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Soyuz is rolling into position for launch day! The rocket will take off from Kazakhstan in the middle of this week, carrying Expedition 39 to the International Space Station. Sunrise over the Baikonur Cosmodrone in Kazakhstan on Sunday, shortly before the Soyuz spacecraft was rolled into position. The Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft was rolled into position…
Tailgate parties aren’t exactly known as the classiest of get-togethers. But thanks to Williams Sonoma’s new cedar-encased cooler, even a Sunday afternoon spent in a parking lot with thousands of drunken sports fans can feel like you’re having high tea with the queen. Functionally, this cooler works like any other. You just fill it with…
Ever walk down the street wishing you could erase the ugly billboards and other urban detritus? These Photoshop-themed street stickers posted around London may be the closest you’ll ever get. The project is called Street Eraser, and its effect of superimposing the ubiquitous visual tableau of Photoshop’s checkered background onto city surfaces is surreal. Those…
The Pritzker Prize is a little bit like the Oscars of architecture: It usually ends up being a chance for everyone to air their complaints about the industry. But every so often, there’s a real cause for celebration—such is the case today, when the jury announced that Japanese architect Shigeru Ban would become 2014’s recipient.…
If someone asked you what the most coveted Tetris piece was, you’d instantly say the straight line, right? After all, you’re always building your stack to leave a thin gap down one side so that when a straight piece does fall, you can clear out four levels at once. But in real life, at least…
Researchers at UC Irvine have determined that golfers who can’t keep their shots out of the rough might actually be responsible for wildfires in California in recent years. Specifically, certain clubs made from a titanium alloy have been found to produce sparks up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit—more than hot enough to ignite dry foliage—when they…
The Royal Observatory of Greenwich, England, has crafted three simple animations to explain three very complex things: What’s inside a black hole, how do we know the age of the sun—did you know the Sun weighs 4,000 trillion trillion hippopotamuses?—and how big is the Universe. What’s inside a black hole? How Do We Know How…
For three years, the fate of Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Tower has hung in the balance. Originally conceived in the heady days of the 2000s, the project has gone through multiple delays and redesigns since 2008. Now, its final iteration—at one kilometer tall—finally been given a start-date for construction. Workers at the tower’s site, in Jeddah,…
It’s not too often these days that an iPhone still surprises you. We’ve more or less seen it all by now. Except, we haven’t. FireChat is a new app that takes advantage of a little-known iOS feature that makes it easy to set up and run a network even when there’s no cellular signal. The…
NASA is collecting votes on the aesthetics of the next edition of the Z-series spacesuit prototypes. With a lot of gortex and electroluminescent wire, the options come straight out of a scifi set. Alas, this is for the prototype phase, which means it is a non-flight suit that will stay firmly on Earth. The cover…
This month, some residents of San Francisco could discover photographs of themselves engaging in rather embarrassing behavior. A website has been collecting photos of people texting while driving, and some of those photos have now found their way onto billboards throughout the region. The project, called Texting While in Traffic (TWIT) is the brainchild of…
The architects at London-based Buchanan Partnership have just built this tiny little flower stall for a shop in Ladbroke Grove, its CNC-milled exterior inspired by the rippling textures of electron scanning microscope images of plants. As architect Kyle Buchanan explains, such photos “reveal tiny three-dimensional ridge patterns across the petal surface. These ridges intensify the…
It’s been months in the making, but Google Now is ready to take over your desktop. The newest build for Chrome will include the preemptive search and personal assistant services for all users. You can expect to see the Google Now cards start popping out the notifications area any day now. https://gizmodo.com/google-now-just-took-its-first-steps-onto-the-desktop-1502716421
Brad Josephs shot this super up close and very personal footage of Alaskan Grizzlies and I am not ashamed to say I gasped when the hairy behemoth bares its chompers around 0:53. It’s amazing to see them play and hunt in their natural habitat from this perspective. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff.…
Getting people to the airport via train is a natural priority for cities around the country. When Minneapolis built its first light-rail line back in 2004 it had two major stops: the airport and downtown. But despite over two decades of modern Los Angeles embracing subways, there’s still no train to LAX. And even if…
If you’re at all interested in Titanfall and/or the Xbox One, you can grab both for $450 today on Amazon with promo code XIAMAZON. If Titanfall isn’t your cup of tea, the same code will work on the “standard” model, bundled with Forza 5. [Amazon] Titanfall Xbox One Bundle | $450 | Promo Code XIAMAZON…
Maybe the most practical dream of a 3D-printing future is on-demand widgets. Missing Ikea pieces, just a button-press away. But what about instant tools, completely assembled and usable straight from the printer? That future’s almost here. You can’t print a whole toolbox yet, but tinkerer AngryMonk has developed two plans—one for a tape-measure, one for…
Apple is adding NPR to iTunes radio, making it the first news station on the streaming service. (Read in your best public radio voice). [Re/code]
The first recovery tests for the Orion, NASA’s in-development multi-purpose crew vehicle, didn’t exactly go as planned. Cut short by difficulty handling lines to secure the test vehicle inside a flooded hull, the team learned a lot in preparation for upcoming full test-flights this fall. Retrieving the boilerplate Orion test-platform by attaching it with lines…
Rusty Blazenhoff from Blazenfluff tracked Adam West—the actor who played Batman in the 1960s TV series—through the phone book, yellow pages and white pages of Sun Valley, Idaho, where he lives. The results, as you can see in her photos, are quite funny. Every time I see one of these stories I’m amazed that they…
