Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Today an appeals court helped the RIAA extort $222,000 from Jammie Thomas-Rasset for distributing 24 songs on the internet. The original verdict called for a preposterous penalty of $1.92 million. Sure, this new amount of just under $9,000 a song is lower, but ugh, it’s still absurd and horrible. It’s been just a few weeks…
Birds are awesome. From a distance. Up close they are terrifying, startling creatures that will crap on you and swoop unexpectedly into your face, making you scramble to hit the deck. Now an avian slumlord has created a bird tenement capable of containing 76 birds—and one weirdo human—at a time. Created by a designer called…
The good news: Google will be sponsoring 4,000 Boingo hotspots through the end of the month. That’s a lot of Wi-Fi! The bad news: It looks like only devices that have direct Google Play access—Android phones, Macs, and PCs—will benefit. Which, hey is Google’s prerogative. But it’s also a very different Google from the one…
The internet makes everything weirder. It’s no surprise, then, that one of the first kids shows to get picked up after a viral YouTube video was Adventure Time, one of the most bizarre shows to ever grace cable television. Adventure Time’s effortless weirdness is a sharp contrast to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim shows, which always…
There have been many, many rumors which, by consistency alone, given us an idea of how big an iPad Mini and iPhone 5 might be. This latest shot, which shows cases for the devices that use the leaked specs, puts those maybe devices in context with the current offerings. And if that iPad Mini shell…
Duct tape solves just about any problem (for a little while, at least). Busted truck bumpers, cracked trash cans, an endless list of other household fractures—if two things are better off stuck together, duct tape is the answer. But how did we come up with this miracle on a spool? And what makes one product…
I took this picture with my new (to me) Nikon D5100. I’m still very new at DSLR photography but I went on a short “nature walk” in Redmond, WA during lunch today. This is a picture of a bridge going over the Sammamish Slough. It took a bit of travelling off the main trail to…
You never know with a handheld photograph. Will it be sharp? Or will it be a smear. But for this week’s Shooting Challenge, we shared a simple trick to make sure your shots come out great, no matter the camera. https://gizmodo.com/shooting-challenge-one-focal-length-exposures-5940329 Winner: Wood Gate Bridge This is my second time submitting, and after reading the…
So far we’ve only had the chance to hear what Nokia’s sweet-sounding City Lens augmented reality app is capable of. If you’ve got a Nokia Lumia 900, 800, or 710 you can get a beta version of the app right now. https://gizmodo.com/nokias-new-city-lens-and-maps-make-lumia-an-augmented-r-5940614 City Lens works much like Yelp’s Monocle: Point it at a street corner…
According to Pat Bradley, one of the cameramen who documented US atomic tests during the 1950s, the Wahoo and Umbrella underwater explosions were more amazing than a atmospheric nuclear explosion. Watch this stunning video and listen to him explaining his experience of living these explosions just 2.5 miles away. 2.5 miles seemed like a safe…
I find this extremely hard to believe, but according to new research published in Nature Neuroscience, scientists have invented a method to induce memories in brains for the first time in history. Total Recall—here we come. The study—published by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Professor of Neurosciences and Physiology/Biophysics Ben Strowbridge, PhD, and…
When Justin Timberlake ripped off part of Janet Jackson’s top at the end of the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII, thus exposing her nipple, old ladies fainted, and the FCC smote CBS for its moral failure. But there’s a new Nipplegate in town, and this time the transgressor is the smut rag known as…
Intel’s next-generation laptop chipset (Codename: Haswell) isn’t set to come out until next year, but when it does, AnandTech says the 3D-transistor-based hardware will offer twice the GPU performance as Ivy Bridge, and when idle, will consume 20x less power than Sandy Bridge. Excited yet? [AnandTech]
The bicycle is one of the most efficient, environmentally-friendly modes of transportation, even centuries after its creation. Still though, there’s no lack of innovation happening when it comes to bike. The latest example of this is the Alfa: a 20-pound bike made primarily of cardboard which is capable of holding nearly 500 pounds. Oh, and…
Imagine a world where every logo, headline and text were perfectly typeset. Every letter on every word on every publication optically kerned to perfection. That world will never happen, but if every single wannabe designer and wanker with Corel Draw and Microsoft Powerpoint played this game, we will get close enough to it. Oh, and…
Last month, Apple’s crazy-lax password reset protocol allowed Wired’s Mat Honan to be hacked. Hard. It was a wake-up call for the company and its customers, a breach so severe it demanded an immediate solution. What Apple came up with, though, might be just as nuts as the original problem: It’s basically impossible to recover…
Pentax has overhauled the excellent dust-proof, shock-proof, water-resistant Pentax K-5 from 2010 with a brand new autofocus system that works in darker conditions than ever before. The Pentax K-5 II might just be the best sticky situation camera out there. One of the things that we love about the direction of Pentax cameras these days…
Taking the awwww approach to earn your affection, Sony is staking a claim in the crowded compact Bluetooth speaker market with its adorable new SRS-BTV5. At roughly the size of a billiard ball, what the 1.2-watt speaker lacks in oomph, it makes up for with functionality. It wirelessly connects to any Bluetooth A2DP compatible audio…
Apple’s next iPhone is coming tomorrow. If you’re planning cashing in your old phone, you need to do it now. Here’s where to look for the best deal while there’s still some time left. https://gizmodo.com/iphone-5-the-complete-rumor-roundup-5930100 ebay How much: $309-$400 How to do it: You can go one of two ways with eBay—you can either sell…
Apple will announce its redesigned iPhone tomorrow. Ahead of that huge launch, Amazon has knocked down the price of the 16GB to just $100 with a contract in an apparent attempt to unload as many of the phones as possible before everybody forgets about the Samsung Galaxy S III. But don’t let the sheen of…
