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As addictive mind-altering substances go, coffee is actually pretty hard to hit up on the move. If you’re out of range of a Starbucks, getting a hot, caffeine-rich epsresso generally requires a 20-pound machine and mains electricity, which is exactly the first-world problem this dinky espresso machine exists to tackle. About the size of a…
The rest of us might be celebrating that we can finally keep playing Candy Crush during takeoff or landing, but flight attendants don’t seem to be too happy about the new regulations: the biggest union for flight attendants is suing the FAA to change the rules back. According to the WSJ, flight attendants (or at…
The NSA’s least-favorite person, Mr Snowden himself, is doing a live video interview with the New Yorker as we speak. If you want to see how a year in Russia has treated the whistleblower, or you want to hear his opinions on the most recent leaks, it’s worth hopping over.
Remember Cody Swanek’s cute, Star Wars themed Maths problem from last week? Well, it took Mr Abrams a while to figure out the answer, but he got in touch with Cody to let him know – and ponder a separate mathematical question as well. http://io9.com/8th-grader-pens-impressive-algebra-problem-about-star-w-1642715847/all Abrams got in touch with Cody after his puzzle hit…
I can’t really think of a classier way to enter a party than to BASE jump off the 1,200-foot Kuala Lumpur tower, and then land in a rooftop swimming pool — assuming, of course, that he’s got a Bond-approved tux under his skydiving outfit.
California remains in a deep drought, and this winter’s expected precipitation levels aren’t expected to be much more than a than a drop in the bucket, so to speak, for the state’s parched aquifers. That means it’s the responsibility of every citizen to conserve as much water as possible in this time of need. But…
I’ve long maintained that any phone with a screen size over 4.2 inches is stupid and pointless, and then promptly went out and got an iPhone 6. It seems, though, that everyone’s acceptance of what the maximum screen size is varies pretty massively. There’s been a steady and well-documented rise in average phone screen sizes:…
We’re less than a week away from a new iPad (probably!), which means the leaks are coming thick and fast. Today, we’ve got alleged photos of a gold-colored TouchID sensor that’s supposedly destined for Apple’s next tablet, in addition to some silicon-porn of the new iPad’s motherboard. The photos come via a Taiwanese Apple blog…
According to a report from The Daily Dot, a fairly long list of big-name retailers — including supposedly high-tech stores like Best Buy — won’t be supporting Apple Pay at launch. Although this isn’t all that surprising, given that supporting Apple Pay will generally require upgrading a store’s payment terminals, it’s still a blow for…
I like Johnson Ting‘s vision of Neo Japan 2202, wherever his Neo Japan is located to have two moons (or maybe one is no moon but some space station, I don’t know.) Every time I see illustrations like this I long for immortality. Or at least a couple hundred years in good health so I…
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day is featuring this long exposure photo of the lunar eclipse rising over the city of Chongqing, China, captured by photographer Zhou Yannan on October 8. The zooming tail effect as the Moon went out of the eclipse is fantastic. From NASA: As the Moon rose and the Sun set…
This is great news, just announced this Friday at New York Comic Con: Marvel is releasing a Guardians of the Galaxy animated TV series coming in 2015 on Disney XD! Check out the first sequences of how it is going to look here (I like that colorful 80s look!) SPLOID is a new blog about…
Johnson Ting creates these amazing images by painting new layers on top of existing photographic material using a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet and Photoshop. The results sometimes end being completely different from the original, and they are always impressive. Johnson Ting is a concept artist and illustrator based in Malaysia. You can follow him on…
[To the Rolling Stones’ I Miss You] Look that mantis eat a fly/ You’ll never she her cry/ Lord I hate you. Mother Nature she’s the Ma’am/ She just doesn’t give a damn/ She will kill you. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
Skateboarding, motorcycling, breakdancing, doing gymnastics—all of those sports already look awesome in real time. But if you record them with a Phantom at 1000FPS slow motion in beautiful 4K, they become so epic that you wish life came with a slow motion button too. Watch. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…
Vocativ analyzed over 600 presidential speeches in US history, measuring syllables and keeping track of word and sentence count to determine the Flesch-Kincaid reading level of each speech. In the beginning, presidential speeches were at the level of a PhD, now it’s at the reading comprehension of a 7th grader. But this is actually a…
I’m finding it hard to do much else on this afternoon after learning earlier today that one of the greatest films of my childhood will, after 28 years, finally be getting a sequel. I’m talking, of course, about the 1986 movie Labyrinth. Details are vague, but according to Variety, the Jim Henson Studio says yes,…
Everybody knows how the 13-minute-long, zombie-laden adventure that is the Thrillervideo shaped the history of music and saw the birth to a little phenomenon called MTV. Michael Jackson was primed to reinvent the medium from the start, though, with his very first music video. Released in 1979, that Michael Jackson video was “Don’t Stop ‘Til…
Set in the World War II invasion of France, this is the story of a British paratrooper that crash lands in a forest and the cute magical creature who finds him wounded. It’s also the story that shows that there’s only one thing worse than an evil being: A total imbecile. The short was created…
It’s hard to imagine, but Manhattan used to be a bunch of open fields and trees. Then, after a small Dutch fort turned into an important trading post, things began to change. Anda new map projectby the architects and coders at Morphocode lets you visualize the past 300 years of that process. Urban Layers is…