Tech News

This Polaroid Produces Instant Slices Of Cheesy Deliciousness

Instead of churning out instant photos, this Polaroid has had its camera guts removed and replaced with a simple cheese slicer. For $10, it still produces fond memories, but instead of a baby’s smile or a day at the beach, it’s fond memories of eating thin slices of cheese. And that would put a smile…

Oculus Rift Lets You See What It Would Be Like To Swap Genders (NSFW)

Oculus Rift is amazing in that it lets you experience other worlds beautifully and immersively. And, in this project by BeAnotherLabs, it’s letting users experience a few minutes as the opposite gender. (Warning: some nudity ahead). https://gizmodo.com/i-wore-the-new-oculus-rift-and-i-never-want-to-look-at-1496569598 The group calls it the “Machine To Be Another.” Kind of weird and kind of cool, and to…

Report: Amazon Might Create an Online TV Service To Compete With Cable

The next company in a seemingly never-ending deluge of company working on some kind of online TV streaming service? It’s Amazon, according to a WSJ report. Amazon has apparently approached some major “media conglomerates” to strike up some deals for a service that would combine channels you might get on cable with content you could…

The U.S./Mexico Border Is Infested With Underground Machines

The very fact that underground robots being used to patrol the U.S./Mexico border—a program now moving into its second decade—can be greeted with what amounts to a disinterested shrug is a good indication of how sci-fi our everyday lives have gotten. There are underground robots patrolling the edge of the country. As the Christian Science…

Biker base jumps off Bolivian death road and survives against all odds

Watch as a biker attempts to base jump off Bolivia’s famous Death Road and fails badly. Don’t worry, he survived, but it was really painful: “injuries included fractures in his forearm and cut tendons in his knees.” SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Passenger Snaps Photo of Fuel Pouring Out of a Dreamliner’s Wing

If Boeing was looking to 2014 as a fresh start for their constantly malfunctioning Dreamliner, that particular dream is almost certainly crushed by now. In addition to one of the plane’s batteries malfunctioning (again) just a few days ago, a Norweigan’s Airlines flight was cancelled yesterday after a passenger noticed that fuel was pouring from…

How Google Glass Will Save Car Enthusiasts From Extinction

“Computers are killing the automotive hobby!” Car geeks say this with defeatist disdain; tech nerds utter it with futurist superiority. Thing is, they’re both wrong. Virtual reality and wearable tech could very well save hobbyist mechanics from becoming the 21st century’s horseshoe installers. Here’s how. Modern cars have gotten enormously complex. Increasingly stringent emissions and…

At first glance, this winning design for a mixed-used complex in Zhejiang Province design by Liu Xisang seems like just another glassy tower project. But take a closer look at the facades, which are laced with a network of outdoor spaces spiraling upwards to connect the ground floor to the roof with a—nearly—continuous path of…

This Anvil Case for Your iPhone Just Needs Casters and Band Stickers

Go backstage at any rock club in the world and you’re going to find tons of anonymous-looking black boxes holding all of the equipment that bands travel with. Now you can get that legendary protection for your phone. Above, a crazy-intense new iPhone 5/5s case from Anvil, a manufacturer of road and flight boxes for…

iOS in Your Car Could Look Pretty Great

One of the big revelations from the iOS 7 debut was that Apple’s working on an in-car version of the mobile operating system. Now app developer Steve Troughton-Smith has tweeted some images of what iOS could, and should, look like when it hits your dashboard. And they’re pretty slick. https://gizmodo.com/apple-wants-to-redesign-your-cars-dashboard-722692417 It’s undeniable that iOS is…

The World’s First Nuclear Submarine Was Launched 60 Years Ago

Launched 60 years ago today, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. Its atomic fuel source gave for the U.S Navy a dramatic increase in both range and operational flexibility. A few years later, the USS Nautilus achieved another historical first: she was the first vessel to complete a submerged transit to…

Dancing on paper

Artist Heather Hansen thought it would be neat to cover her hands and feet on charcoal and transfer her body moves directly into paper, like a human plotter. She called it Emptied Gestures, an “experiment in kinetic drawing.” SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

62 Years of Global Warming in One Terrifying GIF

If you’re on the East Coast you might be getting some snow today, but rest assured the globe is getting warmer by the year. A lot warmer. See for yourself. This visualization from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies was just updated with new data from 2013, which tied for the hottest year since 1880…

This Is the Closest Thing to a North Korean Google Street View

North Korea remains one of the few places in the world that remains untouched by Google Street View’s all-seeing eye. But at least now, we can content ourselves with these fascinating, state-approved (i.e. likely censored) 360-degree shots from Singaporean photographer Aram Pan. Despite North Korea’s notoriously strict limitations on tourists in general (not to mention…

Of Course, China’s Bad Air Is Polluting the West Coast

The latest fear-mongering study about pollution in China has arrived, and it’s frightening. According to a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, bad air in China is blowing across the Pacific and polluting the West Coast. Scary! Well, not really. It’s hardly a surprise that dirty air from China could become…

Honda Grom: City Commutes Should Always Be This Fun

Pound for pound, there’s no bit of technology that made me happier last year than the brand new Honda Grom motorcycle. Is it cheating that it’s not strictly a gadget? I don’t care. Even if the Grom still breaks fast on old-fashioned dino juice, its diminutive size paired with 50-state street legality changed the way…

Take a Visual Tour of the World’s Most Modern Slaughterhouse

Right, I’m going to kick off this post by saying that I am not a squeamish person. I love food, I love meat, and I particularly love pork. In an ideal world, we would all get our meat from the guy in our village whose family has lovingly cared for their animals over generations, given…

The Best Blu-ray Player, iPad Air, 70″ Vizio, George Orwell [Deals]

If you just need a dedicated box to play all those blu-ray discs we’ve found you deals on, this is the best one, and the cheapest it’s ever been. You can get the Sony BDP-S5100 3D Wifi Blu-ray Player for just 80 dollars today. We don’t know what “super wifi” means, but we know this…

Do Kids Really Need a Smartwatch?

At the London Toy Fair 2014, VTech has decided that the recent trend in wearable electronics should apply to kids too. So the company’s new Kidizoom Smartwatch straps a 1.4-inch color touchscreen display, 0.3-megapixel camera, and various games, apps, and clock faces to your kids’ wrist for somewhere around $66. But do kids really need…

It’s a Perfect Day For a Snow-Conquering SuperTruck Monster

As snow continues to clutter up the Eastern Seaboard, you’d be hard-pressed not to long for a ride in RaptorTRAX. It is, gently put, an unstoppable snow-chewing behemoth. More details from our friends at Jalopnik below. https://jalopnik.com/ford-reveals-ken-blocks-snow-munching-tracked-raptor-e-1505832991 https://jalopnik.com/ford-reveals-ken-blocks-snow-munching-tracked-raptor-e-1505832991