Daily Links: September 30, 2011

Warranty Void If Seal Is Broken by LM4K

6 Images of Abandoned Weaponry You Won't Believe Are Real

The 10 Best Jobs for Adrenaline Junkies

Ever wondered if you have an accent to other Americans? Here's a map of North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns. Speaking of accents, last summer the BBC did a series on "Americanisms," or how American English was "infecting" the Queen's English. Ben Yagoda responds and documents how in fact it's the other way around. He documents "Britishisms" on his blog.  


Science:
10 Things You Didn't Know About Light stories: A week ago, who among us would have guessed that light, the universe's ultimate speed demon, would be observed getting outpaced by a bunch of reckless neutrinos?

This new system could produce hydrogen anyplace that there is wastewater near sea water," said Bruce E. Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering. It uses no grid electricity and is completely carbon neutral. It is an inexhaustible source of energy.

Science: Neutrinos faster than Light

Neutrinos discovered to be faster than light at CERN. If confirmed, these results will overturn a century of one of the most basic assumptions in modern physics. 'Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure' the speed of light 'ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit. But Antonio Ereditato of the Orion collaboration and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.'

Video Distraction: Kitchens of the Future

Selections from two industrial films from the 50s. First, the Frigidaire kitchen from General Motors' "Design for Dreaming," a promotional film for the 1956 Motorama. Second, a section from film coverage of the Monsanto "House of the Future," located in Tomorrowland in Disneyland. Just one word: "plastics."

Daily Links: September 21, 2011

Sexual Activity by Smart Phone Brand by OKCupid

The moral of this infographic is that you should always try hitting

on the girl with the iPhone first, she's libel to be the sluttier choice. 

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Witness Protection

50 Expert Networking Tips You Should Start Using in School

America currently has a higher poverty rate than at any time in the past twenty years. The line is drawn at $22,113 for a family of four, so if you make more than that, you’re officially not poor.

Check out this Best Buy flyer from 15 years ago. 
 
Death industry reaps grim profit as Japan dies: Corpse hotel with refrigerated coffins the latest trend

SFSignal has posted a list of Songs About Zombies

Simple Ideas That Are Borderline Genius (35 Pics)

What's the best non-sexual sensation ever? A Reddit thread.

Video Distraction: Electric TRON Lightcycle

"All New Full Scale Electric Tron Lightcycle driving in the daytime as well as night time. This bike has had extensive reworking on the body as well as Lithium Ion batteries and a 96volt electric motor."

After charging the battery for around 20 minutes you can get yourself about 100 miles of TRON lightcycling. Plus, the motor is no joke and can reach a top speed at 100 mph. But wait!! get this... they are trying to make it street legal and I am going to attempt to win the lottery so I can own one.

Source: Parker Brothers Choppers

Photo: Milky Way over the Annapurna

Photographer Anton Jankovoy captured this stellar shot of the Milky Way in the skies over the Annapurna section of the Himalayas — a massif with a peak elevation of over 8,000 meters.

Source: Bad Astronomy

Gadgets: Conquest Vehicles

The Knight XV from Conquest Vehicles: For when you absolutely, positively need a luxury ride that can withstand the Apocalypse. With a limited production run of only 100 vehicles, this luxury armored SUV - inspired by the Gurkha military vehicle - costs a paltry $310,000 USD; its nearest competitor, the Dartz Pombron, has no base price listed (estimated cost: $1.5 million USD).

Architecture: Sleepbox

Sleepbox is a modular sleeping capsule that offers many of the comforts of a hotel room in a box about the size of a small garbage dumpster. Intended for use in airports, train stations, and hostels, the capsules feature wifi, luggage storage, and up to three self-changing beds. Sleepbox is manufactured by the Russian Arch Group Architectural Bureau.

Featured Site: Show Me Non-Stop

Show Me Non-Stop is a video player that will play a continuous stream of videos based on the user’s search term. It is powered by VHX, a new platform for watching online video. Show Me Non-Stop is by Jamie Wilkinson, Casey Pugh (both co-founders of VHX) and Chad Pugh. The site was created during last weekend’s hackday.tv, a 24 hour video hackday. Previously we wrote about another project from that event, Casey Pugh’s Music Video Genome.

Tech: Thing-O-Matic

The New York times is running an exploded view of a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer illustrated by Frank O’Connell.  We’re extremely excited about how well it explains our pride and joy to a wider audience.

It also mentions the Stepstruder Mk7 in a dual configuration.  That’s right folks — the compact size of the Mk7 is going to make experimental dual extrusion possible for the first time.  Stay tuned for details, or come to World Maker Faire NYC this weekend to see a them in action!

Science: The Science of Fire

   Why fire is red, gas flames are blue, why you’re too cool to glow, and why fire moves in an upward, dancing manner.

Exploration: Living Bridges

Photo: Daily Mail

Deep in the rainforests of the Indian state of Meghalaya, bridges are not built, they’re grown. For more than 500 years locals have guided roots and vines from the native Ficus Elastica (rubber tree) across rivers, using hollowed out trees to create root guidance systems. When the roots and vines reach the opposite bank they are allowed to take root. Some of the bridges are over 100 feet long and can support the weight of 50 people.  Check out Architizer for even more pictures.

Featured Site: Music Video Genome

Music Video Genome by Casey Pugh is a site powered by VHX that generates a music video channel focused on an artist chosen by the user (in a formula that will be familiar to Pandora users). Pugh created the site during last weekend’s hackday.tv, a 24 hour video hackday.

Video Distraction: Daleks Chasing a Turtle

Random Daleks tied to a random turtle (tortoise) were spotted meandering around geek.kon Madison, WI last weekend, and it just might be the most randomly awesome thing you will see all week.

Daily Links: September 14, 2011

Timeline of the Universe infrographic by Omid Kashan

Absolutely stunning depiction of the Big Bang and many of its splendid afteraffects (hint: us and like, everything else). Makes me wish I lived there and not in the alternate pocket dimension I currently reside in. But the view sure is nice from this graph. Look at the massive (almost as big as the universe itself!) version at this link. Via: Boing Boing



Nerdy Day Trips aims to bring you the best in disused power stations, abandoned nuclear bunkers, lighthouse museums and solar observatories from around the world.

Those stories about Ikea abandoning bookcases because people don't buy books anymore were nonsense: "As it turns out, not only had the 15 inch bookcase been in development for a period of eighteen months to two years. Ebooks didn't factor at all into the decision."

News: 
U.S. Poverty Rate, 1 in 6, at Highest Level in Years (NYT) - An additional 2.6 million people slipped below the poverty line in 2010, census officials said, making 46.2 million people in poverty in the United States, the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been tracking it, said Trudi Renwick, chief of the Poverty Statistic Branch. That represented 15.1 percent of the country. The poverty line in 2010 was at $22,113 for a family of four.

Science:
What does a Higgsless universe mean for science? The Higgs Boson is quite important to the standard model of physics. If it exists, it plays a major role in explaining how particles acquire mass. There’s a distinct possibility that the Higgs Boson may not even exist. Stephen Hawking made a famous bet that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) wouldn't find it. So far both the LHC and Tevatron, another massive particle accelerators have both searched much of the energy ranges we expected to find the Higgs with no luck. So, then, what does it mean if we don’t find the Higgs at all?

Featured Site: Two of Us

Project Popcorn, an in-house project for creative agency, The Barbarian Group, has developed Two of Us, a new website where you take a smiling picture using your computer’s webcam and share it with a complete (but smiling) stranger.

The premise is simple: take a webcam pic of your best smile to brighten someone else’s day, and get a smile in return!
And no cheating, we’ve got special smile detection software to make sure you’re sending a smile and not…something else.

According to Caelin Cacciatore, a junior designer for The Barbarian Group, “The site is built in NodeJS, a cutting edge event driven web server and MongoDB. The smile detection software was written by Sebastián Alvarez…”

Via: The Barbarian Group

Video Distraction: Baby Chasing a Laser

Laser chasing isn’t just for cats, as demonstrated in this video by our friends David Calkins and Simone Davalos of their daughter Emma Danger tracking down an ever elusive laster dot.

Daily Links: September 13, 2011

Sometimes anxiety can lead Freshmen to be a bit over-prepared.

Via: Reddit

10 Famous People Who Battled Alzheimer’s

15 Facebook Etiquette Tips Every Baby Boomer Should Know

"A former police officer for the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia has admitted to stealing $2.4 million worth of 'error' coins and selling them to a coin distributor in California."
 
Kids today won't know the shrill cry of a 9600 baud, or the magical "doodleeedoo" of a 28.8 modem. Help preserve our digital history. Join us in recording your best impression of a "modem handshake" sound.



"US researcher Eric Poeschla has produced three glowing GM cats by using a virus to carry a gene, called green fluorescent protein (GFP), into the eggs from which the animals eventually grew." (If scientists admit to creating stuff like this, what have they done and kept secret?)

Link Round-Up: September 11th

What We Talk About When We Talk About 9/11

This word cloud was made in Worldle using editorials from a number of national newspapers, including The New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

9/11 Encyclopedia (New York Magazine )
New York Magazine's editors chose the encyclopedia format to explore topics as diverse as missing person posters, the people who jumped, the PATRIOT ACT, the families, the memories of the kindergarteners at the nearby school, the hijackers, the flight attendants, counting the dead, the artifacts left behind, and more.

9/11 Mystery Solved
Ten years later, one of the greatest mysteries arising from 9/11 has been solved: the guy who faked the 'tourist guy atop the WTC while the plane approaches' picture has come forward.

Daily Links: September 9, 2011

Above: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Internet Needs

The 50 Best Twitter Feeds for Math Geeks
 
Nine Hours is an ultra-modern capsule hotel in Kyoto, Japan.

Soldiers marching can damage bridges due to resonance, the wind did the same to the Tacoma bridge. Glass can be broken using sound but gym rats wobble a skyscraper? 

Ten Strange Places People Live. They look like pretty nice homes, except for the ones from which you could plunge to your death.

Vision Hacker Uses Front-Facing Camera to Create Kinect-Like Experiences on iOS

Whedon, Black, Oswalt, Savage etc.: How to Survive High School Rookie, the new blog/magazine from fashion's darling, 15 yr old Tavi Gavinson, asked various "grownups" for advice about high school. (Read Joss Whedon's advice for getting through high school here.)