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Are there any here among us who didn’t watch Scooby Doo as a kid, see a villain spying (with blinking eyes) behind a picture on the wall, and secretly wish we could do that? We may never be allowed to carve holes in our walls, but we can still make that dream come true. Mark…
Twenty-seven years after introducing the world’s first graphing calculator, Casio has developed its most sophisticated educational Game Boy ever. Indeed, the new Casio fx-CP400’s 320 x 528 resolution screen isn’t just color—it’s a freaking touchscreen that flips from vertical to horizontal. That’s a far cry from the drab 94 x 64 display on the the…
Promising to turn even the poorest of doodlers into artificial Rembrandts, researchers at Keio University have developed a desk that will automatically guide the tip of a pen to draw straight lines or perfectly round circles. It can even guide an artists’ hand through a pre-determined illustration, making the technology sound like a forger’s dream…
Chocolates shaped like bike wheels. Artisanal pen ink. Vegan beard oil. These are just a few things you might on Etsy. Now you can browse the online market for homemade goods on your iPad. What does it do? Helps you discover, buy, and browse items for sale on Etsy. Why do we like it? We’re…
You may not have noticed—why would you have?—but Internet Explorer has actually gotten markedly better! Better enough, anyway, to possibly soften to hardest-hearted internet troublemaker. https://gizmodo.com/the-five-best-new-features-in-windows-8-consumer-previe-5889122 And while you’re still probably right to stick with Chrome, kudos to Microsoft for keeping the bar in this video at just the right height: progress is progress, and…
Lights out, rebels: it looks like the Syrian government just blacked out almost the entire country’s access to the web. This is cyber warfare. Internet-monitoring firm Renesys says “77 networks experienced an outage in Syria starting at 10:26 UTC on November 29. This represents 92% of the routed networks in the country.” That’s a big…
Researchers at the Illinois Institute of Technology have developed a novel take on the rollcage-wrapped flying bot that does more than just protect the rotors during a crash. Its HyTAQ, or Hybrid Terrestrial and Aerial Quadrotor, uses a spinning cylindrical cage that also allows it to simply roll along the ground to get around. But…
HunterMoore.tv, the site that wants to do for sext revenge what YouTube did for animal videos, has a killer new feature. And by killer, I mean terrifying: the site’s (naked) victims will be put on a map. Stalker jackpot. https://gizmodo.com/heres-where-the-naked-pics-you-sexted-will-end-up-5963883 In a comment to Betabeat, Moore couldn’t sound more excited for his perverse baby’s geolocational…
The recording industry’s Copyright Alert System won’t launch until 2013 because of Hurricane Sandy. [Daily Dot]
This is the first ever scanning electron microscope image of a strand of DNA, and it shows the structure of the minuscule string of molecules that encodes all life. It’s tiny—that little scale bar in the bottom right corner measures just 20 nanometers—but it definitely shows the characteristic double helix that makes DNA iconic. Those…
I know what you’re thinking. Not another wearable health tracker, right? Except this one is a bit different and might actually be worth a damn. In an already crowded market, you might be wondering how or why the Basis watch is any different than every other wearable health monitor that’s currently available. You’d be absolutely…
When electoral clairvoyant Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight fame, goes to Google to discuss/plug his fancy new book, the collective IQ in the room probably matches the entire state of Rhode Island. So kick back, relax, and learn a little something from this hour-long smartypants chitchat. If nothing else, it’s fun to watch Googlers not be…
A lot’s changed on the surface of the Earth over the past 4.5 billion years. This video explains the long, slow process that enabled simple cells to evolve into the creatures that inhabit our planet today. [YouTube]
China’s well-known for its long and illustrious history of censoring the web. But rather than just blocking sites, it’s now employing some rather strange techniques—which means the online home of a small pet spa in Miami is receiving an insane number of hits every day. New Scientist has taken a peek inside the sinister world…
For as long as we can remember, AT&T has been rated the worst carrier of all carriers by Consumer Reports. This annual report placing AT&T last is as consistent as Christmas being on December 25th every year. So yes, for this year, it’s the same story. AT&T is the worst again. And Christmas is on…
Qualcomm sure is proud of its patent collection. Just like a proud mother hangs up pictures of her children, the company shows off 1,395 of its favorite patents in the entrance to its San Diego HQ. These images were snapped by Engadget. Still, it’s just a small slice of the Qualcomm patent portfolio: in total,…
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Japanese manufacturer Sharp is in serious talks with a number of US companies to try and save its finances. It plans to offer up stakes in the business in return for a “stable supply of breakthrough display technology”. The Journal reports that Dell, in particular, has been a…
Amazon’s Maps API is out of beta, which means developers will be adding it into plenty of new apps from now on. [Amazon]
Apple’s longed-for à la carte channels-as-apps TV is proving remarkably slow to arrive. But Time Warner’s CEO, Jeff Bewkes, can’t wait to get one. https://gizmodo.com/why-apple-tv-just-became-apples-most-important-product-5931185 It seems a little unusual that the head honcho of a cable TV company would be so keen to get his hands on Cook and co’s competition—but he is. Speaking…
For the past five months, Julian Assange has been holed up in a tiny room within the Embassy of Ecuador in London. It’s the only place in the city he can avoid extradition to Sweden—but it’s having some serious implications on his health. The Guardian reports that Assange has a “chronic lung condition”—it doesn’t say…
