Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
I seem to have struck out. After 2+ hours, my quest to find a last-minute Valentine using social media has come up dry. There’s reason for you to be hopeful on your own search, though. https://gizmodo.com/the-best-place-to-get-a-last-minute-internet-valentines-5884771 For one, it’s not exactly romantic to include terms and conditions of your proposition. And for another, I probably…
Crackberry came into some supposed BlackBerry 10 OS screenshots from a tipster, which, among other things, shows off a new widget-centric UI. The shots apparently come from a packet put together by an ad agency working for RIM, and plenty of the Playbook’s QNX underpinnings can be found in the photos. The widgets themselves look…
In 1877, after many millennia of spirited debate, the gods finally settled on the fate for the way cinema would evolve and unfold over the course of human history. They would hide the choicest gems in a visual sea of garbage, and leave us mere mortals to fend for ourselves. But then towards the end…
What’s eating Fox News’ Shep Smith these days? Apparently, it’s AT&T’s new policy regarding customers with high data usage. Shep got a friendly text from AT&T informing him that he might find his 3G speed a bit throttled unless he switches over to a tiered data plan. Smith has been known to go off script…
You might think you can explain where Colombia-based Aracataca got these giant pens, pencils, crayons, and markers that are somehow miraculously passing through solid objects. But you can’t. Because it’s magic. Pure, unadulterated, magic. Oh, you think they’re just made from wood and magnets and painted to look like larger versions of the real thing?…
Earlier this month, a team of Russian scientists finally drilled down into Lake Vostok. Everyone was incredibly excited but, how deep can a lake really be, right? Um, it turns out very, very deep, and this visualization lends some perspective. https://gizmodo.com/we-finally-reached-that-20-million-year-old-lake-beneat-5882649 What I particularly like is the inclusion of the dates in this image published…
We’ve all been there. You’re setting up a shot that perfectly frames your friend against the background but as you snap your picture the people in the background start moving around and mess it all up. The picture is ruined, your friend looks like a bobbing ocean buoy amongst a sea of people and you…
Thanks to the exit of e-wallet service Paxum, and a $100,000 fraud incident, trading has been suspended at TradeHill, a Bitcoin exchange site that mostly played second-fiddle to the more prominent Mt. Gox. In a blog post, the Chile-based company outlines their reasons for halting trading and returning funds to customers, basically saying that in…
The thing that sucks about sadness is that, sorry, no one is ever going to be there for you. Except this pillow. It’s not a person, but it’s smart like one, and it bursts into song when you need it most. The Sleepy Weepy Pillow NEEDS to exist because sad people are really depressing, and…
Chameleons are famous for changing color in order to blend in with their surroundings. This little guy doesn’t really need to, though; at just an inch long he’s the smallest chameleon in the world. Discovered on a small islet just off Madagascar, this tiny reptile is one of a new species called Brookesia micra, reports…
If the DOJ gets its way, it won’t need a warrant to monitor people who buy cell phones and other electronic services using a fake name, according to a story in today’s Wall Street Journal. The DOJ is arguing that because a California man used a fake name when he bought a broadband card, service…
A box of chocolates? Yeah, that might be fine for omnivores, but what about that special carnivorous someone? How’s about a dozen beef sirloin roses from this British butcher? Nothing says “Let’s get carnal!” like a bouquet of carnage. [Hungree via Design You Trust]
Toy Fair is full of lame jigsaw puzzles, toy horses, and other antique things nobody cares about anymore. But! There’s also plenty of unreleased Star Wars, Spider Man, and other stuff that makes us feel like excited kids again. Lightsabers! Of all the figurines and goofy weapons we put our paws on, the new versions…
Have no doubt about this: Apple is revamping their MacBook Pro line in 2012 in a radical way—not merely evolutionary. We know this not because of the usual rumors, but because there is no way this will not happen. This is what we expect. A radical but logical change When Steve Jobs said that the…
San Francisco is a ridiculous place where no one will tell you when you have a bad idea. Like today, when its emergency broadcast system is going to belt out I Left My Heart in San Francisco instead of the standard weekly warning. The warning siren, which plays every Tuesday at noon in San Francisco,…
If you’ve been looking for an excuse to drink all morning, I just found you one: according to a recent study, drinking vodka improves word association and verbal creativity. Somebody pass the bottle. Science News reports that people who are intoxicated, though not legally drunk, have more intuitive insights into difficult word-association problems. The research,…
You don’t have a Valentine’s Day date. It’s ok, neither do I. But I am going to put myself out there for your benefit and figure out which social network will give you the best chance to beg a last minute Valentine’s Day date. Starting… now. At exactly 11:30 EST, we’re going to activate comments…
For a while Samsung couldn’t decide whether to call its Galaxy Note tablet or a phone. Considering that its 5.3-inch screen splits the difference between an iPhone and a Galaxy Tab 7, that’s not surprising. But why get caught up on labels? Let’s just call the Galaxy Note what it is: A giant hulking mammoth…
Boo, an animal so impossibly cute as to make physicists question our understanding of the cosmos, is now available for mass production. It’s soft. It’s lifelike. We went hands-on with the most disgustingly cute toy ever seen. The Boo Doll, which debuted at the New York Toy Fair this week, is more than just a…
Borrowing from the design of the recoil shoulder pad you’ll find on a shotgun, the sidewalls on the iPhone GunnerCase are filled with air cells that collapse on impact, absorbing the forces and minimizing the damage of a dropped handset. And unlike a lot of soft rubber cases that are prone to attracting untold mountains…