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The first week of July 2015 will forever be known as the week the internet freaked out about a bunch of triiiiiiippy images generated by a snoozing computer. Please. In my day we didn’t need Google to help us see melting dog faces with six eyes that are actually snails with centipedes crawling on their…
After a week of controversy, Ellen Pao is out as the CEO of Reddit, the tenth most-trafficked site in the US. The controversy began when Pao fired Reddit’s popular AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor. Subreddits appeared across the site calling for her resignation, as well as over 200,000 people signing a Change.org petition urging her to…
There’s a stupid obsession with the 90’s that’s weird because the 90’s were pretty boring and really just speaks to our base desires of wanting to re-live childhood because all of us are old and slowly deteriorating into dust. But still, even cold hearted me can appreciate this supercut of Disney movies from the 90’s.…
Internet-loving Americans have been waiting way too long for a team of benevolent juggernauts in Washington to take on massive money-hungry cable companies. This week, four freedom-fighting senators took their first swing in the form of a strongly worded letter to the Federal Communications Commission. The message was clear: Bring down broadband prices. Senators Bernie…
Like new cars, new telescopes come with their own unique smell. Unlike cars, telescopes are delicate enough that this smell can damage the high-precision instruments, killing them with their own outgassing. Here’s how NASA protects fragile space telescopes from themselves. New materials outgas, releasing volatile organic chemicals that quickly disperse into the surrounding environment. The…
Last month, Beats by Dre headphones went in for a thorough slagging across the internet, and on this here blog, on the basis of a teardown of the flashy cans. The exercise, conducted by a venture capital outfit called Bolt that focuses on hardware startups, seemed to prove that the headphones were a sham. It…
Man, this is cool. Paul Feig just tweeted a picture of the new all-female Ghostbusters cast in front of the new ECTO-1. They look so cool and bad ass that I want to watch this movie right now. Or I’ll just watch Ghostbusters again for like the 14th time. From left to right, Leslie Jones,…
This week, the theater world and social media exploded over a man who jumped on stage at Hand to God in order to plug his charger into a (fake) on-set outlet. Then queen diva Patti LuPone snatched a phone straight out of a texting audience member’s hand and sauntered off with it. What the hell…
It’s just after midnight and you’re jolted awake by the sound of a window breaking somewhere on your street. You look outside and you see two men who you’re pretty sure are stealing your neighbor’s car. You take out your phone but instead of calling 911, you start live-streaming to Periscope. That scenario might soon…
The quest for immortality has a long history in futurist circles. What if you could jump from body to body, complete with the same thoughts, the same memories, the same personality as before? That’s the idea behind the new Ryan Reynolds vehicle Self/Less. And while the film won’t change your life, it’s a fine way…
Here’s a pretty picture perfect scene of fireworks exploding behind a C-130 Hercules airplane at Yokota Air Base, Japan. I like to imagine all those fanciful blue explosions as a swarm of alien planes that are waiting to come back to the mothership Hercules. Or something like that. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us…
There are lots of relentless forces in this world. The Earth keeps spinning, the Sun keeps spitting out heat supporting all known life, and apps. There are always apps. So at the end of a new week, we have seven days-worth of software that you should be downloading. New ways to keep organized, new ways…
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is showing the world sketches of penises and vulvas. Admittedly, they’re penises and vulvas that Leonardo da Vinci drew around 1508, which makes them art instead of crotch shots. Check ‘em out at the oh-so-proper Royal Collection Trust website. Contact the author at [email protected].
Bees are extremely important to the way we live. One out of every 3 meals we eat is made possible because of bees and if they died out, plants would die, some foods will stop existing and millions of humans would starve. Seriously! Kurz Gesagt tries to explain why honey bees are dying and what…
When it comes to renewable energy, Denmark is officially kicking ass. Yesterday, Denmark’s wind farms produced 116% of national electricity demands, allowing the country to export power to Norway, German, and Sweden.According to The Guardian, that figure had risen to 140% by early Friday morning. “It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy…
In recent days, we’ve seen Google’s dream robot reimagine everything from internet memes to Hunter S. Thompson’s acid trips. But exactly how the artificial neural network creates these trippy images is hard to grasp…until you watch it all happening in real time. Johan Nordberg, an artist-developer with a penchant for visual fun, created a video…
After confirming that over 22 million people had their personal information stolen in the largest government digital data breach, Office of Personnel Management director Katherine Archuleta has resigned. As late as last night, Archuleta had insisted she wouldn’t step down from office, despite calls from Congress. Beth Cobert, deputy director of management at the Office…
Apparently if you work at Pixar, everything you make has to be adorable. So Alonso Martinez, a technical director at the company, designed and built a simple robot called Mira that’s just about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen when it’s playing peek-a-boo. Watching Mira get sad and change colors when Alonso hides his face…
If you were standing up straight, your head would be clipped off from this low pass from a fighter jet. That’s how close this Libyan MiG-23 is flying to the ground. The flyby is terrifyingly low and ridiculously fast and it is completely wild, especially considering how Libya only has a smattering of these jets…
You’ve been able to explore interesting corners of Marsfor years using Google Earth. However, NASA just one-upped the search giant with a data-rich interactive map that lets you peek into every nook and cranny, from the miles-high volcanoes to the sperm-shaped valleys. You can even reproduce them with a 3D printer! The new Mars Trek…
