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Imagine being 8-years-old again and on a long car trip. Instead of whining “Are we there, yet?”, you pick up a controller and play with your holographic animals. It sounds like science fiction, but it could be reality someday. Researchers at the Games and Experimental Entertainment Laboratory (GEELab) in Australia are developing a holographic entertainment…
HP handed out pink slips to employees in its webOS Global Business Unit on Monday. The computer company wouldn’t say how many workers it was letting go, but rumors suggest over 500 people are now unemployed. [AllThingsD]
It’s kind of hard to startle a New Yorker. That’s not arrogance speaking so much as being numb to all the public masturbators by this point. Still, an elevator in a nondescript office building in Queens opening to a hellish mix of Carnivàle and a Tim Burton flick is something to see. The surreal elevator…
Remember when the Pentagon let the F-35 start flying again, even though its underlying defects hadn’t been fixed? They just did literally the exact same thing with the F-22 Raptor. Hope you’re not worried about oxygen deprivation. https://gizmodo.com/the-f-35-is-cleared-to-fly-again-and-still-not-fixed-5832176 This past spring, the country’s entire $62 billion F-22 fleet was grounded after pilots reported symptoms of…
Everyone loves Amazon, except some employees in its Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania warehouse. According to a report in local newspaper The Morning Call, working conditions within the facility are unbearable. The report describes a factory with temperatures in the 100s, employees passing out from the heat and workers being terminated when they can’t keep up the…
Pools are great for cooling off but they’re not very green. They use lots of electricity, are kept clean with harsh chemicals and create an artificial landscape that screams “I love vinyl.” But it doesn’t have to be that way. More and more pool companies are designing Eco-Smart pools that’ll look and feel like you’ve…
I hate when people call me. Hate it. And I take it as a personal affront when they leave a voicemail. But apparently more than half of cellphone-using Americans still prefer dealing with calls and voicemails over texts. https://gizmodo.com/the-best-part-about-a-smartphone-is-never-having-to-cal-5736678 Specifically, 53 percent of cellphone users still, inexplicably, prefer being called to texted. The numbers switch…
California’s Matilija Dam is a huge mistake. Over 60 years after its construction, engineers and ecologists are realizing it does more harm than good—a feeling shared by the rogue artists who painted huge, easy instructions as a fix. I’m not sure what the proper protocol is for removing a dam without causing an instant flood,…
Facebook may have some upcoming changes that’ll add Watched, Listened, Read and Want buttons to its social network, according to a rumor from TechCrunch. These buttons will fine tune your profile information and could replace or augment the Like button. They will also give Facebook even more personal information tit can use to violate your…
This song has an awful title. It sounds like it should be the name of some horrible bar in Tijuana. That’s okay—ignore it. Drake’s latest is lush and lovely. And perfect for a Monday. For me, the front of the weekday choo choo train means balancing the blast of workplace brain chemicals (INTERNET INTERNET!) with…
Last year, when we asked what could possibly need an 8-square-inch low light sensor, Canon replied with, “Space stuff”. Totally proving them right, the Schmidt telescope at the University of Tokyo’s Kiso Observatory now employs it to records faint meteors in the night sky. https://gizmodo.com/with-expanded-size-comes-greater-light-gathering-capabi-5626133 The sensor already only requires 1/100th of the light as…
It’s a cold day in the life, so you’ve decided you need yet another music discovery app. One that gives an ear to lesser known talent. You hipster you. Well, Band of the Day lets you listen to some admittedly cool below-the-radar bands and learn all about them. What’s it do? Band of the Day,…
You’re constantly hearing about how you need to make sure to use a secure password, but what are you supposed to do if a hacker can just change your password without even cracking it? That’s what users with physical access to your computer can do on OS X Lion right now. A similar issue in…
The surgeons in this (somewhat gory, you’ve been warned!) video followed a lighted path to the cancer cells they needed to remove. Purdue researchers made the cancer cells glow using a dye that stained only the bad cells in the ovaries of 10 women in a small study published on Sunday in Nature Medicine. Ovarian…
Yes, bikes are efficient transportation, but city people also love their bikes because they look cool. What you ride is a style choice. Wanna really stand out? The Mixie Straight Edge is a fashion-forward collision of urban bicycle trends. The Mixie Straight Edge doesn’t know what it is. A low-rider fixie? A speedy stunt bike?…
If someone handed you a tiny plastic container and challenged you to snag a bunch of ping pong balls midair, do you think you could get ’em all? I know I couldn’t! But this self-perfecting robot sure can. The quadrotor mini-copter is so nimble because it’s constantly learning how to move better, demonstrating what’s called…
A year ago, BASE jumper Jeb Corliss defied death by jumping off a mountain in Switzerland wearing only his wing-suit and five GoPro cameras. A few days ago he processed some of his video through Twixtor. The crystal-clear results are insane. https://gizmodo.com/death-defying-wingsuit-video-shows-what-its-like-to-be-5657398 Twixtor is an artificial video speed software filter that works in programs like…
Sunday night’s announcement from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings that the company was to be split in two was a bombshell that quickly became a joke. According to Reed, Netflix will continue to stream content, while a new company called Qwikster would handle DVD distribution. Unfortunately Netflix/Qwikster haven’t acquired the Qwikster Twitter handle from weed-smoking gangstaz,…
I love the rich sound of my old vinyl albums, but I hardly ever spin them. MP3s suck, but they’re so easy that I’ve given up. At least I have this awesome speaker to remind me of better times. We’ve seen iPhone speaker horns before, but this is the first to really embrace bastardized low-fi…
YAAAAAAAR, IT BE TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY, YE OLDE, FESTERING WENCH! AS SUCH, I WILL SHOUT ALL ME RANTINGS AND YOU’LL LIKE IT. IF THOU EVER HOPES TO GET SOME SEA LEGS, YOU’D BEST HEED THIS LIST. Marion Hyper-Submersible Powerboat Sailboats just won’t do for a pirate anymore. Hell, normal-powered boats won’t even do.…
