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it was on february 1st, all you observers of may 7th are just a bunch of loser wannabe poser copycats

http://gizmodo.com/tag/change-...

Converting water from liquid to gaseous phase (aka boiling) is energy intensive (read:expensive).

Conveniently, a lot of energy is stored in that gaseous water which could be converted back into electricity.

Even if you had no other costs, and you paid the lowest (tier 1) residential rates from So Cal Edison...

Why would a distillation plant pay residential rates?

This was a quote from Brian Shul, author of Sled Driver. http://gizmodo.com/5511236/the...

Isn't this the same department that crashed a drone into their own armored vehicle full of SWAT personnel during a photo op? This seems a lot less like mechanical difficulties and more like inexperienced/inept officers who are blaming everything on their new, expensive, unnecessary toys.

http://gizmodo.com/5890507/pol...

I'm afraid you underestimate the staggering power of the grand daddy of all nuclear power plants

You know who doesn't underestimate that power? All of the birds dying at California solar plants.

So I would suggest just constantly invading the privacy of the rich. Hovering over their pools and outdoor parties, peering in their windows. Either they will get lopsided laws written that only prevent poor, citizens from using drones (which is entirely a possibility,) or a market will appear spurring the development of measures to thwart drones. Of course this could spiral out of control in many, many ways, from just private, semi-sanctioned police/security forces "protecting" their clients, to a robot vs human war (where maybe EMPs would be helpful.)

They already have lopsided laws on the books (like the law in Texas), but it is not rich people getting these laws, it is rich corporations. The Texas law was a direct response to a drone pilot embarassing a corporation by recording them dumping a river of blood into the environment. Why would corporations (or rich people) bother with expensive drone countermeasures when they can just buy some nice, cheap legislation? Our legislators have shown time and time again that they are for sale, and the price is incredibly low.

You know those USB ports in the back of some airlines seats? You can use them to stream video from an iPad.

That was from 2006... I thought I had read recently where some airline was working on a system where you could get in-flight movies on your iPad.

You'd be better off doing this -
http://gizmodo.com/how-to-use-...

just taping the lens from a $1 laser pointer onto your phone camera lens works well enough to play around with

The law allows us to consume cilantro. We all have an equal right to do so; even people who would never exercise that right, because they're genetically wired to to hate the stuff.

Similarly, the law in all 50 states allows us to marry a member of the opposite sex. We all have an equal right to do so; even people who have no desire to exercise that right.

How can claims of "unequal rights" be credible, when, as I just demonstrated, we all have exactly the same rights?

Like this? http://gizmodo.com/facebooks-d...

None of that is necessarily true if it's rooted. http://gizmodo.com/google-glas... Also, "most people" aren't doing something that they mind being recorded doing. The problems come from the situations where they do mind.

What makes you think the connectors on the Blackberry were top of the line? Apparently not their durability.

As for the clone lightning cables, you mean like this? Just waiting for Apple to nuke it with an update to the OS?

Like I said, strip the crap out and don't let a company like Apple control it and it might be worth discussing.

In my experience, very few android fans give credit to Apple for anything at all even though one of Google's android architects admits to having to redesign the UI for android after seeing iOS for the first time. Most are too passionate in their hatred to see things any other way other than Apple as being evil and unworthy.

http://gizmodo.com/google-star...

This is Slashdot, until someone makes a Beowulf cluster of punch-card processing machines, we can't call ourselves geeks!

And, someone needs to compute how many punchcards it would take to back up Google. Oh yeah, I'll just google that;

Let's assume Google has a storage capacity of 15 exabytes, or 15,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. A punch card can hold about 80 characters, and a box of cards holds 2000 cards. 15 exabytes of punch cards would be enough to cover my home region, New England, to a depth of about 4.5 kilometers. That's three times deeper than the ice sheets that covered the region during the last advance of the glaciers.

http://gizmodo.com/if-data-was...

I think it's important to know that Google's data would be three times thicker than the glaciers during the ice age. It's strangely comforting.

Or perhaps this

" Crypto-currencies are awesome."
No, not really. I mean, it's a neat idea, but there is no long term inherent stability in hiding money behind math.

http://gizmodo.com/the-quantum...

http://www.techspot.com/news/5...

not only does apple control everything about the phones we buy, but they think they can tell the owners to fuck off? One more reason that I wont ever buy another apple product

The owners agreed with Cook - the right wing loonie didn't get support from the rest of the shareholders. Which makes sense, as Apple needs not only to have the current premium products associated with its brand, but align with its potential customers - and above all, avoid really bad associations. Or just being boring.

Image is very important for premium brands - and that's what the majority of the shareholders wants Tim Cook to continue to cultivate, alongside its innovation focus.

The reason that mobile apps have been so popular is that in many ways they offer a better experience to websites.

No, the reason is that Web sites must be heavily promoted for anyone to even realise they exist; this requires either being so useful that word-of-mouth works (difficult) or paying for ads (easy).

Compared to Web sites, apps offered:
  * 'Free' advertising space in the app store
  * Far fewer competitors
  * The opportunity to become the go-to, de-facto standard for whatever mundane crap the app happens to do (eg. Angry Birds)
  * An audience consisting entirely of people with too much money who are happy to part with it (ie. iPhone users)

All of the above points except for the last one apply to any new, incompatible platform; eg. Facebook apps, alternative OSes, browser extensions, consoles, etc. The key is the last one: an iPhone-using demographic is far more likely to give you some money than a general Web audience. That's why so many companies threw so much money into the app-making business.

Fast-forward a few years and all of these points have disappeared. Apps are no longer a small, exclusive club, so 'being an app' is no longer a competitive advantage. Every now and then a new platform will emerge (eg. Google Play), but they either quickly saturate or are ignored as too niche. Also, thanks to years of advertising targetted specifically towards iPhone/iPad owners (since it's seen as the highest-paying demographic) the idea has now emerged that these Apple devices are normal, everyday things, rather than high-end toys. This has eroded away most of the final point, for example this is from 2011 http://gizmodo.com/5871111/wah...

What Jeff seems to be saying is 'enough already'. There was some money to be made by the early land-grabbers, but these days the most reliable ways to monetise are using underhand tactics like encouraging addictive behaviour, making games unplayable without constant micropayments, getting children to spend their parent's money, selling private data, etc. At this point we should consider the experiment over and reasses the balance between usefulness and profitability in our software.

NOTE: I have nothing against those writing useful apps/sites/whatever and trying to make a living from doing so. I am criticising the armies of point-haired-bosses who direct vast resources towards making crap.

So I understand that lots of stuffs are being copied and developed upon by many Chinese companies.... They copied these things BMW 7-series car: http://www.chilloutpoint.com/s... Boeing aircraft: http://gizmodo.com/boing-474-t... and many more... But they didn't even have the decency to come up with a name? They have to derive Red Flag from RedHat... WTF???

Comcast *does* compete with Verizon -- directly.

Yet, they are partners:
http://www.verizonwireless.com...

Their FiOS and DSL options are direct competition for both TV and high-speed Internet

You mean the FiOS that they're not going to deploy anymore?
http://gizmodo.com/5503428/ver...

http://www.dslreports.com/show...

Tell me more fantasy of broadband competition. This is fun!

"So combine the modern bauhaus, apple,..."
LOL!

Boy, are you caught in RDF, hook, line and sinker!

Apple enclosure design (and that is what we are talking about) is largely derivative, retro rehash, that primarily impresses naive, design newbies. Anyone who has followed industrial design knows how bland Apple is.

"Samsung makes mostly high quality products that have large market shares but lack their own style--mostly their style is a copycat of some other brand like Braun or Apple"

As another poster pointed out, Samsung was selling the Ipad enclosure design at least four years before the Ipad (and one year before the Iphone), so they are not really copying Apple in regards to enclosure.

Acutally, it is well established that it is actually Apple who is copying Braun (not Samsung): http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960...

Here's a few revelent articles: Phone companies already record and log all 'meta-data' and have for decades. Law enforcement have had full access to it through court-orders, warrants, etc. Generally, information is kept by phone companies for a period up to or a minimum of 3 years.

http://gizmodo.com/5795861/how... ("How the police get your phone records" written, 2011)

https://www.aclu.org/blog/tech... ("How Long Is Your Cell Phone Company Hanging On To Your Data?", 2011): this article covers cell phone only. Generally information is saved for 1 year minimum, but some carriers save it longer.

The paper battery is a reality now, the graphene battery is coming.

A Hybrid paper/graphene/super capacitor is where I think this is headed.

When it happens it will revolutionize battery tech, and likely cars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

http://scitechdaily.com/scient...

16 second charge time anyone ???

http://gizmodo.com/these-new-g...

The world is about to change in a way that will be a black swan for the fossil fuel industry.

I wrote the article, but I didn't write it *for* The Guardian. They picked it up and syndicated it, as did Gizmodo ( http://gizmodo.com/why-the-wor... ), but the original is still on my blog: http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2...

I can easily see an AI-like interface being programmed with at least the appearance of emotions in order to improve interactions with humans. It wouldn't take long for the operators of an AI-driven telephone customer services agent to work out that an appearance of empathy leads to improved customer satisfaction. Only way that differs from the real thing is that the fake-empathy would never be allowed to alter the business decisions made at a lower level: It doesn't matter how much the AI appears to feel for your difficulty, if the company policy is no refund then it's not going to make an exception for you.

And that's not that far off. I mean, even Siri knows how to crack a joke now and again (and Siri does not like Her).

It's all artificial and programmed, of course, and Siri won't pass any Turing tests soon (or ever), But given the idea for this movie probably came from Siri and what it might become in the future...

(And while Siri isn't "new" or "innovative", to many people, it still appears to be magic purely because of the way it operates.)

The transbay terminal is connected to a poorly executed public transit extension, which pops out of the ground in a dozen or so places. That's the source of the delays. Well, that and the issues with public funding. Google wouldn't have that problem (unless they tried putting a transit station in the building's basement...).

Google also wouldn't need an 80 story building. The new Googleplex is 1.1 million sq ft. If a city block is 260 feet long (that's a low-ball estimate), then a large building filling that city block would be 67,600 sq feet. Seventeen stories at that size would be 1.15M sq ft, twenty stories would yield 1.35M sq ft. So the term "skyscraper" isn't even necessary. There have certainly been quite a few buildings in the ~20 floor range put up in the last few years (at a construction time of about 2-3 years).

Sorry you didn't see the humor in all of this. There's no way Google's going to abandon their brand new campus and move up to a city where the land costs at least 5x and build a new complex, be it 17 floors or 80 floors.

Just Google "movie theaters confiscating cell phones" and read all about it. It was a pretty common thing to do around and before 2009, apparently it's still a common thing to do for special screenings. From 2009 http://gizmodo.com/5314778/no-... http://boingboing.net/2009/07/... And these were from just 2012 http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards... http://www.avvo.com/legal-answ...

That's not even remotely true. A couple months ago I attended a lecture by Paul Nicklen from National Geographic, and he talked about his experience photographing a female elephant seal (one of the most aggressive creatures on the planet). I would say more, but you could just watch this instead: http://gizmodo.com/5405892/nat... I'm willing to bet this is very common behaviour in the animal kingdom, especially with mammals who learn empathy because they have to raise their young.

Like most retail stores, Apple store staff are rewarded for sales, not having not having warranty repairs. When I went there with a similar issue more than 5 years ago: http://gizmodo.com/5061605/apple-confirms-failing-nvidia-graphics-cards-in-macbook-pros-offers-free-repairs-and-refunds I was summarily dismissed by their "genius". I went from there to an Apple authorized technician who actually tested the computer and confirmed the issue. Over the next couple years the laptop had to be repaired three times until I finally replaced it with a high end ASUS. Moral of the story... never, ever buy a sexy new Apple product unless you can also afford to also buy the extended warranty.

It's inserted during shipping. There was a big deal about the NSA intercepted packages being mailed a while ago. I'm not sure how they actually insert the bugs into the USB jacks, but this is all done as the device is on the way to the customer.

Give it 10 years. You might be able to scan and sequence someone's DNA from a smartphone, and upload it to a cloud based service for further post-processed analysis. You're looking at 770MB worth of data uncompressed for each person.

http://gizmodo.com/5993925/sequence-your-dna-in-an-hour-on-this-tiny-chip

If you really like large workspaces, you may like future generations of the Oculus Rift displays.

Once they get the latencies really low, fix the image quality issues (and maybe reduce the weight - no one's complained yet but maybe for hours of work they might), you'd have as big a "screen" as you can manage.

Check this out: http://gizmodo.com/i-wore-the-new-oculus-rift-and-i-never-want-to-look-at-1496569598
Then imagine you are looking at huge virtual workspaces as large and as many as you can handle. Even better if there's tech to fade in and out of virtual/actual reality without removing the goggles - so you can do augmented reality, switch to full virtual or full "real world".

So I'm not really that excited by these large high res physical screens. To me we should already have had high res screens a decade ago, but we were stuck on or even regressed to crappy resolutions for too long.

Yes I'm impatient- I'm not getting any younger and it's disappointing to know that so many things should already be possible but aren't implemented yet.

Who could have envisioned, 50 years ago, that we would have cars that drove themselves?

Isaac Asimov, for one, and I'm sure he wasn't the only one, just the one that's been, y'know, all over the news this week.

Don't worry. Fail safe measures will be implemented in order to keep the systems secure.

Yeah like fail safe code for nuclear release...Hey, wait...that's the code for luggage...

Most people seem to forget that CES is more about the companies reaching the sales channels than the news media. It's all about the actual meetings not the bloggers.

What are you talking about? It's all about teh bloggers:
http://gizmodo.com/344447/giz-banned-for-life-and-loving-it-on-pranks-and-civil-disobedience-at-ces

There's quite a precedent established!

(Apollo 10)

Netflix: "The Goal Is to Become HBO Faster Than HBO Can Become Us"

I won't believe it until Jade Rabbit takes a picture of footprints or flags!

Oh wait, wrong hoax...

(By the way, speaking of flags... am I the only one that thinks it's a terrible coincidence that they've faded to white just as the Chinese showed up?)

It won't matter what you use if you let anyone on your network with an android phone. Oh hai, let's back up everything to teh googles.

Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages â Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism â Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch â Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls â Company says it is legally compelled to comply http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

"Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple" http://gizmodo.com/google-to-government-let-us-publish-national-security-512647113

And look at the chronology of this:
23 September 2013: BBC News - RSA warns over NSA link to encryption algorithm http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24173977
21 December 2013: NSA Gave RSA $10 Million To Promote Crypto It Had Purposely Weakened https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131220/14143625655/nsa-gave-rsa-10-million-to-promote-crypto-it-had-purposely-weakened.shtml How apt: Techdirt said the story was from the "from the say-bye-bye-to-credibility,-rsa dept"

Fuck you RSA. Fuck you NSA.

Courtesy of Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com/the-scariest-part-of-the-latest-nsa-revelation-is-this-1455050775

The machine puts up tunnel walls as it goes.
http://gizmodo.com/big-bertha-is-digging-seattles-massive-underground-fre-662469199
Concrete panels go in right behind the bore head. Infront of the maw is ground below the water table. The bore head forms a seal and the tunnel behind the bore head is pumped dry of water that leaks through.

For serious content creation, they are just not the right tool for the job.

See: http://gizmodo.com/this-incredible-portrait-of-morgan-freeman-was-painted-1475026182
But I guess art isn't serious.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/8k-tv-films-arrive-to-japan-and-they-feel-like-looking-1464050347

Buying decisions are often NOT made based on how well a product scores on benchmarks. Evidence: iDevices

Except they win most benchmarks handily.

Well it's what happened with the old 3.5 inch screens, with the awkward 3:2 aspect ratio. Don't forget that the iPhone 5 (with the 4" screen) was not released until march 2013.

http://gizmodo.com/5847981/this-is-why-the-iphones-screen-will-always-be-35-inches

This time it's the screen resolution... Apple has always bragged about their high resolution retina displays, and now that they're lacking in that department, all of a sudden high resolution is a bad thing and Apple's retina are the "perfect resolution".

According to a new report released Monday by the Sunlight Foundation, 78% of 2012 outside election spending can be attributed to the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allows unregulated amounts of corporate and otherwise outside campaign donations.

Citizens United made it easier to buy important political offices in the United States. When you have a bought Congress, not much is solvable, because the elected paradoxically owe nothing to those who voted them in. We're nobody, but the people who dropped billions of dollars in the (D) or (R) buckets are somebody.

It's not a coincidence that we have money for bloated and failing trillion dollar defense contracts and not a few billion to feed needy children. That's the predictable effect when the purpose of your government is something other than the welfare of its citizens.

"Newly surfaced legal documents say that the 29-year-old ordered not one but two hits on former associates." Source: http://gizmodo.com/actually-the-alleged-silk-road-kingpin-hired-a-hitman-1440610170

It looks to have a modified version of the 911 engine, so probably not too bad. Most "supercars" like this are Porsches or Ferrari/Lamborghinis with a body kit, sometimes an engine swap as well.

So, yeah. Just another example of some "expensive" bulls**t being little more than a much less expensive thing with lots of gratuitous and tacky bling glued on. (*)

I mean, so what? I could make the "world's most expensive car" by gluing the Koh-i-Noor diamond to a 1998 Vauxhall Corsa. Who cares? It's still just a clapped-out Vauxhall Corsa.

Then again, it's entirely appropriate that this would be unveiled at the Dubai motor show, held in a location notorious for its gratuitous bling architecture such as the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world that needs trucks to remove all the crap because they don't even have the sewage infrastructure. Yeah, I'm impressed guys... come back when you can actually develop a supercar- or half-modern society- yourselves. This doesn't count.

(*) Ironically, the reason why so many products at this level of "premium" *are* just bog-standard kit with jewels glued on is because they couldn't *actually* afford to pay what it would cost to develop a car that was (e.g.) 25% faster than the current record-holder or a phone that was twice as fast and had twice as high resolution as the current best model... unless they were to sell in large numbers, which would entirely defeat the purpose. The development and tooling cost would render them ludicrously expensive even for the richest people in the world- many of these things only work out as being economic because they're intended to sell in the millions to us plebs. You can wave several million dollars at Intel, and you still won't get a processor that's twice as fast as their current high-end mass-market model. Ha ha, nice Corsa you've got there. :-P

And I think that will happen when 4k TV takes off. I don’t hear anybody talking about shipping physical media for that format.

No way will this work. Bandwidth caps as they are today will prevent people from downloading 4k video. Here's a reference to a 4k documentary that is 160GB. Does that sound like something that's going to fly with the ISPs we currently have?

4K has only 4X more pixels than 1080p. Netflix says that currently, you need a 5mbit connection for Hidef streaming, or 7mbit for super hidef. So that would put 4K streaming at around 20 - 28mbit... maybe less if better graphics hardware means they can use better compression algorithms. Many people are already able to get that speed from a Cable modem or U-verse style DSL.

Bandwidth caps are a business limitation, not a physical restriction. I'm sure there are bottlenecks that providers will have to overcome, but that's the nature of the business.