Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Yes. Fifty cores. Five zero. All on a single, tiny chip. It’s real. Intel beamed over their 50-core “Knights Ferry” processor yesterday at a supercomputing conference in Seattle, Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times reports. And they have good reason. The tiny chip is capable of 1 teraflop of processing power—an esoteric way of calculating…
Even though customers who pre-ordered the Nook Tablet aren’t supposed to start receiving deliveries until Friday, the new Nook has already been spotted in the wild a whole two days early, and people who pre-ordered can expect deliveries early as well. https://gizmodo.com/nook-tablet-its-like-the-nook-color-on-speed-updated-5857020 Barnes and Noble is shipping its 7-inch tablet into the world early—just like…
AIM has risen like Lazarus. And don’t think this will be a haphazard update either. AIM has been reimagined from the ground up. As an AIM user since its earliest days, this is the first revamp/update that’s excited me in quite sometime. https://gizmodo.com/remember-when-aol-instant-messenger-was-our-facebook-5800437 AOL gave the platform to Jason Shellen and his team, who were…
Iodine-131 is a dangerous radioactive isotope. It can clog up your thyroid gland and contaminate food. It’s been a big problem in Japan (for obvious reasons), but now it’s been scarily detected throughout Europe. And nobody knows the source. Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Sweden, and the Czech Republic have all detected clouds of iodine-131 within…
The Secret Service just said that bullets hit the White House. One of the bullets smashed a window but was stopped by ballistic glass on the interior and another was found on the White House’s exterior. Everybody seems to be safe. Luckily, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama aren’t currently in the White House, having traveled…
Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and 3D technology specialist Xpand 3D are moving forward quickly with plans to create a single format for active shutter 3D glasses, with many more TV makers joining the standards licensing scheme. The consortium now has its own umbrella web site which it’s bravely opted to call Full HD 3D Glasses (which…
Chalk this one up as rumor, but Engadget’s been sent a render of a new HTC handset codenamed ‘Zeta’. The monster device is supposedly packing a beast of a 2.5GHz quad-core CPU besting the previously rumored quad-core Edge. If the source is on-the-money, the Zeta should come packing a 4.5-inch 720p screen, 1GB of RAM,…
The general manager of the French division of Nokia has just let slip one enormous great secret, revealing plans for a Nokia made Windows 8 tablet. And it’ll be launching next summer. Speaking in an interview with newspaper Les Echos, Paul Amsellem said: “In June 2012, we will have a tablet that runs on Windows…
According to wireless guru John Stanton, he and Steve Jobs repeatedly discussed the feasibility of creating a “synthetic carrier” over Wi-Fi connections—thereby squeezing out AT&T—between 2005 and 2007. Stanton didn’t elaborate on why he abandoned the idea, though I’d guess it’s because Jobs figured out how to get Sprint to give him $15.5 billion for…
Despite being the coldest national capital in the world, Mongolia’s Ulan Bator is about to undertake a unique climatological experiment—employing artificial glaciers to cool and water the city during its warmer months. The £460,000 experiment involves artificially growing “naleds.” A naled is a thick slab of ice that can grow in excess of one meter—often…
Foursquare’s undergone something of a Renaissance over the last few weeks—packing on new features like Radar and unlockable badge levels. Now, the social-mobile site is shifting its focus away from check-ins and towards exploration while optimizing the site for tablets. https://gizmodo.com/foursquares-biggest-new-feature-isnt-broken-anymore-5853618 The screen shot above shows the most obvious change to the Foursquare website—a large…
Although it escaped into the world a bit early, the HP Folio Ultrabook is now a publicly acknowledged child of HP as a machine designed for the business crowd, but cool enough for the average consumer. https://gizmodo.com/hps-leaked-13-folio-ultrabook-looks-pretty-tough-5859828 The 13-inch, 3.3-pound machine is nice and slim at 0.7-inches thick, though it’s not the slimmest (but we’re…
HP’s Envy line of serious fun notebooks (as opposed to serious business, bleh!) have always been a bit on the tacky side. I hate to say it, but they looked like expensive toys. Now they’re grown up, in and out. The new Envy 15, 17, and yes, 3D models borrow heavily from Apple. It’s disappointing…
I’m not much of a DC Comics fan—Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern took care of that—but this meticulously-crafted model of an assault on the Daily Planet is just jaw-dropping. Check out the full image after the jump. Assembled over a span of two months by LEGO builder Mr. Xenomurphy, this scene depicts Superman, Superboy and…
Who would have thought the future’d start with an ad in the back of Electronic News? But, on November 15, 1971 Intel announced its new 4004 processor—the first commercially available computer processor manufactured on a chip—and helped to usher in the Digital Age. Federico Faggin, Stanley Mazor, and Ted Hoff share credit for designing the…
After Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringe announced last week that the electronics giant was going to build “a different kind of TV set,” it’s not that big of a surprise that the companies working on something. Okay, it’s sort of a surprise. Let’s just hope Sony can pull this off. https://gizmodo.com/sonys-ceo-says-every-tv-it-makes-loses-money-5858511 According to the WSJ,…
Wanna know why movies are called flicks? It’s because of the flickering light that’s emitted from film projectors. Like smoking, smell-o-vision, and intermissions, it looks like 35MM films and their projectors are on their way out of the cinema. According to a report from IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service 2012 will “mark the crossover…
Down jackets are the de facto standard of winter clothing. They’re light, flexible, warm and so far, no one’s been able to make something better. Well, until now. North Face might’ve just made a jacket that’s better than down. It’s called ThermoBall. https://gizmodo.com/d-is-for-design-the-anatomy-of-a-down-coat-5713615 The new ThermoBall jacket looks like your run of the mill down…
Somebody in Hungary thought that designing high voltage towers in a shape that vaguely resembles a clown is a good idea. As if high voltage towers and their potential cancer-inducing powers weren’t terrifying enough. Somebody needs to get fired. The argument is that the shape will beautify and make big industrial objects more attractive. The…
So much news passes before our collective eyes every day that we couldn’t possibly cover it all. Mostly because much of it isn’t worth covering! But here are a some borderline tidbits we passed on, just in case. Robot Can Control Your Arms with Electrodes Over my dead… wait, it’s potentially helper robot for injured…
