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Short film tells the weird story of a missing nuclear missile

Writer and director David Soll explores the interior of a real-life Cold War era nuclear silo in this comedy short film: The custodian of a nuclear missile silo wakes up one morning to realize that the projectile has disappeared. David explains to the Hollywood Reporter how they found the silo: One of the silos had…

Cool history of evolution turns lifeforms into robots

This ad for the German technology store Saturn makes as much sense as a Transformers movie: Zero. But I like how it tells the evolution of life on Earth making a parallel with the evolution of human technology. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Cargo Ships Arriving at the ISS Are Guided In Using a Plastic Ruler

You’re looking at the European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst as he guided in the Automated Transfer Vehicle 5 to dock with the International Space Station on August 12th. In his hand? A simple plastic ruler. While ATV-5 is designed to dock without human intervention, someone aboard the ISS always manually checks the approach speed…

Someone Built a Fully Functioning 1KB Hard Drive Inside Minecraft

Cody Littley is a computer science PhD student with a little time on his hands. Which perhaps explains why he built a working 1KB hard drive in Minecraft out of virtual building blocks. Why did he build it? Because he could. “When I built the the device, I didn’t have anything in mind that I…

The futuristic jets, humans, and Star Wars designs of Stephen Chang

Stephen Chang tells me he loves to think about how the future will weave technology into humans. He has done a lot of cool art so far and I’m sure he’ll get far. If he doesn’t, that’s fine: He got his design for the Rogue Shadow ship—from the game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed—turned into…

New bacon-in-everything restaurant looks deadly delicious

Brutus is a bacon’s lover dream come true. Located in Montreal, Canada, the restaurant will use bacon in all their dishes. It’s probably half a heart attack but I’m drooling just by looking at some of the food that will be served there. 100% bacon sausage hot dog Bacon, red caramelized onions and cheese with…

BAE Wants to Make Airplanes With Skin That Feels Its Surroundings

BAE’s had another mad brainstorming session, this time developing the concept of a “smart skin” for airplanes to help them “feel” their surroundings and detect damage. Engineers from BAE’s Advanced Technology Centre are testing the idea of embedding “tens of thousands of micro-sensors” into an airplane skin that, once applied, could give a pilot more…

A New Attack Secretly Binds Malware to Legitimate Software Downloads

A team of researchers from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, has created a new kind of cyber attack where malicious code is able to be sent in parallel with a legitimate software download without modifying any code. The new attack binds the malware to free and open source software, because there are fewer code signing…

Swing Copters, Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen’s second game, is now live in both the Google Play Store and the App Store and somehow, it’s evenharder than Flappy Bird The aim is to steer a vague creature with huge eyes and a propeller on its head through a series of swinging gavels. It’s like Flappy…

SoundCloud is Getting Ads

SoundCloud has been getting a little more business savvy of recent time, but now the pivotal music service has announced some sad news: it’s getting ads. https://gizmodo.com/how-soundcloud-changed-music-forever-1588811594 From today an ad-supported On SoundCloud program is live—first in the U.S. and then later around the rest of the world. It will allow content creators to monetize…

Toyota’s New Cars Will Have a Nexus 7 Built Right Into the Dashboard

Having a 7-inch tablet slotted into your car’s dashboard just makes so much sense. It would be an elegant solution to craptastic GPS systems and clunky entertainment options. Toyota thinks so too. Its latest cars in Taiwan come with a Nexus 7 built right in. Toyota partnered with Asus-owned Unimax to create something known as…

The Earth’s Ozone Layer Is Still Being Chewed Apart

If you thought that the depletion of the ozone layer was a problems of the 90s, think again: according to new NASA research, the Earth’s atmosphere contains an unexpectedly large amount of ozone-depleting chemical, decades after it was banned worldwide. The new study shows that carbon tetrachloride—once used in dry cleaning and fire extinguishers but…

Jaime King Took an Uber To the Hospital to Give Birth

When Jaime King was home alone and thought she was about to give birth, she didn’t want to make a fuss. So instead of calling for an ambulance or getting a friend to give her a ride she… got an Uber. I mean, giving birth in your own car would make a bit of a…

Facebook has added Oculus to its bug bounty program, which means that people reporting issues in the code for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, software development kit, and website will be rewarded with cold, hard cash.

Report: 30 Percent Of All Mobile Spam Is Sent Through iMessage

It’s not like we need more reasons to hate iMessage. But we don’t really have to look very hard. A security researcher has claimed that Apple’s messaging service is used to send over 30 percent of all mobile spam out there. “It’s almost like a spammer’s dream,” says Tom Landesman from security and anti-spam company…

Google is reportedly processing a million takedown notices from various copyright holders every single day. This is apparently up from just a few dozen notices a year a couple of years ago. TorrentFreak quotes RIAA executive Brad Buckles saying: “Every day produces more results and there is no end in sight. We are using a…

Hackers May Have Stolen Credit Card Data From 51 UPS Stores In The US

Your friendly, neighborhood UPS store might have been hacked. UPS just confirmed that 51 stores across 24 states in the United States had malware capable of recording credit card information and sending it to third parties on its in-store cash registers. If you swiped your card at any of these, your details are probably being…

Twitter’s New BotMaker Cut Spam On The Network By 40 Percent

If you think you’re getting less spam on Twitter, you’re right. Twitter has just unveiled BotMaker, a system that lets the social network create anti-spam bot code on the fly. BotMaker can automatically take down pesky spammers, block suspicious links, and flag shady behavior — sometimes, even before the accounts in question have had a…

What is the massive green oceanic glow that surrounds Bangkok at night?

This stunning picture of the city of Bangkok, Thailand at nighttime was taken from the ISS by astronaut Reid Wiseman. Well, the concentrated bright white light was the city at least. The emerald green surrounding it? The astronaut had no idea. Was it nuclear waste? Glow in the dark algae? Alien sea monsters? None of…

If You Don’t Understand Why People Love Erotic Fanfic, Watch This Now

In her slam poem Fantastic Breasts and Where To Find Them, Brenna Twohy quickly gets to the heart of why so many people love their erotica attached to familiar fictional characters while powerfully critiquing certain types of mainstream pornography. The video is NSFW and may be triggering for its images of sexual coercion. Twohy’s message…