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As the leaders of 196 countries negotiate a carbon emissions goal for the planet to prevent an environmental apocalypse, the real work will fall to the companies that will need to deliver change to consumers. And no single person is doing as much to help change our energy consumption as one Elon Musk. In a…
Fire bubbles! That’s what happens when burning hot liquid magma hits water. National Geographic writes that, “Scientists are trying to determine the potential dangerous effects of introducing water into a pressurized pocket of magma underground.” SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
It was Christmas Eve, 1985. Seattle attorney Charles Goldmark was at home with his wife, Annie, and their two children, 10-year-old Colin and 12-year-old Derek; all were eagerly anticipating the festive holiday dinner to come. But a murderous, hate-filled stranger would put an end to all of their plans. David Lewis Rice knocked on the…
The future promise of VR headsets is immense, but perhaps the biggest impediment to their wider adoption is the lack of actual content you can watch on them. To its credit, Google’s really pushing hard to solve the problem. It’s latest effort is Cardboard Camera, which makes taking a 360 degree snapshot a breeze. Using…
Sarah Zhang has a fascinating post over at Wired about the systematic study of Cold War-era nuclear test films that’s currently being undertaken by nuclear physicist Gregg Spriggs. One of the most interesting elements to the story is the fact that of the 7,000 films discovered so far, 4,000 are still classified. From Wired: While…
Best known for their experimental snowboard creations, the folks at Signal Snowboards have now teamed up with an LA-based company called Ernest Packaging to use cardboard to recreate things you’d never expect to be made from paper, staring with a recyclable Fender Stratocaster. Many of the cardbocaster’s (our name, not theirs) components are the same…
The building and construction industry is a massive source of global CO2 emissions—but it could easily reduce its impact with existing technology. At today’s climate talks in Paris, 18 countries and 60 organizations formed a new alliance aimed at doing just that. Just how widely does the construction and building industry affect emissions? The numbers…
Who’s to say if a cocktail tastes better sipped from an Endor or a Tatooine glass? What’s for certain is that you can spend $40 on this six-piece set of Star Wars Planetary Glassware from ThinkGeek, and then fight over who gets to drink from the Death Star glass, and who has to settle for…
For years, we’ve been hunting for and writing about the best smartphone apps out there. Every week. Now, we’re going to try something a little different, so this’ll be our last Apps of the Week as you know it. But it will be reborn as something new and, hopefully, better. That being said, here are…
Hunter Moore, animate STI and founder of revenge porn site Is Anyone Up, was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday. Moore pled guilty to hacking and identity theft earlier this year. Moore solicited nude pictures from pissed-off exes and posted them on the gleefully vindictive Is Anyone Up, along with the identifying information of…
NASA has released a stunning new photo of Enceladus, as the Cassini spacecraft peered up at the icy moon from just below the plane of Saturn’s rings. Wow. The image was taken in visible light by Cassini on July 29, 2015, from a distance of 630,000 miles (or one million kilometers). The spacecraft was just…
You don’t need to know enough about it to build one yourself, but a little knowledge of how digital cameras actually work can help improve your photography game. So if you’ve got an extra 13 minutes at your disposal today, watch this wonderful explainer of how a camera’s sensor works. The video, hosted by John…
It smells like bullshit in China’s PR shop. Yesterday, China’s state-run news agency said that criminals—not the government—stole data from the US Office of Personnel Management. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that China claims to have arrested those criminal hackers back in September. This is a bad story for the US government. If the OPM…
The same isolated, dictatorial nation that’s currently expanding its nuclear test sites also wants to attract more foreign tourists. But visitors are subject to a ridiculous battery of tech-combing security inspections–including a very fine-grained look at your internet habits. On the heels of a recent warning from the U.S. State Department urging against all travel…
The original Muppet Show has long since left the airwaves, but with this Muppets-themed cuckoo clock hanging on your wall you can relive the series with a sound and light show at the top of every hour. The $200 clock comes adorned with all of the series’ most memorable characters like Kermit, Statler and Waldorf…
Hollywood is hardly original. Movies pay homage and crib ideas from films that came before it and everyone pretends not to notice. But there are certain movies that are basically carbon copies of other movies that came out around the same time, just with different actors and different directors at the helm. It’s the result…
Here is exclusive footage showing how their technicians disassemble an entire U-2 spy plane for inspection. It’s a remarkable feat because every part of the plane gets inspected and repaired or replaced if necessary. That is, more than 40,000 rivets and 1,800 individual parts gets looked at and then gets reassembled for every 4,700 flight…
There’s an entire industry dedicated to squeezing as many tiny tools as possible onto the keyring you carry every day. But the usefulness of miniature scissors or a petite pair of pliers can’t compare to the sheer number of repairs you can make with 18-inches of duct tape in your pocket. Roughly the same size…
Google Play Music lives on the web and as several mobile apps. But as you would expect from Google, there’s not much in the way of desktop support. If you do want to air your tunes from a desktop application in Windows or Mac OS X, then there are a couple of third-party, open source…
Ford is rolling out support for Siri Eyes-Free to five million vehicles dating from 2011. The feature will allow you to activate Siri on your phone using the voice-recognition button on vehicle steering wheels. It’s notfull-blown CarPlay, but hey, it’s something.
