Tech News

Message Board Scrabble Lets Everyone Play Whenever They Have Time

One of the reasons Words With Friends became so popular on smartphones was because it let players take as much time as they needed between turns. There was no pressure from other players while everyone sat around a game board at a table. So perhaps this hanging message board version of Scrabble was partly inspired…

This ad’s food porn made me so hungry I’m now hypnotized

This commercial for Japanese restaurant Yugo—a very cool place in Madrid, Spain, decorated like a World War II Japanese bunker—is making me drool so much that I’m afraid of drowning in my own saliva. I want to stuff my face with a bucket full of those broiled toro nigiri. That’s the only thing in my…

Set Your Dropbox Links to Expire for Safer File Sharing

A few months ago, Dropbox added the ability to add expiration dates to the shared links you send out to let others get at your files and folders. Even if you’re very trusting of your friends and colleagues, it’s a good idea to apply this setting to all of the links you share. If someone…

Irregular-Shaped Building Blocks Let Kids Build Ultra-Modern Skyscrapers

Hot Wheels doesn’t sell tiny die-cast horse and buggies to kids these days, so why would anyone assume that children would want to build ancient castles with building blocks? Areaware’s Blockitecture set—designed by James Paulius—instead features a collection of irregularly-shaped wooden blocks that can be stacked and balanced to create a towering modern high-rise. Not…

Satellite imagery reveals how gold mining is destroying tropical forests

The picture above is terrible. It shows the catastrophic effects of the deforestation caused by the current gold rush in the tropical forests of South America. The consumption of gold worldwide is increasing in the last years due to the global economic crisis and the instability in the financial markets. According to a paper published…

Watch more cute monster animation drawings get inserted into daily life

I just love the fake cartoon reality that augmented reality artist Marty Cooper creates within our world because his character drawings pack so much personality that I just want them to be real. Here he is with part three in his Aug(de)mented Reality series, which splices crazy cute monster drawings into normal situations of real…

Cats Using Instagram, and Everything Else You Missed Yesterday

Cats posting to Instagram, Microsoft invading Android tablets, LG’s goes metal on the G4. This is all the news and rumors from the past 24 hours, all on BitStream. We have reached peak technology. Pack it up. We’re done. Whiskas, a company known more for feline food than feline wearables, is working on a “Catstacam,”…

This MCU Themed House Turns Your Living Space Into Avengers Tower

Sure, there’s being a fan of the Marvel movies — watching them all, going to midnight screenings, buying the merch, reading the comics — and then there’s decking your house out with wall-spanning prints and giant logos. That’s like, Coulson-levels of fanboying right there. The job was taken on by Absolook Interior Design, who took…

These Light-Emitting Fibers Could Make Fabrics That Glow

A team of researchers has developed a new light-emitting fiber than could be woven into fabrics, providing flexible smart fabrics than can illuminate themselves. The fibers use a stainless steel wire core, which is coated with a thin layer of ZnO nanoparticles and then wrapped in electroluminescent polymer. Finally, a transparent coating of carbon nanotubes…

A German Airbus A320 Has Crashed in the French Alps

A passenger airplane operated by German airline Germanwings—Lufthansa’s low-cost division—has crashed in the Alps in southern France. The Airbus A320 crashed close to the mountain village of Barcelonette during a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. The French TV station iTele reports that there are at least 142 passengers and 6 crew-members were aboard. Newspaper Le…

This is what happens when you ask OK Go to make your commercial

Damian Kulash—lead singer of OK Go and the guy who creates their popular music videos—just made this neat commercial for the Chinese home furniture brand Red Star Macalline. The ad features the band members and follows the same visual style as their video The Writing’s on the Wall. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us…

“It costs how much for 10MB? Forget it, my email can wait.” [Truth Facts]

Xiaomi’s New Mi TV 2: A 40-Inch Android-Powered Smart TV for $320

Xiaomi’s onslaught of affordable technology continues. The Chinese company has today launched its new 40-inch Mi TV 2: a powerful smart TV running an Android-based OS that will sell for $320. https://gizmodo.com/this-xiaomi-action-cam-beats-a-gopro-hero-on-specs-and-1688860914 The new TV features a 40-inch full HD LED panel by Sharp with 5000:1 contrast ratio, a Cortex-A9 quad-core 1.45GHz CPU, 1.5GB of…

10 fun things you can do to play with fire

Everyone has a little bit of pyromania in them, it just depends on when it wants to come out. After watching this Brusspup video of 10 tricks to do with fire, I know exactly when I’m going to start playing with fire again: the next big power outage. I’m totally going to make fire tornadoes,…

Facebook Clarified its Policies. Now How About Fixing Them?

Facebook recently updated its community standards. As the company noted in the announcement accompanying the change, their “policies and standards themselves are not changing,” but that they wanted to provide more clarity to a set of existing rules that have often been misunderstood by users. While some of the changes provide significantly more detail as…

A Bar On Board A Plane? Now You’re Talking

When you talk about the price difference between economy class and business class, or business and first, you have to find some pretty significant differences before you can justify that extra cash. (Unless someone else is paying, or you can snaffle an upgrade using points or some smooth talking.) But if you’re looking for a…

High-Rises Made Of Wood Might Actually Be Good To Look At

High-rise housing blocks are all too often concrete monstrosities, the kind of places that don’t exactly scream Home Sweet Home. In an effort to make them just a little more welcoming, Swedish architects are proposing an all-wood construction. Building skyscrapers out of wood isn’t a totally novel or ridiculous idea. You have to understand that…

Can You Identify This Glittering Landscape?

This isn’t snow, so what is it? Here’s the full image. If you’re sharp-eyed, you might spot a familiar object for scale. As usual, the answer is after the photo: A sandy beach in Hawaii photographed on December 1, 2007. Image credit: Courtney Schaneville/USGS This is a sandy beach near Waimea on Kauai in Hawaii.…

Our Solar System Is Weird Because Jupiter Is A Destructive Bully

Most planetary systems are made up of a few rocky super-planets orbiting extremely close to their stars, making our system — multiple, distant bodies — an oddball outlier. And according to new research, Jupiter could be to blame (thank?). Normally, planetary systems are typified by big giants close to the star — closer than Mercury…

This Webpage Uses Centuries-Old Physics To Let Anyone Scroll Hands-Free

The Doppler effect is a well-documented phenomenon in physics which causes a change in the frequency of a wave as the source moves closer to the observer. It’s the science behind satellites and speed cameras alike. And, in the hands of one computer science student, it can make a little magic happen on your computer.…