Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
I’ve been craving a good burger lately and looking at these fantastic burger pictures from Fat & Furious is not helping me at all. Some of them look absolutely delicious, others look crazy and surreal, and all of them are photoshopped and heavily styled. It doesn’t matter: I would like a bite of every single…
Musicians are notoriously hard-living, but there’s one man who, based on deeply affectionate and incredibly wild stories from his (famous) friends, really and truly went for it. Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) is a fantastic introduction to the singer-songwriter whose flawless voice belied a decidedly imperfect, human existence. Here…
The trailer for Birdman, starring Michael Keaton as a washed-up actor and former star of a superhero franchise (heh) who’s trying to stage a comeback with a play he wrote to direct and star in himself, looks like all kinds of meta cinematic insanity—set to a sweet cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” for…
Ten years ago this week, the Summer Olympics triumphantly returned to their historic home with splashy opening ceremonies in Athens, Greece. Unfortunately, the glory did not last after the Games. While the dilapidated state of Athens’ venues post-Games has been well-documented, new photos taken this week show just how devastating the Olympics were for the…
In 1994, there were just a few thousand websites on the internet. HTML was still new, and the concept of web publishing was still embryonic. It was the year that Microsoft launched its own website—and today, to celebrate its 20th anniversary on the web, the companydug that old website up and put it back online.…
Believe it or not, when camping you can’t just survive on toasted marshmallows and s’mores. You need vitamins and protein to keep you fuelled through canoe trips and hikes, but don’t toss that pointy stick just yet. Grandpa’s FireGrill is compact enough to bury in a backpack, but jam a stick into the end and…
The Great Unbundling has begun. Recode reports Facebook has begun to shut off access to chat within its main app. We’ve known about Facebook’s plan to make everyone use Messenger by disabling chat within the main Facebook app for a while now, but itjust started rolling out to people in the U.S. If you still…
Previously, we’ve seen researchers use everyday Wi-Fi signals like radar, able to detect shapes through a door or wall. Well, here’s the logical next step toward the robot overthrow: Putting that tech on top of wheeled robots. You can run (okay, walk), but hiding behind a brick wall is futile. Dr. Yasamin Mostofi and her…
If you don’t know Paolo Nutini,I don’t blame you. I just learned about this British singer when I saw this video of his song Iron Sky. It opens with a hard-to-watch 2-minute silent intro—and then the beautiful music hits contrasting with the lives of pariahs, the mentally insane, the junkies… It knocked me out. Warning:…
The USS Montgomery, the second of the Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship made for the United States Navy. Out of the water, it looks like this 127.4-meter (418-foot) this high-speed trimaran (47 knots on sprint!) could have been designed at an Imperial Navy shipyard. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
At one time, close-up sleight-of-hand magic relied on coins, cards, and currency, but since most tricks require an audience to pay close attention, it’s hard to compete with distractions like Facebook and Twitter these days. So as the folks Cool Hunting discovered, magician Doug McKenzie decided to just incorporate them, as well as other technologies,…
The intricate folds of origami are infinitely useful across science, from designing safer airbags to building more resilient architecture. Here, though, the same principles are being applied to a self-assembling robot that uses a tiny microcontroller to transform itself from 2D to 3D, then walks away. Harvard’s microrobotics engineers Sam Felton and Robert Woodwere inspired…
The Roomba paved—or cleaned—the way for a long list of robot vacuum copycats to hit the market, but very few offer a compelling reason to not just buy the original autonomous floor cleaner. However, what Samsung’s new VR9000H robo vac lacks in eye-catching product naming, it makes up for with a neat feature that lets…
For years, scientists have been looking for cheaper and faster ways to make vaccines, including tinkering with what sounds like an unlikely source: Tobacco plants. In fact, the highly experimental serum given to the two American Ebola patients was created using this novel technique. Here’s how it works. Whether for vaccines or serums, the basic…
You would think that, if you take out all the jokes and leave just the plot in American sitcoms, you would end up with something that is not funny at all. And you would be completely right—although the edits of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm still had some solid funny moments. Seinfeld Friends The Office…
Cognitive computing has been one of our most exciting frontiers for years. It’s enticing to think that we can someday build a computer that’s as powerful and as efficient as a brain. IBM’s latest miraclechip just got us closer than ever. Big Blue has married neuroscience and supercomputing to create a new computer chip that’s…
We’ve all seen what happens when someone can’t cross the street in the allotted signal time—the pedestrian gets frustrated and drivers get mad. A program in Singapore lets seniors swipe a card at an intersection so the signal will give them extra time to cross. It’s a smart solution to a problem that’s increasingly going…
If you’re on a hike and come across a predator that’s determined to protect its young or its turf, you’re not going to have much luck scaring it off with whistles or loud noises. You need a deterrent that’s a little more convincing, like a 950,000-volt stun gun on the end of a 56-inch hiking…
The Fox Searchlight 20th Anniversary Collection packs in 20 critically acclaimed movies in one pretty package. All Blu-ray, a few special editions, and an Amazon-exclusive inclusion of Once. It’s also $170 off MSRP today with your preorder, bringing the set down to $130, or $6.50 a movie. [Fox Searchlight 20th Anniversary Collection] 127 Hours 28…
Given the gradual blurring of linesbetween iOS and OS X, Siri for Mac is a pretty safe bet. Now, a new patent filing details what the desktop version of the voice assistant might look like. As previous patents have also suggested, it’s going to be a lot more extensive than on mobile. The patent for…
