Tech News

GE Built a Better Bus Battery

Electric cars and buses may quickly be gaining ground on their internal combustion counterparts, but they still face numerous technical hurtles before becoming the de facto transportation technology, the first of which is that current battery chemistries either allow for high voltage output over a short time or low voltage over a long time. If…

Hip Gifts for the Non-Geeks in Your Life

He’s always asking you to find cool stuff for him on the Internet. She lovingly calls you geeky, in a cute way. They always think you know everything about technology because they know nothing. Like, literally nothing. To them, a Galaxy S III is a Droid. Or, even worse, they think it’s a Samsung iPhone.…

Sprint 4G LTE expands in Chicago. Now added: Indianapolis and parts of California and Pennsylvania.

Can Someone Please Make This Awesome Game a Reality?

This is not a game. I wish it was, but it is not. It looks like the stages map for the most awesome 8-bit game I can possibly imagine, but It’s an awesome 8-bit image made by Eric Poulton. It’s titled Underneath It All, which is a great game name too. I put the image…

Watch The Madness of a Truck Full of Live Cows Spilling Onto the Highway

Thank god for Russian dashboard cameras. What epic absurdity have they captured this time? Just another truck crashing in an unnamed town in Russia. That’s what you think, until the cargo of said truck turns out to be a small herd of cows: bovines spilling and scattering across the road. Remarkably, most of those cows…

Apple is now offering free next-day shipping on anything in the US. What’s your excuse now, slacker? [Apple]

Credit Card Skimmers Aren’t Just at ATMs Anymore

It used to be that you only had to be paranoid about credit card skimmers when using an ATM. But times have changed, and the bad guys have gotten so sophisticated that they’ve now created realistic but fake point of sale terminals that even print an authentic looking receipt while they’re collecting your credit card…

The Tech Nerds Who Are Up for Time Person of the Year

Time magazine just put out a list of eight finalists for its Person of the Year award, and some of our favorite tech heroes made the cut. https://gizmodo.com/12-tech-heroes-of-2012-5967532 There’s Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Tim Cook of Apple, and Italian physicist Fabiola Giannati and the Higgs Boson. They’ve got some stiff competition from Mohammed Morsi, Undocumented…

How to Install an Escalator on the 101st Floor of America’s Tallest Building

Here we see an escalator being hoisted to the 101st floor of World Trade Center 1. (How did you think they got escalators up that high?) At first glance, the dizzying perspective of this photo will make your brain hurt. Here’s the thing: the photograph, posted by Reddit user Jacknappler, isn’t what it seems. The…

Is This the Job With the Best Views of the World?

What is the job with the best views in the world? I thought an astronaut in the ISS. But perhaps I’m mistaken. https://gizmodo.com/the-job-with-the-best-view-in-the-world-5547765 Maybe it’s the job of the guy sitting on this KC-130J Hercules, watching those two AV-8B Harriers getting closer and closer over Helmand province, Afghanistan, Decemeber. 6, 2012. That guy is U.S.…

Multi-Function Microwave Handles All Your Dinner Prep Except Buying Groceries

If you demand every tool and appliance in your kitchen to more than pull its weight, you’ll want to check out this multi-function wonder from Italian company Ariete. Its new 4-in-1 kitchen miracle combines a microwave, a grill, a toaster oven, and a bread maker into a single stainless steel covered metal box. With a…

Tumblr’s native Android app now supports tablets! Sorry iPad users, you ain’t got nothin’.

Pixel Art Backpack Lets You Decorate It Tetris-Style

If you miss the crude pixelated graphics from videogames of yesteryear, and don’t mind wearing a pack that’s probably designed with kids in mind, this Uanyi Pixel Art backpack will appeal to your retro 8-bit style. The backpack comes with a small mountain of silicone pixel blocks that attach to a flexible panel letting you…

AT&T Defended Its 1970s Monopoly With Cartoons

Everyone knows the easiest way to sell something to the masses is through animation. Hasbro had the Transformers and G.I. Joe cartoons to sell toys back in the 1980s, and in the 1970s AT&T produced this whimsical animated romp which the company used to extoll the benefits of its regulated monopoly. It’s actually more of…

NVIDIA’s Tegra 4: Six Times as Powerful as Tegra 3, 1080p at 120Hz and 4K Video?

A leaked slide, published by Chip Hell, purports to show the specs of NVIDIA’s next high-power mobile processors—and if the leak’s accurate, it looks like NVIDIA is more than catching up with the competition. The leak details the 4th generation of NVIDIA’s Tegra processor, currently codenamed Wayne. It apparently uses 28 nanometer processing across a…

What Is This?

This thing looks like a potato or a chunk of root ginger—but it’s not. In fact, it’s something far larger, and more exciting, but can you guess what it is? The image was taken just last week by a team of Chinese scientists. The black background and shadow on the object’s surface might give you…

HTC’s Next Android Flagship to Pack a 1.7GHz Quad-Core Processor and 1080p Screen?

Some leaked tech specs supposedly tell us what to expect from HTC’s flagship Android model for 2013, with the phone maker apparently set to launch a 4.7-inch model with a 1080p display. The phone, which is currently known under the codename HTC M7, features an enormous 468PPI image density output thanks to the display numbers,…

Skype’s giving away a month’s worth of free international phone calls. Merry Christmas! [Skype]

Will We Have Cognitive Computers That Feel And Smell in The Next Five Years?

At the end of each year, IBM releases its “5 in 5″—five technology predictions that IBM researchers foresee coming to fruition within the coming five years. These predictions are based on everything from emerging market trends to cultural and social behaviors to actual technologies IBM has incubating in its many labs. And if this year’s…

Canadian carrier Rogers is letting customers reserve Blackberry 10 devices—despite no specs being public. Dumb. [TC]