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On its Twitter account Lego just revealed the lineup for the second series of its Lego Simpsons Minifigures that will be individually available in blind bags once again come May. These include fan favorites like Groundskeeper Willie, Professor Frink, Hans Moleman, and Comic Book Guy. But also extended family like Patty and Selma, and alternative…
This is it. This is the day that your overly specific and impressively skeptical questions about the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules can finally be answered. The agency just released the full text of the policy that will protect the open internet. The full 400 pages of the FCC’s policy and research on…
It’s weird to see a working Nest thermostat on display at a Smithsonian museum in Manhattan. It’s even weirder to tinker with the gadget, pushing buttons and changing settings. But touching and tinkering with technology is the Cooper Hewitt future museum’s specialty. You could consider the Cooper Hewitt to be the Smithsonian’s computerized crown jewel.…
Driver Ott Tanak and his co-pilot Raigo Molder crashed on a river during the Mexico leg of the FIA World Rally Championship. Fortunately, they could escape before the water flooded the car completely. This insane video, shot from a camera place in the back seat, depicts pretty graphically one of my worst nightmares. SPLOID is…
Google says goodbye to one of its best pieces of hardware, PlayStation Vue is finally coming, and the $10,000 Apple Watch gets some much needed ribbing. All news and rumors you might have missed in the last 24 hours, all on BitStream. The fate of the Nexus 5, Google’s ultra-cheap and ultra-great smartphone, has been…
Expedition 42 to the International Space Station is officially over with the safe landing of Barry “Butch” Wilmore, Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova in Kazakhstan. The decent featured a brief surge of drama when communications flickered out. Top image: Soyuz TMA-14M descending under parachute above Kazakhstan on Thursday, March 12, 2015. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA…
Books, magazines, comics, even photographs have already all made the move to digital. And finally, 65 years after coming up with a clever way to boost gum sales, Topps is bringing its iconic trading cards into the digital world with a new Star Wars app that lets collectors trade cards with anyone else on earth…
Last year, a form of powdered alcohol called Palcohol was cleared for sale in the United States—and then immediately banned again by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Now, it’s perfectly legal once more. The Associated Press reports that powdered alcohol has regained approval by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.…
The laws of probability seems simple at first thought, but scratch the surface and their inner truth can be rather more counterintuitive. This video describes one of those situations—and the answer might prove more useful than you think. In this alternative to really nice new recasting of the Monty Hall problem by New Scientist, the…
A new report by the media measurement organization Nielsen reveals that more than two-in-five American households now subscribe to an online video streaming service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. Of the streaming services used around the country, Netflix wins out by a clear margin. In its Total Audience Report, Nielsen claims that around 36…
I love animated GIFs. I make them as part of my work here in Sploid, I drool when we see one that is a perfect infinite loop, and I think it’s a great medium to tell stories. That’s why I like theGIFYS. An award show devoted to honor the best animated GIFs on the Internet.…
The three crew members of International Space Station Expedition 42 returned safely to Earth early in the morning of Thursday March 12th after a 167-day mission. Their journey was stunning. You can see the view they got in this graceful photo of the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft as it descended toward the silken clouds above the…
Now Vaio is its own boss, free from Sony, it’s able to do as it chooses. Hoton the heels of two rather nice new laptops, it’s announced its first smartphone. Say hello to VAIO Phone. Its a sleek enough looking handset, certainly, all glossy back plastic—but if anything that serves to make it look rather…
For all its wonders, the internet does have some dark sides. Trolls. YouTube comments. 4chan. But as YouTuber Tom Scott explains by showing us what a completely offence-free internet dystopia would look like, even the lowliest of bridge-dwellers are a defining feature of online life. Scott’s ‘Bubble’ — a fictitious, perfect, personalised screening device for…
You probably don’t think about Wi-Fi signal much, except when you’re at the the wrong end of your apartment and swearing profusely. But rather than being some steady, even projection of data, Wi-Fi actually looks completely random when you map it out in 3-D. Dominique Thiebaut, a computer science professor at Smith College, used a…
Capracotta, a charming town in Italy’s heartland, received a barely-believable 8 feet of snow over the course of 18 hours yesterday. That’s possibly a world record for snowfall, and unsurprisingly, it’s brought life in the town to a grinding halt. Italian broadcaster Telemolise managed to get a news crew in (presumably by snowmobile, since 8…
In 2011, a massive earthquake hit Tōhoku, triggering a tsunami that devastated coastal Japan and surged across the ocean. The triple-plate tectonic junction that spawned the disaster has a mirror image across the Pacific Ocean, a nasty intersection of looming catastrophe in the Pacific Northwest. Road damage after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake in Washington. Image…
Damn, that thing really is stealth. This video shows how the B-2 stealth bomber refuels and rotates its fuel receptacle so that it can maintain its stealth. You see the receptacle in clear view when it’s ready for fuel but after it’s all filled up, it’s gone and the whole plane is back to being…
Geckos have a neat superpower that allows it to stay dry at all times: water droplets basically get catapulted off their skin like popping popcorn. It’s pretty nuts to see the water launch in the air like that and also pretty gross to think of it as the sort of human equivalent of shooting out…
There are a lot of alternative keyboard options out there, but sometimes you need something really specific. Building your own is pretty tough. Students from Tokyo University are about to make it easier. Tricky is a prototype modular keyboard system designed to create small, purpose-built input devices. Want a mini-keyboard for Photoshop shortcuts? Build it.…
