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When you think about mechanisms that animals use to avoid becoming dinner, clever adaptations like poisons or pointy spikes come to mind. But the Ostracod, a type of zooplankton, uses something a little more magical. To avoid being eaten by a Cardinal fish, they excrete a sudden blast of luminescent chemicals that act almost like…
Want to mix music in a hurry or on the go? You’ll like the sound of Openmix, a teensy new audio mixing tool being developed right now. With it, you can connect your iPhone to a Walkman with a cassette of rare bongo concerts, or switch between your laptop and tablet. It’s just a super…
When I was in grade school, I used poorly engineered retractable pen cannons to fire tiny beads at my friends an enemies during class. I thought it was pretty cool but this mini grappling gun puts all my pre-adolescent tinkering to shame. In a quick and easy step-by-step mist8k shows you exactly how you can…
A backpack’s got plenty of pouches and pockets for storing a water bottle, but a sleek messenger bag? Good luck fitting a Nalgene in there without an unsightly bulge. You’ll either need to go without and keep an eye out for drinking fountains, or toss a few dollars towards these Kickstarted flat-pack water bottles. Called…
If you’re wondering how people first decided plummeting downhill inside a rickety box on wheels seemed like a good time, look no further than the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway in Pennsylvania. What began as a railway for shooting coal down the mountain turned into a destination for thousands of tourists in the late 19th century.…
The world’s seven seas may be wildly unpredictable, but if you ever find yourself itching to play Poseidon, you might want to consider enlisting. Because at the Naval Surface Warfare Center just outside Washington, D.C., the Navy gets to control every inch of its very own indoor ocean. And now, thanks to 216 newly acquired…
In Australia every full time worker is guaranteed four weeks of paid vacation each year. In Japan, it’s 10 days. Canada? A minimum of 10 days of paid vacation. Here in the U.S.? Zero. Just as the United States is the only wealthy country in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave, it’s also…
This is the story of Aleksander Aurdal, a Norwegian freestyle skier who fully understands the most important rule in life: You need to crash to learn and progress. Repeatedly. In sports. In your job. In love. In life. Even Nature itself knows this—existence itself is a chain of failures and successes. Aleksander went to the…
This ad is so cool it makes me want to run the Mizuno Uphill Marathon, one of the toughest and most demanding races I’ve ever heard of. It takes place at the gorgeous Serra do Rio do Rastro, a beautiful mountain in Brasil with a winding road with a drop of 4,658 feet (1,429 meters.)…
The rooms in Ikea’s catalogs may look like wonderlands of inexpensive furniture, but they’re mostly computer generated. Like, 75 percent computer generated. The Swedish juggernaut has experimented with CG product shots for almost a decade now, and it’s getting incredibly good at it. But it’s far from the only company doing it. We learned about…
This looks like some 3D rendering of a fantastic alien matter that can’t possibly exist on Earth. But, being the amazing planet we live in, it is actually a real thing: “A bismuth crystal illustrating the many iridescent refraction hues of its oxide surface.” We live in a wonderful world, people. SPLOID is a new…
If you’ve ever wanted an easier way to move data on and off your Android phone, this 16GB flash drive includes a Micro USB plug and free file management software. If you’re going on vacation and plan to take a lot of photos with your phone, this would be a great option for backing them…
When fighters belonging to a moderate Syrian rebel force raided an ISIS hideout earlier this year, they could never have expected to come away with a haul as valuable as this. What they found wasn’t weapons or ammo or money, it was a laptop. A laptop filled with thousands of hidden files filled containing schemes,…
I like some of Christopher Nolan’s movies more than others. And I like The Dark Knight—although mostly because of Heath Ledger. But, after watching this The Dark Incredibles trailer, I have the feeling that a dark version of Brad Bird’s movie would suck. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
You know that rumored iWatch we’ve heard is debuting at Apple’s September 9 event? We might see it, but according to Re/Code, the thing won’t actually ship until next year. https://gizmodo.com/apples-iphone-event-will-be-sept-9th-1627957216 That’s not great news in that Apple would be leaving a ton of holiday sales on the table, and it gives room for people…
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 should be coming very, very soon, almost certainly at Samsung’s Unpacked event next week. But in the meantime, it’s made a sneak appearance in an extremely short leaked video. Not the shortest we’ve seen, but close. https://gizmodo.com/samsung-galaxy-note-4-rumor-roundup-everything-we-thin-1616936073 Posted by one-video-account TechTastic, the clip shows the Note 4 in all its massive…
Alienware is famous for two things. One: selling ever more powerful gaming computers. Two: making them look like they were designed by aliens. But its latest full-size desktop gaming PC isn’t just another box sculpted to look like it’s out of this world. In fact, the new Alienware Area-51 is trying to challenge the assumption…
Amazon has built its brand around consistency—it rarely follows popular user interface trends, and its design mission has always been ruthless pragmatism. But now, for the first time in many, many years, it’s given its login page an overhaul. It’s the end of an era, and it could signal broader, site-wide changes. The new page,…
De-icing slippery winter roads is a vital public safety measures in cold-weather climates. However, the annual cycle of salting streets only to have the mineral seep into the blacktop and rot it from the inside wreaks havoc on transportation infrastructure throughout the U.S. and around the world. This little bot helps fix that. The problem…
It’s that time of year again! That special window where everyone rushes to shed their old iPhones in order to recoup a little cash before the new, maybe bigger, inevitably better iPhone rears its shiny head. Fortunately, we’re at a point now that you can get at least a little cash for Apple devices that…
