Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Did you know that the United States Federal Government has shut down 17 times since 1976? That also must be the number of times that the Republicans have pushed the Obama administration to the verge of shutdown—just to be saved at the last minute. This is how Washington may stop it this time. By the…
I doodled on my textbooks like a mad man when I was a kid, but this Japanese student is taking this art to a completely new level, whitening out parts of the drawings and replacing them with his own—sometimes with hilarious results and always in a sick way. Japan! https://kotaku.com/silly-doodles-make-school-books-fun-1425393011
Lifehacker has six excellent tricks to do very useful things with YouTube just by using your browser’s address bar—from downloading any video to bypassing regional restrictions. https://lifehacker.com/the-six-best-youtube-url-tricks-1422544868
Back in the 1930s, American scientists were searching for a morphine substitute when they stumbled upon a new drug called desomorphine. Little did they know that they had invented a substance that would be used to turn people into near zombies in Russia—and Arizona—nine decades later. https://gizmodo.com/russias-flesh-eating-drug-krokodil-actually-has-origin-1411641798
The iPhone is not the absolute king of the hill anymore. It’s still the most inviting and friendly phone, but not the very best. It’s “a great phone”—says Gizmodo’s Kyle Wagner—but “it’s not perfect.” Read his full review here. https://gizmodo.com/iphone-5s-review-its-an-iphone-past-present-and-fu-1405289089
Friday. Weekend. Beer. Good beer. Belgian beer—made in America. Bar manager Jeffrey Morgenthaler gives you four great domestic Belgian-style brews at Playboy Safe for Work’s Kinja. https://playboysfw.kinja.com/who-says-belgian-beer-has-to-come-from-belgium-four-gr-1408176955
“This is the little baby [bunny] we’ve been feeding for a week,” says the mom. “Oh, there’s your mommy, go get her” she continues, leaving the bunny on the grass. Too bad a falcon was quietly gliding above this lovely scene. Nature! (Poor little kid, though. The shrink bills are going to be astronomical.) https://deadspin.com/bunny-gets-released-into-wild-is-immediately-devoured-1411861779
Game controllers have buttons because they offer a much precise control than, say, the surface of an iPad. But Steam—the company who has a chance at challenging Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for the game console supremacy—has decided to switch buttons to trackpads. It just appears to be really stupid. But look at what they say:…
Watch this monster truck losing control and stopping at the last second. Imagine being on that first line of that public. Or the third. Or the sixth. At that initial speed, it could have killed them all. https://jalopnik.com/watch-this-monster-truck-nearly-kill-an-entire-crowd-1411915588
Aaran Stewart suffers severe autism and OCD, which makes it extremely difficult for him to travel through Heathrow. But the staff of the third biggest airport in the world is doing something amazing: they replicate “the same conditions for him—from check in to pre-flight shopping to take off—every time he flies” to avoid stressing him…
Lucasarts. If you were born in the 70s, your memories are probably intimately tied to their classic games. The company was once a dream workplace in which amazingly creative and talented people created some of the best games in history. Sadly, this is how corporate stupidity destroyed it, starting with George Lucas. https://kotaku.com/how-lucasarts-fell-apart-1401731043
Watching the mighty Porsche releasing horrible suburban cars for loaded douchebags is painful. Here’s the last one. First it was a SUV, then a four-door sedan, and now a replacement to the (rich) soccer mom van: the Macan. It’s one of the three exclusive leaks obtained by Jalopnik. https://jalopnik.com/the-porsche-macan-will-have-two-turbo-engines-cost-52-1410719001
Yesterday, Kanye West went nuclear on Twitter after Jimmy Kimmel mocked his interview with the BBC, in which West claimed to be the greatest rock star in the planet. As hard it is to believe, it seems the entire thing is serious—unless both of them are playing a joke on all of us. Of course,…
Scientists now think that moons orbiting around planets can harbor life under certain conditions. And just by that—even being extremely conservative—the number of celestial bodies capable of sustaining life in the universe may have jumped up by about four trillion. Could one of these habitable moons be our next home? Just do the numbers. NASA…
One of the best baseball players ever has retired today: 42-year-old Mariano Rivera threw his last pitch and abandoned the Yankee Stadium—his home for 18 years—for the last time, crying his eyes out of unabashed emotion. https://deadspin.com/watch-mariano-rivera-leave-the-field-at-yankee-stadium-1407355404
Amazing news from Mars: Curiosity has found that each cubic foot of the planet’s soil contains two pints of liquid water. One liter, people_._ It’s not a sea or a lake—the water molecules are actually bound to the soil itself—but that’s really amazing news, and a good omen in the search for life in the…
Siri—Apple’s iPhone assistant—can do pretty much anything you want in the new iOS 7, as shown in this massive list of stuff you can ask Siri. https://lifehacker.com/all-the-things-you-can-ask-siri-to-do-in-ios-7-1401408294
Watch Prescott Harvey’s pitch perfect video letter for JJ Abrams, the next Star Wars trilogy director/producer/emperor. It contains four simple rules to make Humanity’s favorite galactic saga wonderful once again. https://gizmodo.com/a-beautifully-animated-open-letter-to-j-j-abrams-about-1397273170
Along with retail masters Mickey Drexler—then Gap’s CEO—and Ron Johnson, Steve Jobs created the Apple Stores in 2001. They wanted consumer heavens in which everything, from the space to the body language of the salespeople, is carefully designed to work people into buying a brand, its products and “happiness.” The Cupertino corporation used the stores…
I love Antoni Gaudí’s modernist architecture—but I always thought the Sagrada Familia looked like a insectoid nest built by giant alien wasps. When it’s completed in 2026, it will truly look like a majestic alien cathedral to adore Gozer and Zuul. https://gizmodo.com/heres-how-sagrada-familia-will-look-when-its-finally-1400455342
