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Cops are fighting Waze over a feature that lets users pinpoint where they’ve seen officers on a map, thus using the crowdsourced traffic app to avoid getting in trouble with the law. Now police in Miami are subverting the app by filling it with loads of bogus police sightings. NBC in Miami reports that hundreds…
Tsunami is a cute, perfectly crafted animated short film made by the students at the Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. It tells the story of a man returning to his house, flooded after a tsunami, and a water spirit that got trapped in there. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
BitStream is like a knowledge chef serving up a tech news entrees and tasty rumors for dessert, all to help satiate your brain’s desire to be “in the know.” Dig in. NASA’s building a better rocket If humanity has any hope of exploring our solar system—specifically Mars and far flung asteroids in the short term—we’re…
Everyone had that favorite, heavy, feather-stuffed pillow that was their not-so-secret weapon during a sleepover battle. But a pillow doesn’t come anywhere near being as awesome as Factory Entertainment’s new line of Zombie-battling stuffed toys that includes what could be the world’s first plush chainsaw. The new Zombie SWAT—or Soft Weapons and Tactics—line actually features…
Hitting the snooze button is generally understood to be bad for you—the extra sleep you’re getting isn’t of a very good quality, and on top of that you have to choose between missing breakfast and missing your bus. If you really can’t resist the temptation to take another twenty minutes under the covers on your…
You may have heard of the Dell Chromebook 11. It’s one of the very best Chromebooks you can buy. In fact, we think it is the best—a perfect compromise of product and price. So reasonably, it’d be exciting to hear that Dell has a new Chromebook 11. Version 2.0. Well, don’t jump for joy because…
These industrial robots—by FANUC America Corporation—pick and arrange batteries at ultra-fast speed. Watching these two guys work is mesmerizing. Pro tip: Mute the utterly boring voice over and play this instead. It works like magic. Here’s another video with the three-axis Delta robot working solo: SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or…
Thinking about buying a new gaming laptop? Hold up: you might not need to. A new graphics card could breathe new life into your old machine—and now it’s easy to actually buy one you can install yourself. Technically, you’ve been able to swap out your laptop’s GPU for a newer chip for some time now—it’s…
Meet the Spider-Tailed Horned Viper, a species that lives in western Iran and uses his tail in the shape of a spider as a lure to attract birds. Snakes and spiders are quite scary per se, but this animal combining both seems like a genetically-modified monster conceived by a mad scientist. SPLOID is delicious brain…
What happens to your Facebook profile when you die has long been an important, if controversial, issue. Now, the social network will let you designate a ‘legacy contact’ to take care of your profile when you die. https://gizmodo.com/should-your-family-get-access-to-your-online-accounts-w-1605996532 The Wall Street Journal reports will finally allow a person of your choosing to manage certain aspects…
Once bacteria cling, it can sometimes be hard to make them let go as they accumulate and form adhesive biofilms. That’s a particular problem on medical materials use for implants and instruments—but a new non-stick material might change things. A team of researchers form Harvard has developed a powerfully non-stick material that can be used…
This video shows how NASA makes and tests their largest, and most powerful solid rocket boosters ever. These engineering beauties will propel the new Space Launch System (SLS) and its astronauts to deeper space explorations. Mars, here we go. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
It’s become hard to manipulate App Store rankings, with Apple increasingly stamping out contributions made by bots. But what if you have a huge bank of iPhones to make (seemingly) legitimate contributions? This image is circulating Chinese social media site Weibo, captioned to explain that it shows a “hardworking App Store ranking manipulation employee.” Flanked…
There are more than 1.4 million apps available on iOS and finding them can be an absolute nightmare. Now, Apple and Pinterest have announced a new collaboration which will allow users to pin and download apps directly to and from Pinterest boards. The new tool, launched today and called App Pins, allows you to stick…
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA put out this video of all the coolest, jaw dropping explosions that happened on our Sun over the past five years. You basically watch the Sun dances with shooting flares and solar loops. It’s unreal. This video from NASA is just fantastic. NASA writes:…
I didn’t wake up craving dumplings today. But after reading about this epic dumpling crawl in Lucky Peach and seeing Momofuku’s David Chang post videos about dumplings and then learning a brief history about dumplings and watching them get made in the video above, well, damn. I’m really craving dumplings now. SPLOID is delicious brain…
An unassuming scrapbook buried inside the archives of Sandwich, England turned out to hold quite a treasure: an original copy of the Magna Carta from 1300, one of just several that have survived all these centuries. The Magna Carta Project announced the discovery this week, after verifying the tattered page found in December was indeed…
Valentine’s Day is this weekend. And whether or not you believe in spending $5.95 on Hallmark greetings, hopefully, you still believe in love. So for this week’s Shooting Challenge, that’s what we’re celebrating: Love. The Challenge Take a photo that features love as the subject. (It doesn’t have to be pro love if you prefer…
Apple has banned ‘bonded servitude,’ which means it won’t let its supplier factories make their new hires work for free to pay for the costs of hiring them. Good!!! And also: Why the hell is this just happening now? When Apple gears up to make a new product, its supplier factories go on hiring sprees.…
In the future, our air conditioners will look like giant clouds of mist — and they’ll follow us around. When we last checked in with MIT’s Senseable City Lab, they were debuting a prototype heater that targets the exact space where you’re standing. Now, the lab has created a system that does the same thing—for…
