Tech News

Bracing for the Next Big Quake With L.A.’s New City Seismologist

The 4.4 jolt that shook Angelenos awake this morning was the latest reminder of our complicated relationship with the ground below us. But I had a different perspective of what was happening under my feet this time: Just before this latest earthquake, I took a walk along Hollywood’s fault lines with Dr. Lucy Jones, Los…

Wes Anderson Is Obsessed With Symmetry: A Supercut

Whether it’s Richie Tennenbaum’s face or the Fantastic Mr. Fox’s tree home, Wes Anderson is obsessed with symmetry. Don’t believe it? Just watch this supercut. That’s some very, very impressive attention to detail. [FastCo]

BBC America’s New Show Looks at “The Real History of Science Fiction”

BBC America has a new show debuting next month called “The History of Science Fiction.” And it looks pretty neat. The first episode airs on Saturday, April 19th at 10pm EST. From BBC America: From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who, each program is packed with contributors…

Happy birthday, Hubble! Time to watch starbirth

The Hubble Space Telescope is always a good source for astronomical eyecandy. Today is it’s 24th birthday, and to celebrate, NASA has released images of stars being born in the Monkey Head Nebula. https://gizmodo.com/watch-a-mass-of-stars-being-born-through-the-eyes-of-t-1545589620

Read Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity for yourself

Although the major excitement today is focused on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, his Special Theory of Relatively is a quick and fascinating read that changed the way we think about the universe.. https://gizmodo.com/do-yourself-a-favor-and-read-einsteins-paper-on-special-1545377104

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is taking a very, uh, literal approach to his $23.5 million Mount Fuji World Heritage Center. The building’s wooden lattice is designed to look like the volcano’s inverse—reflecting its silhouette in pool that will surround the building when it’s finished in 2016. [DesignBoom]

This Electric Motorcycle Has Storage Space Instead of a Gas Tank

Unless you’re on some giant Harley designed for a long cruise across the country, a backpack is probably the most storage room you’ve got on a motorcycle. But besides the savings on fuel, an electric motorcycle has other advantages, like a giant hole where the gas tank and engine used to be—which this bike, the…

Physicist rejoices as he learns his Big Bang theory is correct

Today is a great day for science, humanity and Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde—one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory that was confirmed today. Watch his emotions as assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo surprises him with the news of the evidence that supports a whole life of theoretical work. https://gizmodo.com/scientists-capture-first-ever-signal-from-the-beginning-1545578133 Kuo and his colleagues were…

Those Mesmerizing Robot Arms Are Back and Playing With Trains Now

It seems the best way to impress someone on the market for a set of industrial robotic arms is to demo them playing with kid’s toys. First DENSO Robotics did it with slot cars, and now ABB gets in on the action with this mesmerizing model train demo. https://gizmodo.com/i-cant-stop-staring-at-these-mesmerizing-robot-arms-1222648079 You’d think that demoing these IRB140…

900 Megapixel Portraits Turn the Human Face Into a Crazy Landscape

We’ve seen stitched together “gigapixel” photos made of a billion pixels before, but they tend to be reserved for huge landscapes. Photographer Daniel Boschung has taken absurdly high resolution methodology and applied it to a much smaller area: The human face. https://gizmodo.com/can-you-spot-the-hidden-easter-eggs-in-this-20-gigapixe-1509297350 Boschung’s “Face Cartographies” are captured by a robot that’s been programmed specifically for…

Why are the colors in this (not photoshopped!) image so weird? Why did the CIA recruit Howard Hughes for deep-sea mining? Why are bikers up in arms about an obscure Wyoming land dispute? What is the new car smell? Answers to this and more in this week’s landscapes reads! The CIA Origins of Deep-Sea Mining…

This is the most ridiculous Bloody Mary ever and I want it all

Believe it or not, this is a Bloody Mary. The most ridiculous Bloody Mary ever, an entire mega-brunch in a glass, but still a Bloody Mary. Check out the entire thing. The Bloody Mary may be one of humanity’s greatest inventions but, as you can see in these images collected by The Vulgar Chef, it…

This Treacherous Hanging Staircase Doubles As Shelving and a Desk

Here’s a great space-saving idea for anyone living in a small home with multiple floors who also happen to be incredibly sure-footed. Mieke Meijer’s designed this completely unorthodox staircase called the Object Élevé for a home in the Netherlands to maximize space, functionality, and wow factor. The base of the stairs feature an integrated desk…

This Digital Sundial Tracks the Sun Through a Laser-Cut Cube

Sure, sundials are totally impractical in the age of precise atomic clocks, but this digital sundial cube is still the coolest. Made out of 59 plates of metal cut to match the angle of the sun at different times of the day, the Sun Cube casts a dot-matrix number to mark each hour. Toronto-based artist…

The history of dancing in film in one 246-movie supercut

Film history is full of dancing. Romance, drama, spy thrillers, musical, comedy, terror, even war movies. It doesn’t matter. There’s dancing in every genre. This supercut demonstrates it, compressing 246 films in one groovy supercut set to the Bee Gee’s You Should Be Dancing. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on…

Mercury: the Shrunken Planet

Previous photogeology estimates of how much Mercury shrunk after formation are revised from a pipsqueak 0.8 to 3 km, to a massive 7 km shrinkfest. Pretty cool that we can figure out shrinkage-rates from planet-wide fault patterns! Read more on Mercury’s time-dependent size the BBC, or hit up the source article on Nature Geoscience. For…

Poke Out Parts of This Perforated Lamp Shade To Make Your Own Pattern

This Take-Off light shade comes in a single perforated sheet, and you poke out the teensy shapes to make whatever the heck pattern you want. It’s like the design equivalent of popping bubble wrap—everyone likes popping bubble wrap!—except you’ve got to be pretty precise. Once false move and you’ve got a wackadoo motif to live…

This WhatsApp Redesign Would Make Facebook’s $16 Billion Buy Worth It

Whatsapp has been one of the most talked about start-up giants in recent memory. Building upon the most basic of mobile services, messaging WhatsApp has managed to monetise and evolve the service through cross platform integration and making it free (among many other things). Following the $16billion acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook I thought that…

Twitter Is Reportedly Testing a “Fave People” Timeline…For Your Favs

TechCrunch reports that Twitter is experimenting with a new version of timeline that allows you to browse a stream of tweets from your favorite accounts. If real, the new “Fave People” feature would mirror a similar feature on Facebook—and makes a lot of sense for helping you filter out the noise in your timeline. The…

I really wish there were races of these awesome spider mechs

Since I was a little kid, my favorite car racing liveries in the world are Martini, Marlboro, and Gulf. Maybe that’s why I love so much these racing machines created by Alex Jaeger, an industrial designer and VFX Art Director at Industrial Light & Magic. That and because they are damn cool. Alex Jaeger is…