Tech News

Sculpting With Magnetic Clay Looks Fantastically Weird

When we last checked in with Jolan Van der Wiel, the Dutch designer was mixing iron filings and plastic to cast gravity-shaped furniture. This spring Van der Wiel returned, with an exhibition showing the process of sculpting with clay mixed with iron filings. And it’s bizarre. The project is called Dragonstone—yes, just like the Game…

Use Google Now’s Location Reminders To Power Through Your To Dos

One way to deal with tasks that you never get around to or are always forgetting is to attach a location to them. Google Now has had the ability to display reminders based on a place for a while now, and they only take a few seconds to set up. Launch the Google Search app…

101 Years of Tour de France Bikes Map the Evolution of Cycling

This year marks the 101st riding of the Tour de France, one of the most brutal sporting events ever created by man. In fact, plenty of us are so focused on the madness that we overlook how incredible the technology that powers it has become—and how it’s evolved over more than a century. We ran…

Lunatic leaps on top of moving metro train as it emerges from tunnel

Watch a madman leap on to a moving train as it emerges from a tunnel in France. The idiot then tells the camera that he will try again soon because it didn’t work out how he had planned—as if it’s not easy enough to get yourself killed these days. SPLOID is a new blog about…

Kindle Unlimited Is Here: Read As Much As You Like For $10 a Month

Following rumors earlier this week, Amazon has just announced its new Kindle Unlimited subscription service. Pay $10 a month, and you can read as much as you want (from a pool of 600,000 books, at least). https://gizmodo.com/amazon-is-prepping-a-kindle-unlimited-book-rental-ser-1605911418 The service isn’t just limited to e-books, either: you can also take your pick from over 8,000 of…

New pictures and video show interior detail of the Siberian hole

Scientist are already working hard to figure out how the mysterious Siberian hole appeared. Meanwhile, The Siberian Times went to the site they call the crater at the end of the world and captured images and video that reveal in more detail how the interior looks. https://gizmodo.com/new-footage-of-mysterious-giant-siberian-hole-as-scient-1606452428 Andrey Plekhanov, Senior Researcher at the State Scientific…

MIT Has a Free Photojournalism Course You Should Take

Lots of schools now offer free, online courses, but here’s a doozy from MIT: an introductory course about documentary photography and photojournalism that won’t cost you a cent to work through. Published through MIT’s Open Courseware project, the course—Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: Still Images of a World in Motion—was originally taught by Prof. B. D.…

Ed Snowden: Sharing Porn Selfies Is All in a Day’s Work at the NSA

Notorious security campaigner Edward Snowden has given an interview about his times working for the NSA, claiming that employees enjoy poking through people’s private files—and sharing their best finds with their colleagues. Snowden explained that jock culture is alive and well in the macho ranks of the security world, pointing out that: “During the course…

Optical illusion GIFs make classic horror characters three-dimensional

Saline used a well-known optical illusion to turn the greatest scary monsters of all time into beautiful postcards that feel three-dimensional on your screen. I love that they paid homage to the often gimmicky classic horror films of yesteryear with such a gimmicky technique. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on…

Insanely detailed hand-cut illustrations on rice paper

Bovey Lee—an artist based in Pittsburgh—has the skills and the endless patience to make these amazingly detailed illustrations. She hand cuts each one on a single sheet of Chinese xuan (rice) paper using a wide array of cutting instruments. The resulting pieces are delicate and mesmerizing. My narrative-based cut paper explores the tension between man…

Google Maps for Mobile Now Lets Cyclists Avoid the Hills

Good news for cyclists everywhere: Google Maps for mobile now provides you with an elevation chart of its routes, so you can choose to avoid the hills—or take them on. The update plots elevation against distance, allowing you to compare the amount of climbing you’ll have to do. It shows multiple routes in the same…

Scientists use wireless Oculus Rift to create real life holodeck

Scientists at the Max-Planck-Institut in Germany have created the closest thing we have to a real life holodeck using a wireless Oculus Rift and multiple cameras distributed inside a 32-foot by 32-foot room. Of course, it’s still far away from Star Trek, but it works. Watch the video to see how: Subjects in the lab…

Listen to a Wiretap of Ukraine Rebels: “We Just Shot Down a Plane”

Ukraine has released audio from phone calls made between rebels and Russian officers after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. You can listen to it here. In one of the calls, a rebel is heard to say that “We have just shot down a plane.” A reminder, perhaps, that even if the content they…

The Science of Penis Size: Does It Really Matter?

The eternal sexual question asked by men across the world is about size—and whether it matters or not. Let’s have science settle the debate once and for all. Spoiler: yes, it does. At least a little bit. But you can take (some) relief from the fact that it’s all relative, and down to how it’s…

Google has confirmed that Android Wear will support custom watch faces—which could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

The amazing system that tested the most powerful rocket engine ever

A photo of the Rocketdyne F-1 rocket engine—”the most powerful single-nozzle liquid-fueled rocket engine ever flown”—being tested at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama. Five of them powered the first stage of the Saturn V. Watch and listen to all of them being tested—in Dolby 5.1 sound. It’s amazing. Here’s a drone video of the…

Discuss: The laws that bind atoms and galaxies control your feelings too

Pour yourself a whiskey and think about this before going to sleep tonight: “What you perceive as a conscious perspective is actually a bunch of little particles banging into each other and swerving around based on the same rules that form stars, nebulae, and black holes… …That means these rules must contain within them the…

This beautiful rainbow insect is actually a wasp

So today I learned that all wasps are not yellow and black. There’s a an iridescent rainbow variant called the cuckoo wasp—of which this is a particularly beautiful specimen. They are kleptoparasitic wasps, who lay eggs in others insects’ nest. The baby wasps will then eat the eggs or larva in the nest. Gorgeous bastards.…

Flying race car narrowly avoids decapitating another pilot

The best part about the video—other than that ridiculously close call of the flying race car launching right pass the driver—is how the driver who almost got crashed into, calmly fixes his side view mirror and keeps driving. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Yikes, these animal hybrids are so hilariously terrifying

Don’t be surprised if in the future crazy scientists will have tampered with genetics so much that they’ll create insane animal hybrid mashups. And not just designer dogs but psycho frigs, horsquirrels, eagluanas and chinchillapotamuses. They’ll probably look a lot like these excellent photoshopped animals. The photoshop jobs are done by QuebecTango and they make…