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The Department Of Energy posted 21 photos onto its Flickr page a few weeks ago about Chicago Pile-1, the site of the first human-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction, located in Chicago. Built under the west stands of the Stagg football field of the University of Chicago and initiated on 2 December 1942, the Chicago Pile-1 was…
Before laser-printers were even dreamt of, large companies had to use typesetters to render text if it were to look any good—but they were expensive and tightly controlled. Then, in the summer of 1979, engineers at Bell Labs changed all that. Over their summer vacation, a team of researchers decided to reverse engineer the technology…
USA Today is reporting that Amazon is planning to launch a wholesale store in 2014, which will take on warehouse store businesses like Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club. The rumor suggests that Amazon will launch a new online service, referred to as Pantry, which will initially carry “2,000 products typically found in the center of…
Last year, LinkedIn suffered the embarrassment of having millions of its users’ passwords stolen. So someone went and turned it into art. Of course they did. Aram Bartholl created Forgot Your Password? after the event: a set of eight books containing 4.7 million passwords leaked during the hack. Bartholl explains: In summer 2012 the social…
Chances are that, if you’re visiting this page, you’re not a human. A new study reveals that 61.5 percent of all website traffic is generated by automated bots. Hi, robot! The research, carried out by researchers Incapsula, shows that bot-produced traffic has jumped by 21 percent in the last year alone. But while it might…
Following no small amount of outcry, Twitter has reverted its blocking changes. So they’re now virtually all back to normal. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Obviously nobody wants their website full of abusive content cleverly hidden away in the last name field. So why not get creative? Of course, as Randall Munroe points out in the alt text of today’s XKCD: “It’s ok, they’ll always let you opt out! Like they did with the YouTube real name profile thing.” Oh…
Overnight, Beyonce has released her fifth studio album without warning. Referred to as the “visual album” and titled Beyoncé, it was made exclusively available on iTunes without any announcement—and has already made quite an impact. With Twitter going crazy over the release, the Daily Mail reports that it “caused iTunes to temporarily crash as fans…
Bloomberg is reporting that Google is mulling the idea of designing its own server processors, using technology from ARM. The report cites a source who points out that the move could help Google better manage the interface between its hardware and software. It also points out that the move would threaten Intel’s market dominance, given…
The project: Record original secular holiday music: glistening, reflective, gentle. Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.…
La Terremoto de Alcorcón and Mr. K! team up for a booty-shaking, block-rocking tribute to, well, I’m not really sure. I don’t speak German well enough to translate.
Found by Redditor refie, here are 2013’s most overplayed songs played back by one guy and his guitar in only one minute. The original songs were a pain, but his interpretation is pretty pretty good. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us in Facebook.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, indeed. For their first animated music video, the incomprehensibly talented Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings take on a pack of rampaging, cat-calling wolves in a psychedelic battle of dance.
For some people, even the lowly peanut butter and jelly sandwich represents a culinary challenge that could go disastrously wrong at every step. It’s those amateur chefs who need all the help and support they can get, and that’s what these placemats featuring detailed blueprints for incredibly simple dishes provide—well, that and a way to…
Twitter has made some changes to the way its block feature works. And many users aren’t too happy about it. Blocking a person now simply mutes them from your stream — creating what some people have called a one-way mirror where the skeezes can look in, but you can’t see out. Update: After much wailing…
The next time you find yourself in need of a parking spot in Utrecht (been there!), steer yourself towards this new garage. Not only will you be able to park your car, you’ll also be able to get in a little belaying practice—thanks to its two climbing walls, which run along the edge of the…
When it comes to sports, they say it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, just how you play the game. And if hockey’s your thing, with the FWD Powershot sensor on the end of your stick you’ll know for sure if you played the game better than everyone else out there on the ice.…
Welcome to SPLOID, Gizmodo’s spin-off blog of all things awesome: News that feels like it’s from the future, weird and wonderful happenings, discoveries that can change the world, or just beautiful images and videos—all the things that truly and honestly surprise us. We started SPLOID because we want a place that contains the futuristic stuff…
Done any swashbuckling lately? Want to try it in the sky? Look no further than this handmade sailing ship kite, which takes flight on sails made of nylon on a ship made of bamboo. It doesn’t get much more elegant than a tall ship floating in the wind. At 26-inches by 28-inches, this kite is…
If you want to put on a surgical mask, rubber gloves, goggles, ear muffs and trap yourself in a plastic bubble after watching this terrifying video of how fast an epidemic would spread across the world, well, I’d totally understand. Because it’s crazy fast. Using the world’s air transportation network, theoretical physicists have created a…
