Technology

#pastperfect When I was a kid, I'm not sure how old, I got a little red Panasonic RQ-44A cassette player for Christmas. I learned about design, music, and even audio engineering on it. I still kind of miss it. More »

#soundtrack Just sit and listen. Give it some time. At first it may just sound like a repetitive piano loop. A minute in, it opens up and starts to get a little weird. Don't run off! It won't hit you right away. Somewhere around the 3:30 mark it all comes together and hits you with its holy shit moment. More »

#music The gAtari is a "musical instrument" that basically consists of an Atari 2600 playing pre-programmed tunes, which has been hacked together with a few guitar effects processors. It's kind of like an Atari keytar. The resulting music is scatterbrained weirdness that's impossible to describe. More »

#dailydesired I hate everything about time. Being on time, looking at time, adhering to time. EVERYTHING. My hate for time is a big reason why I never wear watches because then, I would be handcuffed by time. AND WHO WANTS THAT. I'm a free spirit! Don't change me world! Or I can just wear this Kisai On Air Watch that looks more like a faceless watch than a timecuff. More »

#bestof2011 This is probably one of the most beloved features of Gizmodo: image cache. It's where we put the most beautiful, the most striking, the most most images and videos of the web. Here are the best of 2011. More »

#spam Some 8.6 million people received a weird, unprompted email about their New York Times subscriptions this afternoon—regardless of whether or not they had subscriptions at all. The email was initially reported to be a hack. More »

Should Have Gotten You From Amazon" href="http://gizmodo.com/toolkit/" style="background-color:#888888; color:#FFFFFF; font-size:12px;text-align:right; display:block; height:14px; padding:1px 2px; text-decoration:none; text-transform:uppercase; width:156px;">#toolkit Should Have Gotten You From Amazon" href="http://gizmodo.com/5869716/the-7-things-your-friends-and-family-should-have-gotten-you-from-amazon/gallery/" class="pp_image"> Should Have Gotten You From Amazon" alt="Click here to read The 7 Things Your Friends and Family Should Have Gotten You From Amazon" src="http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/images/4/2011/12/small_3a0f4941c5a37579c54e099071668381.jpg"/> Sorry, you didn't get what you asked for. You didn't even get what you could politely pretend to use. Luckily, Amazon's a trove of exchangeriffic items, and we've got seven picks for you at every budget. Suck it, extended family! More »

#rant If Twitter is useful for anything beyond a flamethrower of breaking news and URL errata, it's forcing us to be considerate about language—we have to use space wisely. Unfortunately, the hashtag is ruining talking. #NotGonnaLie More »

#memory You just bought the fastest (and most expensive) desktop platform on the planet. Which company's memory will you use to populate Intel's quad-channel controller? We tested four purportedly high-end kits in order to find out which set is the best. More »

#botsofwar Robots can't have feelings. But humans develop feelings for them. You know, like R2-D2 in Star Wars. Or like Scooby Doo, a real life small robot that saved the day 19 times. This is his single-tear story. More »

#shootingchallenge New Year's Eve is this weekend, meaning that most of us are attending parties. For this week's Shooting Challenge, I want you to capture that party...in a really long exposure. 15 seconds to 30 minutes. More »

#gadgetoftheyear Round 2 of our Most Important Gadget of the Year tournament is in the books, and you made some, let's say, interesting choices to get us down to just eight gadgets. You might be pretty surprised about what made the cutoff. More »

#piracy The list of the most pirated movies on BitTorrent reveals that as as society, we've got incredibly bad taste. Fast Five is the winner. It was downloaded more than 9 million times this year. The list gets worse. More »

#fitmodo I'm tired. I'm old and I'm groggy and mentally slow. I don't get enough exercise, or family time, and I'm sick too often. I don't perform my best at work, or anywhere else, and I'm grumpy when I don't mean to be and it's all largely because I'm so damn tired. More »

#rumors A leaked Windows Phone roadmap shows what we've got to look forward to in 2012. In the short term a batch of cheapy phones for the masses, but by the end of next year we could be looking at "superphones". More »

#food If you are cooking this holidays (or ever) you will love this MAGIC tip: how to peel a whole head of garlic in less than ten seconds. It just requires two bowls and some shaking. Aaaah-mazing. [Thanks Joe!] More »

Before The Game Was Released" href="http://gizmodo.com/wtf/" style="background-color:#888888; color:#FFFFFF; font-size:12px;text-align:right; display:block; height:14px; padding:1px 2px; text-decoration:none; text-transform:uppercase; width:156px;">#wtf Before The Game Was Released" href="http://gizmodo.com/5871578/this-guy-spent-16000-in-a-virtual-sword-before-the-game-is-released" class="pp_image"> Before The Game Was Released" alt="Click here to read This Guy Spent $16,000 On a Virtual Sword Before The Game Was Released" src="http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/images/4/2011/12/small_a1d0577d7dbaae9f458e8ab5b070715d.jpg"/> This man is holding an image of a sword that doesn't exist in real life. In fact, it doesn't even really exist on a virtual world—he paid $16,000 for a game sword that he can't play yet. More »

#monstermachines The world consumes more than 2 million metric tons of Salmon annually—both farmed and wild. That's a lot of lox. And to get that much fish to market in a timely manner, one can't gut them by hand. That's why there's the Gutmaster8000. More »

#stopsopa This is going to feel good: now you can call all supporters of SOPA and PIPA, the dreadful US internet censorship laws, using a simple web site. Just record your very own message, pay some dollars and fire away. More »

#bestof2011 We really hated hated hated these things. Like, almost as much as we hate Nazis. That's a lot of HATE. So we ranted about them. You should read these because... well, because these aggressions shall not stand, man. More »