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Taking an amazing photograph is hard. So let’s lower the bar a bit this week. I want you to take a bad photo—actually—I want you to take the absolute worst photo you can. The Challenge Take the worst photo you can, whatever that means to you. It could be because of the production value or…
Last April, an unknown number of gunmen, armed with what were likely AK-47s, crept through the dark near San Jose. Their target? A power station that provides electricity to Silicon Valley. Phones lines were cut from a manhole and more than 100 rounds were fired, knocking out 17 transformers. We still don’t know who was…
Back in 1985 Tipper Gore testified in front of a Senate committee warning that children were being exposed to all kinds of naughty stuff in modern music. Sex, heresy and violence were destroying good old-fashioned American values. Won’t somebody think of the children! Gore’s testimony and the outrage of finger-wagging parent’s groups led to the…
We geeks all have the same platonic prosthesis ideal: Luke Skywalker’s badass Star Wars mech-hand. We’re getting there, bit by bit. Dennis Aabo Sørensen’s new hand is almost there; it let him feel again. The hand is the subject of an in-depth paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine today, and has been tested…
Abandoned subway stations have long been the playgrounds of squatters and urban explorers alike, but one French politician has higher hopes. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a candidate for mayor of Paris, wants to turn them into awesome entertainment and sports venues. Kosciusko-Morizet—or NKM, as she’s known by her supporters—just revealed a series of sketches for what these…
The New York Times has a great visualization of major Winter Olympic Games in the middle of Manhattan. This vision of Sochi’s bobsled course in the middle of Times Square is so good. The alpine track in central park is amazing too—and there’s more.Check them all here. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff.…
Video is the defining medium of the 21st century, thanks to the rise of the internet. But its origins go back way further, to the late 1960s, when the first portable video devices emerged. It was a watershed moment in history—and our short documentary explains why. The history of video is often overshadowed by its…
This photo from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a fresh crater about 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter at the center. The impact happened somewhen between July 2010 and May 2012. View the map-projected version of the image here: The enhanced colors reveals a large, rayed…
Air conditioners aren’t exactly known for being particularly environmentally friendly, but during a scorching summer we’re all happy to turn a blind eye. Not Thibault Faverie, though. Perhaps racked by guilt, he’s created the Cold Pot, a simple terracotta device that can cool a room using just evaporating water. The porrous terracotta pot—the same material…
The Duke Energy company says their 82,000-ton coal ash spillfrom one of its retired power plants into North Carolina’s Dan River is not dangerous. Thousands of dead fish disagree from their toxic cement graves. Just look at all that sludge. The video above clearly shows the result: The ash turned the riverbed into toxic uncured…
The thought of mutually assured destruction in the form of worldwide nuclear annihilation made leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain squeamish. But, limited nuclear war, now there was a plan! Irradiating the Soviets just a little bit, you know, as a deterrent, was seen as the clearly superior option to outright ICBM volleys.…
Guelph Park in East Vancouver was just like any other under-appreciated park in a city near you: grassy but forgettable. Until a fake sign was erected in one corner by a local artist, christening it with a new name: “Dude Chilling Park.” Suddenly, Guelph/Dude Chilling Park became a global sensation. The sign is by local…
If your storage and power needs aren’t already met then this is impulse purchase day for you. Grab a 4400mAh power bank for 12 bucks and/or a 16GB USB3 flash drive for nine. Doesn’t get much cheaper than this. Today on Amazon, you can pick up a GoPro HERO3 Silver Edition for just $229, or…
Road salt is one of those city services that we take for granted, an invisible network infrastructure with a murky provenance. But though you may not know it, the salt on your roads might come from a sprawling, century-old mine right below your feet. As the country (excepting those jerks in California) slogs through a…
Here’s a really cool piece by Roxy Paine, part of his Apparatus exhibit: A full 1:1 scale (McDonald’s?) burger kitchen entirely carved of birch and maple—all the way from the deep friers and the soft ice-cream machine to the french fries, soda cups and burger boxes. It’s really amazingly well done. He also has another…
Cyclists in Budapest, Hungary, can be as insane as in the rest of the world. Or even a bit more, judging from this video in which two guys—one from New York, truth be told—risk their lives going through the thin trenches crated by running trams. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…
Say you’re going to Sochi for the Winter Olympics. You’ve magically found a hotel that’s actually complete and not full of trash and construction equipment. Crisis averted, right? Not quite—because as NBC Nightly News’ experiment shows, your computer or smartphone could be hacked in seconds in Sochi. Hackers will be going after your computer or…
Battery fires are no fun. Just ask Boeing. Problem is, lithium-ion batteries are full of liquid acid electrolyte that gushes out when a battery’s housing ruptures, causing chemical burns and fires. Not fun. But what if, instead of burny liquid, batteries were filled with a viscous goo that would stay put? That’s exactly what these…
The Northeast may have had its fun mocking the South’s recent descent into chaos in the face of snow, but now it’s our turn to fall apart. This newest storm has shut down I-84—one of the region’s biggest highways—and crippled countless other roads. The culprit? We’re running out of salt. Beginning last night, snow has…
An enterprising 16-year-old in Kansas recently 3D-printed at prosthetic hand for his 9-year-old family friend, giving the young tyke the use of fingers for the first time in his life. And he did it all at the local county library. Mason Wilde, the teenager with the 3D printing skills, first became interested in making the…
