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Last month, London reached a grim milestone: Six cyclists were killed within 14 days, sparking a massive “die-in” protest. London isn’t alone; 176 cyclists or pedestrians were killed in NYC last year. The rapidly rising death toll is spurring a race to build a technology to warn drivers before they hit someone on foot or…
The folks over at Ohio State University’s Cartoon Library and Museum have posted a fantastic cartoon from 1901 that takes a humorous look into the world of tomorrow — specifically that far off, futuristic year of 1987. Drawn by J. Campbell Cory for the New York World newspaper, this “prophetic vision of the 20th century”…
The fact that we’ve kept the number of U.S. states relatively static is nothing short a miracle—there have been hundreds of attempts at state secession over the years. But what if they had all succeeded? This brilliant map depicts that alternative universe, where the U.S. is broken up into 124 different states that stretch from…
Michael Bloomberg leaves office tomorrow after 12 years as New York City’s mayor. No mayor in recent memory has added so much to a city. Or taken so much away. To remember him properly, here’s a list of everything Bloomberg banned during his time in office. Smoking in commercial establishments like bars and restaurants (2003)…
Drunk driving combines two of America’s favorite pastimes: getting absolutely hammered and driving an automobile. But before the invention of the modern breathalyzer in the 1950s, determining if someone was too intoxicated to operate a motor vehicle was incredibly subjective. It took decades for law enforcement technology to catch up with one of our most…
The newest update in the highly disconcerting series of devastating failures that is the Fukushima cleanup effort is troubling to say the least. Tepco has confirmed that (unexplained) plumes of steam have been rising from the mangled remains of Reactor Building 3. In other words, there’s a chance Fukushima could be in the middle of…
Sony may get into the Windows Phone game, launching a model as early as mid-2014, according to The Information. If it pans out, it would be a break from Sony’s Android loyalty, and bring some variety to the Nokia-heavy Windows Phone segment. [The Information via The Verge]
September 19th, 1989 UTA Flight 772, flying from Paris to Brazzaville (in the People’s Republic of Congo), was taken over by six Libyan terrorists. They set off a suitcase bomb over the Sahara Desert, and all 170 souls aboard perished. 18 years later the victims’ families met at the crash site to build this memorial.…
Michelangelo Buonarroti was too busy to buy food, so he used to send his illiterate servant with grocery shopping lists like the one above, illustrated in 1518. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us in Facebook.
Authorities and copyright holders all over the world tried their damnedest to kill the Pirate Bay, but as data reported by TorrentFreak proves, the file sharing hub is a rogue ship that won’t sink. According to TorrentFreak, the Pirate Bay’s monthly uploads grew roughly 50 percent year over year, from 50,411 in November 2012 to…
The future is all around us. From medical miracles that could cure our most deadly diseases to transportation revolutions that will change how we travel around the planet, these are the ten most impressive cutting-edge machines we’ve covered this year. https://gizmodo.com/how-a-supercomputer-may-have-finally-unlocked-a-way-to-510672032 How a Supercomputer May Have Finally Unlocked a Way to Beat HIV There’s no…
This incredible photo by Nir Ben-Yosef aka xnir—an Israeli photographer who specializes in aviation and air-to-air photography and production—may look really scary. But fear not, because this AH-64A Apache is not going down in flames. It’s just releasing flares to show off. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us in Facebook.
It’s ironic that one of the nights of the year when fireworks are the perfect way to celebrate is also the one night when you and your friends should not be messing with explosives. But with this LED fireworks kit, you can drink yourself silly and still safely put on quite a show when the…
These are the words that appeared most often in my Twitter timeline. I know this thanks to Vizify’s fun new tool that pulls highlights from all of your 2013 tweets—including popular topics, Vines, photos, and followers—and assembles them into a delightful short video. Soooo, I probably swear too much on Twitter and nothing puts that…
Picking a favorite Vine is like picking a favorite hilarious, non sequitur grain of sand from an endless beach of weirdness. Fortunately, some blessed soul has stitched together hundreds of six-second masterpieces for your near-endless amusement. Watch it, enjoy it, laugh and cringe at it. And if after sitting though all 23 minutes of madness…
It’s New Year’s Eve and unless you’ve got children to tend to you’ll probably be partying well into 2014 this evening. And while normally sunglasses aren’t required for the middle of the night, these Dropshades are, since they feature a glowing pulsing EQ that stays in sync with whatever music you’re listening to. And, the…
Google Music All Access users are reporting that they’ve received an email inviting them to join the ranks of Glass Explorers. (Here’s the sign up page you can try if you didn’t get the email.) As far we can tell it’s the first time Google has opened up the program to a subset of its…
It looks like a waste paper bin, costs a fortune and is, perhaps, the best workstation you’ve ever owned. But what lurks beneath that shiny black shell? https://gizmodo.com/a-fully-loaded-new-mac-pro-will-cost-you-14-00-1486321039 Fortunately, you must ponder no longer, because iFixit has kindly ripped apart the new Mac Pro and spread its guts out on the floor for all to…
Welcome to the end of another year, people! We made it, and not without a ton of brand new stuff to carry us into 2014 and beyond. We saw lots of beautiful, interesting, and just plain weird things, but here we’ve rounded up the items that stuck with us; not just because of what they…
Birthdays are great, aren’t they? Really, we should have more of them—so why not try and do that by opting to celebrate mathematically significant dates rather than being a slave to the annual event? Really, birthdays are arbitrary anyway, so you may as well switch to math. You’ll learn something, it’ll be interesting, and you…
