Tech News

Your Touchscreen Usage Is So Unique It Can Be Used as a Password

It turns out that your seemingly random taps, swipes, and other finger gestures on a touchscreen display might not be so random after all. In fact, the way you interact with a touchscreen is so unique that researchers at Georgia Tech have successfully created software that can lock down your tablet if someone else pokes…

Facebook Adds “Nearby Friends” to Show You Where Everyone’s At

Facebook’s newest feature, Nearby Friends, begins rolling out today. The opt-in app addition lets your friends know when you’re close by, with the option to show your precise location on a map, if that’s the kind of thing you want to share with your friends. Making its way to Facebook’s Android and iOS app in…

Scientists discover unique sex-reversed species with female penis

Scientists have discovered a new species in which the female is the individual who has the penis and the male has a vagina-like opening. According to Kazunori Yoshizawa—from Hokkaido University in Japan—these cave insects are the only documented beings in the planet with this surprising feature. Although sex-role reversal has been identified in several different…

Red Hot Nickel Ball vs. Peeps: Fiery Death Has Never Been So Adorable

For whatever reason, Easter has become that special time of year when people everywhere gather round to destroy tiny, marshmallow birds in the most demented ways they know how. And so far, it looks like Red Hot Nickel Ball has this year on lockdown. We’ve seen our good friend Nickel Ball take down quite a…

Scientists Are 3D Printing Whole Cancer Tumors From Scratch

We’ve seen 3D-printed cells, organs, and even body parts over the last few years. But in Philadelphia, a team of scientists is printing cancerous tumors—modeling the very things that are threatening to kill patients in order to understand how to quell them. It’s becoming more and more common to use 3D printers to print “sheets”…

Sonos Is About to Get Even Easier By Ditching the Bridge

Sonos’ multi-room wireless music system is crazy easy to use, but it’s always had one annoying little drawback: You’ve got to plug at least one Sonos speaker or a Sonos Bridge into your router for it to work. Well the company just announced that it’s overhauled its tech so that you don’t need to be…

Northrop’s Flying Ram Would Have Sliced Enemy Planes in Midair

War drives technological innovation like little else. No proposal is too ambitious, impractical, or downright foolhardy for consideration if it provides a strategic advantage. This school of thinking has led to atomic bombs, autonomous vehicles, and, in 1945, a short-lived fighter prototype that could cut through enemy aircraft in midair. Conceived by famed aircraft designer…

Fireman flies using water hoses

In case there were any doubts that firemen are badass and generally cool, here’s one levitating like the Green Goblin using six high pressure water hoses. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

How You Count Matters: Maps of Census Data in the US

Maps are interesting, where the same data can be used to tell many stories. Displaying United States census data as numerical counts or as density portray American population distribution dramatically differently, as a country that is half empty, or half full. On the left is a segment of a map by Nik Freeman featured by…

Breeze: Finally, a RunKeeper For Those Who’d Rather Walk

We really dig RunKeeper, the smart fitness app that keeps track of your jogs. But how’s an anti-jogger supposed to get in on all the fitness tracking? Enter Breeze, RunKeeper’s brand-new walk-tracking iPhone app for people who prefer a saunter to a sprint. Like RunKeeper, Breeze harnesses the activity-tracking power of the iPhone 5S’s M7…

This Simple Siri Hack Lets You Control Anything With Your iPhone

Voice control is a super convenient way to control stuff with your phone, at least when your AI isn’t just shouting error messages at other computers. Googolplex makes it even better by unlocking Siri to let her control your stereo, your thermostat; honestly, just about anything. The premise is simple; by just changing your iPhone’s…

You’re Not Allowed to Sue General Mills If You Like Them on Facebook

You probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the legal implications of liking something on Facebook, but you should. General Mills quietly updated its privacy policy so that doing things like using a coupon, entering a sweepstakes, or liking the brand means you can’t sue them. Really. The new language is clearly designed…

Guy Builds Spider-Man’s Web-Shooter Using an Electromagnetic Launcher

Since scientists have yet to figure out a formula for real-life human spiderwebs (c’mon, guys!), hardware hacker Patrick Priebe took matters into his own hands. But since he’s limited by real-world constraints too, he instead engineered this wrist-worn electromagnetic miniature harpoon launcher. In some ways, Priebe has one-upped Spidey. His rig includes laser targeting and…

7 Ingenious Trains That Slide Up the Slopes So You Don’t Have to

Walk? Like up that giant hill? Yeah, no. This ain’t the 15th century, we have funiculars for that now. In fact, here are seven of the swankiest ground-based gondolas to ever put the “fun” in “climbing steep-ass inclines without breaking a sweat.” Wait, What the Hell Is a Funicular? A funicular is a mechanical, ground-based…

As if owning one wasn’t bad enough, Nokia has suspended the sale of its Lumia 2520 tablet due to electric shock risk. (It’s actually the charger that is dangerous.)

Watch the IRS Defend Its Use of Computers in the 1960s

When the IRS began using computers in the early 60s, there was national outrage: how could a machine be trusted to look after our finances? This 10-minute video, fresh from the archives, was an attempt to convince people that everything would be OK. There was plenty of opinion to change, after all: some tax experts…

This Is What Tablets Looked Like in 2001

It’s probably for the best that tablets didn’t really enter the mainstream until Apple launched the iPad, at least if the Nokia M510 Web Tablet was anything to go by. The Nokia M510 entered limited production in 2001, with around 1,000 of them built for testing purposes. It ran a version of Symbian on what…

A Co-Working Table With Hidden Depths

Co-working can be tough: regular users of a space have their natural sprawl, while those spending just a few hours at a desk would prefer a minimum of clutter. This desk has hidden depths to cater for all. The ‘Co-Worker’ table is the brainchild of German designer Tobias Lugmeier, and it’s based around a neat…

Samsung Galaxy Owners Now Have a Custom Kindle Store With Free Stuff

Got a Samsung Galaxy device? You’re in for a treat: Amazon is building a custom Kindle store for you and your device—and it comes with perks. The new store, announced this morning, will provide Galaxy users—initially just those with an S5, but more will follow—twelve free books a year. You’ll get to choose from four…

​Eyefi Cloud Syncs Photos From Your Camera to the Internet in a Flash

Basically every new camera that comes out these days has Wi-Fi on-board, but the technology hasn’t progressed to the point that it’s seamless. There’s still a little friction when you’re trying to get photos from your camera to another device—and that’s still one step removed from the internet. Wi-Fi enabled SD card maker Eyefi is…