for devs. Listen to Big Bird, y’all.

Websites Skew Prices Based on Where You Live

Depending on where you live, Staples might try to sell you a more expensive stapler. The Wall Street Journal has conducted an Important Investigation and found that a lot of online retailers vary their pricing based on the buyer’s location. The cost of a product you buy from a website—a book, Scotch tape, whatever—might be…

Is This BlackBerry’s QWERTY Savior?

The hole RIM has found itself in is deep, dark, and doused in despair. And as much as the company’s gambling on its new BB10 platform to pull itself up, an operating system’s only as good as the phones running it. So take a good, hard look at this supposed BlackBerry N-Series device. It could…