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This heartwarming tale of friendship and loyalty by Inese Verina follows “over modern future wave guy” as he battles through a treacherous virtual world set in the dawn of the Internet era in search of his faithful laser cat. Well, either that or the single most absurd guerilla marketing campaign for Windows 98 of all…
Neat shot of two Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft supercarriers—the USS George H.W. Bush and USS Harry S. Truman—cruising together in the Arabian Sea. I still find amazing that ten of these giant monsters roam the seas. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
Perched on the edge of an abandoned quarry in Wales, this home was designed by Hyde + Hyde Architects for a photographer. That’s appropriate, since its long cantilevered living room acts like an architectural aperture with a glass “lens” at one end. And yes, that is a DeLorean in the driveway. [DesignBoom]
Kelsey spotted this beautifully simple house that is suspended on a minimum concrete structure on the edge of the Brecon National Park in Wales, United Kingdom. It’s so minimal and beautiful. I want it. Badly. I don’t like how the interior is decorated, but the space is wonderful too. SPLOID is a new blog about…
The news today that Facebook will buy Oculus—the makers of the best virtual reality experience in existence—caused paroxysms of upsetment and surprise. That’s fair! But once the smoke clears, this could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the most promising technology we have. If you’ve been tracking Oculus since its…
Live from the swamps of Dagobah, it’s everyone’s favorite Jedi on the mic: Master Yoda! If you ever felt that his wise words would be enhanced by a trippy remix then: Listen, you must. Eclectic Method made the funky beat and accompanying vid, which both feature greatest hits clips of the robe-wearing, Force-flowing sage. A…
Why is Facebook buying the virtual reality company Oculus? Because without a sci-fi toy — like Google’s robots or Amazon’s drones — Facebook had nothing to offer hungry tech journalists who are looking for the next big thing. With Oculus, Facebook gets to trot out the coolest in just-over-the-horizon futurism at a time when their…
I cannot stop watching intricate patterns emerge like magic from the hands of Russian potter Mikhail Sadovnikov. How does he draw such incredible things over and over again from just a little bit of clay and a potter’s wheel? Watch the whole mesmerizing 15 minutes. You can also check out more of Sadovnikov’s work. [Colossal]
“Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote today announcing Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR. “But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together.” But y’all still look like goofballs. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-what-i-see-every-time-you-tell-me-how-cool-ocul-1530587594 https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-buying-oculus-vr-for-2-billion-1551486746
How do we discover new cities to visit? How do we remember where we’ve been? With all the tools at our fingertips, I’d still argue it’s actually not all that easy. Hi, which just opened to the public today, is a beautifully designed way to find, share, and tell stories about places. What Hi is,…
People have been working on the concept of an electronic cap to supercharge your brain’s learning ability for a while. But the one you see here, devised by a Vanderbilt team, has a funny (and potentially very abusable) trick: flip a switch, and it makes you more prone to mistakes and confusion. Don’t show your…
A headlamp is the ultimate hands-free flashlight when you’re going toe-to-toe with mother nature, but you don’t necessarily want to wear one 24/7. For those times when you’re hanging out at a campsite, or getting ready for bed in your tent, Blackfire’s Clamplight Lantern also seems like a great alternative to trying to strategically position…
Completely out of the blue, Facebook has announced that it is buying Oculus VR—the future of virtual reality awesomeness—for $2 billion. What?! https://gizmodo.com/i-wore-the-new-oculus-rift-and-i-never-want-to-look-at-1496569598 Facebook’s plans for the totally rad VR headset aren’t immediately apparent, and the social media giant’s announcement of the acquisition does little to clear it up, citing the possibility of using the…
I can’t begin to imagine the terror of this man trapped on a top floor terrace of a building on a 5 alarm fire. Thankfully, Houston’s firefighters were able to rescue him on time. [Thanks Matt Hardigree!] SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
What was the most memorable way you ever lost a tooth? For me, it was the day some girl karate kicked an incisor into the back of my throat at gymnastics camp. For this brave, young soul, it will almost certainly be the day his dad ripped his tooth out with a quadcopter. Knowing what’s…
Depending on what you’re wearing, unexpected downpours can be real outfit ruiners. Rather than block the drops, Dutch designer Aliki van der Kruijs used them to make natural patterns on specially-treated silk scarves. She developed a special technique she dubbed “pluviagraphy,” using a film coating on the fabric to capture “photographic recordings” of precipitation (thankfully,…
This is awesome: Patricio Gonzalez Vivo found a way to scrape Google Street View for its depth map data, then rebuilt the streets as ghostly spatial models in openFrameworks. The weird and flickering results, seen in the video above, are like a holograph dreaming of electric streets, with facades and sidewalks tuning in and out…
About a year ago we brought news of a Power Glove themed oven mitt that had anyone who grew up playing the NES excited to do some baking. But that version was made of heatproof fabric and while it looked convincing enough, it can’t hold a candle—or a hot tray of cookies—to this amazingly detailed…
Game of Thrones Season 4 is coming in two weeks and everyone is itching to see [SPOILER] die a horrible dead. Please allow me to entertain you with this wonderful auto-tuned music video that will placate your thirst like Dragonade for at least two minutes. SPOILER ALERT: Don’t watch if you haven’t completed the first…
Ceramics are an increasingly common material to work with—from hard-wearing bearings to heat-proof cladding on spacecraft—but they all share one fatal weakness: they’re fragile. Now, though, inspired by nature, researchers are making a ceramic that mimics mother of pearl—and is ten times stronger than normal ceramics. The material, developed by researchers from the Laboratoire de…
