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Iran’s previous attempts at creating an indigenous UAV fleet have been rather, well, comical. However, with recent sightings of a this medium-altitude, long-endurance flyer in the skies over Damascus, Iran’s drone program may have finally reached the big time. Dubbed the Shahed 129 (or “Eye-Witness”), this Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) measures roughly 26 feet…
Yesterday, a 14-year-old Dutch Twitter user learned the hard way that airlines don’t take bomb threats lightly. And after blowing up Twitter feeds everywhere, @queendemetriax_ has officially been arrested by the Rotterdam police. The young Demi Lovato enthusiast apparently thought it would be a good idea to tweet the following at the American Airlines twitter…
If you can’t raise a plant to save your life you know the appeal of terrariums, which can sustain themselves for months on end without being watered. But a retiree in the UK says he sealed up his bottle garden in 1972—and hasn’t watered it since. The Times reports on David Latimer, a Surrey man…
When supernova explode, they fling gas out into space, creating beautiful, gauzy remnant for us to drool over. Supernova remnant G352 is pretty, but weird. It’s collecting extra material, misplaced its neutron star, and looks dramatically different depending on the wavelength. The strange remnant is located about 24,000 light years from Earth, in the direction…
When you want a frosty cold one, you usually don’t have the time to wait for your pint glass to actually get frosty sitting in a fridge. So you probably settle for a less satisfying can or bottle—a compromise you’ll never have to make again with this countertop glass frosting contraption. The device connects to…
A fun fact: If you live in the US and other countries where they put their months first on dates, every day is going to read the same backwards until Sunday. It’s palindrome week! SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
The IRS isn’t exactly known for playing fast and loose with deadlines—your deadlines, that is. But when it comes to its own, its apparently a lot more willing to take their chances. In this case, that means paying millions of dollars to keep running Windows XP long after the deadline has come and gone. As…
Originally marketed in 1979, the first Sony Walkman turns 35 this year, and it’s about as outmoded as a technology can be these days. That’s why it’s understandable that the kids in this delightful video, none of whom were alive in the 90s, have no idea how to use the thing. Or what it’s for.…
Since most faucets are nothing more than a metal tube, you rarely get a glimpse of the magic inside when cold and hot water come together to create warm water. So Philippe Starck designed the Axor Starck V, a crystal clear faucet that creates a vortex as the streams of water mix and bubble up…
The concept of glow-in-the-dark roads is an incredibly simple piece of safety infrastructure that feels like it should have been implemented years ago. Finally, it has been—on the roads of the Netherlands Back in 2012, Dutch design firms Studio Roosegaarde and Hejmans Infrastructure proposed the idea of roads painted with lines which would charge in…
Amazon is running several camera/accessory combo discounts through April 26th, so if you’re looking to replace your current gear, you should definitely take notice. Selection ranges from point and shoots to the amazing Sony A7 line. Buy a Sony A7 Series Camera and save on select lenses and accessories Sony’s A7 Cameras are the future…
Al Brady creates some really awesome biologically inspired planes. He is the designer of the awesome pterodactyl combat jets that will be featured in Bastiaan Koch’s movie Is This Heaven. His other vehicle creations are cool too. Al Brady is a concept designer in the UK. He works for game companies but enjoys painting all…
Every April around this time, Milan welcomes creative types from all across the globe for the Salone Internazionale del Mobile—pretty much the wildest week in the design world. Though the past few years have seen efforts to curb the rampant bacchanal of new production for new production’s sake, there’s still a hell of a lot…
We all have a surface somewhere in our home which is covered in clutter: phones, wallets, coins, keys, pens, cables, tickets and all other kinds of crap. But this neat console table gobbles it all up to keep it out of sight. The Balka Console, brainchild of Gregoire de Lafforest, combines a beautiful oak top…
What’s alleged to be Banksy’s latest piece of artwork has popped up on the side of a house in Cheltenham, and it depicts security agents spying on a public phone—right round the corner from the UK’s intelligence center, GCHQ. The graffiti appeared first thing Sunday morning, reports the Gloustershire Echo. Karen Smith, who owns the…
It’s virtually impossible to imagine now, but back when the iPhone was launched in 2007, Google wasn’t planning to make Android for touchscreen devices. Revealed in court documents that form part of the current Apple-Samsung legal argument, a Google report explains that Android “was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption.…
Over the weekend, it was revealed that President Obama thinks that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, they should be allowed to exploit it if there’s a “a clear national security or law enforcement need.” The comment was revealed to the New York Times by “senior administration officials” on Saturday.…
Photographer David Maisel—widely known for his incredible aerial work, including a breath-taking project recently shot in Spain—has opened a new show in New York exploring the otherwise invisible insides of culturally important art objects. Called History’s Shadow, it is on display at the Yancey Richardson Gallery until May 10, 2014. As Maisel describes it, the…
While the American West stumbles forward into an already dangerous drought—and it’s barely even summer—Berliners are simply not using enough water. This means that the city’s water table is now on the rise, and it’s beginning to threaten the city’s buildings from below. Some basements have already been affected. As The Economist explains, “Since the…
What an awesome way to end a book: literally in the last paragraph, Michael Lewis’s excellent Flash Boys drops a weird infrastructural mystery—and this gives away no spoilers—right when you were ready to turn out the light and go to sleep. But there, in the final six sentences, Lewis lights a fire. The Weird World…
