November 2012
135 posts
How Realistic Are These Five NYC Apartments You’ve Seen on TV?
By Harry Sawyers
There’s always a slight hint of doubt when you see a TV character’s fictional apartment, even if the place is a borderline dump. If it’s on TV, it just doesn’t seem like it could possibly be true.
Padmapper took a look at five New York apartments—the places the characters live...
Top 25 Nate Silver Facts
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By Nick Stango
Wow, this Nate Silver guy sure is something. The whole Internet’s talking about how awesome he is. Check it out:
When Alexander Bell invented the telephone he had 3 missed calls from Nate Silver.
Nate Silver threw a grenade and killed 50 people, then it exploded.
Nate Silver can delete the Recycling Bin.
Nate Silver once got bit by a rattle snake. After...
Gizmodo Is Back on Gizmodo.com!
By Harry Sawyers
After spending the better part of last week rescuing our servers from the storm, Gawker Media’s tech team has restored gizmodo.com to its former glory. Thanks guys!
And thank all of you for reading our Tumblr over the past week. It’s been fun. The posts have migrated back to the main site, with the discussions open—so feel free...
Movie Night: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
By Brian Barrett
One of the biggest commercial flops of the late 1980s also happens to be one of the most wonderfully imaginative, whimsical, and downright silly movies of the last several decades. Not that you’d expect any less from Terry Gilliam, especially when he was in his prime.
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The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a fable...
Soundtrack: Dinosaur Jr. - Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know
I hadn’t thought much about Dinosaur Jr. since the mid-90s. Why would I have? They broke up in 1997, and got back together without much fanfare in 2005. But the group’s latest album, and particularly this lead track, hits me with a jolt. It belongs in 2012, but feels like 1994. It’s a thread strung through a...
The Surest Way to a Viral Hit: Professional Clicking
By Brian Barrett
Need a viral smash? No point leaving it to chance. Just get Buyral on case. Their team of expert clickers will get your views up in no time; whether or not anyone actually sees it is another matter altogether.
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As Buzzfeed points out, it’s a great parody of the viral rat race that drives so much of the...
Maybe We Wouldn’t Pirate Music If There Were Anywhere Else to Hear It
By Brian Barrett
It may not be totally fair to blame piracy’s ascension on MTV’s decline. But you know what? Neither was sending Snooki to the Vatican.
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Look, I’ll be honest, all I want is 120 Minutes back. Wait, it is? Okay, then let’s just get Bill Bellamy’s career back on...
Amazon Really Does Lose Money on Every Kindle Fire HD (But Microsoft, Not So Much)
By Brian Barrett
Fresh on the heels of an iPad mini teardown that revealed $188 worth of components, IHS has pegged the Kindle Fire HD bill of materials at $165. That means that only about 20 bucks’ worth of hardware separates devices with $130 price tag differential. Yeesh.
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It was no surprise...
Copyright-Infringing Tweets Will Now Be “Withdrawn” Instead of “Disappeared Forever”
By Brian Barrett
Twitter received 4,410 DMCA takedown notices last year alone. But while previously a successful claim would lead to a tweet being vanished under dark of night, from here on out it will be replaced by a notice that it’s being withheld.[[MORE]]
The tweet in question...
Here’s the Mother Lode of Windows 8 Nerdery
By Brian Barrett
Sure, you watched the Microsoft Build conference keynote last week. Why not? It had a comprehensive Windows 8 overview, Ballmer being Ballmer, some jaunty pre-show music. You know, typical keynote stuff. But if that didn’t satisfy your Windows 8 itch, well, here’s your chance to scratch it raw.
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Hackers Replace NBC Sites With Smörgåsbord of Hacker Cliches (Updated)
By Brian Barrett
Those in search of SNL and 30 Rock clips over at NBC’s videos page have been met with something quite different: a hacked page of weirdness with a surprisingly catchy soundtrack. It’s most prominent website hack we’ve seen in a while, and also one of the least coherent.
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The Onion’s TED Talk Parodies Keep Getting Better (And More Scathing)
By Brian Barrett
We haven’t checked in on The Onion’s brutal TED Talk parody series, but now’s as good a time as any to get caught up. Above is the most recent, a breakdown of farm animal noises with rapidly escalating pretension. And below? Maybe the purest distillation of TED yet.
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Sandy-Soaked New Jerseyans Will Be Able to Vote by Email
By Brian Barrett
Rather than let a hurricane disenfranchise thousands of displaced New Jersey residents, Governor Chris Christie has given a green-light for voting by email or fax. Are the security concerns? Sure. But if you’re going to pilot a e-voting program, at least it’s in a situation that has no other choice, and that...
Yep, Your Political Tweets and Facebook Posts Are at Least This Bad
By Brian Barrett
The first argument you hear against posting political views on social media is that you’ll only end up alienating your [OTHER PARTY] friends, or crowding the echo chamber your [SAME PARTY] friends have been smugly simmering in for months. But there’s something else you should seriously consider:...
The iPad Mini Costs $141 More Than Its Components Add Up To
By Brian Barrett
According to a teardown by IHS, renowned estimator of how much companies actually pay for components, Apple’s iPad Mini carries a $188 cost of materials. You know how Google and Amazon are just barely breaking even on their tiny tablets? This is the opposite of that.
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For some perspective, the 16GB...
Apple Hides Its Latest Samsung Apology With Some Clever Code
By Brian Barrett
The saga of Apple’s court-enforced public apology to Samsung continues. The first, newspaper-printed mea culpa read as too tongue-in-cheek for the judge’s liking. Now it turns out that the follow-up, a condensed contrition on the Apple Store’s UK home page, has come with a few caveats as well....
Don’t Forget To Set Back That One Non-Internet Clock You Inevitably Still Have Hanging Around
By Eric Limer
Tonight’s the night we do that Daylight Savings Time thing again, so here’s a reminder to find that one dumb-clock you still have in your house and set it back an hour. Unlike almost everything else you look at the time on, remember that the good old-fashioned analogue...
This Is the Dumbest and Most Awesome Way to Light a Bonfire
By Eric Limer
I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but they were sort of right, in an extremely dangerous way. These clowns decided that maybe they should light their bonfire with a home-made bazooka that fires fireworks, and thankfully they caught it on camera for the rest of us. Don’t try this at home, folks....
William Shatner: I Can’t Get Behind That
By Eric Limer
Speaking of Bill Shatner, a fantastic soundtrack for this evening (or any evening) is the his hit single* “I Can’t Get Behind That” of his 2004 album Has Been.
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With the help of Henry Rollins, Shatner uses “I Can’t Behind That” to just go off on everything and anything, including his...
This App Makes Your iPhone Recite Some Custom Shatner-esque Poetry
By Eric Limer
Surely you are well-acquinted with Mr. William Shatner’s fantastic spoken-word work. If you aren’t, you should be. If that’s your jam—and it should be—the new Shatoetry app will let you create some of your own, using the Cap’n Kirk’s iconic voice.
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How To Turn a Propane Nozzle Into a Rocket Engine
By Eric Limer
If you’re trying to turn a propane nozzle into an actual rocket engine, chances are you are going to run into more than a few problems. If you’re trying to use it as a practical effect, on the other hand, to make something that looks like a convincing rocket thruster, you’re barking up the right tree.
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This Website Can Help People Find Power, But Only With Some Help From You
By Eric Limer
Power is slowly flowing back into lower Manhattan, but there are plenty of areas still affected by the wreckage of Sandy’s rage, and plenty of people who don’t have power. Fortunately, there’s a site that can help them out, but it also needs a little help from you.
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Places With...
This Interactive 360-Degree Video Is the Closest You’ll Ever Come to Driving an F1 Racer
By Eric Limer
Driving Formula 1 cars is hard. It’s hard and it’s scary. Lucky for you, the folks at Red Bull set up a nifty 360-degree panoramic video rig on top of their own F1 racer so now you can get some of the thrill with none of the skill or the danger.
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Red Bull teamed up...
This Is Why You Should Backup Your Own Data, Especially the Nudes
By Eric Limer
When it comes to something like transfering your data from your old phone to your new phone, sometimes it’s just better to learn how to do it yourself. Why? Your carrier can sometimes do it for you at the store, but it takes a while, sometimes they’ll charge you, and they might also steal the nude photos...
Get the Most Out of Your Generator by Hooking It To a UPS
By Eric Limer
When the power goes out, you want a backup plan. Plenty of us have learned that over the past week or so. Having a generator on hand can definitely help ease the pain of a prolonged power outage, but it’s not quite the same has just having normal, interrupted power. You can make it a little closer to the norm,...
Watch These New Yorkers Celebrate in the Streets After Getting Power Back
By Eric Limer
Manhattan’s lower east side had the pleasure of finally getting its power back yesterday, after about a week of going without. As you can imagine, people were pretty stoked. This passerby caught some footage of the celebration. The whole scene is positively jubilant. Enjoy. [Reddit]
This Sea-Worthy Robot Sailor Surfed Straight Through Sandy
By Eric Limer
Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of damage, and it’s going to take a long time to get everything fixed back up. Not everything succumbed to Sandy’s destructive force, however. This little surfing robot, for example, survived on the high seas despite the storm, never failing to do its duty all the while.
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Reinventing the Pocket Knife As a Crazy Machete
By Eric Limer
Do you carry a pocket knife? Does anyone anymore? They can be helpful if you need to open a stubborn package or if you need something for the TSA to take from you at the airport. But though they’re sometimes useful, they aren’t particular fearsome. At least, until Joerg Sprave makes one.
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As part of a belated...
Hard-to-Read Fonts Will Make You Less of a Biased Jerk
By Eric Limer
It’s generally not a good thing to be biased. Sure, you can have your opinions, you can even cling to them strongly, but if they start actually altering your perception of reality, things can get messy. Lucky for you, hard-to-read fonts are here to the rescue, and might be able to save you from opinionated ranting.
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Apple Posts Its Apology To Samsung, But For Real This Time
By Eric Limer
After trying to be snarky and biting with its court ordered apology to Samsung, and being reprimanded by the UK court and told to fix it, Apple has now put a second, simple, much less back-handledly “Samsung’s dumb and we’re the coolest” apology on their UK webpage. Hopefully this will be the end of...
WatchPlastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
By Casey Chan
Plastic Paradise is a documentary by Angela Sun about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch at Midway Atoll. It shows how plastic is ruining nature, causing birds and animals to die and polluting the waters. It’s pretty bad.[[MORE]]
The documentary analyzes the change that inventing plastic has had on our lives and tries to answer...
This Week’s Top Web Comedy Video: Romney Pours a Glass of Water
By Splitsider
With this election looming, it’s important to keep two seemingly contradictory ideas in your head: First, that voting is essential. And second, that laughing at politicians is an essential part of democracy. Especially when it’s Mitt Romney.
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The rest of this week’s top comedy...
Confirmed: Fleshlight Is STILL Developing an iPad Case You Can Have Sex With (NSFW)
By Kyle Wagner
You were getting worried, weren’t you. It’s been the better part of a year since we confirmed that the iPad sex toy case was going to (probably) be a real thing. I was worried. So we checked in with Fleshlight, who told us, Yes!—This is still going to be a thing!
A Fleshlight...
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Most Of Your Hurricane Sandy Knowledge Is Coming From A Man Who Doesn’t Believe In Global Warming
By Ashley Feinberg
If it’s not already, the Wikipedia page on Hurricane Sandy will become the most widely viewed internet resource on the storm. And as PopSci discovered, it’s being largely controlled by a 56-year-old, unemployed Floridian who doesn’t believe in rising...
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What Are You Doing Once Your Electricity Is Back?
Americans all over the East Coast (or at least between a few states of it) are without power, slowly losing sanity and hygiene. Who will charge their phones? What did light bulbs look like? They don’t remember. But we asked them what they’re gonna do when the juice flips back on, and they have very serious answers.[[MORE]]
Diane...
