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Popcorn Time’s “Netflix for Torrents” Will Play Nice With AirPlay

The team behind the slick service that lets you stream torrents like they’re Netflix movies keeps churning out updates. Popcorn Time recently got Chromecast support. Now it’s coming to an Apple TV near you, thanks to AirPlay support. As you might recall, the original (and questionably legal) Popcorn Time open source project killed itself earlier…

Do Rats On Drugs Listen To Miles Davis? Depends.

Years ago, this experiment got written up a few places with headlines like, “Your tax dollars at work!” But that’s what happens when your experiment gives rats cocaine and makes them listen to jazz. Of course, the experiment wasn’t about seeing if cocaine helped rats enjoy jazz (although it does). The first experiment involved rats…

5 Bikes Designed To Survive the Big Cities of the Future

The Bike Design Project is a huge effort to push urban cycling into the future: Five teams across five cities designed what they believe to be the best urban bike for their respective home towns. So what does a bike designed specifically for San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and other major American cities look like?…

Martin Scorsese drew this storyboard for a roman epic film at age 11

Martin Scorsese already wanted to become a movie director at the age of 11. He even planned to do an epic roman film called The Eternal City starring Marlon Brando, Virginia Mayo, Alec Guinness and Richard Burton. This is the storyboard he did for the movie. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…

Guy Builds Giant Spirograph, Takes Chalk Art To the Next Level

Over on imgur a user with the alias ‘hababird‘—aka Nathan Pryor—has posted a gallery of images showing the step-by-step process he went through to create a gigantic eight-foot wide wooden Spirograph set that uses chunky pieces of chalk to create intricate artwork on streets and sidewalks. Normally you can’t wait to take a hose to…

You May Not Have to Wait 30 Years For The Next Mad Max Movie

The unbelievably good-looking Mad Max: Fury Road is set to premiere on May 15th, 2015. The last Mad Max movie before that was Beyond Thunderdome, released in 1985. That’s a long time! The good news is if Fury Road does well, director George Miller says the sequel is already written. Miller’s original plan was to…

Facebook Makes All Users Switch to the Standalone Messaging App

Over the next few days, if you go to send a message through Facebook’s smartphone app, you’ll see the alert shown above. Starting this week, Facebook is fully unbundling its messaging service, as part of its move to become a network of related apps. Facebook started bouncing messages to the standalone app for some European…

A ‘Fake ID’ Flaw in Android Leaves Millions of Phones Vulnerable

A team of security researchers has discovered a security flaw in Google’s mobile OS which affects handsets running versions up to and including 4.4—leaving a potential 82 percent of Android users at risk. The vulnerability, discovered by Bluebox Labs and nicknamed Fake ID, stems from how app security is checked on Android. Each app gets…

Nvidia Shield Tablet Review: A Gaming Beast, But So Much More

Nvidia’s Shield tablet was made for playing games. That’s what it’s best at. But it’s also much more. In fact, it should probably be your next Android tablet no matter how much button-mashing you do. What Is It? The Shield is Nvidia’s first real tablet, and the first tablet at all to be driven by…

Are There Star Wars and Avengers Characters We Don’t Know About Yet?

Benedict Cumberbatch and Zack Snyder both add to Star Wars speculation, while Joss Whedon teases a character for Avengers: Age of Ultron. Plus, details about the cast of characters populating American Horror Story: Freakshow. Get a look at concept art for Sleepy Hollow’s villains. And USA picks up a show set in near-future L.A. Spoilers…

Report: Microsoft’s Got a Selfie Phone (Bad!) and a Premium Lumia (Good!)

The Verge reports that Microsoft’s got two new phones set to launch imminently. The first is a so-called “selfie phone,” the second is a premium Lumia. The first makes us want to give up all hope, the second has definite potential. According to The Verge, Microsoft devices chief Stephen Elop recently revealed the two new…

Skydivers land on lake and slide all the way to the shore

These skydivers—after a series of crazy spins—land on a lake sliding with their feet all the way to the shore. I’ve seen skydivers land in crazy ways before but I’ve never seen them touch down in such an acrobatic way. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

A bill introduced in Congress could be an important step in clarifying property rights in outer space. The ASTEROIDS Act says that resources obtained from asteroids legally belong to the company or other entity that extracted them, but it has some kinks to work out, such as the legal definition of an “asteroid.”

Epson’s New Smart Glasses Provide Pilots with Smart HUDs

The Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35 Lightning II are two of the most advanced warplanes ever designed and come replete with bleeding-edge, motion-tracking, x-ray-vision-enabled helmets. But why should Air Force pilots have all the fun? Epson’s Moverio smart glasses have been on the market for a couple of years now, but have hereunto been used primarily…

Opportunity Rover’s Record-Breaking Mars Drive, Mapped

The Opportunity rover landed on Mars way back in 2004. Now, NASA reports that it’s clocked up 25.01 miles of driving on the Red Planet—setting a record for the longest distance a vehicle has driven outside Earth. https://gizmodo.com/what-a-rover-looks-like-after-a-decade-on-mars-1509484587 Opportunity snatches the titles from the previous best, the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 rover, which drove 24.2…

Chris Pratt Stops an Interview to Show Off His French-Braiding Skills

Here are the pros and cons for this video: Pro – Chris Pratt continues his charm offensive and proves he is a treasure of a human being. Con – Entertainment Tonight is still having trouble figuring out what do with Guardians of the Galaxy. https://gizmodo.com/entertainment-tonight-has-figured-out-the-secret-to-gua-1596315513 Seriously, they give up talking about Guardians really quickly and…

This rescue of kayakers trapped in a cave freaks the hell out of me

A group of kayakers take a wrong turn and end up trapped in a cave. Luckily they are prepared and know exactly what to do. I am not sure I would have stayed nearly so calm. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Are Smart Drugs Really That Smart?

Are we asking the right questions about smart drugs? Marek Kohn looks at what they can do for us – and what they can’t. “You know how they say that we can only access 20 per cent of our brain?” says the man who offers stressed-out, blank-screened ‘writer’ Eddie Morra a fateful pill in the…

Report: A Windows Phone HTC One Is Headed for Verizon

Windows Phone fans may well be in for a treat. WP Central claims that a Windows-powered version of the wonderful 2014 HTC One is headed for Verizon this August. https://gizmodo.com/htc-one-2014-review-faster-stronger-better-1550841872 The report claims that a “One (M8) for Windows”—snappy name, that—will be available from the carrier as of August 21st. Verge claimed at the weekend…

Dystopian future drawings feel like a Terry Gilliam movie storyboard

Laurie Lipton is an artist based in London with an exquisite pencil technique and great attention to detail. In this series of photorealistic pencil drawings she projects a world that is halfway between the past and a dystopian future. When traveling around Europe as a student, she began developing her very own peculiar drawing technique…