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The Festo researchers who built this prototype robotic arm claim that they were inspired by the form and function of an elephant’s trunk. But anyone familiar with Spider-Man’s nemesis, Dr. Otto Octavius, knows what they really had in mind. It’s only natural that under-paid, unappreciated scientists would spend their time working on a project that…
In February, Philadelphia’s Lower Merion School District had remotely activated webcams of school-provided MacBooks 42 times. In fact, the school snapped thousands of photos in total. https://gizmodo.com/school-spies-students-through-their-laptop-cameras-5474614 A collection one especially creepy district employee called the “little LMSD soap opera.” The Philadelphia Inquirer has the latest news in the saga, which you can catch up…
The championship match of the 2010 FIRST Robot Competition is starting soon. Many teams have fallen and many robots have fallen apart. But now it’s just the best student-made bots of the lot, battling for all the glory. Watch inside! https://gizmodo.com/first-2010-americas-engineering-whiz-kids-face-off-in-5518948 You can watch the stream of the event, provided by NASA, here. Learn about…
The tastiest design at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair isn’t furniture at all—it’s this tiny, tomato-powered LED lamp by Israeli group d-VISION. You say tomato, I say incisive commentary on energy production and consumer culture. [MocoLoco and Inhabitat]
Is the OPC Computer Amplifier a guitar amp with a bonus computer or a computer with a bonus guitar amp? The look suggests the former. The 500GB HDD, GeForce 9300 graphics card, and Windows 7 OS suggest the latter. OK, to be honest, the answer is A. The OPC is the latest and greatest from…
Though the championship match isn’t slated for a few more hours—we’ll be back with full coverage when it does—the division finals for the student-built robotics extravaganza are now streaming live from the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. These are the elimination matches, so there are sure to be some robot tears shed. Tune in to see…
Octopuses, it is generally agreed, are the sneakiest, most awesome animals in existence. They have magical camouflaging abilities and can squeeze through teeny holes. The latest octopus rascality: stealing a diver’s video camera and shooting an undersea home movie. Updated In this case, the inspired cephalopod borrowed the camera from New Zealand free diver Victor…
Heartwarming: An elderly actor used the internet to recreate the Manhattan apartment he lived in as a youngster, item by item. Not so heartwarming: it was a stunt by the Swedish Postal Service to familiarize old people with e-commerce. My heart doesn’t know how to feel about this. Bo Brundin, a Swedish actor who appeared…
I don’t buy into the iPad as a laptop replacement—not quite. But it is fantastic at tapping into your computers to access video and audio, documents, and even your full desktop, remotely. Here’s how. The iPad is first a foremost a device for consuming media, and where is most of your media if not on…
Outside of the U.S., soccer is taken quite seriously. So seriously, it turns out, that members of England’s national team will soon sleep in oxygen-deprivation tents to prepare for their high-altitude matches at the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. The players are subjected to a variety of creepy tests at the team’s Hertfordshire “hotel,”…
If a rugged cam is only as good as the places you can mount it, then the X170 Action Camera, which can be strapped to heads, latched to handlebars, and velcroed just about anywhere else, must be pretty damn good. The X170 from Drift Innovation shoots 720 x 480 video and 5MP photos on a…
The great thing about cloud computing is that no matter where you are, your files are just there. It turns out they’re just there for law enforcement, too, as two Google Docs-using spammers recently found out. In a case Wired’s calling “the first publicly acknowledged search warrant benefiting from a suspect’s reliance on cloud computing,”…
As if it’s not enough that he turned his iPad into an overpriced name tag, this guy had to go a step further and let it dangle precariously from his neck. Geez. There are classier ways to announce your name. Like this: See? All it takes is a hair tie on each corner and your…
Gears of War 3 is coming out—not until next year, but we still have some pictures and video and stuff. (Plus, much more in TWGSYCM!) Gears of War 3 Now Has Actual Worldwide Release Dates Spoiler: April 5, 2011 https://kotaku.com/gears-of-war-3-now-has-actual-worldwide-release-dates-5515832/ Your First Look At Gears Of War 3 The Mad World Gears of War trailer…
In this week’s personally approved app roundup: Alternative browsers, allowed! TV shows, appified! Your health, minded! Old games, emulated! Your international reputation, protected! And more… https://gizmodo.com/apple-asks-pulitzer-prize-winner-to-resubmit-rejected-a-5518945 If you’d like to see this gallery as a single post, click here. https://gizmodo.com/this-weeks-10-best-iphone-apps-5519234 Opera Mini: An alternative web browser with (!!!) a different rendering engine than than Safari…
The livestock power mill makes cows even more productive turning farms into virtual power plants. Instead of letting his cows range free on a field while they graze, a Northern Ireland farmer named William Taylor has jury rigged a treadmill to capture that spent energy and generate electricity. One cow on a treadmill can squeeze…
One remarkable photo out of many in Life’s quietly stunning photogallery, The Day That Einstein Died: Dr. Thomas Harvey, who famously dissected Einstein’s brain, cuts into one here. It might be Einstein’s. [Life via Jon Snyder]
The Library of Congress announced this week that they’ll be archiving every public tweet made since 2006, but they’ve been keeping track of some people’s Twitter accounts way longer than that. We’ve collected some of the great tweets from yesteryear: https://gizmodo.com/your-past-and-future-tweets-will-be-archived-at-the-lib-5517180
Light painting was the killer technique behind the winners in our slow shot photo contest—and it’s how this quite awesome Hennessy ad was made, not CGI. Wanna know how they do it? Check out the video. [Strobist] https://gizmodo.com/74-mesmerizing-slow-shutter-shots-5411177
We’re told that Barnes & Noble will be revealing some new products later this year: Nook 2 (“Project Encore”) and a Wi-Fi-only Nook Lite. Meanwhile, a software update that includes a full browser is supposed to hit next week. Apparently both of the devices are due this year—we’re told that the Nook Lite will be…
