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Self-driving cars, as popularized by the likes of Google and Tesla, are meant to be transportation bubbles that operate free of any human interference. But full autonomy isn’t the only option, and Toyota is investing in a system that would use computers as an aid to human drivers, not a replacement. As MIT Technology Review…
Uber is currently embroiled in hundreds of lawsuits around the world, but after today, it can cross one off the list. The cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco sued Uber in 2014 over its background check procedures. The company has now settled out of court for at least $10 million. The settlement, approved by…
These days, when we’re talking about reservoirs and lakes in California, it’s normally using words like “historic low” and “unprecedented drop”. But thanks to recent heavy rain, California’s largest reservoirs are finally getting back to normal. A series of images from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite show the changes in Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, over…
After the release of the Rogue One trailer, the internet was abuzz with theories that parts of the new Star Wars film were filmed in a London Tube station. Which is, of course, not true. Everyone knows that the Death Star has an incredibly comprehensive public transit system—possibly the best in the universe. Built during…
Cheese, aubergine, ham, and tortillas are tasty in their own right, but in the hands of artist Matthew Herper, they also make beautiful music. He uses laser-etching to make edible—and still playable—record albums to explore the acoustical properties of food. The project is called Edible Sound, commissioned by London’s Science Gallery. It’s for a good…
It’s not really not the ending that anyone expected for one of LA’s most bizarre police chases ever. The convertible navy blue Mustang had been driving for hours with its top down in the rain, nearly T-boning a TMZ tour bus and doing doughnuts on Hollywood Boulevard. After meandering through traffic on the southbound 101,…
I get it now! That’s why soccer doesn’t let players use their hands. Just in case they decide to start playing with a fireball. Watch Joltter, Andrew Henderson, and Melody Donchet do tricks with a ball that’s on fire and also hit a free kick too.
Facebook in 2016 is a bubbling stew of disconcertingly specific advertising, viral content, live video, political vitriol, old classmates, old people in general, and narcissistic oversharing. This last annoyance, however, appears to be on the decline, and thank god for that. The Information reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s grand social experiment has seen a noticeable drop…
Aaron’s Inc., an Atlanta-based furniture company, held its annual meeting of managers in Maryland and did what is hopefully the last team-building exercise these salesmen will ever have to engage in. All 1,200 participants stood in front of mattresses (ones Aaron’s Inc. will later sell to customers, one assumes) and fell backward into each other,…
Oh my, to be able to live in a time where the silliness of dropping a tank of gas from a 100-feet in the air onto a torch on the ground is totally normal. And to be alive when you first drop it and nothing explodes that you drop it a second time to ensure…
It’s wonderful to be able to see nature like this, with animals in a habitat that has largely been left untouched. I’ve watched this video multiple times, first to see the animals—elk, pronghorn, etc.—migrate and then again to just appreciate the beauty of Yellowstone. Joe Riis made this video for National Geographic. SPLOID is delicious…
Sometimes you want to sit up. Sometimes you want to lie down. Sometimes you need a place to put your computer, or perhaps a drink. A single piece of furniture rarely fulfills all these desires. This shapeshifting sofa can reconfigure itself into a seat, a couch, a bed, or even an end table, all with…
Trap-jaw spiders hunt by sneaking up on their prey and rapidly snapping their mandibles shut, but scientists weren’t entirely sure about the mechanics involved. Using high-speed video, researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have chronicled just how these spiders manage such an impressive combination of power and speed. The details can now…
It turns out you don’t need to be an idiot savant like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man, or an MIT mathematics prodigy in order to count cards. There’s a relatively simple approach that can give you a slight advantage over the dealer when playing Blackjack, and this site can help you master it. You’ve…
Here’s something for you to think about when you’ve run out of things to think about. If scissors became sentient, would they still want to be scissors? I mean, they’ve been forced to be executioners and act as mobile guillotines! Here’s a short film from David Sandell showing a scissor escaping the life of being…
Gifs are a much-loved online medium for capturing that perfect animated emotion, but they can be damn hard to make. You either need to find a favorite automated tool, or at least be semi-fluent in Photoshop. Giphy’s lowering that technical barrier by introducing Capture, a dead simple way to quickly capture anything on your Mac…
Remember ChatRoulette? You’d log on, click through webcam feeds of obese men having sex with fruit, and walk away feeling like you’d finally made a human connection. Just take away the anonymity, the second camera, the sense of fate, and the fruit intercourse (for now) and you get Facebook Live’s new map—a digital panopticon fueled…
Have you seen this photo of Earth from the perspective of the Hubble telescope? Well, it’s 100 percent fake. It’s a stunning image, but it’s actually computer generated. And there’s still some confusion over who first created it. Snopes figures it’s from 2013 and done by an artist named Mike Kiev. But I suspect it’s…
When it’s cold outside, I don’t even want to go out. But there is beauty in the winter stillness and there are people who can brave the cold and enjoy it. Here is a portrait of Karol Garrison paddleboarding Lake Michigan while ice surrounds him. It’s so peaceful out there. But so damn cold. SPLOID…
The only way to truly gain street cred with New Yorkers is to show them that you understand the source of their deepest daily misery. So if presidential candidates want to win New York City, they gotta go underground. It all started last week when Bernie Sanders—a Brooklyn native (Flatbush, specifically) who later moved to…
