Source: Unique Daily
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Factoid: BLK water
BLK water
This is blk. water, black spring water imported from Canada. It’s black because it's infused with fulvic acid, a naturally occuring substance found in pre-historic plant matter such as peat and coal.
Blk. contains natural electrolytes and 77 trace minerals that regenerate your body's cells faster than regular water while proving a large infusion of antioxidants.
Evidently, blk. is the next Perrier.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Infographic: Science Lovers
Physics or fashion? What science lovers link to most.
Visualization of bit.ly data from 6,000 users.
Source: Scientific American
Overheard: Nature is the 99%
What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems - its atmosphere, oceans and biosphere - goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power and control by that corrupt and greedy 1 per cent we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park? What if the assault on America’s middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?
- Nature is the 99%, too
Monday, November 28, 2011
News: Apple iTunes Flaw
A British company called Gamma International marketed hacking software to governments that exploited the vulnerability via a bogus update to iTunes, Apple’s media player, which is installed on more than 250 million machines worldwide.Via: The Telegraph
The hacking software, FinFisher, is used to spy on intelligence targets’ computers. It is known to be used by British agencies and earlier this year records were discovered in abandoned offices of that showed it had been offered to Egypt’s feared secret police.
Apple was informed about the relevant flaw in iTunes in 2008, according to Brian Krebs, a security writer, but did not patch the software until earlier this month, a delay of more than three years.
Overheard: Congress
Despite the founders’ intentions, however, Congress has evolved from a dependency “upon the people,” to an increasing dependency upon the funders. Members spend 30 percent to 70 percent of their time raising money to stay in Congress, or to get their party back in power. Less than 1 percent of Americans give more than $200 in a political campaign. No more than .05 percent give the maximum in any Congressional campaign. A career focused on the 1 percent — or, worse, the .05 percent — will never earn them the confidence of the 99 percent. Indeed, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, so far it hasn’t earned them the confidence of any more than 9 percent.
- Lawrence Lessig
Overheard: Kindle
The Kindle Fire experience doesn’t feel like you’re connecting to the web - it feels like you’re looking through a keyhole into one little room of the web… or perhaps you’re trapped in a hallway with many doors and many keyholes. Many of the keyholes are blocked. That’s when it hit me… Amazon isn’t giving me access to ‘The Cloud’, they’re giving me access to ‘Their Cloud’. Everything that I purchase from them resides in ‘Their Cloud’. The same is true for Apple. The stuff I buy from Apple ends up in the ‘Apple Cloud’… You can’t see the (public’s) sky because the (vendor’s) clouds are blocking it
News: License Plate Scanners
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the District of Columbia is engaging in widespread tracking of citizen’s movements using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). According to the Post, the D.C. police:
It has now become clear that this technology, if we do not limit its use, will represent a significant step toward the creation of a surveillance society in the United States.
- Are running more than one ALPR per square mile;
- Are planning on sharply increasing the density of these devices until they form a “comprehensive dragnet;”
- Retain the time/date/location/tag number even of innocent people for whom nothing is found to be wrong;
- Store that data in a database for three years.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
News: US malls track shoppers via Cellphones
The US is importing a bit of foreign technology this Black Friday, but it’s probably not the kind you’d like to see more of. Path Intelligence’s FootPath location tracking system is being introduced in two American malls on Friday, with the express purpose of logging detailed location data for each cellphone-equipped shopper that enters the premises. The data collection is anonymous and doesn’t attempt to identify you cellular number or any purchases you make, though it does paint an almost intimately accurate path of the route and time you take as you venture through the mall.Via: The Verge
News: Textbooks Take a Big Leap
Amazon, which got its start selling books online, announced this year that, for the first time, its digital books had outsold paper books. This trend of going digital does not hold true for all books: While many popular consumer books have successfully made the switch into the new format, textbooks are still widely read on paper.Via: The New York Times
Textbooks are gaining, though, as publishers take advantage of the popularity of tablets like the Kindle and iPad, expanding their catalogues and offering products like rental digital books that expire after a semester or two.
The potential for digital growth is leading publishers to experiment with products that stretch the boundaries of traditional textbooks, slowly turning away from static text and images toward a multimedia, intuitive approach, publishers say.
“Textbooks as e-books ought to be seen as a stepping stone to the future,” said Mark Majurey of Taylor & Francis, a textbook publisher in Britain.
Daily Links: November 25, 2011
8 Countries that Celebrate a Day of Thanks
15 Songs You Always Knew, But Never Knew The Names Of. I am almost ashamed to admit that I knew almost all of them by name.
A Cherry Pie, an Apple Pie and a Pumpkin Pie, Each Cooked Inside a Separate Cake, and Then All Cooked Together inside Another Cake.
The Food Lab's Complete Guide to a Stress-Free Thanksgiving. Of course, the most stress-free Thanksgiving is one where you don't cook!
Great Food Ideas For A Fantasy and Sci-Fi Themed Thanksgiving. Just in case you'd rather have fun with friends than eat turkey and watch football.
Jell-O Turkeyfest - the turkey-shaped Jell-O mold annual competition. David Byrne is a returning participant. (Past winners/entries: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, and where it all began: 2005.)
This Declassified USSR Bunker gives visitors a glimpse into life during the Cold War.
Top 10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving Eve Is the Best Bar Night of the Year. This is especially true for college students.
Why Thanksgiving is the Best Holiday of the Year.
News:
- High school student Emma Sullivan posted a tweet disparaging Kansas Governor Sam Brownback while on a field trip to the State Capitol. Brownback's staff called Sullivan's principal and complained. This has not resulted in postive PR for Brownback.
News: November DDoS Attack
Information technology and services company Prolexic says it recently helped mitigate the largest DDoS attack of 2011 thus far, seeing bandwidth peaks as high as 45Gbps during the week-long ordeal. Stretching from November 5th through the 12th, the attack saw an Asia-based e-commerce company hit with packet volumes three times that of any event this year — 69 million packets per second at its worst — with the globally-coordinated incident using traffic primarily originating from China. While sabotage by competitors or frustrated employees are possible motives, Prolexic cites particular concern for online retailers during the coming holiday season. The company has seen e-commerce transactions specifically targeted, sometimes even with state approval, due to the lack of taxes collected from online purchases.Via: The Verge
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Tech Links: November 22, 2011
Computers are good at storage and speed, but brains maintain the efficiency lead
The 21 gram keychain computer
"The tiny PC enables what its inventor calls 'Any Screen Computing,' the ability to turn any TV, laptop, phone, tablet, or set-top box into a dumb terminal for its Android operating system." Similar prototype from another inventor. Other than biological hardware (an actual implanted thumbdrive), this seems like the most portable computing possible. But are these devices too late to the party? After all, the concept relies on generic input and output devices becoming as ubiquitous and available as...well, mobile phones. Which, as phones come to feature HDMI-out, as well as USB keyboard input, are pretty much this. But not all content creators are on board.
Breakthrough chip mimics human brain function
The day that computers outsmart their human overlords may yet lie in the distant future, but a new computer chip that mimics the basis of learning and memory in the brain is a critical step towards that moment.
Facebook Enters The Phone Wars
They are reportedly working on a phone in cooperation with HTC that has true social media integration and will probably run a customized version of Android - much like the Kindle Fire.
Google Music v iTunes Match v Amazon Cloud Player.
Google has officially launched its (U.S. only) "Google Music" service, which aims to do for the Android market what iTunes and the recently unveiled (U.S. only) iTunes Match service does for Apple. All three services allow you to upload thousands of songs to the "Cloud". This music store showdown could revolutionise the way people collect, store and listen to music - or not.
Hublot painstakingly recreates a mysterious, 2,100-year-old clockwork relic - but why?
Misconceptions in AI: Or why Watson can’t talk to Siri
"So Watson can’t take dictation, and Siri can’t play Jeopardy. Understanding why shows how far we have to go when it comes to true artificial intelligence and those fears of the robots taking over."
Occupy Flash
The movement to rid the world of the Flash Player plugin
Stanford has announced new online courses for January 2012. Like the three courses currently running (1,2,3), these courses are free, open to the general public, and have no required textbook: CS 101, Cryptography, Design & Analysis of Algorithms I, Game Theory, Human-Computer Interaction, The Lean Launchpad, Natural Language Processing, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Software Engineering for Software as a Service, Technology Entrepreneurship
Stop Internet Piracy Act Has Huge Online Backlash
The act, which is designed to curb foreign policy but would cripple the Internet as we know it, is being officially protested by AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga - and also protested by a huge grassroots movement, which may be turning the tide of the bill in Congress
Wolfram Alpha launches the coolest flight tracker ever
Have you ever wanted to know where the planes flying overhead were going? If so, you finally have a way to find out.
Daily Links: November 22, 2011
Chef Sanjay Thumma (vahrehvah.com) wants to teach you how to make pretty much any Indian dish you can think of at home. Great stuff if you're adventurous with a high threshold for curry.
The Surveillance Catalog: Where Governments Get Their Spying Tools The Wall Street Journal has obtained a "trove" of documents from the secretive retail market in surveillance technology sold to world governments, and has created a searchable database for your enjoyment. "Among the most controversial technologies on display at the conference were essentially computer-hacking tools to enable government agents to break into people's computers and cellphones, log their keystrokes and access their data..." E.g., FinFisher installs malware by sending fake software updates for Blackberry and other devices; VUPEN's Exploits for Law Enforcement Agencies "aim to deliver exclusive exploit codes for undisclosed vulnerabilities" in software from Microsoft, Apple and others.
What Randall Munroe did for Radiation, he does again for Money. (Money: A chart of almost all of it, where it is, and what it can do.)
News:
- "Of course water hydrates." or does it? EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration. Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration. And hysteria over the EU's ruling on water and dehydration ensues. You can read the EU's ruling here (PDF). Highland Spring vows to defy EU rule on water labelling.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Factoid: Lichtenberg Figures
Lichtenberg figures may also appear on the skin of lightning strike victims. These are reddish, fernlike patterns that may persist for hours or days. They are also a useful indicator for medical examiners when determining the cause of death. Lichtenberg figures appearing on people are sometimes called lightning flowers, and they are thought to be caused by the rupture of small capillaries under the skin due to the passage of the lightning current or the shock wave from the lightning discharge as it flashes over the skin. A lightning strike can also create a large Lichtenberg Figure in grass surrounding the point struck. These are sometimes found on golf courses or in grassy meadows. Fulgurites may also be created as sand and soil is fused into glassy tubes by the intense heat of the current.
Architecture: Forest in the Sky
Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) is a project for metropolitan reforestation in Milan, Italy that contributes to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity without the implication of expanding the city upon the territory. Bosco Verticale is a model of vertical densification of nature within the city. It is a model that operates correlated to the policies for reforestation and naturalization of the large urban and metropolitan borders (Metrosbosco). Metrobosco and Bosco Verticale are devices for the environmental survival of contemporary European cities. Together they create two modes of building links between nature and city within the territory and within the cities of contemporary Europe.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Daily Links: November 18, 2011
5 Amazing Homemade Roller Coasters
7 Tragic Magician Deaths: To "die" on stage is the fullest expression of failure; but to "kill" during a performance is the highest achievement. The history of magic reveals many instances wherein the figurative becomes the literal. The history of magic is littered with stories of death and murder.
If We Only Had Wings explores the long-held dream of personal flight, from da Vinci's gliders to the Swiss Jetman to the in-development NASA Puffin (man, do I want a Puffin). Since the article is from National Geographic, there is also a great photo gallery.
National Geographic's picks for the Seven Wonders of Nature.
Unusual Thanksgiving Celebrations from around the U.S. I love the snazzy hats in the first slide.
News:
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Quick Pic: Clouds of Carina
The Cool Clouds of Carina
Observations made with the APEX telescope in submillimetre-wavelength light at a wavelength of 870 µm reveal the cold dusty clouds from which stars form in the Carina Nebula. This site of violent star formation, which plays host to some of the highest-mass stars in our galaxy, is an ideal arena in which to study the interactions between these young stars and their parent molecular clouds.
At this wavelength, most of the light seen is the weak heat glow from cosmic dust grains. The image therefore reveals the clouds of dust and molecular gas — mostly hydrogen — from which stars may form. At -250°C, the dust grains are very cold, and the faint glow emanating from them can only be seen at submillimetre wavelengths, significantly longer than those of visible light.
The APEX LABOCA observations are shown here in orange tones, combined with a visible light image from the Curtis Schmidt telescope. The result is a dramatic, wide-field picture that provides a spectacular view of Carina’s star formation sites. The nebula contains stars with a total mass equivalent to over 25,000 Suns, while the mass of the gas and dust clouds is that of about 140,000 Suns.
Tech Links: November 17, 2011
Featuring every computer released by Apple
Barnes and Noble brings up the Microsoft Patent Squeeze on Android. Sounds like it has a chance to get nasty - but it might pay off for everyone working with Android, and B&N sounds like they want to embarrass Microsoft.
Google Verbatim Search. Last week Google disabled the '+' operator. In response to feedback, they have now created a search mode that doesn't try to out-think you.
Google Analytics Unmasks Anonymous Bloggers: How a program usually used for Web traffic can be used to unmask people who attack and harass others online and then try to cover their tracks.
iTunes Match: A Solution to a Problem Apple Helped Create: The new service solves the problem of where to store all that music you've downloaded and ripped, and keep it safe. It's not free - the cloud service costs $24.99 a year - but it solves a lot of problems for people who want to access large music libraries at home and at work without dragging along their iPod
Daily Links: November 17, 2011
12 Futuristic Finalists in the Zombie Safe House Competition
Blog Your Way to a Better Career: Research shows that people who blog make more money than people who don't. The reason for this may be because blogging focuses your thinking, which is key to career success. Not saying that this is a hundred percent gospel truth, but if you're on the fence about starting a blog, it definitely can't hurt!
The goal of the new site Audiofiles is to be the Longreads of public radio, providing an easy-to-use, well-cataloged guide to the best radio stories ever told. Some background.
'Klingon' helps Milton Keynes man deal with dyslexia: A Milton Keynes man has revealed how translating "Klingon" has helped him deal with dyslexia.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Gadgets: Bulled Light Bulbs
A series retrofitted LED light bulbs which match the brightness of incandescents while only using 85% of the energy. 11 dimmable LED modules combine in a single frame to create as much illumination as a 60 watt incandescent while only being 11 watts. While fluorescent alternatives are also energy efficient, they have a cool color temperature, giving off a white light. By contrast the color temperature of ‘Bulled’ is 2800k, allowing the light to look very warm and natural. Because of the shape, the light disperses at 330 degrees.
Tech: Automated Warehouse
Check out this CNNMoney video on little orange robots at Kiva Systems that move shelves, "setting the inventory free." The goal is to help the company ship orders more quickly.
So why doesn't Amazon do this yet? It seems perfectly suited for selling books.
Daily Links: November 29, 2011
10 Myths About Introverts: "Myth #2 – Introverts are shy: Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite."
Epic version of The Legend of Zelda theme, on marimba, snare drum, cymbal, bells, timpani, and triangle. Ocarina of Time on marimba: Song of Storms, Song of Time, Saria's Song, Gerudo Valley.
Islands make up only about 3% of the earth's land area but host about 20% of all species and 50 to 60% of endangered species. The biggest threat to islands are invasive species, mainly rats, but also pigs and cats, who feed on nesting birds and native plants. New Zealand has been the innovator in clearing islands of rats because of its endangered populations of flightless birds which are vulnerable. One species of flightless parrot, known as the kakapo, has only 131 individuals left in the "wild" - they are closely guarded 24x7 on Codfish Island, their nests surrounded by rat traps and cameras vigilantly on the lookout for invaders.
A radical new idea is turning schools upside down. 'Flip the Classroom' is based on a simple concept: kids watch podcast video presentations of lecture material on their own time - at home. They then do the 'homework' at school, in an environment where the teachers can guide and support them, instructing on specific points as required. Colorado teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams have been pioneering the technique, and their Learning4Mastery website is a fount of information on it.
The Stupid Things You Do When Shopping (and How to Fix Them)
Daily Links: November 16, 2011
15 Funny Real Life Sci-Fi Road Sign Hacks
Speaking of all angles, geeks are even now hacking into road signs. It’s fantastic! Here are 15 you will love…
Boulder Votes to Go Clean Energy On Its Own
One of the election victories you may have missed in the past week came out of Boulder, Colorado, where voters approved two ballot measures to allow the city to break away from their investor-owned utility, Xcel Energy, and look to instead create their own progressive municipal utility.
Check If Your House Will Be Vaporized in a Nuclear War
Call me paranoid, but I spend nearly every waking moment contemplating whether or not I’d survive a massive nuclear strike. I mean, weirder stuff has happened, guys! Luckily we can now pinpoint our chances with the precision of Google Maps.
Cover up to look smart
Men and women who bare more flesh are regarded as less intelligent, study finds
Five Best Desktop Comic Book Readers
There’s a certain nostalgia to reading a paper comic book and flipping the pages, but if you can get digital copies of your favorite comics and you can use your computer’s large display to read them, why not?
NASA Hitches a Ride on a Russian Craft, and Begins a New Dependent Phase
A Russian Soyuz rocket with three astronauts — two Russians, one American — is set to lift off from Kazakhstan on Monday morning, ferrying the men to the International Space Station.
What Your Favorite Map Projection Says About You
Tech: True 3D Display
This is a video of a new 3-D laser display that can "print" 3-D images IN MIDAIR.
The system has a framerate of just 10-15 FPS right now, although the company is working on bumping that up to 24-30.
It's smoother in real life than it looks in this video, though. According to DigInfo News, the video was shot at 30 FPS, which makes the 15 FPS projection look like it's flickering.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Daily Links: November 15, 2011
I'm pretty sure this is a Sign of the End Time
8 things your tattoo (and where it is) says about you. Anyone with these tattoos is welcome to speak up and refute any points.
The 15 Tech Companies Young People Are Dying To Work For
How To Erase Your Digital Footprint
How to Extend the Due Date of Your Library eBook on the Kindle
It wasn't always this way. In earlier decades, prosperity the economy affected rich and poor alike.
Living a prosperous modern life won’t make you happy. In fact, there are facets of the modern world that make up a recipe for depression.
Some Google Earth enthusiasts have found a strange and unexplainable grid pattern in the middle of China's Gobi Desert.
News:
- Big Banks Plead with Customers Not to Move Their Money, so it turns out that they DO care about our opinions... sort of.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Lecture: The Shared Experience of Absurdity
Improve Everywhere founder Charlie Todd
gave a TEDxBloomington talk about The Shared Experience of Absurdity.
Charlie Todd causes bizarre, hilarious, and unexpected public scenes: Seventy synchronized dancers in storefront windows, “ghostbusters” running through the New York Public Library, and the annual no-pants subway ride. At TEDxBloomington he shows how his group, Improv Everywhere, uses these scenes to bring people together.
Science: Eating Insects
In Episode 78: Eating Insects, Daniel Klein of The Perennial Plate interviews David Gracer of Small Stock Foods, an expert in entomophagy (eating insects for food), as he “gives a pretty good case for making wider use of bugs”.
If you aren’t already familiar with The Perennial Plate, you should check out their ongoing “adventurous eating” and “sustainable living” road trip across America video series. You can also suggest story ideas for their future destinations.
Video Distraction: Stunning New Time Lapse Video from the International Space Station
A few weeks ago a beautiful time lapse video shot from the International Space Station made the rounds. When I saw this new video pop up on Vimeo I assumed it was the same thing, but immediately realized it was something wholly more incredible, not to mention five times longer. This new (or newly edited?) video was shot with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expeditions 28 and 29 onboard the ISS from August to October, 2011 and captures numerous shots of the Aurora Borealis.
Daily Links: November 14, 2011
The Visible Universe, Then and Now
Before the telescope was invented in 1608, our picture of the universe consisted of six planets, our moon, the sun and any stars we could see in the Milky Way galaxy. But as our light-gathering capabilities have grown, so too have the boundaries of the visible universe. Popular Science’s interactive map shows how the known universe has grown from 1950 to 2011.
8 Important Silicon Valley Innovators Not Named Steve Jobs
The 10 Weirdest Things You Can Do With Your Ashes
Carving out the buried secrets of the lost city of Atlantis: Bettany Hughes reveals her new research into the ancient myth of Atlantis.
My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine After a brief, failed experiment paying me to do chores, my dad tried something really neat. It clearly took a bit of legwork, but maybe there are some transferrable lessons for parents who want to lay an entrepreneurial foundation. He gave me a vending machine.
Sixth grader codes iOS apps, gives TED talks, and - generally - makes me feel like I've been lazy my entire life.
Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs? Businessweek takes a look at the labor supply situation in Alabama, after state legislation sent illegal immigrants packing to other states.
You can call the red phone booths in the United Kingdom section of Epcot's World Showcase!... though I'm guessing these numbers will blocked or changed in a matter of weeks.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Daily Links: November 11, 2011
Push for Portal
AI scientists want to make gods. Should that worry us? Nah! It turned out all right in all those Asimov novels, didn't it?
It's 1 year 1 month and 11 days until the end of the Aztec Calendar. Which makes a few too many 1's, so sit back and watch this clock turn to 11:11:11.
The Socialbot Network - A UBC study suggests that many Facebook users will friend total strangers. Researchers said they collected 250 gigabytes of information from Facebook users by using socialbots — fake Facebook profiles created and controlled by computer code (sic).
What should you drink? Take your cues from the tunes. That's the premise behind Drinkify, a scrappy little webapp that recommends drinks based on what you're listening to. Their motto? "Never listen to music alone again."
You have certainly seen a Tree of Life at some point (not the movie; the diagram of the evolution of species). Originally conceived of by Lamarck (though there is some interesting debate on this), it was Darwin himself who popularized the concept, first in his notebook, and next as the only image in The Origin of the Species. Though they have inspired beautiful illustrations, and a large and fascinating web project to map the tree, trees of life remain problematic since taxonomy can be complicated. One truly stunning way of redrawing the tree is the Hillis Plot, which maps 3,000 species by genetic similarity. You can print out the amazing illustration here, but, even though the Plot only contains 0.18% of named species, it needs to be 1.5 meters square to be legible. The Hillis Plot has been appearing in art, notably (and meta-rifficly) this one carved into an English oak, and, of course, tattoos.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Daily Links: November 7, 2011
10 offbeat and alternative search engines you might not have heard of
10 Marketing Gimmicks Gone Wrong. Companies are like insecure teenage girls: they want your money and will do almost anything for attention.
Apple's Supply-Chain Secret? Hoard Lasers
Buy A Civilization Starter Kit, Prepare For The Apocalypse Now: If you’re worried that the zombie apocalypse is nigh, never fear! On Kickstarter, a site well known for getting wild ideas off the ground with crowdsourced funding, you can actually invest in your end of the world plan now — before things go south. A collective called Open Source Ecology is drumming up funds on the site for what they call Global Village Construction Sets, and while they might not be zombie-proof per se, they do aim to provide the tools you’d need to start a modern civilization from scratch.
The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case
Four Things You Need to Know About Protecting Your Online Reputation: It's a no-brainer that pictures of you being drunk and stupid at a party could get in the way of you getting your dream job, but not having any online presence at all can be just as damaging.
Hacked! James Fallows writes in the Atlantic Monthly on how his wife's Gmail account was hacked, and years of email were deleted. Summary: if you have Gmail, you should be using its new 2-step verification; use strong passwords; don't re-use passwords.
The Top 10 Valedictorian Speeches on YouTube
Why Daylight Saving Time Should Be Abolished
News:
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Video Distraction: Zombie-proof your car
These two guys are pretty entertaining to watch, and they do seem to know quite a bit about car modification, but my favorite part is the "zombie survival expert" who desperately doesn't want to be identified. What, is he afraid the zombies will target him if they know what he looks like?
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Daily Links: November 3, 2011
10 Cool Underground Hotels
The 12 Most Convincing Real-Life Ghost Stories
Google Books' WebGL Bookcase (Aaron Koblin wrote about it; try hitting "H" for the control panel)
How Cell Phones Shape the Lives of College Students. Mainly, they love and depend on them.
Infographic: How We Wait for the Elevator Correlates With Our Attitudes
Turntable.fm is an awesome new service that, unlike Pandora and Last.fm, uses real live people to create radio stations instead of some formula. In Turntable, you enter a "room" with up to five DJs, playing different songs in real time, usually with an overarching genre or theme. Turntable also has nice integration with other music services like Spotify, letting you send a track to your service of choice with the click of a button.
Which Bank Is the Worst? Some shameful acts are easier to understand than others, but the biggest grievances are lined out bank-by-bank.
Video Distraction: Bouncy Balls from a Helicopter
A helicopter drops 20,000 bouncy balls into a parking lot on the Utah State Campus in Logan. The ball drop was part of the Utah State University College of Science's "Geek Week"
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Daily Links: November 2, 2011
American law enforcement demands for Google users’ personal information surged by 29 percent during the past six months according to Google's transparency report. Research In Motion has established a surveillance facility in India following a authorities applying pressure. Google, Skype, Twitter and Facebook are also under pressure to provide greater surveillance assistance.
China's post office is not normally a place you would associate with love. However, Beijing authorities, alarmed at the skyrocketing divorce rate, are promoting a new service in which the post office will send a love letter to your partner – after a delay of seven year
Did you know that hard candy is actually a glass? Neither did I! Learn the science with this detailed protocol for making your own that helps explain what is going on. (PDF) Bored with the protocol and need a recipe instead? Let these two hardcore hammer wielding home candy-making women show you the ropes. All using common or easily acquirable equipment.
In 2004, Texas Judge William Adams beat his 16-year old daughter with a belt for downloading music and computer games. Unbeknownst to him, she filmed the whole thing. Seven years later, fed up with the continued harassment and abuse from her father, she uploaded it to YouTube (warning: graphic language and violence, NSFW). Less than 24 hours after hitting Reddit, the video is all over the news. Hillary Adams says on Twitter that she hopes her father will receive help, not condemnation... but clearly, also condemnation.
Infographic: The Schools That Rule the Web Infographic
The New York Times have published the eulogy Mona Simpson delivered for her brother Steve Jobs at his funeral, which includes his last words.
Why Fingernails on Blackboards Sound So Horrible
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