Tech News

Behind the Scenes of the First Crewed American Spaceflight

On this day in 1961, Alan B. Shepard Jr. muttered to himself, “Don’t fuck up, Shepard…”, huddled into the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule, and lifted off to become the first American to reach space. These are the photographs from the historic suborbital flight. Shepard reported observing the outlines of the west coast of Florida, the…

How big the Moon is explained in one simple video

Here’s a neat, simple video that clearly explains the dimensions of the Moon in relation to other things. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

A Cat’s Eye in the Stellar Dragon

Thousands of light years away in the constellation Draco shines the Cat’s Eye planetary nebula. Formed when a star transitions into a red giant and sheds its outer layers, the planetary nebula will shed gas until only a hot, dense core of a white dwarf is left behind. The Cat’s Eye nebula is 3,000 light…

Why Are Smartphone Makers So Obsessed With Materials?

As the playing field for smartphone specs has leveled out recently, companies are increasingly turning to materials to distinguish their models. Metal, plastic, glass—which of these is the best? And which is just a gimmick? Over at Anandtech, Joshua Ho explains in a deep dive on the stuff your phone is made out of: It’s…

The NSA’s Drunk Again

Or, you know, they’re hiring code-breakers. One of the two.

The Norwegian Army is Using the Oculus Rift to See Through Its Tanks

When it comes to protection, a hulking vehicle made of armor is probably one of the safer places you can be. The downside of hanging out in a metallic womb, though, is that it’s kind of tough to see out. That is, until you strap on an Oculus Rift and turn the tank invisible. With…

This Site Broadcasts Radio From Wherever the Sun Is Rising

There’s something about the sound of the morning news that seems eminently hopeful. For some of us it’s NPR, but of course every place has its own variation—which is why Global Breakfast Radio, which lets you listen to the radio wherever the sun is rising, is so cool. All you have to do is head…

Google Same-Day Delivery Hits the Streets in New York and Los Angeles

Google’ same-day delivery service, Shopping Express, is expanding from San Francisco to New York and Los Angeles. It’s never been easier to be lazy. The service isn’t coming to the entirety of the country’s two biggest cities right away. In the short term, Google is offering free six-month trial memberships to Shopping Express. If you…

4 Totally Fake Currencies That Changed the Course of Real Wars

At the tail end of his time as Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan, General David Petraeus commented that “money is my most important ammunition in this war.” It was far from an original thought. In fact, you could argue that currency is the most important and least acknowledged wartime weapon. Banknotes, in a way, make…

LED Tubes Will Make Fluorescents Seem Old-Fashioned

Cree, front-runners in the scramble to replace traditional forms of illumination with greener LED sources, has just announced the release of a new type of tube light designed to tackle one of the biggest energy hogs in Corporate America: fluorescent overhead lights. The new Cree T8 bulb looks very much like the traditional T-8 fluorescent…

Now You Can Add to Your Amazon Cart via Twitter

Amazon has just announced a new feature that allows you to add items to your shopping basket by including a hashtag in a tweet. Once you’ve connected your Twitter and Amazon accounts, you’ll be able to reply to Amazon product links seen on Twitter with the hashtag #AmazonCart — or #AmazonBasket in the UK —…

The Big Sleep: How Hibernation Could Overcome Life-Threatening Injury

Imagine it: you have been rushed into the emergency room and you are dying. Your injuries are too severe for the surgeons to repair in time. Your blood haemorrhages unseen from ruptured vessels. The loss of that blood is starving your organs of vital nutrients and oxygen. You are entering cardiac arrest. But this is…

This book can filter water and could save millions of lives

Lack of clean drinking water is one of the major risks to human health in the world today. This book not only teaches safe water habits but also every page is made from a technologically advanced filter paper, capable of killing deadly waterborne diseases. Each page is coated with silver nanoparticles, whose ions actively kill…

This is What the Internet Sounds Like

It’s not sobbing YouTube commenters or whoops of World of Warcraft winners: the internet does in fact have a distinct, and real, sound, and it’s the noise of the servers keeping your favourite websites running. Sound Artist Matt Parker took a trip to the data centres at Birmingham City University and recorded the sounds inside.…

New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has signed a deal that means passengers will be able to buy tickets and present them to conductors using only their phones. There’s currently no word on quite when it will roll out.

These shops sell Walking Dead merchandise in exchange for your blood

Working with blood banks in the US as well as countries in South America and Europe, a series of official Walking Dead pop-up stores will offer merchandise in exchange for donations of the red stuff. The more blood you give them to chill, the better the goodies you will be able to walk out with.…

DNA Sequences Can Trace Your Ancestors to Within 30 Miles

DNA sequencing can already tell us a lot about our ancestors—but now, a new technique developed by an international team of scientists allows them to pinpoint a person’s geographical origin—going back 1,000 years. The Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool—slightly confusing, admittedly—beats previous best attempts to tie location to DNA. It can track populations back to…

Giant New Zealand carnivorous snails are anything but slow

I’ve never seen a snail moving this fast in my life, but then I’ve never been to New Zealand where these creatures come from. The snails had to adapt to their isolation and became bigger and carnivorous. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Why Do Chinese URLs Use Numbers, Not Letters?

If, for whatever reason, you’ve ever spent much time on Chinese websites, you’ll know that they often use numbers over letters or other characters. So, 4399.com is a gaming site, 92.com deals with car trading, and 12306.cn sells train tickets. Why is that? New Republic explains why in this weirdly compelling article. Turns out, it’s…

Simulation of Saturn passing by Earth on a collision course to the Sun

The always cool Yeti Dynamics has released another brilliant scientific simulation: What would Earth’s sky look like if Saturn went off its orbit to race into the inner solar system on its way to the Sun and our planet was on its path? I just love these impossible but visually arresting scenarios. Of course, aside…