Tech News

This fluff ball is a vicious beast that eats fish larger than itself

Short poem for the bloody hairy frogfish: Oh how cute, the hairy frogfish. Walks around, the mighty sea. Check him out, he chomps some fresh dish. What a bastard, you must agree. A video by Jose Lachat that won the “Prix de ‘l Insolite” (the prize of the unusual) at the Festival Mondial de l’Image…

Oceanviewer

While the Earth Wind Map remains the most mesmerizing way of visualizing atmospheric and oceanographic forecasting, Oceanviewer is making a pretty good stab at layering on data for Canada’s Atlantic region. https://gizmodo.com/this-real-time-global-wind-map-will-completely-devour-y-1482867032 Use the viewer to switch between wave, wind, temperature, salinity, and chlorophyll measurements, or locate local webcams to take a peek. The data…

An exoskeleton punched through to form internal skybridges as the triangular trusswork wrapped around the building’s exterior gets tangled up in spiderwebs deep within the resulting, cave-like hollows. No, it’s not a prop in a children’s horror story or a postmodern Charlotte’s Web, but a new hotel and casino proposed by architect Zaha Hadid for…

28 rare cutaway illustrations of classic cars

Without a doubt, cars are the most popular of all cutaway illustrations, so they couldn’t be absent from our cutaway series. Here you have a collection of 28 rare vintage drawings, some of them crafted by some of the greatest cutaway artists in the business. Martini Porsche 935, 1976, Image: Bonhams Martini Porsche 936 Sportwagenweltmeister…

Scientists Can Reconstruct Faces by Reading Your Mind

Fantasizing about an old flame? Lusting over a celebrity instead of your current squeeze? Watch out: scientists can reconstruct the faces you’re thinking about from a brain scan alone. Researchers from Yale have been using functional MRI scans to reconstruct the images of people’s face from subjects that are thinking about a particular person. Showing…

A Light-Up Alarm Completely Changed My Life

Slamming the snooze button over and over again is pretty much the crummiest, least restful way to kick off your morning, so consider this a public service announcement: A light-up alarm completely changed my life, and I think it can change yours, too. The light alarm concept itself isn’t new. Folks have been waking up with…

Google Turns Today’s Biggest Privacy Issue Into Weird Playmobil Video

Google wants you to know exactly how it deals with U.S. government requests for user data. That’s good! But the company wants to explain it to you with stop-motion wooden toys, like you’re some kind of three year old. That’s . . . weird. This odd little video showed up on Google’s Take Action page,…

This Lightbulb Comes Shattered On Purpose

We’ve all marvelled at those high-speed photographs showing the point of impact when a speeding bullet pierces and shatters a lightbulb. And thanks to a Swedish company called Gässling, those moments are now frozen in time in real life, with a series of pre-shattered bulbs created using 3D printers. Larger than your average bulb to…

Where the F-Word Comes From

In its various incarnations, the F-word can be a noun, verb, adjective, and even an infix. The Crescent wrench of the English language, the F-bomb has been adding emphasis, vulgarity and spice to our conversations for longer than anyone can remember. Early History Because fuck is the type of word that “wasn’t written in the…

10 Ways to Annoy Photography Snobs

We all have DSLR-toting friends who are incredibly precious about their art. Here are ten way to irritate the hell out of your photography-snob buddies. Whether you’re using an ISO higher than 200, shooting in P-mode or taking photographs without a lens hood, you can probably no longer be friends with a Photography Snob. And…

Sony’s Digital Paper: A Bit Like Paper, a Lot Like $1,100

The holy grail of flexible electronics is a reading device that you can roll up and stuff in your pocket. And now, thanks to Sony and E Ink, we’re almost, sort of, kinda there. If you have $1,100 to spare. Much prototyped and teased in the past, Sony’s 13.3-inch Digital Paper device—really intended for legal,…

Life Before the Internet Was Just Plain Boring

Before the internet? Don’t kid yourself. It wasn’t more fulfilling or engaging; you didn’t have more time to read and think and play. You just sat around in your underwear watching daytime TV instead. As Randall Munroe wonderfully reminisces: “Do you realize how soul-crushing it was? I’d rather eat an iPad than go back to…

The complete map to Earth’s deepest cave—7,208 feet deep, 8 miles long

At 2,197 meters (7,208 feet) the Krubera cave is the deepest on Earth. Located in the Arabika Massif, of the Western Caucasus in Abkhazia, Georgia, it extends for 13.432 kilometers (8,346 miles.) I would love to get inside, but I know the fear would paralyze me. I love to go through its complete (so far)…

I really love this little animation

I really love this animation of Joseph Gordon Levitt, perfectly rotoscoped in 89 frames by Carli Ihde, a 22-year-old published comic book artist, illustrator, and graphic designer with a great style. So much that I want to see an entire short movie done in this style. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…

The incredible moment in which a deaf woman hears for the first time

Joanne Milne has not heard a single word, bird chirp or music note for 39 years. Four weeks ago, she got electronic cochlear implants. This is the exact moment when she hears for the first time and starts to cry overwhelmed by the feeling and emotion. I don’t blame her! I felt overwhelmed and teared…

Three Awesome New Hues That Will Light Up Your Living Room

Philips has announced the upcoming release of three new products in the Hue lighting ecosystem: a streamlined and dimming white light, a kinetic-powered control panel, and a 3D-printed lamp that will sure to become the centerpiece of any room. https://gizmodo.com/philips-hue-lightning-review-your-lamps-not-worthy-up-5994183 The Lux Bulb Not every room in your house needs to resemble the interior of…

This Brilliant Coming-of-Age Space Opera Will Leave You Breathless

For some, the path to adulthood is gradual and fluid, as if maturity could somehow seep into one’s pores like steam from a warm bath. For others, the yoke of real responsibility is thrust suddenly and heavily upon their shoulders, though neither have a say in which path to maturity they will take. Prospect, a…

I don’t know why I like this short so much

I’m not completely confident I know entirely what’s going on in this CG animation but I like it. Oh, there’s 3D nudity, so if your precious eyes can’t take that, well, sorry. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Make Music from Haiku at the End of the World

Disquiet Junto Project 0117: Naviar Junto Haiku Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. This project was…

These useful everyday objects turned annoying are pretty hilarious

Everyday objects like keys and forks and spoons and brooms and umbrellas and so forth are always designed with usability in mind. You use them everyday so they better be easy to use, right? But what if you re-designed them to make them annoying and uncomfortable to use? They’d still technically be useful objects but…