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Tech NewsSploidWhy This Arctic Language Doesn’t Use an Alphabet
So before you feel tricked by a technicality: Inuktitut does have a written language, but it’s just not an alphabet. Instead, as Tom Scott explains, it uses a related system of symbols to express sounds called an abugida. This writing system is in use in the far north of Canada and was originally invented by … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsPalmer Luckey, Millionaire Founder of Oculus Rift, Loves Donald Trump and Dates a Gamergater
It’s been an open secret for some time that Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old founder of VR company Oculus Rift and heir apparent to the future of gaming, is a strange guy—the type who argues with his customers on Reddit and casually cosplays as My Little Pony characters. Turns out, he also appears to be an … Continued
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Tech News
Lyft Thinks It’s ‘Exciting’ That a Driver Was Working While Giving Birth
Lyft—the ridesharing app that most people only use when Uber surge pricing is too high—does something a lot of tech companies do: it runs a blog. It’s where the company publicly celebrates its own excellence, for things like new features and anniversaries. It’s also where, earlier this month, a story appeared praising one of the … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsHappy First Day of Fall
Time to warm over that 10-year-old dancing Nebraska newscaster clip with some spicy new mashups, pretend pumpkins taste like cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar, and join in collective dread of the coming days when it becomes so cold that social obligations are a legitimate health hazard. Carve a decorative gourd. Eat a dried leaf. It’s fall, … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsSploid
Tilt-Shift Effect Makes Entire Galaxies Look Adorably Tiny
Tilt-shift lenses can make whole cities look like desktop miniatures through some amazing optical trickery. Unfortunately, we don’t have any of them up in space, but it hasn’t stopped some cosmic creatives from trying to mimic the effect on photos taken by NASA, ESO, and other space research groups. A collection of these excellently doctored … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsSploidHow to Make a Fancy and Delicious McRib Clone
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, even within the realm of professional chefs, is an absolute madman. Even his midnight snacks are more involved than most people’s date-night dinners. Behold his latest creation: Ribby McRibface. Ribby McRibface, unlike the standard McRib, is technically available any time. Yet a vast gulf lies between “available” and “realistically attainable.” Everything except … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsSploidHow Building a New Mosquito Could End Malaria
Malaria is a horrifying disease. It explodes your cells and wears their skins as camouflage so it can more effectively burst more cells. The disease kills over a million people every year—but as Kurzgesagt explains, our best bet to eradicate malaria is by building a new mosquito. Mosquitos are excellent vehicles for disease. (They were … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
The Dark Web Is Mostly Full of Garbage
The dark web—the portion of the deep web only accessible through specific software—exists to serve the needs of hackers-for-hire, hitmen, internet drug kingpins, child pornographers, and their inevitable customers. That’s the public consensus. Then there’s the counter-narrative. In spite of them ne’er-do-wells, .onion sites are invaluable for whistleblowers, activists, and regular citizens sick of having … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidMan Lets Himself Get Stung by One of the Biggest Assholes of the Insect Kingdom
The velvet ant (a.k.a. cow killer) has one of the most painful stings of any insect. And that’s just one of the ways they’re absolutely horrible little creatures. Many species of velvet ant start life as parasites attached the eggs of other insects, because if you’re going to be a jerk, 110 percent is the … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsYouTube’s Solution to Moderation Will Be a Mess [Update]
YouTube is famously terrible at announcing site changes, and the upcoming rollout of its “community” features are thus far no different. Today it created a program to enlist users as moderators, and it’s bound to be a goddamn mess. The video—posted to the YouTube Help channel and entitled “Getting Started with YouTube Heroes”—gives a high-level … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
AT&T Wants to Blanket the Nation With Gigabit Wi-Fi From Utility Poles
Fiber-based internet service is great (ask any jealous New Yorker not eligible for FiOS) but laying fiber cable costs tens of thousands of dollars per mile. Infrastructure projects to bring it to every household in a given area so expensive, even Google can’t foot the bill. So AT&T decided to use stuff most places had … Continued
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ScienceHealthApple Hires YouTube Doctor Who Prescribes Apps
Have you heard of Dr. Michael Evans? Probably not. He’s a YouTuber and former staff physician with 70k subscribers, doing the sort of whiteboard-style animation RSA and others helped to popularize half a decade ago. So why were Apple so desperate to hire him into their fold? For one, Evan’s videos are utterly simpatico with … Continued
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Tech News
FDA Wants an App to Help Solve Opiate Overdoses
Among the many ways to combat a drug epidemic, an app competition is easily the strangest. Abuse of illegal and prescription opiates alike is a massive problem in the United States. Since 1999, deaths due to these substances has tripled. Overdoses can be reversed by administering Naloxone, but availability of the life-saving drug is spotty—some … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsSploidThese Goofy Dudes Just So Happen to Be Incredible Ping Pong Players
What have we learned from this compilation of Takkyuugeinin’s “table tennis entertainment” vines? A cast iron skillet is not the worst paddle Ping pong balls do not make a very good shirt Bathrooms, parks, and robberies are all good times to practice sports Making ping pong funny requires incredible ping pong skills Screaming helps. Always. … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsSploidA Clever Way to Make The Legend of Zelda Beat Itself
Arbitrary code injection is fascinating stuff. Intrepid gamers have discovered hidden glitch worlds, turned Mario into Flappy Bird, or performed a standard action so many times it crashes the game. The original Legend of Zelda is susceptible too—as glitch hunter Sockfolder found out—and executing the following instructions skips past the vast majority of the game’s … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsSploidVideo Called ‘Moving Plant to the Left 3,000 Times’ Shows Plant Being Moved to the Left 3,000 Times
In his most recent upload, Schnooleheletteletto pushes a potted plant to the left—with varying degrees of force—3,000 times over the course of 77 minutes. This is a classic Schnoo troll, one that bears more resemblance to an art project than the sort of disingenuous mockery we usually associate the word with. All his video titles … Continued
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Tech News
Tumblr Is Banning Videos of Dogs and Kids for Being ‘Sexually Explicit’
Tumblr—the internet’s preferred space for fandoms and emotional self-flagellation—is undergoing a particularly bizarre moderation crisis. While Facebook struggles with war photography and police brutality and Twitter makes limp attempts to boot trolls, Tumblr appears to be removing totally innocuous videos of pets and children. Sam Cornwall uses his Tumblr to upload videos of his kids. … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidHere’s What Preparing Sashimi Doesn’t Sound Like
Raw fish is an art form, and unlike those novellas that sent me to the ER, it’s meant to be eaten. But listen closely as the video’s terrible foley ruins any appetite you were about to work up. 88rising grabbed some beautiful shots of a master chef breaking down the freshest seafood—making precise cuts to … Continued
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Tech News
Someday I’ll Be Able to Afford Leica’s New Instant Camera
Instant cameras are coming back in a big way. In the past couple years, Fuji, Lomography, and “Polaroid” have all thrown their hats into the ring, producing cheap, fun devices that provide a nostalgic experience. Leica is keen to get in on the fun, but it seems to have missed the memo on price point. … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsApple
Apple Is on a Moderation Rampage After Porn Was Found in iOS 10 [Update]
Earlier today, our colleagues at Deadspin discovered something strange about the new gif search in iOS 10’s iMessage: Inadvertently do the wrong search, for, say, the word “huge,” and you could be looking straight at a stranger’s genitals (or a cartoon horse’s, as the case may be). Now, it appears that Apple is frantically banning … Continued
By Avery Ellis
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