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For the first time since the accident in 1976, workers at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington are planning to clean out the roomwhere chemicals exploded in Harold McCluskey’s face, showering him with radiation 500 times the occupational limit and embedding radioactive americium in his skull, turning him into the Atomic Man. McCluskey, improbably, survived the…
Electrolux is known for its bold and sometimes ridiculous concepts, and the Swedish appliance manufacturer holds a contest every year to encourage young designers to submit their innovative/cockamamie ideas. And this year’s finalists? Well, they’re just as bonkers as you’d expect. This year, the focus of the competition was food enjoyment, air purification, and fabric…
The “Cast Screen” function for Google’s Chromecast dongle that we reported on during last month’s Google I/O developers conference has finally made it out of the keynote and into our mobile devices. Now, anything that plays on your Android device also plays on your TV. Yes, even your porn. The feature began rolling out today…
Google Now is great, but it’s not perfect. Sometimes it doesn’t hear you quite right. If that happens though, you don’t have to repeat the whole command; just tell Google the word it got wrong with “No, I said…” As 9to5Google explains, maybe you asked for “nearby bars” but Google inexplicably gave you results for…
YouTube user iZHarms made this awesome fireworks machine-gun using with five AK-180—a type of repeating roman candles—for a total of 900 shots. If this is not the best project you can do this summer, I don’t know what is. Last year he made this mini gun: SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…
The 4th of July may be over, but our obsession with blowing things up need not be. Here are 7 animated gifs to keep the party going. Winner: Reverse Flow Canon EOS 6D; Lens: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L; Focal Length: 16mm; Aperture: f/2.8; ISO: 3200. Shot at 60fps and slowed down to 30% and…
Tim Wu is a busy man. When he’s not teaching law at Columbia or writing forThe New Yorker, he’s testifying before Congress about the FCC proposed net neutrality. And as of last month, Wu is running for lieutenant governor of New York State. Busy might not be the right term, actually. Tim Wu is brimming…
A few of the best iOS games on the App Store are marked down today, and you’d be crazy to not buy them all at these prices. Threes! ($1) | Normally $2 | Also on sale for Android. Monument Valley ($2) | Normally $4 Blek ($1) | Normally $3 Eliss Infinity ($1) | Normally $3…
Hyperlite Mountain Gear makes packs and shelters with a new, Space Age material called Cuben Fiber. It’s 15 times stronger than steel and lighter than anything that’s come before. How do they do it? We asked Hyperlite Mountain Gear’s founder, Mike St. Pierre. IW: What is Hyperlite Mountain Gear? MSP: Hyperlite Mountain Gear is a…
This is the work of young concept artist Seokin Chung,just out of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. I like his style—not only the aesthetics of his designs but his rough, simple, but very effective brushwork. Seokin Chung is a freelance concept artist based in Los Angeles. Someone should hire this kid.…
If your ideal vacation has you cruising the countryside in a VW Camper Van, but you’re having a heck of a time finding a used one for sale, Dub-Box USA might just have a decent alternative. In fact, the company’s retro-styled camper trailers are probably better option than an aging VW, thanks to modern amenities…
Ever try measuring the straight-line distance between two points on Google Maps? You had to hold some object or appendage up to the little scale, then eyeball-measure the distance on your screen. What a mess. No more—a new update puts the task a right-click away. Also, you can doodle with it. This new feature is…
The race to build ever-faster helicopters has seen some rather, um, unique designs take flight in recent years, but nothing quite like this Frankensteined airship from the AVX Aircraft Company. And though it may look strange, this concept chopper could soon be setting some new airspeed records. Built as part of AVX’s bid for the…
Super slow-motion footage turns even the mundane motion of a circular saw into a spectacle worth watching. Vision Research’s Phantom cameras have long been the masters of the medium, with their absurdly high frame rate possibilities up to a million frames per second. And its monster camera just got even faster. The new Phantom v2511…
The Adidas Fit Smart might seem like just another fitness tracker, and in many ways it is. But the app-and-watch combo also features a handy a color-coded gauge that shows just how hard you’re exerting yourself. No more slacking, slacker. This isn’t Adidas’s first foray into fitness tracking, but it’s more in line with what…
For all the boring photography jobs out there—weddings, corporate, et cetera—Sergeant Larry Reid Jr. did pretty well to avoid them all and land one of the most thrilling jobs imaginable. He is the photographer for the Air Force Thunderbirds. His job is to fly with the team and document their amazing flights. In this video…
Doc Brown himself recently lied to us about the existence of hoverboards. But if you’ve got the cash, an original hoverboard (albeit, still non-hovering) could soon be yours. One of the original hoverboards used in filming Back to the Future: Part II will be going on sale this fall and it’s expected to fetch a…
With the magic of virtual reality, it’s easier than ever to find out what it would be like to see out of someone else’s eyes, but for the full effect you have to mirror your movements. What if you could actually control the other person though? It’s actually already possible. Hello, Avatar. In this being-another-human…
The Star Wars vs Star Treknerdbate is as old as the Universe itself and it’s been way too long since the last time we had it. Here’s an old video of a classic battle between Imperial Forces and the Enterprise over the skies of San Francisco to start the fire. Who would win a battle…
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but in this case it’s more like tons and tons of the latter. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a sort of “sensing skin” that can make it easier to detect faults and damage in concrete structures before they fail and…
