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How Game of Thrones Crafted Last Season’s Emmy-Winning Visual Effects

Game of Thrones walked away from the Emmys last week with four of the biggest technical awards, including a very well-deserved win for best visual effects. One team responsible has posted some of their process videos from season 4. Let’s just say it looks tougher than conquering the walled city of Meereen. Montreal-based Rodeo FX…

Watch a Pilot Snag Cold War Spy Satellite Footage as It Falls From Orbit

The Corona program was the opening salvo in the effort to peer into Soviet-controlled territory from orbit. In order to recover the top-secret physical photographs it took, Air Force pilots took to the sky for what amounted to a claw arcade game, played miles above the Earth. Here’s a rare look at it in action.…

We Rode a Backpack With an Electric Skateboard Inside

A few months ago we told you about Movpak, a backpack that’s totally unremarkable except for the fold-out electric skateboard hidden inside. Last week, we got to test-ride a prototype ahead of the company’s Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for production. Finally, a backpack that carries you. MovPak looks to solve the “last mile” problem;…

Report: HBO’s Going to Ruin The Wire With the Wrong Aspect Ratio

Kottke reports HBO is embarking on a rebroadcast marathon of The Wire. We should be pumped that The Wire is getting remastered in HD, right? Not so fast. HBO is about to ruin a classic. The original video promo posted by HBO Watch bills the rebroadcast marathon as “The Wire Remastered,” with the claim that…

That Infamous Spider-Woman Cover Rendered In 3D Is A Flesh Nightmare

Hey, remember that incredibly unfortunate Spider-Woman variant cover by sexy sex artist Milos Manara? Well, someone decided to see what would a 3D model would look like in the same pose. The answer, it turns out, is a melted human/flesh-rent monstrosity that only Clive Barker could love. The render came from Redditor dinoignacio: Look, I’ll…

This Dazzling Laser Show Is Way More Effective Than Any Warning Shot

Warning shots are a waste of ammunition and not a particularly effective deterrent. Instead, modern warfighters inform potentially lost civilians/potential suicide bombers that they’re in the soldier’s rifle sights by blasting them with laser light from barrel-mounted laser dazzlers like these. The U.S. military had a rough go manning vehicle checkpoints during the Iraq and…

The Opportunity rover has been diagnosed with a case of “amnesia”, after more than a dozen lapses in its flash memory storage. To attempt to solve the problem, NASA’s engineers say they will clear out the robot’s memory and reformat, trying to avoid any worn out storage areas.

The Disturbingly Inexact Science Of Food Expiration Dates

It’s an all too common ritual: A product in the kitchen passes its “best before” date, so you toss it. Trouble is, it was probably perfectly safe to eat — and you just wasted good food. This is a problem that’s only getting worse. Here’s what you need to know about “expired” foods — and…

This Hot Toys Batman might be the burliest action figure ever

This might not be the craziest or most lavish Batman product Hot Toys have ever made – that award goes to perhaps either their 1:12 scale version of The Bat or the ludicrously extravagant Dark Knight Armory– but this newly revealed Batman figure might just be the bulkiest pile of plastic Bat-muscle they’ve done. Created…

Drain Drones and Hydro-Saws: A Sewer Tour of LA’s Underground Tech

“So, do you prefer full-immersion or ankle-deep?” Not quite the reply I’d expected from Kent Carlson, the sewer and stormwater field operations manager for the city of Los Angeles, when I requested a tour of the city’s new sewer technology. I’d reached out to Carlson after catching some intriguing photos on his Twitter feed, which…

A Single-Celled Organism Commits The World’s First Murder

At the dawn of life on Earth, a group of early lifeforms is eager to get on with this whole living and adapting business. But one of them is getting a bit annoyed with its compatriots—and it’s ready to commit the first act of violence. The First Murder was written and directed by Philip Brooks…

​That Time Lloyds of London Insured The Loch Ness Monster

In 1971, Cutty Sark offered an award of one million pounds ($2.4 million) to anyone who could capture the Loch Ness Monster. But, the whiskey manufacturer began to get cold feet, so it asked Lloyds of London to underwrite the contest. The insurance company agreed, with the condition that it would get to keep Nessie.…

New HTML Is About To Make Your Phone Way Better at Using the Internet

Underneath every picture of a dog in a beekeeping suitand ice-bucket challenge videoyou see on the internet, there’s a complex framework of code. Soon, that framework will get a tiny tune-up that will make surfing the web on your phone faster than it’s ever been. When the internet on your phone gets laggy, the culprit…

A Robotic Dolly Means You’ll Never Carry Anything Up Stairs Again

Tackling a long flight of stairs is grueling enough when you’re empty-handed, but having to climb step after step while carrying something heavy? Mankind wasn’t designed to endure such torture, so thankfully we’ve invented something so we don’t have to. The folks at Akihabara News in Tokyo spotted this robotic stair-climbing dolly at a train…

1000 Discounted Books From Self-Help to History [Deals]

Today’s Amazon deal of the day features over 1,000 discounted Kindle books that are meant to help students, but anyone who wants to pick up some new skills should take a look at the selection. The stars of the show are O’Reilly computer skill books for as little as $4, but there are also business…

10 Words You Didn’t Know Used to Be Dirty

We chortle today at the number of “ejaculations” in Sherlock Holmes stories, and laugh at how old newspaper stories describe the “erection” of skyscrapers. But previous generations would snicker just as hard at us. A look at archaic slang shows that we say a lot of very suggestive things without knowing it. Here are ten…

You Can Now Send a Netflix Rec to a Friend in a Facebook Message

Netflix indecision is the worst, so from time to time you’ll ask your friends what they’re watching. And then you forget what they told you and you’re back at square one. Now Netflix is making your life easier, by letting you recommend a show or movie to a friend directly from Netflix in a Facebook…

Sony’s Rumored QX1 Lens Could Turn Your Smartphone Into a DSLR

That camera breakdown above is reportedly Sony’s new ILCE-QX1 lens camera system. Originally leaked by the Xperia Blog, this lens is the next evolution in Sony’s determination to transform your smartphone lens into a more professional grade shooter. The biggest addition to Sony’s QX lineup, which includes the QX10 and the QX100fixed lenses, is that…

Terrifying dash cam video shows what it is like to be inside a tornado

According to the Youtube description, this video—published yesterday in Reddit but shot last year—captures the moment when a tornado violently hits a village in Bashkiria, Russia. The hair-raising footage was taken from a car’s dash cam that stayed on even when the tornado was passing right over it. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome…

What Was The Most Bonkers Season-Ending Twist On Falling Skies?

Falling Skies still has one season left, but it’s pretty clear that this show will be remembered for its wacky spit-take moments at the end of each season, among other things. But which season-ending moment of ridonkulousness is the best? We have a handy poll. Spoilers ahead… So the two-hour season finale of Falling Skies,…