3D printing’s always been stuck with a pesky size limit—your average printer’s cramped build area forces makers to slice big designs into awkward chunks, gluing them together like a clumsy puzzle. It’s a pain, and the results often scream compromise. But what if you could churn out massive creations in one shot without needing a warehouse-sized machine? Makers Ivan Miranda and Jón Schone spotted a treadmill—yep, that gym staple—and turned it into a mind-bending 3D printer that spits out giants, like a two-meter girder or even a full-blown kayak.
Peng Yujiang, a 55-year-old paraglider with five years of experience, set out to test a second-hand harness in China’s Qilian Mountains. He wasn’t planning to fly—just shake out the gear at 10,000 feet above sea level. But nature had other plans. A freak updraft, known as a “cloud suck,” grabbed him and hurled him skyward, launching an ordeal that would see him soar to 28,208 feet—higher than most commercial flights and just shy of Mount Everest’s 29,029-foot summit. Thanks to a camera strapped to his glider, the world got a front-row seat to his movie-like survival story.
Minimalism in a workspace is like pulling off a magic trick, literally. For YouTube’s Basically Homeless, the hunt for a clutter-free desk sparked a wild idea: cramming a beastly gaming PC into an office chair, hiding all that power in plain sight.
Photo credit: maniek-86
In a world where sleek laptops and towering gaming rigs dominate, one Reddit user, maniek-86, decided to defy convention. Rather than let an old matrix typewriter gather dust or end up in a scrap heap, he transformed it into a fully functional computer.
A Reddit user named Jeguetelli recently learned a costly lesson while filming a brand-new Volvo EX90. As his iPhone 16 Pro Max zoomed in on the car’s roof-mounted LiDAR sensor, a dazzling display of red, pink, and purple specks erupted across the screen. Those weren’t festive digital confetti—they were the last gasps of his camera’s sensor, permanently scarred by the encounter.
Photo credit: Jeremy Little, Michigan Engineering
A golf ball seems like an unlikely muse for high-tech innovation. It’s just a small, dimpled sphere meant to fly far on a golf course. But at the University of Michigan, engineers have turned its design into a clever underwater robot. This spherical prototype, covered in changeable dimples, moves through water with impressive ease and control, hinting at new possibilities for exploring oceans or even skies.
Photo credit: DJI
Mid-May 2025 on Pensacola Beach, Florida, was deceptively calm—golden sunlight, gentle waves, and a hidden menace: a rip current. Andrew Smith, a shark fisherman sidelined from swimming by a seizure disorder, arrived at Fort Pickens Beach, nudged by a friend. Ten minutes later, chaos erupted. A teenage girl, trapped 100 yards offshore, battled the current’s relentless pull. Smith, unable to dive in, turned to his SwellPro Fisherman Max drone, typically used for scouting sharks. What followed was a heart-pounding rescue that turned a fishing tool into a lifeline.
Photo credit: Mike Lewinski
The night of May 17, 2025, turned the skies above the United States into a jaw-dropping cosmic canvas that had everyone staring upward. A sudden geomagnetic storm splashed the heavens with glowing auroras—ribbons of green, blue, and red swirling across the horizon. The real showstopper was a dazzling white streak that flashed across the night, stealing the spotlight from the northern lights.
Photo credit: Randy Barber | Boulder Valley School District
High school is getting wild, but not the way you think. In classrooms filled with algebra struggles and notebooks full of doodles, a clever teen pulls out a paperclip with a mischievous smile. With a fast poke into their school Chromebook’s port, smoke rises, sparks fly, and the room fills with gasps and laughter. Say hello to the TikTok Chromebook Challenge, the viral prank setting laptops ablaze and sending school admins scrambling for fire extinguishers.
Photo credit: Leitz Photographica Auction
During the Cold War, a Soviet spy walking through a dark Eastern Bloc street with a plain leather briefcase was a common sight. It looked like ordinary luggage, but inside was a clever secret: the Neozit F-27 electric spy camera, ready to take hidden photos through a tiny lens. This is the KGB Spy Camera Briefcase, a rare piece of spy history now being sold at the Leitz Photographica Auction in Austria.