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Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Teardown: If This Thing Breaks, You’re Screwed

Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 3 might be the greatest laptop-tablet hybrid that you don’t really need, but what exactly lurks inside it? Fortunately, iFixit has torn the thing apart so we don’t need to wonder any longer. https://gizmodo.com/surface-pro-3-review-the-greatest-laptop-tablet-hybrid-1581896186 So, what is there going on in there? Here are some highlights (or more accurately, low points):…

Privacy advocates are concerned that the U.S. Army is planning to launch two blimps over Maryland to watch for incoming cruise missiles. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued the Army for details of the equipment, noting that “a system that can survey a large area… could have profound implications.”

The world’s best TV ads of 2013

The Cannes Lions are the Oscars of the advertising industry. Agencies from around the world gathered last week on the French coast to show their work and select the best ads of the year. These are some of the winners in the film category and you can see the rest here. The Epic Split –…

Beware Crooks Stealing Your Card Details at Car Washes

There’s a new trend sweeping the credit card fraud business, and it takes the concept of money laundering quite literally: criminals are swiping card details from car washes. Krebs on Security reports that the Connecticut Financial Crimes Task Force, which includes includes the U.S. Secret Service and state police, has discovered that at least 40…

Crazy pilot scoops objects off the ground with his airplane’s wing tip

Watch Cesar Falistocco of the Escuadrilla Argentina aerial acrobatic team prove he is an ace with this display of control—he swoops in low and picks up a pair of flags lying flat on the ground with just a wing tip. Incredible flying. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

What Happened to the Flags on the Moon?

On July 10, 1969, Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. At 10:56 pm eastern standard time, Neil Armstrong accomplished another first. With the immortal words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” (or something like that) Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on a major celestial…

The Brightest Star in the Sky as You’ve Never Seen It Before

It might look like a drunken rainbow, but you’re actually looking at a view of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, as its light gets refracted by our atmosphere. Usually when you gaze upwards, the stars in the sky appear to twinkle. In fact, that’s a results of the light passing through our…

Chicago’s New Lamp Posts Will Track Pollution and Count People

The walls—or lamp posts, at least—have ears. Chicago is rolling out some new street furniture, and it will be able to measure air quality, monitor noise and even count pedestrians. The Chicago Tribune explains that the “curled metal fixtures” will appear on Michigan Avenue lamp posts as soon as July, and will measure air quality,…

Neutrality Begins at Home: How Mayors Could Help Save the Internet

This weekend at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Dallas, some mayors will take a strong stand in support of net neutrality. According to an op-ed by Mayors Ed Lee of San Francisco and Ed Murray of Seattle, the city leaders are unveiling a resolution calling on the FCC to preserve an open…

Silicon Valley Giants Just Handed Out $15M in Prizes to Mathematicians

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation, which is funded by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and investor Yuri Milner, just doled out five $3 million awards to cutting edge math projects (which you almost certainly won’t understand). The Breakthrough Prizes—there have been two previously, for life science and fundamental physics—are designed to raise awareness of…

Watch This Guided Tour of Stockholm’s Beautiful Subway

Alexander Dragunov is an architectural photographer, but his real passion is capturing images of subways. In this video, he gives a guided tour of his favorite metro system in Stockholm—and reveals that it is indeed stunningly beautiful. The St Petersburg-born photographer shot this video with the BBC to explain why he thinks Stockholm’s is ‘the…

These are the coolest amateur rockets I’ve ever seen

Bamboo rockets are really cool. They are wheels with a central rod full of solid fuel and nozzles that spin into the sky until they stop and fall back to Earth on a parachute. Or explode. It’s a big thing in Thailand—so big that they celebrate festivals to watch them fly and broadcast them on…

Spectacular photos of the US Navy’s most powerful battleship ever

This is the USS Iowa, the first of the largest, most powerful battleship class ever in the United States Navy, equipped with nine 16-inch (406mm) guns that could fire nuclear shells—the only American ship in history with this capability. This photo series is old but still stunning. Those nine guns firing simultaneously is a terrible…

Watching Gordon Ramsay Be an Arrogant Prick Is Delightful

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares would easily beat The Wolf Of Wall Street in a number-of-cusses-every-60-seconds contest. You get a generous serving of “bollocks”, a side of “arse”, and a dash of genitalia-related terms through the course of the show. This is an old gem that I discovered on Netflix last week and I’ve been pretty hooked…

All Grown Up, And This One Still Thinks He’s A Puppy

Lucius used to be a lap dog. Then he got bigger. Of course, he was never a “dog,” as such – it’s just… well… nobody had the heart to tell him otherwise. Above: “best friends” by Khoa Le. See more at her website and DeviantART page.

Jesper Kyd: Earth

Someone has to say it: Assassin’s Creed II, like its predecessor, was an average game. Once you got over the lush visuals, the missions became a chore, the running around became tedious, and the actual assassinations became routine when you realized that you didn’t actually need to be stealthy to carry them out — you…

Pearl Jam Confirms: We Have Reached Peak “Let It Go”

Friday night, at a performance in Milan, Italy, Pearl Jam cut in on a performance of “Daughter” to play a few licks from Frozen’s “Let it Go.” This is it, folks. The end of the line. The shark has been jumped, cleared, and bludgeoned to death by a water-ski-wielding Fonz. Thanks to everyone for playing…

The National Weather Service Will Use Airplanes As Weather Balloons

Here’s how weather forecasts in the United States work: The National Weather Service attaches devices that measure pressure, temperature and humidity to weather balloons that are launched, twice a day, from 69 locations in the US. This is the way it has been since, well, the 1930s. Now, the Weather Service is finally getting better…

Why Twitter GIFs Aren’t Actually GIFs

Twitter GIF are VIFs. They’re regular MP4 files that basically play in a loop. Why does Twitter convert your GIFs to MP4? Turns out it’s all about size and control. Sean Creeley of Embedly has a great explanation on his blog, in which he compares the file sizes of a GIF and an MP4 file.…

Holy Crap, Orphan Black‘s Season Finale Changes Everything

Orphan Black promised to open up a new chapter in the cloning conspiracy—and boy, did it pay off on that promise. We’re more excited than ever to see what’s ahead for Clone Club, and a brand-new faction in the Orphan Black world. We open in Siobhan’s home, with Felix still drugged and feeling guilty about…