Tech News

Waiting in line looks way cooler when five Hercules aircraft do it

Like ducks in a row, five C-130 Hercules aircraft lined up before taking off at Yokota Air Base, Japan. That’s one intimidating traffic jam to be in. The picture was taken for the US Air Force by Senior Airman Cody H. Ramirez on their Instagram page. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…

Sploid Casey Chan

Creepy Portraits of People Taken by a Desktop Scanner

When you put sandwiches in a desktop scanner, the result is delicious. When you put humans, the result… lies somewhere in the uncanny valley. German artist Till Koeeneker created these full-size portraits of her closest friends and family members with an ordinary desktop scanner. Each one of these scanner portraits gets up close and personal,…

Tech News Sarah Zhang

EMA: Satellites

EMA’s droney, esoteric music doesn’t fit easily in boxes, but her latest fuzzed out abstraction, “Satellites,” lends itself quite well to the batshit video she made for it. It’s totally DIY, and features some queasy eyeball closeups. Also, is that an Oculus Rift? Yes it is. EMA posted a little behind the scenes information about…

Tech News Mario Aguilar

Cute animation explains everything you need to know about NFL football

Because we are in the US, I’m not going to call football “American Football” or whatever other people call our version of not-soccer outside of the USA. It’s football here. That’s the end of it. But I get it. To people who know football as some other thing or don’t care to know our football…

Sploid Casey Chan

Microsoft’s Building Smart Elevators That Know When You Want to Get On

Smartphones, smartwatches, smart home appliances. Why not smart elevators? That’s the question Microsoft asked—and then answered, by putting a Kinect camera in an elevator, training it to recognize when people want to get on, and teaching it to open the doors automatically when needed. Smart, indeed. https://gizmodo.com/oh-great-even-refrigerators-are-hackers-now-1502811526 The project, installed at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington lab…

Tech News Bob Sorokanich

Heart Cells Power This Swimming, Sperm-Like Robot

Say what you will about these sperm-like bio-bots; they’ve got heart. The beating of live heart cells propels a tail back and forth, so that these self-powered swimming bio-bots—the first of their kind—could one day wriggle through your body delivering drugs. No batteries needed. The design, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, is…

Tech News Sarah Zhang

An abandoned veterinary school looks like the most terrifying place

Old mental institutions. Haunted houses. Cemeteries at night. Clown conventions. They’re all terrifying. But I’m pretty sure I’d rather sleep overnight in those places than spend a single minute in this abandoned veterinary school. At this horrifying school you see animal heads trapped in formaldehyde, organs floating around, death surrounding you and monsters in the…

Sploid Casey Chan

How I Hacked Snapchat’s Dumb Anti-Robot Security In Less Than 30 Minutes

I woke up this morning and saw an article detailing Snapchat’s new verification system designed to help cut back the snap spam that seems to be slowly infiltrating the service. You may not have seen it but if not I will summarize it for you. They basically have you choose from amongst a bunch of…

Tech News Steven Hickson

A Toaster Oven With a Bread Slot For When Pizza’s Not On the Menu

There are entire cookbooks dedicated to preparing meals using only a toaster oven, but most of us only ever use them for reheating pizza. So it seems like kind of a waste to have one sitting on the kitchen counter all the time. Unless it’s the Toastation by Hamilton Beach, which adds traditional toaster functionality…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

Dying grandmother’s mystery code cracked by the internet after 20 years

Ask MetaFilter member JannaK presented the community with a puzzle that had been troubling her family for nearly 20 years. Her grandmother died in 1996 from cancer and in her last days she scribbled down a seemingly non-sensical string of characters on index cards. Nobody knew what it all meant. Then the Metafilter community solved…

Sploid Mario Aguilar

How Often Do You Blow Through Your Internet Provider’s Data Cap?

Chances are, your cable provider has allotted you with some kind of bandwidth cap, depending on your plan. You stream stuff on Amazon, download seasons of the HBO series du jour, but how often—if ever—do you go over that limit? Even if you don’t, we’re interested to know how much of your allotted data you’re…

Tech News Leslie Horn

Reusable Airbag Backpack Helps Keep You Alive In an Avalanche (Or Two)

A car’s airbags are designed to absorb impact and protect passengers during a crash—and need to inflate immediately on impact. But the airbags that skiers wear to avoid being buried in an avalanche don’t necessarily need to inflate as fast. So Black Diamond’s new JetForce backpack uses a fan instead of compressed air which means…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

A Single Man Spent 53 Years Building This Massive Cathedral

Very few of us will work at a single job our whole lives. Even fewer will work on a single, self-led project our whole lives. Spanish octogenarian Justo Gallego Martinez is an exception: He’s been the sole designer, engineer, and construction worker on a cathedral in Madrid since 1961. We first wrote about Don Justo…

Tech News Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

Seeing every single Nintendo NES video game start screen is so fun

Wow. NicksplosionFX just created a time machine of emotions by stitching together every single—yes, every single—original Nintendo NES video game start screen in one epic video. The whole shabang lasts 3 hours and goes in alphabetical order and has so many memorable beeps and boops that you can’t help but feel like a kid again…

Sploid Casey Chan

Skywalk Through Outer Space With These Celestial Carpets

Hey hey stargazers and celestial daydreamers: Here’s your chance to walk barefoot above the heavens. Spacecrafted is a new collection of rugs from German designer Jan Kath that takes hi-res satellite images of the great beyond and turn them into super detailed wool and silk patterns. At first glance, the designs are tough to make…

Tech News Jordan Kushins

How to Survive a Skyscraper Fire

A man died trying to escape a fire in his high-rise apartment building in Manhattan earlier this month. What makes this all the more tragic is that he would have survived—if he had only stayed in his apartment. Skyscrapers are designed to contain fires, so that, even when you’re hearing alarms and smelling smoke, the…

Tech News Sarah Zhang

A Visit to the Weirdest Archaeological Site in North America

In the desert two hours northeast of Los Angeles, just outside the town of Barstow, there is a peculiar little place called the Calico Early Man Site. If you’ve driven either direction, from L.A. to Las Vegas or back, you’ve probably seen the sign for it, mysteriously and without any real information implying that the…

Tech News Geoff Manaugh

4 Ways to Make Better Roads and Parking Lots From the Ground Up

As a surface for wheels, pavement does its job well enough. Asphalt concrete is flat, smooth, and solid (usually). But there is a price we pay for the convenience of paved roads and parking lots everywhere—a price paid in heat, noise, and polluted runoff. We went in search of better pavement and found these potential…

Tech News Sarah Zhang

This Hilariously Retro Soap Ad Promised You a Robot Butler

Advertisers love to associate their products with the future, even if there’s nothing terribly futuristic about them. Like in this 1984 ad from a British company that was selling… soap. The TV ad is for Cussons Imperial Leather soap and aired in Australia, promising the good folks Down Under “the ultimate in luxury.” Apparently part…

Tech News Matt Novak

Lasers Create Ultra-Lightweight Mirrors From Styrofoam Beads

It’s much easier for a telescope to see deep into the universe when it doesn’t have to peer through the Earth’s atmosphere, but getting them into space is expensive. There is a much cheaper solution, though, as researchers have actually found a way to make incredibly light mirrors using lasers and polystyrene—aka styrofoam—beads. The size…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

Waiting in line looks way cooler when five Hercules aircraft do it

Creepy Portraits of People Taken by a Desktop Scanner

EMA: Satellites

Cute animation explains everything you need to know about NFL football

Microsoft’s Building Smart Elevators That Know When You Want to Get On

Heart Cells Power This Swimming, Sperm-Like Robot

An abandoned veterinary school looks like the most terrifying place

How I Hacked Snapchat’s Dumb Anti-Robot Security In Less Than 30 Minutes

A Toaster Oven With a Bread Slot For When Pizza’s Not On the Menu

Dying grandmother’s mystery code cracked by the internet after 20 years

How Often Do You Blow Through Your Internet Provider’s Data Cap?

Reusable Airbag Backpack Helps Keep You Alive In an Avalanche (Or Two)

A Single Man Spent 53 Years Building This Massive Cathedral

Seeing every single Nintendo NES video game start screen is so fun

Skywalk Through Outer Space With These Celestial Carpets

How to Survive a Skyscraper Fire

A Visit to the Weirdest Archaeological Site in North America

4 Ways to Make Better Roads and Parking Lots From the Ground Up

This Hilariously Retro Soap Ad Promised You a Robot Butler

Lasers Create Ultra-Lightweight Mirrors From Styrofoam Beads

Watch and Follow Live as NASA Launches Its First Crewed Mission to the Moon in 54 Years 🔴

This Is the Way to Lego’s April Releases

Group Pushing Age Verification Requirements for AI Turns Out to Be Sneakily Backed by OpenAI

Amazon Facilities in Bahrain Hit Again as Iran Follows Through on Threat, Report Says

Why the PS6 Handheld Will Matter More Than the PS6

DNA Study Casts Even More Doubt on Shroud of Turin’s True Origin

Sam Witwer Is Ready for Maul’s Moment

Anthropic Can’t Cover Up Its Claude Code Leak Fast Enough

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

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