Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Laser pods mounted on drones to shoot down missiles. Yeah, that’s science fiction warfare, right there. And that’s exactly what the US military wants. The US just gave Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman contracts to develop aircraft-mounted laser weapons to protect drones from getting hit by missiles. Or create a flock of drones that can…
If you ever, for a second, wondered questions like what’s the purpose of life or why the Internet exists or what are you going to eat for lunch today, the answer is simply this magical software tool created by GitHub user LindseyB. It automatically turns any Star Wars quote into an animated GIF, complete with…
Rainbows are visual desserts, you’re always happier after you see them. But we don’t see them enough! Not with a Pixelstick though. It’s a giant stick that has 198 LEDs that can be programmed to display colorful rainbows, 3D cubes, pulsating magic carpets and so on in your light paintings. Basically wave, set your camera…
When you smash the world of our favorite cartoon family from Springfield with what very well might be our favorite literary fantasy world, well, you get this epic winding tour of The Simpsons traveling through Middle Earth that passes by all your favorite Simpsons characters as Hobbit characters to reach The Comfy Couch.
So this is completely terrifying. In a you will probably pee a little bit as you watch this GIF kind of way. In a holy crap wait a minute this isn’t a video game right kind of way. No, no it is not. This is what it looks like to take a direct hit from…
You can stare at magazines all day and wonder why your body doesn’t curve like that and why your butt isn’t shaped like that and why your skin doesn’t glow like that but you’d only be killing yourself over magic Photoshop fairy dust. Anything we’re meant to see is totally fake and this GIF sums…
The 1,050-foot-tall MoMA Expansion Tower will start rising on West 53rd Street in 2014—holding 145 luxury condos and 36,000 square feet of museum space. Maybe it’s mistake, but not for the reasons you imagine. You can’t stop building the future… This city was built on the desire to create a new world. It respected nothing.…
For the first time in history, NASA astronomers have “discovered the first Earth-size planet outside the solar system that has a rocky composition like that of Earth.” The technical name is Kepler-78b but they should call it just Hell. Earth’s hellish twin. While the planet has the same mass and size as our home planet,…
This is madness: watch this crazy pilot celebrate 100 years of Argentinian civil aviation with the longest and lowest flyby I’ve ever seen. That plane is a 94-foot wingspan Boeing 737-500 capable of carrying 132 passengers. This is even crazier than my previous favorite low pass: That’s a Portuguese Airbus A310 doing an extremely low…
What’s Google hiding in their mysterious barges near San Francisco, Portland, and Maine, surrounded by chain-link fences and 24-hour armed guards? Why did they gag government officials with non-disclosure agreements? And how can a private company do that, anyway? The questions pile up. https://gizmodo.com/an-up-close-look-at-the-east-coast-google-mystery-barge-1454795416
10 arrows in 4.9 seconds. That’s how impossibly fast Lars Andersen can shoot arrows. Faster than the fantasy character of Legolas in the Lord of the Rings and faster than anyone in the planet—the previous record was 15 seconds. Most amazingly, he does it with incredible accuracy. Watch the video: Andersen worked on recuperating the…
Just when you thought it was impossible, Google Glass gets even more obnoxiously stupid. If this is what the future of humanity looks like, Sergei Brin can fold it and push it up his ass until it goes click. https://gizmodo.com/the-next-google-glass-looks-even-sillier-than-the-old-g-1454367685
Did you know that there’s a theory of human evolution that says humans and primates’ brains and visual systems developed to detect and avoid snakes? “There is new evidence to back up this unusual theory, which explains both our agile minds and our uncanny ability to sense the presence of snakes”, explains Joseph Bennington-Castro on…
Excited to see the new X-Men: Days of Future Past? Me too. I prefer not to look too much into trailers, but I know you impatient kids want it all today. Here’s Charlie Jane Anders in-deep analysis of the new trailer. https://kotaku.com/new-x-men-days-of-future-past-trailer-brings-all-the-t-1453961784 https://gizmodo.com/all-the-most-x-ceptional-things-we-saw-in-the-new-x-men-1454135405
This short clip of the iconic Calvin and Hobbes’ dance in the woods by Canadian animator and compositor Adam Brown makes me want an animated cartoon so badly. One that is silent because, really, no actor would be able to get their voices right. Sadly—or fortunately, knowing Hollywood—we all know that Bill Watterson will never…
Hentai Patel thought it would be cool to transform his old Fiesta into a Transformer. Too bad it’s in a permanent state of contemplation and/or pooping spare tires.
A group of scientists at the University of Milan have discovered something that I’d really like to try: If you use magnetic fields to excite a part of the brain—the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—everything will look a lot more beautiful to you. The field modifies your subjective judgement not your vision. So much, in fact, that…
In 2017, the capital of Kazakhstan will look like the set of an utopian sci-fi movie, which seems appropriate considering this is the place from where the Soviet Union conquered space. A titanic new capital will rise by the old city, powered by sun and wind. Move over Dubai. Your cliché New York-wannabe skyline is…
Physicist Dr. Dave Goldberg tries to give an answer to a complex scientific question on io9: When will the Universe end? And how? There are still many theories, but one timeline seems likely. Not that I care too much beyond pure curiosity—it all feels too far away compared to the certain and nearness of our…
NASA has released three Spitzer telescope images for Halloween, showing dead things in space. From left to right: the Exposed Cranium Nebula—I see the brains—the Ghost of Jupiter Nebula—I see the resemblance—and Little Dumbbell Nebula—I can only see a pair of boobs. NASA’s descriptions: Exposed Cranium Nebula The brain-like orb called PMR 1 has been…
