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Some people like to claim that MTV’s heyday was back when it actually showed music, rather than the reality TV programming. Those people have clearly never watched MTV Cribs, the crown jewel of the televised aughts, featuring celebrities showing off their homes. Among other things, it produced the spectacle of Mariah Carey bathing in a…
Acer just had its annual hardware vomit: from laptops and tablets to PCs and wearables. Most of the stuff involved incremental updates, gaming gear that looked more like alien architecture, and something called a GrandPad that is a tablet for old people (and not adult diapers). But there were other glimmers of cool, and this…
Lacking a decent keyboard for password entry, it’s tricky to secure a wearable computer so that someone else can’t just put it on and access your private files. But researchers have come up with a better alternative, by listening to the unique sound of the wearer’s skull. That’s not to say that your brain is…
Clickety Clack. The sounds of a mechanical keyboard are just so soothing. There’s such a satisfying audible (and physical) reaction whenever you hit the keys, like hey, press this button and you’ll feel good. Here’s Pseudorandom using the mechanical keyboard as an instrument for a song. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook,…
Sure, an affordable electric car can go a long way towards helping the US achieve energy independence and wresting its citizens away from fossil fuels. But if Elon Musk really wanted to solve our transportation problems, he’d be designing an electric bus. If his comments at a conference today are true, Musk is doing exactly…
A record player is always going to be a little magical. How it sounds, the nostalgia of it, the vinyls, the needle, and so forth. This exploded view of a record player plays down the specialness of its sound and breaks down what’s inside and how it works. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us…
Is it really any surprise that pointing a Phantom Flex high-speed camera at a drum covered in colorful paint pigments would produce stunning results at 1,000 frames per second? Not at all. But the results from The Slow Mo Guys’ latest video are especially spectacular as you watch the shockwaves launch an explosive rainbow in…
Many of us have trouble sleeping in an unfamiliar place, like a hotel, or a friend’s house for the first time. When we finally do get to sleep, it’s often fidgety and disturbed. New research shows that one hemisphere of our brain stays more active during the first night of sleep—and it does so to…
Apparently, there are two schools of thought when it comes to washing your hands. There’s the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) approved way, which we all do already. Which is wrong. And there’s the WHO (World Health Organization) method, which is better and cleaner and “microbiologically more effective”. Which is right. The CDC…
You don’t need dangerous explosives to put on an impressive fireworks show. Just grab a magnifying glass, a bunch of tiny resistors, capacitors, and transistors, and then blast them with more electricity than they were designed to handle. The results won’t disappoint, as long as you aren’t hoping for a Fourth of July extravaganza. [YouTube…
After doing more than 24 hours of new research and testing—including interviews with several professional photographers—on top of 60 hours previously spent reviewing camera carrying gear, we’ve found the best bags (both backpack and messenger style) and straps to keep your equipment organized and protected in the field. This post was done in partnership with…
If you’re going to bother tackling a craft project, it might as well do something interesting when you’re done with it. Aliaksei Zholner used his skills with paper and glue to build a working Stirling engine powered by a bowl of hot water and a handful of ice cubes. Even the flexible diaphragms that move…
Another day, another person fooled by a falsely attributed Harriet Tubman quote. Or, as in today’s example, the world’s largest search engine. This morning, a quick visit to Google dot com brought up a fairly normal webpage: the colorful Google logo, the search bar, the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons. Below that, however,…
Leveraging the pre-existing power of CRISPR, a team of researchers has made an important adjustment to the groundbreaking gene-editing tool that could make it precise enough for human applications. Researchers from Harvard University have modified the CRISPR system such that it can now alter individual DNA letters in a given gene. This new technique, called…
Yesterday, The New York Times published a hilarious or apocalyptic (depending on how much you like basketball) account of NBA players’ attachment to their smartphones before and after a game—and sometimes during. Halftime is the where the frontlines of a generational divide is splitting some NBA teams in half. Older players regard halftime as a…
Cardistry wizard Zach Mueller is back to show us his floating card routine, which may or may not be the product of ghosts. Whether it’s eye-catching shuffles or immaculate two-card moves that look more like levitation than card tricks, Mueller knows his way around a deck. The only problem is that this new routine is…
Who knew that a rolling, beeping garbage can would one day be one of the greatest marketing tools man has ever known? There are more products based on R2-D2 that galaxies far, far away, and now that he’s an oven mitt, the plucky little droid can help you get out of yet another hot mess.…
Android already gives you plenty of flexibility when it comes to managing notifications—and more features are on the way—but if you really want to tailor these pop-up alerts to suit your own tastes there are third-party apps around to do the job, and we’re here to introduce one of the best. Nevolution lets you change…
Mother Teresa? Gandhi? It doesn’t matter how nice or upstanding a human being you might be, the second you plunk yourself down in a chair made from the remains of a Boeing 737’s massive jet engine, you’ll immediately be mistaken for a comic book-caliber supervillain. Whether or not that’s a bad thing is up to…
Earlier this week, we heard alarming reports of a “significant” nuclear waste leak at Hanford, the largest radioactive waste dumpsite in the country. Should we be worried? Absolutely. But mainly because this is a symptom of a much bigger problem that’s been festering for decades. https://gizmodo.com/workers-have-found-a-significant-nuclear-waste-leak-at-1771704459 Located just a few miles north of Richland in…
