Tech News

Airplane Wi-Fi Is About to Suck Less

Wi-Fi in the sky is a wonderful idea, but unfortunately, it’s painfully unreliable. Boeing has just developed a new calibration technology that will hopefully help make your Boingo better. Boeing engineers initially developed the new signal test method to comply with regulatory standards, but it will also help engineers optimize your Wi-Fi signal. According to…

Here’s How To Download All Your Tweets Ever

Just a few days ago, Twitter started rolling out a feature that lets you download all the Tweets you’ve ever Twittered. We’ve known this was happening but now Twitter is starting to push the feature to everyone. Here’s how to get your old tweets. https://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-download-your-entire-twitter-history-maybe-5968814 Go to your settings, and scroll down to the bottom.…

There’s an Official Fix Coming For the Crazy Samsung Phone-Bricking Exploit

There’s a crazy exploit sneaking around that could brick your Samsung phone and break into your physical memory to steal your data. But don’t freak out; Samsung says it’s aware of the problem and is working quickly on software fixes. https://gizmodo.com/crazy-new-exploit-can-brick-samsung-phones-or-steal-all-5968879 Samsung confirmed to Android Central suspicions that the problem is an Exynos processor vulnerability…

Google Play Books Gets “Read Aloud” and Other New Features

Google Play Books got a nice update last night, with a Read Aloud feature, and pinch-to-zoom and double-tap-to-zoom. The Read Aloud feature sounds really robotic—even more than Siri or other voice command prompts—but it gets the job done. It’s nowhere near as polished as something like Amazon’s integration with Audible audiobooks, but it’s also totally…

So This Is How They Make Clouds, Hmmm?

A cloud factory! If I ever have a kid, I would show him this photo when he asks about how clouds are made.* I mean, it’d be technically true, right? That’s evaporated water, after all. * Of course, I will tell him the truth a couple of days later: everybody knows clouds are make by…

Police Rescue Dog From Burning Home By Tasering Sword-and-Shield-Wielding Old Man

KATU reports that firefighters couldn’t move to put out a house fire over the weekend in Portland, Oregon because a 69-year-old man was parading around outside wielding a sword and shield. As if a firefighter’s job wasn’t hard enough. It gets crazier. After police arrived at the scene, they tried to talk reason into the…

Nintendo Wii U’s TVii Is Out Tomorrow—But with Some Major Missing Pieces

We’ve been waiting for the Wii U’s cable box/television-controlling TVii features to make it since the system launched late last month. As of tomorrow, it’ll finally be here. But without a few key components. https://gizmodo.com/wii-u-review-the-future-is-in-good-hands-5961513 The big omission is DVR capabilities through TiVo. That’s the only way to use the Wii U as a DVR,…

Charles Dickens Turned His Dead Cat’s Paw Into a Letter Opener

When Charles Dickens’ cat, Bob, died in 1862, the writer was devastated. So naturally, he stuffed one of Bob’s paws and made it into a letter opener. Apparently in the Victorian era, taxidermied dead pets were the new black. So at the time it wasn’t at all weird. Chuck just opted to preserve the paw,…

Kodak has finally sold off the last bits of patent meat from its carcass, for $525 million, to Apple and Google.

A Stunning Four Billion Pixel Photo Is the Safest Way To Explore Mount Everest

Not only has filmmaker David Breashears climbed Mount Everest on five different occasions, he’s visited the world’s tallest peak 15 times in his career as he works to document the effects of climate change on the mountain. And fortunately for those of us who will never have the chance to see Everest in real life,…

The 90s X-Men Intro in Stop Motion: Pure Nerd Bliss

Whatever you’re doing, just stop. The best cartoon of the early 90s—the X-Men, obviously—has gotten a stop-motion treatment that belongs in some sort of kitschy, bizarro-universe Louvre. This. Is. Awesome. It was also an overwhelming endeavor; it took director Kyle Roberts two months of rotoscoping and animating over 4,000 pictures to get the perfect facsimile.…

So How Exactly Do Snowflakes Become Frozen Works of Art?

We probably all have a rough idea of how exactly a snowflake forms high above our heads, but BytesizeScience breaks down the specifics of why every flake has six sides, how they can become so intricate, and why there might actually be plenty of them that look exactly the same. Turns out it’s more nurture…

Walmart is currently offering $50 iTunes gift cards for $40. Free money! [Walmart]

Point and Laugh With—or at—LG’s Magic Remote

This isn’t Christmas 2012′s hottest sex toy. It’s LG’s revised Magic Remote, the new way to turn the act of changing channels into a never-ending loop of frustration. The reworked, smaller and slimmer Magic Remote will arrive inside the packaging of LG’s CINEMA 3D Smart TV range, offering voice, motion, point and wheel controls to…

This Photographer Knows Exactly What You’re Getting for Christmas

We’ve all seen x-rays as art before, but this Christmas-themed selection is too good to pass up. Captured by Hugh Turvey, these images show what lurks beneath the wrapping paper you can’t wait to tear open. https://gizmodo.com/the-x-rays-of-completely-healthy-game-consoles-5235810 Turvey is actually artist-in-residence at the British Institute of Radiology, and used the facilities at his disposal to…

Math + Animated GIF = Nerdgasm

This could be the most deliciously geeky animated GIF ever created. Just in case you didn’t believe that Pythagoras’ Theorem worked, you now have no reason to doubt it whatsoever. [Chart Porn]

Penguin’s agreed with the DoJ to end pacts stopping it from lowering digital prices. Cheap Penguin ebooks FTW! [Reuters]

How Rental PCs Loaded With Spyware Snooped on and Photographed Their Users

When you pay to use a computer, you don’t expect it to be tracking your each and every digital move as a result. But that’s exactly what happened to Aaron’s Sale and Leasing customers—who had their rental computers snooped on in incredible detail. Ars Technica has a great, detailed feature about the saga, which originally…

iOS 6 upgrades jumped a massive 29% over the weekend—no doubt because Google Maps became available. [MoPub]

Do People Really Not Know What Texting Is?

People never cease to surprise me with how brainless they can be. This American Apparel ad, which explicitly says to Text apparel to the number 23000, has actually gotten countless Facebook comments with ‘APPAREL 23000’ on the post. Um, that’s not texting people. Do people really not know what texting is? I’d give people the…