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Siri has been an accomplice to the comedy routines of everyone from Conan O’Brien to our very own Sam Biddle, but we hadn’t seen her musical talents until the Flaming Lips enlisted her help on this new weirdness. https://gizmodo.com/conan-knows-how-were-really-using-siri-5853086 Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne posted a track featuring Siri to Soundcloud over the weekend, writing…
Need an iPhone tethering app? For $2 (and likely a very limited time only), you can download QuasiDisk, a file viewing app that can also share a connection over a proxy. TheNextWeb says it takes a fair amount of tweaking to get it working, but it does work. [iTunes via TheNextWeb] Image via Preetam Rai
Everybody loves to talk about other people. It’s human nature. But our society seems to stigmatize gossip, branding it as common, rude and just a little bit shameful. Turns out, though, it’s not all bad. According to Robb Willer, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley there are a lot of…
A trip to the coffee shop can provide some temporary warmth on a cold day, but performance clothing manufacturer Virus has a more unique approach to using coffee beans to boost your body temperature up to ten degrees: turning it into spandex. The company’s StayWarm line uses a specially developed fabric made from something they…
We’ve seen the Nook Tablet rooted before, but this has to be the easiest process out there. All you need is a 2GB SD card, a computer that runs Windows, and a Nook Tablet with tablet software version 1.4.1 or earlier. https://gizmodo.com/nook-tablet-rooted-android-free-for-all-coming-soon-5861258 The detailed instructions are posted on the XDA Developers Forum, and we’ve got…
For purist photographers, there is no alternative to the optical viewfinder. Current LED screens are, by comparison, like looking though the bottom of a bottle. But could this tiny, high-res display change that? This new MicroOLED display, originally developed with military and medical heads-up displays in mind, can deliver a fairly impressive 5.4 megapixel (2560…
When landing a helicopter, I guess there are a few basic rules to follow. Make sure you don’t land on people likely comes first, but a close second is probably to avoid landing near things that stand a good chance of getting blown away. This pilot didn’t remember that part. Apparently recorded in northwestern Libya,…
A post on Facebook has received over a million comments, which is believed to be a first. Sadly, it was achieved by 107 fans of the game Frontierville who hit the 1,001,291 comment mark with a lot of two-letter posts. The record attempt has been submitted to Guinness for appraisal, but as yet there’s been…
Cooperation is a rare thing in the cut-throat world of technology, but some of the world’s biggest email providers are teaming up to help cut the incidence of phishing scams. The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, AOL and plenty more are backing something called Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC).…
I don’t know what it is about new data centers, but they all seem to resemble the evil lairs of Bond-movie villains. Google’s latest, based in a disused paper mill in Finland, is no exception. Joining the ranks of the Norwegian fjord-cooled data center in a cave and Facebook’s $700 million Arctic server farm, Google’s…
Continuing its bold, brave and surprisingly successful e-Reader battle with Amazon, Barnes & Noble is soon to launch its fifth Nook device. Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a long feature piece on the book seller. Tucked away, two-thirds of the way through, was a tantalizing nod toward the company’s future tech: “At…
Since the feds shut down Megaupload, there’s been concern about what would happen to the user data stored using the service. Turns out that it may just be deleted, as early as this Thursday. https://gizmodo.com/feds-kill-megaupload-updated-5877612 Associated Press reports that a letter, filed in the case on Friday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern…
Bjork’s fifth album, Vespertine could come out 10 years from now and it would still sound startlingly ahead of it’s time. Quiet, meditative and stark, the LP is absolutely perfect for these winter months. “It’s Not Up To You” was maybe sorta supposed to be a proper single on the album, but for whatever reason,…
When it comes to the kitchen, simplicity reigns supreme. Cooking gadgets and tools are novel, but more often than not, they’re better in concept than actuality. The Twist Whisk, which transforms from a flat whisk to a balloon whist, appears to be a bit of an anomaly. When you twist the handle, the teflon-coated steel…
Remember that civil lawsuit looming over the heads of some of the top Silicon Valley companies for conspiring not to poach each other’s employees? The latest juicy tidbit to leak from that involves Steve Jobs sending Eric Schmidt an email demanding that Google stop stealing. https://gizmodo.com/doj-says-apple-google-pixar-and-intel-conspired-to-no-5877929 Reuters say the email, sent in 2007, was quickly…
Life has a fantastic collection of images from the photographer Fritz Goro, who spent the middle of the 20th century documenting all the weird and wonderful ideas coming from the worlds of science, technology and industry. Holograms, Exosuits, lasers, factories, laboratories and strange looking fetuses are all blessed with Goro’s magic touch. You should really…
How do you fit a humongoid Anglepoise lamp in your home? Reduce it down to two-dimensions and pack it full of LEDs, of course. Forged of birch and steel, Giles Godwin-Brown’s Nepa Lamp will sit flat on a wall, or spin out into the third dimension and totally screw with your head. I love it.…
According to Symantec, 13 apps from three developers—many in the official Android Market—have been carrying malicious chunks of code called Android.Counterclank, and are suspected of running on as many as five million phones, stealing info and running ads against the will of the device’s owner. ComputerWorld, speaking to Symantec, learned that the apps have been…
One of the things I love computers for is how they have democratized the access to things that once were only attainable by a very few. This World War II short film called The German is a perfect example. In the film, “a British fighter pilot pursues the german ace that shot down his friend…
There are lots of recycling programs that will happily salvage the raw materials from your outdated electronics. But if you still can’t let your old 386 go, maybe Rodrigo Alonso has another solution for you—turn it into gaudy furniture. His N+ew, or No More Electronic Waste, stools are composed of a small mountain of defunct…
