Tech News

The World’s Most Badass Combine Harvester Will Shuck Your Mind

For untold centuries, humanity manually harvested and threshed our grains to separate the literal wheat from the chaff. The advent of combine harvesters—those that both harvest and thresh the grains in a single, automated process—however has vastly increased our ability to cultivate crops. And the new CR10.90 from New Holland does it better than anyone.…

A See-Through Glass Pot That Definitely Boils While You Watch It

Designed by Massimo Castagna and made in Italy, this gorgeous all-glass pot defies the saying “a watched pot never boils” because it encourages chefs to stare in awe at whatever they’re preparing for dinner, while it cooks. Made from dense borosilicate glass instead of opaque stainless steel, the $200 transparent pot has been tempered so…

5 Inspiring Science Projects Designed by Teens

The amazing thing about the Google Science Fair isn’t so much the ambitious projects that spring from it, but who creates them: teenagers worldwide between 13 and 18 years. Google has announced the 15 global finalists for this year’s competition. They’re all spectacular, but here are five that stood out. The final three winners will…

Speedo’s Crazy Nemesis Fins Borrow Their Design From Humpback Whales

When you’re designing a product that helps someone race through the water, it only makes sense to draw your inspiration from the ocean’s resident experts. So you might be surprised to hear that Speedo closely based the design for its new Nemesis fins on humpback whales instead of sharks or dolphins. Either way, it’s a…

Watch music turn vapor into a living and dancing beast

This video shows how powerful low frequency sounds—blasting at full volume through the insanely powerful speakers of car—can affect vapor clouds. The movement is so unreal and seemingly unnatural that it feels like someone edited a series of jump cuts following the rhythm of the music. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff.Join us…

A Flippable Frame Lets This Bike Grow With Your Kids

As your child transitions from a balance bike—where they use their feet against the ground for propulsion—to a larger pedal version, it usually means it’s time for an upgrade. But not with Andreas Bhend’s clever Miilo. The bike’s frame is reversible, allowing it to be easily disassembled and flipped, elevating the seat and making room…

The Extraordinary Evolution of Scissors

Since the ancient Egyptians who supposedly invented them, scissors have been a constant in human civilization. After knives, they’re likely the most common household object the average person owns. Just look around your house: You have them for your nails, your paperwork, your kitchen, sewing—even kids have their own safer versions. So it’s odd that…

Making the poster of The Shining was as intense as the movie itself

It’s quite interesting to see the back and forth between two creative geniuses like Stanley Kubrick and Saul Bass working on the movie poster of The Shining. It wasn’t an easy one for Bass, thanks to Kubrick’s infamous obsessive perfectionism. The poster went through 300 versions before getting final approval. These are five of the…

If only our phones had these options as standard. [Truth Facts]

How Your Hotel Room Price and Wi-Fi Speed Are Linked

Ever wondered if you’re paying for the bed linen or the Wi-Fi? The network-analyzing super-wonks at OpenSignal have crunchedthrough some data about public Wi-Fi, and analyzed in detail the network performance in different hotel rooms. Here’s how your room price and download speed are linked. By probing its database of large hotel chain Wi-Fi results…

What would happen if Mad Men’s Joan Harris worked in a modern office?

It would be hard for Joan Harris—Christina Hendricks’ character in Mad Men—to adapt to the rules of today’s corporate America. She wouldn’t be able drink or smoke at work and new technologies would blow her mind. But sadly, apart from that, some things haven’t changed that much. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff.Join…

Facebook Has Banned Likes-For-Content

Yesterday, Facebook tweaked its Platform Policies, and while some of the changes are subtle, there’s one which is very welcome: from now, the concept of offering access to apps or content in return for Likes is banned. Straight outta the mouth of Zuckerberg & Co., the new rule reads like this: You must not incentivize…

Verizon has added its push-to-talk service to Android phones, so now for $5 a month you can use (one of a range of selected) Android handsets as a walkie-talkie. If you sign up right now, you can try it for free for 6 months.

Yahoo and Google Working Together on Unified Encrypted Email For 2015

Google hasbeen working towards offering end-to-end encryption for Gmail. But now, it’s teaming up with Yahoo to make both webmail services encrypted in such a way that they both work together. Yahoo has been a little slower to the encryption party than Google. But yesterday Alex Stamos, Yahoo’s chief information officer, announced at the Black…

Everything You Need to Know About the New USA FREEDOM Act

Ever since the Snowden revelations, honest (and some dishonest) efforts have been made in Congress to try to scale back at least some of the NSA’s spying. It’s a complex problem, since the NSA has overstepped reasonable bounds in so many different directions and there is intense secrecy surrounding the NSA’s activities and legal analysis.…

Hybrid rocket test looks like dimensional portal sucking reality itself

The first time I saw this image I thought of an inter-dimensional portal of evil sucking in reality. It’s actually the test of the Nammo hybrid rocket engine that will power the Bloodhound. If everything goes as planned, the Bloodhound will be the first supersonic car to reach 1000mph (1,609.34 km/h). In the car there…

Watch solid flat metal sheets being inflated like water balloons

That crazy nutter of Colin Furze is at it again with more garage tinkering, this time making 3D shapes out of completely flat metal sheets, using water pressure to inflate them like water balloons—a process called hydroforming. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Peeking In On A Protostar and A Not-Quite-Star Hiding In Clouds of Chaos

What happens when you take observations of a gas cloud, a protostar, and a pre-star dense core of gas, and model them with turbulence? A downright hypnotizing model at how multiple star systems may form. A gas cloud 450 light years away in the constellation Taurus hosts not just a newborn protostar, but a dense…

Guy with superhuman lungs can make a hot water bottle explode

Meet Brian Jackson, an 11-time Guinness World Record holder who’s probably a mutant with the lungs of a giant. He can make those red hot water rubber bottles explode in 51.98 seconds. Those bottles need 170 pounds of pressure to blow up so yeah, Jackson’s breath is basically superhuman. Jackson says doing one of these…

Fermenting beer time lapse shows one beautiful breathing sludge monster

Watching the fermentation process of beer is a lot like seeing a brown sludge monster grow in strength. It’s not pretty. But then you remember how delicious beer tastes and how wonderful it makes you feel and you forgive it for looking so unsightly. Or at least I did. I think this time lapse is…