Tech News

Watch a Mammoth Airbus A380 Go From the Assembly Line to the Runway

No matter how annoying it gets to squish into an economy seat, it’s hard to deny that airplanes are awe-inspiring. Watching Qatar Airways’ recent Airbus A380 assembled highlights how intricate the design of these beastly machines really is. https://gizmodo.com/cheap-airline-seats-shouldnt-recline-at-all-1626921321 They’re million pound winged buses that soar thousands of feet above the ground for thousands of…

U2 Thinks Putting Its Album on Your iPhone Is “Really Punk Rock”

Remember how U2 gave every iTunes customer a free, very much deletable album as a little gift from Tim Cook to you? And you know how everyone became livid at the sudden influx of extra Bono? Well, don’t be such a square, man. U2 was just being punk rock. At least, that’s how The Edge…

This excellent animation short makes me want to play League of Legends

Superb animation made to promote the League of Legends 2014 World Championship, a professional gaming competition with a prize pool of $2,130,000. It was created by Robert Valley for Riot Games. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

What Will Happen to the Union Jack If Scotland Votes for Independence?

Today, Scotland is holding a vote on independence—whether or not it should be a country separate from the United Kingdom. If the “ayes” have it, the decision could herald the break-up of Britain, which turns a political issue into a design issue: What will happen to the Union Jack? This post originally appeared on the…

Underwater Obstacles Won’t Stop This Aluminum-Armored Jet Ski

If you’re looking for a real sense of speed on the water, a personal watercraft—or jet ski as they’re more commonly known—is definitely the way to go. However, their lightweight fiberglass hulls that let them zip across the water aren’t exactly designed to survive run-ins with rocks or other underwater debris. But the AlumaSki should…

I want to eat all these neat Crayola sculptures of famous characters

These are the tiny sculptures of Hoang Tran, an artist who likes to make popular characters out of crayons. From Calvin and Hobbes to Star Wars, he has them all. They are so cool and lickable that I want to eat all these Crayolas more than ever. Hoang also makes other stuff, like really cool…

Drop $400 on a BTTF Mr. Fusion and Never Pay For Plutonium Again

Unless you turned your daughter’s room into a nuclear reactor after she went off to college, you’re probably stuck paying the exorbitant market price for plutonium. It’s obscene, but the folks at Diamond Select Toys might have a solution. For $400 they’ll sell you a Mr. Fusion unit, just like the one used to power…

7 Dead Shopping Malls That Found Surprising Second Lives

The American mall is a dead and dying creature, its demise chronicled in photos that fill up entire websites and books. Not all malls, however, have to end up so sad and empty. When the shoppers are gone, these are still colossal pieces of infrastructure that can be repurposed, as medical complexes and churches and…

Is this the worst and most hilarious art theft ever? Yes, yes it is

Police have released this hilarious security camera video of a young man trying to steal an art piece that commemorates World War I from the Castle Fine Art Gallery in Birmingham, England. Obviously, the gallery’s security staff caught him as he stepped out of the museum. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…

Clip and Share Content Anywhere with Issuu’s New iOS 8 App

Issuu has announced the release of its newly revamped digital print publishing platform, now optimized to take full advantage of iOS 8’s newest features. And, from the looks of the new app, Flipboard is about to get a run for its money. By far, the coolest new feature is called Clip. Clip allows the reader…

Mantis Vision’s 3D-Sensing Tablet Could Help Anyone Make VR-Ready Video

Mantis Vision is best known as one of the companies behind the tech in Google’s 3D-mapping Project Tango tablet. Today, it’s pushing out an Android tablet of its own, called Aquila. From the surface, the 1920 x1200 8-inch Aquila tablet, made in partnership with hardware company Flextronics, looks a lot like a the Project Tango…

X-rays of the weird things that vets find inside pets

I just knew about They Ate WHAT? A competition where vets send X-rays of animals with weird things stuck within their bodies. These are some of the winners—some images look kind of harsh but don’t worry, all the animals were treated appropriately and they are fine and hungry again. First place: More than 30 ornamental…

Amazon Beat Google to Buy the .Buy Domain Name for $4.5 Million

Amazon — king of selling stuff on the interwebz — just paid a cool $4.5 mil to buy the rights to the .Buy top-level-domain, beating out Google in the process. The auction, held by internet boss ICANN, involved the sale of three of the fancy new top-level domains (TLDs) that have been created in the…

Line, the semi-popular social messaging network, has ‘done a Facebook‘ and spun its 30-second video-capture feature off into a separate app. If you’re a fan of “Stylish Filters, Titles, and More!”, you can download it here. [Line]

This is how natural-born filmmakers come to life

Some people say great movie directors come to this world with a camera on their hands. Add hard work to their natural-born visual storytelling skills and they become genius filmmakers. But talent is something you are born with. This fantastic ad shows how that happens. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…

This 3D-Printed Smartphone Microscope Only Costs a Dollar

We’ve seen small smartphone microscopes before, but they’re either a bit shitty or a bit pricey — problems neatly solved in this edition of Stuff You Didn’t Realize You Could 3D Print. It would appear that there’s some kind of very specific version of Moore’s Law that applies only to smartphone microscopes: a couple years…

Drone-Carrying Drone Carries Drone Carries Drone Carries Gum

It’s like Inception, but with UAVs: the guys at Flite Test recently sought to redefine ‘overkill’ by using four remote-controlled aircraft to deliver one stick of gum. Because science. The Flite Test crew were trying to further the drone-delivery-system idea that’s become popular since Google’s Project Wing and Amazon’s infamous Prime Air concepts, but using…

Man runs out of subway car and races it to get back in at next station

I could have never imagined this could be possible: Watch this guy getting out of a London subway car and running all the way to next station to get back inside the same subway car. I think this can only happen in London. In a place like New York—where trains most often run at Mach…

Boeing’s Going to Sell Rides On Its New NASA-Funded Space Taxi

Buying rides to space isn’t anything new now — in fact, flying in something so old-fashioned as a ‘capsule’ on a ‘rocket’ is probably a little passé. But that hasn’t stopped Boeing from sticking a tourist seat into its new NASA-funded spacecraft. On the back of yesterday’s announcement that Boeing has won a $4.2bn NASA…

$9,000 Gets You Access to Facebook For Oligarchs

Back when apps were new and cool and edgy, someone made an iPhone app that did quite literally nothing but prove that you’re a baller. Now that social networks are new and cool and edgy (or they used to be), someone’s made the same concept: a Facebook country club, if you will. Netropolitan bills itself…