Gizmodo

Gizmodo isn’t going anywhere. But as you know by now, a bunch of stuff happened involving an angry billionaire and a wrestler, and now our parent company, Gawker Media, is being acquired. Gizmodo will remain the best publication in the world, or at least top three. But it’s fair to say that next week marks the start of a new period here at Gizmodo, and at Gawker Media. In honor of new beginnings, we decided to look back at the best from our past—by assembling Gizmodo’s greatest work, as so deemed by its former writers and editors, from the pre-acquisition era. Advertisement Anyway, that was the plan. But given that Gizmodo tends to hire stubborn, poorly behaved, insurgent little twit bloggers, I ended up getting a big pile of random shit from them. Some of it is eloquent and succinct. Some of it desperately needs an edit. Some of it clearly did not follow the orders laid out in my email. In fact, some of the submissions weren’t even about blog posts or … [Read more...] about The Best Gizmodo Posts of All Time (So Far)

No matter how much you wear your Fitbit fitness tracker, it won’t do you much good if it’s not counting steps correctly. Thankfully, we know a few ways to make your Fitbit even more accurate, so you never have to worry about the quality of the data it’s collecting. You’ve probably spent most time on the phone app if you’re a Fitbit owner, but key options are hidden in the web interface settings. To view some of these opitions, log in on a computer, click the cog icon, then choose Settings. In the Devices menu you can set whether you’re wearing your Fitbit on your dominant or non-dominant hand, which should improve its accuracy a little (you can also get at this setting inside the mobile apps). Advertisement Next up you can adjust your stride length (the tracker tries to work this out automatically, but you can enter a value manually too). Measure your stride length first (Fitbit recommends taking at least 20 steps then working out an average) … [Read more...] about How to Make Your Fitbit Even More Accurate

Filmmaker Casey Neistat and Mercedez-Benz don't pair easily in people's minds. One's a YouTube renegade, the other is the manufacturer of cars you can't afford. And yet! They teamed up and made an ad. The result is as surprising and weird as you'd expect it to be. Yes, this is definitely a car commercial, but it's not a stuffy luxury car plug by a mile. It's fun, it's frenetic, and it'll probably turn you on in that way that movies about renegade hackers and underdog football teams make you want to break stuff. This ad doesn't make you want to be richer—it makes you want to have fun. Advertisement For the last decade Neistat has built a career out of telling personal stories about whatever he wants, both on YouTube and on an HBO series. In short, he symbolizes all of the optimistic promise of the free Internet combined with a maker's will to get it done. So how the hell did he end up doing a commercial for stuffy ol' Mercedes? In exchange for his cachet with The Youths, … [Read more...] about How Casey Neistat Shot an Amazing Car Commercial With Zero Planning

The White Ocean camp at Burning Man says that it’s made up of “dreamers that blur the lines between reality and the impossible.” Unfortunately for White Ocean, however, “reality” recently meant getting its shit fucked up by a bunch of vandals. According to a lengthy Facebook post published by the camp on Thursday, the magical wonderland full of “creativity and exploration” was hit by a rash of vandalism on Wednesday night. Advertisement The post explains, in what I can only read in a spaced out, “C’mon, man, we’re just here for the good vibes” tone of voice: A band of hooligans raided our camp, stole from us, pulled and sliced all of our electrical lines leaving us with no refrigeration and wasting our food and, glued our trailer doors shut, vandalized most of our camping infrastructure, dumped 200 gallons of potable water flooding our camp. We immediately contacted authorities. Sheriffs came to our camp along … [Read more...] about Fancy Burning Man Camp Ransacked by Vandals

A startling report by an international team of scientists suggests that processed meats like hotdogs and bacon are a definite cause of cancer, while red meat is a probable cause. Here’s what this means to your health and why you have no reason to panic. Eating processed meats like hotdogs, sausages, and bacon causes bowel cancer, while the consumption of red meats, including beef, pork, veal, and lamb, is probably carcinogenic, an international team of experts has concluded. They evaluated over 800 studies analyzing associations between more than a dozen forms of cancer with the consumption of processed or red meat in different countries and among populations with diverse diets. Advertisement That conclusion is causing considerable consternation and a rethink of what a healthy diet is supposed to look like. The Washington Post is calling it “one of the most aggressive stances against meat yet taken by a major health organization,” adding that it’s … [Read more...] about Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Panic Over Processed Meats Causing Cancer