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We’ve known Fukushima’s been hemorrhaging radiation steadily since the disaster began in March. But now we’ve got a horrid new way to quantify it: the amount of terribly dangerous cesium-137 released by the plant is equal to 168 nuclear bombings. The Guardian reports that the Japanese government’s own calculations put the release of cesium-137—a particularly…
I’m sitting on this sunny, peaceful, picturesque New York day staring at my computer. Why? Because Irenes a coming. See where she’s currently at with the NY Times slick Hurricane Irene Tracking Map. I hope you’ll be okay South Carolina. That’s got to be the scariest spinning icon in the history of spinning icons. [NY…
You know how you know about Hurricane Irene three days before it hits land and ruins the East Coast? Doppler. Specifically, the NEXRAD Doppler system that’s been tracking severe weather across the US of A since 1997. Doppler radar systems work by blasting out a short pulse of energy that scatters when it hits an…
The new iPhone release is near! REPENT and prepare your DOLLARS! And, in the meantime, take a look at the inevitable leaked photos of parts already arriving to the Chinese part resellers. Some of them are labeled N94, suggesting an evolution from the original iPhone 4 (N90) and Verizon’s iPhone 4 (N92). Would this be…
These images show the devastating effect of the 1938 New England hurricane, the last big hurricane to hit the upper East Coast of the United States. Let’s hope we don’t get anywhere near this. [Boston.com, Syracuse.com, The Boston Channel, MSNBC via BuzzFeed]
See if you can understand these famous characters bio-pictograms, from Darth Vader to Bruce Lee to Jesus, the Bible character. Like our friends at Data Visualization say: don’t take them too seriously. I wish the Hitler one showed him burning in the bunker ditch. [H-57 via Data Visualization]
Oh, Gaddafi, you eccentric old creeper. Of course you have a gigantic network of tunnels under Tripoli so you can sneak around and do dastardly shit. Yeah, well, all your tunnel are belong to rebels. The Libyan oppostion and a couple TV crews have finally breached Gaddafi’s massive complex of underground tunnels. Nobody is yet…
Swiss climber Ueli Steck is one of my personal superheroes. Watch this video of him beating a climb speed record on the Eiger—a 13,025-foot mountain in the Bernese Alps—to understand why. Heck, just watch it because it’s bloody amazing. Make sure to do it at 720p in full screen. The cinematography is crisper than a…
From 1974 up until the other night (with a brief NeXT/Pixar interlude), Steve Jobs powered the company that brought the world some of the most innovative products we’ve ever known. (Screw you, wheel!) These are his greatest hits. https://gizmodo.com/steve-jobs-invented-your-dell-pc-and-your-android-phone-5834413 If you wanna ditch the gallery, click here. https://gizmodo.com/apples-most-amazing-products-under-steve-jobs-5834150 1983: The Apple IIe First introduced in…
At 8 x 10 inches, the Maxback is the biggest camera sensor in the world. It was commissioned by professional photographer Mitchell Feinberg and it costed as much as “a good size house.” Why spend so much money? He explains: The development and production of two backs (I wanted to have a spare) was equal…
Here’s something mysterious: amid the WSJ’s report on Tim Cook’s ascension, they say Apple’s “working on new technology to deliver video to televisions, and has been discussing whether to try to launch a subscription TV service.” That could be huge. The claim is tied to ye olde “people familiar with the matter,” but this particular…
PocketNow has a leaked photo of the upcoming HTC Omega and it looks like there’s a front facing camera. WP7 has lagged on that so it’s great to see them reach some feature parity. Oh and using a 1.5Ghz Snapdragon processor doesn’t hurt either. https://gizmodo.com/windows-phone-mango-will-support-front-facing-cameras-5817072 Other purported specs of the Omega are a 3.8-inch S-LCD…
Are you one of the lucky jackasses who got in on the $99 TouchPad bonanza? Then you’re a jerk. I hate you. And also, HP has a cache of apps (normally $31 total) to give you for free. https://gizmodo.com/10-things-you-can-do-with-a-100-touchpad-5833217 The apps include Glimpse, which improves the multitasking capabilities on the TouchPad, some novelties and games,…
If you ever wanted to start a conversation with an iPhone case, here’s a sure-fire way: buy this giant ear case for the iPhone 4. It’ll look like you have elephantiasis on your ear. I can appreciate a cleverly hilarious idea and I don’t see anything more OMG CLEVER than rolling down the street, smoking…
It has some crash problems, but the $1 Seismometer app for iPhone looks like fun if you want to record vibration levels. Apparently it is so sensitive that some users say it can notice your heartbeats. Which, you know, it is perfect for lame huh-what-was-that East Coast earthquakes. [iTunes] https://gizmodo.com/all-the-videos-of-the-east-coast-earthquake-updating-5833659
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver ran no fewer than, I’m sure, 3.48 million simulations predicting what would happen if Hurricane Irene directly hit Manhattan at full strength. If it did, know what the end result would be? ECONOMIC RECKONING. Using historical data from 20 hurricanes to hit the Northeast in the past, and adjusting the economic damage…
What? Everybody knows Jules Verne totally called the Cellular Revolution back in 1874—wrote a book about it called ‘The Camera-Phone” and everything. There’s even a write up about it here, in The Onion.
We love Micro Four Thirds cameras. We use them almost daily. But as nifty as high quality interchangeable lenses are, the big eye on a small body can be awkward. Not anymore. The Lumix’s newest lens retracts like magic. Available as a $750 set (badged the Lumix GF3X) paired with the stellar GF3, the 14-42…
It’s official. The human arm is now a vestigial limb. It no longer serves a purpose now that you can search Google with naught more than the melodious sound of your voice. Voice search is currently only available to Chrome users and requires—obviously—a microphone to work. But, in addition to normal Google searches, the service…
With the amount of vibration and movement a typical car suspension endures on a drive, you’d think someone would try to harvest that energy with kinetic generators. Whaddya mean MicroGen Systems already did that? These generators are tiny, just one-centimeter square, and constructed of a small silicon flap connected to a piece of piezoelectric material…
