Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Quads are dumb motorcycles with four wheels that serve no other purpose but to kill or injure douchebags. This Ferrari-powered quad, however, could be part of a Batman movie. A movie in which Batman is a douchebag who likes to ride dumb motorcycles with four wheels. https://jalopnik.com/this-ferrari-engined-french-quad-is-deeply-crazy-and-pr-1451694946
It seems like something out of Halo, but this new futuristic soldier helmet discovered by KitUp! is now being tested by the US Army. Called the Helmet Electronics and Display System-Upgradeable Protection, it’s a modular variation of the current head gear, with face-protective 9mm plating and Heads Up Display powered by an Android phone. Created…
Scientists have found a perfect bacteria filter right in the gardens and parks around MIT, contained in every tree and plant. Called xylem, this vegetal tissue uses tiny capillaries to filter particles as small as 100 nanometers. As a result, when you fasten it to a tube, it can clean water out of any bacteria.…
The Aviationist reports on a new Iranian drone exclusively designed to kill fixed or mobile targets in suicide missions. The name of this remotely controlled kamikaze is Ra’ad 85—aka Thunder. The Iranian Army commander—Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan—claims that this suicide drone “has been produced in various sizes in order to be used against different…
According to Sci-News, “consumption of coffee reduces risk of hepatocellular carcinoma—the most common type of liver cancer–by 40 percent.” The researchers also found that three cups a day will “reduce the risk by more than 50 percent.” The research analyzed 16 previous case studies from 1996 to 2012, to reach arrive to this conclusion: From…
Buried in this io9 post about some Halloweenesque fashion is one of the most horrible images I’ve seen in my entire life: a photo of leggings made out of a real dead male, full with penis skin, which you can see at Strandagaldur, The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft. Not safe for work or…
Using high speed cameras and lots of complex physics, scientists have uncovered one of the greatest mysteries of modern civilization: why the hell beer turns to foam and overflows from a bottle when you hit it hard at the top? Unsolved mystery: why people who do this “prank” are such jerks? https://gizmodo.com/the-fascinating-science-behind-why-a-tapped-beer-foams-1451022759
What the hell are these huge city lights about 200 to 300 miles of the coast of Argentina? Nothing should be there except the dark Atlantic Ocean and a couple of tiny dim lights in the Falkland Islands—Las Malvinas. What are those light formations then? In the words of NASA: “There are no human settlements…
If there’s something I love about designing—not play, design—and creating things with Lego is the possibility of coming up with complex, realistic space exploration machines and ships, like this wonderful Space Exo Suit created by Peter Reid. It is so damn good that Lego is turning it into an official set. https://gizmodo.com/its-official-lego-is-creating-an-army-of-exo-suit-min-1450747132
Breasts. They have always been wonderful things, but they are even more wonderful today, as scientists have identified the naturally occurring protein in breast milk that can block the HIV virus from infecting immune system cells. Its name is Tenascin-C and, according to the paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it…
Witness driver Augustin Kuntz avoiding what could have been a fatal crash on a 20-year-old Porsche 993 C2. I love to see people dominating their nerves and using their skills and reflexes to master a powerful machine to avoid a total disaster. It’s like going down the Death Star trench and blowing it in real…
Dezeen reports on the crazy plan by a pair of Portuguese architects who want to turn a giant iron bridge into a giant monument by disassembling it and moving it from the River Douro—where it stands unused—to the center of Porto, Portugal. The Maria Pia Bridge bridge was designed in 1877 by Gustave Eiffel and…
Spitfire spits fire. Beautiful image of a Spitfire TE311 performing a hot start, taken by RAF Senior Aircraftman Graham Taylor, from the 2013 RAF Photographic Competition Awards.
This extraordinary image shows something never seen before: a proto-galaxy feeding on the first stuff ever, violently making stars from the pristine hydrogen produced by the Big Bang itself, shortly after the Universe began to exist. It’s like having a glimpse into the beginning of everything. Discovered by Dr Neil Crighton and his colleagues from…
Fellow space nerds of the world, start saving, because soon $75,000 will get you a ticket 30 kilometers into the sky on board one of World View’s TIE Fighter capsules—a pressurized ship that will let feel the awe of watching Earth from space. You will not enjoy the thrill of sitting on top a thousand…
If I could buy a private jet, I would definitely get the $45 million Dassault Falcon X. That integrated skylight is just amazing. And the clean cockpit is neat too. A beautiful beast. https://jalopnik.com/the-falcon-x-is-a-fancy-private-jet-designed-with-a-fre-1450089711
The BBC reports on new research that connects physical exercise with good grades. The scientists found that children could boost their performance by a full grade—from C to B, for example—with 60 minutes of exercise. The study—conducted on 5,000 children by the universities of Strathclyde and Dundee—concluded that boys got a quarter of a grade…
Ann Leckie writes about how artificial intelligence might really see the world—and in the process she defines ourselves, an even more important question as we’re headed to a future in which replicators and brain downloads will probably be a reality. At the end, she says, “we are the stories we tell about ourselves.” https://gizmodo.com/how-to-write-from-the-perspective-of-a-truly-alien-self-1449703465
Next year, the fine people of Uruguay will be able to buy high quality state-produced weed at only one dollar per gram. For reference, high quality weed in the US goes for around $350 an ounce, according to this and this. That’s $12.36 per gram, which is more than ten times the price of Uruguyan…
Hundreds of thousands of historical buildings have been destroyed by natural or human-caused disasters, which is why an organization called CyArk is scanning ancient landmarks all over the world in 3D. If someday something bad happens to them, we will be able to fix them with millimetric precision. Or at least have a digital copy…
