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Kim Dotcom just posted an image of a helicopter chasing his car. Is that the New Zealand police? The FBI in a rented helicopter? The press? A playful friend? He hasn’t shared any more details, but it’s pretty amazing, in a Ray Liotta’s Goodfellas kind of way. Update: Kim just told us that this is…
While most new Monopoly sets desperately try to keep up with the times—swapping cash for credit cards or using circular boards—here’s one which celebrates the past. Now you can play the property-trading game while celebrating the life of the father of computer science, Alan Turing. https://gizmodo.com/the-new-monopoly-will-be-controlled-by-an-all-powerful-5755828 Announced over the weekend by Bletchley Park, where Turing…
Google glasses look dumb enough that you might expect to get beaten up for wearing them. But they’ve now made an appearance at New York Fashion Week and… they still look dorky, even on super models. https://gizmodo.com/a-man-got-his-ass-kicked-for-wearing-digital-eye-glasse-5926570 Admittedly, the glasses are really being used to record designer Diane von Furstenberg’s fashion show, in order to…
Bill Moggridge, a British designer who created the very first clamshell-style laptop, has died age 69. The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has announced that Moggridge, its director, died on Saturday from cancer. https://gizmodo.com/father-of-the-worlds-first-laptop-snags-top-design-awar-5686370 Moggridge is undeniably most famous for designing the Grid Compass computer all the way back in 1982. In particular, he was…
When HP rolled its first TouchSmart All-In-One back in 2008, the potential of such a machine was evident even if the idea itself wasn’t fully realized. Enter the 23.6-inch HP Spectre One. Gone is the IR-based touch technology used in previous devices. In its place, a capacitive, multitouch panel. And no longer do we have…
Man, I don’t even know where to start with this movie. Released in 2009, Dogtooth is a Greek film, so get ready for subtitles, but there’s so, so much more you also need to prepare yourself for. The basic premise is that a mother and a father live with their grown children, two girls and…
The Mountain Goats, or basically John Darnielle, have gone through a pretty major evolution over the years. The new single “Cry For Judas” off the upcoming album Transcendental Youth is a great example not only of how far they’ve come but how they’ve done it without really giving anything up. This doesn’t sound like anything…
For a lot of us, salad dressing is fine store bought and carelessly shaken before application, maybe by being dropped on the floor. But if you have more discerning tastes, and prefer to blend some dressing up fresh, the Prepara Dressing Whiz can help you out. Essentially a miniature blender, the Whiz takes two AA…
Jake Davis—perhaps better known as Topiary, mastermind behind crazy Internet assaults during the summer of 2011—is out on bail with one obvious condition: no Internet. Now, 12 months after his heyday, he’s decided to reflect on his experience, and his new Internet-free life, and wrote about it in the Guardian. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-topiary-lulzsec-mastermind-updated-5826501 It must have been…
The slingshot seems like one of the most basic weapons designs ever, so it must have been around for ages, right? Yes and no. Vulcanized rubber wasn’t invented until the late 1830s but the slingshot concept was around long before that. The key is rope, but I’ll let slingshot man Joerg Sprave explain. [YouTube]
If you’re trying to sell something online, panoramic project images are a great way to make customers feel like they know what they’re buying. Actually making the things can be kind of a pain, but the CupChair app by RotaryView streamlines the process. It’s a pretty simple process: you just place your iPhone in a…
Handy though it may be, Paypal has had its share of gaffes. Between the whole smashed violin thing, and shutting down a charity toy drive they accumulated some ill-will. In a counter-move, PayPal’s President David Marcus reached out to a jilted customer directly, after PayPal locked up about $60,000 of his money. https://gizmodo.com/paypal-smashed-some-ladys-antique-violin-and-can-smash-5872958 It all…
A recent survey commissioned by Crucial has turned up a few interesting statistics on computer stress. 94 percent of respondents said they’ve had computer problems drive them up the wall, and a little over half aren’t happy with how their little Internet box behaves in general. 18 percent even said computer problems are more stressful…
The iPhone 5 launch is just days away. Excitement is reaching its peak. Anything is possible. OK, well not anything, specifically not this. So maybe not all the features in this (obviously fake) video by Aatma Studio are impossible, but the best one is, despite how soul-crushingly bad you yearn for it. You’ll know which…
If you’re into the whole pour-over coffee thing, and are looking for a brewer that fits into your kitchen by looking suspiciously like a standard drip-brewer, the Unplugged Coffee Maker is right up your alley. Designed not so much to make your coffee as to hold the ground while you make the coffee with a…
You’ve probably taken some pictures of yourself at some point or another, but none of them were on Mars. Yesterday, everybody’s favorite currently-active Mars rover, Curiosity, sent back a self-shot that is literally out of this world. In the picture, we finally get a great shot of Curiosity’s face (well, its mast) including its lone…
If you’re afraid of, or just annoyed by, the concept of Windows 8’s Metro (well formerly Metro, but whatever) UI style, there’s a handy way around it. RetroUI is a program that will take users directly to the Classic desktop after login, and even lock Metro away completely. There have been several ways to get…
After confirmations to the contrary yesterday, Amazon has now come out and said that users will be able to opt-out of ads on the new Kindle Fire models for a one-time fee of $15. https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-all-the-new-kindle-fires-will-have-ads-that-5941434 An Amazon spokesperson reached out to us by email with the following statement: I wanted to let you know that…
You probably haven’t seen La jetée. It’s a weird, but interesting French short film from the 60s, composed mostly of photographs. It’s almost a slideshow. I actually saw it during an English class (weird, right?) in college, and while it was interesting—intellectually stimulating even—I didn’t enjoy watching it. I’m glad to have watched it, but…
When you think of the Offspring, you probably think of “Self-Esteem” or “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” instead of “I Choose.” That’s a damn shame. Don’t get me wrong, I dug a lot of their hits way back in the day, but I still dig “I Choose” now. Off their 8th studio album Ix…
