Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
As long as you’re not chugging hydrochloric acid, your fragging thirst quencher of choice shouldn’t be able to fry the impending AZiO’s Levetron Mech4. The look’s not for everyone (MechWarrior fetishists notwithstanding), but the spill proof guts sure are. Even if you’re not trying to shoot someone in the face, the odds are decent that…
Flickr is a shell of what it used to be, Instagram makes everyone’s pictures look the same and Picasa isn’t really ideal for browsing great pictures taken by a great community. 500px, on the other hand, seems to only have great pictures. Their iPad app is an extremely elegant way to browse them. What’s it…
Printers aren’t exciting. They’re printers! We make fun of them, and of HP for stuffing them full of apps. But professional-photography-grade printers? Yeah, we care about those. And Canon’s new PIXMA PRO-1 inkjet is really dang impressive. The PIXMA PRO-1 uses a a 12-ink system—five monochromes—with a tubular delivery system, and ink tanks 2.5x larger…
If you weren’t aware, our own Mat Honan was attempting to go against incumbent San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee as a write-in candidate in next week’s election. With the internet backing him, his campaign was shaping up to be formidable. Then The Man struck. The Department of Elections in SF found a way to negate…
Last night, while the local news affiliate was off refueling its helicopter, police fired tear gas into a crowd of Occupy Oakland protesters. Which made citizen journalists, who captured and distributed the action even while being assailed, themselves, suddenly indispensable. With Twitter and live-video-streaming services like UStream becoming an important tool for reporting events like…
Who knew you could cram so much violence into a tiny little package the size of a deck of cards? I mean, beyond just a wicked knife? Meet “The Business.” It’s a credit card concept that’s five kinds of deadly. https://gizmodo.com/the-credit-card-knife-is-for-the-truly-unbalanced-5715616 The Business is designed for this scenario: you’re coming home late at night and…
There are some inventions—think umbrellas or nail clippers—that have been somewhat serviceable but hardly perfect. Why can’t we find something more effective? Did we all just give up? Athanasia Leivaditou didn’t. She wants to create a raincoat with an umbrella hoody. The problem with umbrellas? You have to freaking hold them. That ties up a…
Boeing’s first 787 Dreamliner made its first commercial flight today. After years of delays the future of aviation has arrived. And according to reviews, it was a totally pleasant flight. Even if the 787 can’t totally fix flying, it might make it a whole lot better. https://gizmodo.com/when-big-toys-break-boeings-dreamliner-delay-explained-5302447 Okay, so all that happened is that a…
Facebook says it has 750,000,000 users. Somewhere in that mix of baby pictures and beer pong, a hell of a lot of scam and spam activity is spread. Luckily for us, Zuckerberg retaliates with the “Facebook Immune System.” A combination of both sophisticated spam-seeking algorithms and a team of 30 human spam hunters, the Facebook…
Hooray! DirecTV just updated its iPad app with the ability to stream live TV. You have to be connected to the same network as your DirecTV Plus HD DVR but that’s okay cause it turns your iPad into another TV. The channels you can watch with the DirecTV app are actually pretty great. Here’s the…
So here is an impolite question: How big is your belly? What size are your thighs? How much of your body is squishy? If you can’t tell me how fat you are, you’ll never get thin. Fat will kill you. Very literally. Lugging around that excess body fat isn’t just cumbersome, it can lead directly…
What if you’re driving down a dark road in the middle of the night and you have no idea where you are? Navigating twists and turns would suck. But what if your car could display all the relevant info in front of your eyes? According to Gizmag, True3D is a technology that wants to put…
The big ugly Foursquare Radar update that accompanied iOS 5—bringing constant location tracking and social tension to the app—has been fixed. Mostly. Although the friend alienation problem persists, you’ll no longer get buried beneath horribly annoying notifications. https://gizmodo.com/the-awkward-horrors-of-the-knowing-where-everyone-is-al-5849286 Before the update, Radar would ping you with suggested checkins—like a sandwich joint you’ve checked into before.…
The way I see it, there are three things you can do today. You could harmlessly geek out about that awesome Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. I don’t care what nerds say, that thing is h to the awt. Two, you can participate in Occupy Oakland, which, um, might result in getting shot in the…
A UK man noticed an unidentified ‘flying’ object in the night sky and said it flashing a bright white light into his home. He called the police trying to explain his situation. The police dutifully logged it down until… the same guy called back later and apologized, saying it was only the Moon. I feel…
Users of Escort’s line of radar detectors are being encouraged to update their power cords to the company’s new SmartCord which adds a Bluetooth connection to a smartphone app, providing constant updates on the location of speed traps, red light cameras and other tools employed by John Law. The $80 upgrade is available in versions…
You buy a BlackBerry for BBM and/or email. RIM’s PlayBook lacks both. Nobody wants to buy RIM’s PlayBooks. So here’s a jazzy idea from the Canadian HQ: they’re not going to add integrated email or BBM support until February. Eureka. At this point, is working at RIM so unbearable that they just want to implode…
At Nokia World, CNET spotted this batshit crazy flexible Nokia phone. Yes. Flexible. As in it’s super bendy and twisty and gooey and freaking awesome. It sort of looks alien but the ‘Nokia kinetic device’ is real. Well, sort of real. It’s only a concept right now and there are no plans to put it…
Nokia just announced two gosh darn attractive Windows Phone handsets. The first “true” Windows Phones, the company says—and makes a pretty convincing case that they are. But rather than making everyone hot and bothered, Lumia seems to be leaving people cold. Here’s why that’s wrong. https://gizmodo.com/these-are-nokias-hot-new-windows-phones-updated-hands-5853424 There’s not much disagreement that the Lumia 800’s got…
Surgical device company Medtronic paid surgeons millions of dollars to investigate the safety of their spinal implant products. Turns out they cause cancer, but no one reported it. So the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel did! They tell the disturbing story in an exhaustive investigative article. The devices in question, called Infuse and Amplify, are used in spinal…
