Tech News

Hey Ubuntu users, you can now get in on some Steam action. [Ars Technica]

Yep, Those “Leaked” Star Wars Episode VII Plot Details Were Just a Dumb Mistake

False alarm, people. Michael McDonald, the Reuters reporter who started yesterday’s Yavin 4 rumors, has put the story to bed: It was all a big misunderstanding, and no, there are no leaked story elements from Disney about the new Star Wars movie. https://gizmodo.com/are-these-the-first-leaked-star-wars-episode-vii-plot-d-5969881 Yesterday, a Reuters report made the rounds, notable for apparently official information…

That Polaroid Mirrorless Android Camera Is Real After All

On Tuesday, we reported on a rumored Polaroid interchangeable-lens camera. Turns out, truth lay within! https://gizmodo.com/whoa-is-this-polaroid-mirrorless-camera-real-5969453 Imaging Resource quotes Polaroid CEO Scott Hardy as saying, There will be an Android powered, interchangeable lens camera introduced by Polaroid at CES 2013. Welp, doesn’t get much more crystal-clear than that! No specs were confirmed, but Tuesday’s rumor…

Airplane Wi-Fi Gets Tested Using… Giant Sacks of Potatoes?

So we knew Boeing was working on improving Wi-Fi on its planes, but we didn’t have all the details, really. Now we do. Boeing made its better Wi-Fi with potatoes. https://gizmodo.com/airplane-wi-fi-is-about-to-suck-less-5969761 You can check out the full rundown in the Boeing video below, or in Boeing’s blog post on their improvements, but the potatoes come…

Win a Pair of Our Favorite Running Headphones

A few weeks ago Giz gave Sennheiser’s PMX 685i headphones four stars for helping make running actually enjoyable. They’re light, well designed, and sound incredible. And now we’re giving away a pair for free. All you have to do to potentially win is take the one-question survey located below. To enter, send your answer to…

The Best Craigslist Ads of the Mayan Apocalypse

Because of course this is going on. Lonely alarmists and pervy opportunists and generally fun-slash-promiscuous are taking to craigslist to find companionship, salvation, and maybe some casual sex. BuzzFeed’s rounded up the 14 best ads it could find, but we’re willing to bet there are some gems still to be uncovered. Although, searching the Dallas/Fort…

Solar Snowboard Charges Your Gear When You’re Done Carving

The talented folks at Signal Snowboards are back with one of their most practical creations yet. Using a sheet of ultra-thin solar cells from a company called Powerfilm Solar, they created a board that harnesses the sun’s rays and turns them into usable electricity for charging a small device. Because the solar cells are actually…

Foxconn just bought themselves an 8.88% stake in GoPro for $200M, which puts a $2.25B valuation on the POV camera maker.

Headphones So Hot You Won’t Even Care How They Sound

Renderings and prototypes of Aedle’s VK-1 headphones have been circulating the designier corners of the Internet since last spring for no reason besides their stunning design. If you fall in love with your eyes and not your ears, get excited because a limited run of 500 headphones is now up for grabs. What’s interesting about…

8 Gifts for the Pop Culture Junkie

Being a nerd doesn’t necessarily mean you or your friends have an extreme affinity for gadgets. Some of you might have a perverse attraction to toys, comics, board games or anything sci-fi-related. If you’re looking for an alternative gift for your pop culture obsessed friend or loved one, these might do you some good. Hey…

The NY Times has probably the coolest graphics on an article we’ve seen in quite a while.

Santa Claus Builds A Flying Machine

Some people are up in arms over a recent update to Santa Claus that excised his smoking habit. However you feel about Santa losing his pipe, let me assure you that this won’t be the last time that Santa gets a makeover. It’s easy for some people to forget that every generation has “updated” Santa…

Exclusive: Corrupt Apple Store Employees Come Forward Across America

We thought the crookedest little Apple Store in Texas was an isolated case. We were wrong: confessions from Apple’s retail squads around the country (and world) poured in. Apple has a serious naughty behavior problem on its hands, and the Evil Geniuses are speaking out. https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-confessions-from-the-most-corrupt-apple-stor-5936324 The sources we talked to this summer described an…

Walmart Is Running Out of Guns So Better Go There and Stockpile

President Obama announced a plan to limit the sale of combat weapons and, hours later, those kinds of guns are out of stock in Wal-Mart “in five states, including Pennsylvania, Kansas and Alabama,” says Bloomberg. God bless America. Wal-Mart says it has no intention to stop the sale of “sporting rifles,” the euphemism the gun…

Flipboard Is Now On All Android Tablets

Whoa, fire up your Fire, zoom off with your Xoom, Xyboard your… something something. Flipboard is finally available for every single Android tablet. Of course, the reader app has been around for Android smartphones since the summer. But the latest release is a version of Flipboard that’s optimized for a number of different screen sizes…

Path is adding search to Android and iOS, so you can easily find pics from your trip to the world’s largest corn maze.

MySpace Tom Is a Prick

Remember MySpace? No, not the new one, but the old, horrible one, the acne of the Internet, the one with Tom’s dumb face plastered across it? Ever wonder what happened to him? He makes fun of regular people on Twitter. https://gizmodo.com/the-new-myspace-review-just-die-already-5965926 It went down like this: some nobody makes fun of MySpace imploding as a…

Makerbot Is Finally Removing 3D-Printable Gun Designs

In the wake of the horrific shooting last week in Newtown, Connecticut, Makerbot has begun to strip gun designs from Thingverse, its community-generated site that has blueprints for 3D printable designs. https://gizmodo.com/the-makerbot-replicator-2-prints-a-bigger-more-detaile-5944706 Guns have always been banned from Thingverse, although the site is largely unpoliced. But in light of the recent tragedy, Makerbot’s legal team…

Amazon’s New Sitcoms Look Like They Might Actually Be Good

Amazon just took the lid off of a bunch of new, original series it’s taking to pilot, and surprise—some of them actually look really good. All Things D has the rundown on all six, and details about how they’ll be rolled out. Here’s the lineup, as told by ATD: Alpha House, about “four senators who…

Why Superconductors Are Insanely Amazing

Everyone always bangs on about superconductors as if they’re some super-amazing scientific miracle, but where’s the proof, eh? Eh? Umm, here it is: check out how they compare to plain old normal conductors, and you’ll be gobsmacked. The picture above, discovered by Redditor revnastyy shows two lengths of electric cabling taken from the LHC. The…