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There's some great news for watch aficionados who haven't already found a friend in Europe to buy and ship them Swatch's new Sistem51 timepiece . The watch features a genuine Swiss mechanical movement that's assembled through an automated process that means it can be mass produced on the cheap, but not cheaply made.

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Maybe I'm the last person in the world to see these (I don't go out on Halloween or to clubs or do anything cool really), but these Black bar censorship sunglasses are a little bit genius:

And they look way better than wearing Google Glass. You can buy a pair on Amazon for $6. Reminds me of David Friedman's pre-pixelated clothes for reality TV shows. (via @mrgan)

Tags: fashion

Verizon just suffered a major setback at the hands of the NSA. Bloomberg is reporting that the German government is declining to renew its contracts with the telecom giant, primarily because of concerns over the company's collusion with NSA surveillance. "There are indications that Verizon is legally required to provide certain things to the NSA," German Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate told Bloomberg, "and that's one of the reasons the cooperation with Verizon won't continue." The new contracts will require firms to confirm that they're not legally obligated to share data with foreign governments, a promise that Verizon might not be able to make.

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Testing the download and upload speeds of your smartphone with apps like Speedtest will no longer count against your monthly data allowance on T-Mobile. The carrier has confirmed this change with Android Central, and says similar apps intended to help customers gauge network performance have also been "whitelisted" and will add nothing to their data usage totals. In the past, T-Mobile has relied on user-initiated tests from Speedtest to back claims that it offers the fastest 4G LTE data service in the United States.

"Millions of speed tests from real people using their own phones prove it," CEO John Legere said back in January. And now that subscribers don't need to worry about those tests affecting their data cap, they may be inclined...

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This year's soccer World Cup has already shown what the march of technology can do to the world's favorite sport. Yesterday Luis Suarez's lawyer claimed the tooth marks left in the shoulder of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini by his Uruguayan client were enhanced with Photoshop; today the Russian national team's manager, Fabio Capello, blamed a green laser for his team's exit from the tournament.

Capello said that the Russian goalkeeper, Igor Akinfeev, had been "blinded" with a green laser shone from the crowd in the seconds before Algeria scored its only goal of the match. Russia drew 1-1 with its groupmates, a result that saw the North African nation progress to the competition's next stage, and the Russians knocked out. Russia were...

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At the UK's Goodwood Festival of Speed, Nissan today took the wraps off a full-scale model of its new virtual supercar. The Nissan Concept 2020 Vision GT was created for Gran Turismo 6's "Vision Gran Turismo festival," which invites car makers to present their vision of the near automotive future as downloadable content for the game. Mercedes Benz, BMW, Mitsubishi, and Volkswagen have all contributed to the in-game festival so far, and Nissan's will be available for download in July.

The...

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Foursquare plans to start charging companies making the heaviest use of its vast local-business database. The massive resource has gradually been enhanced through the years as Foursquare has grown and compiled over 6 billion user check-ins. Thanks to all that activity, the company's location database is seen by many as superior to similar services from Facebook and others. (Many users were displeased when Instagram moved away from Foursquare in favor of Facebook's solution.) Foursquare obviously risks angering developers and pushing them to research other options by charging for access, but COO Jeffrey Glueck told The Wall Street Journal that the fees will impact less than 1 percent of companies currently pulling from its database.

T...

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Rich Mogull, writing for Macworld:

Corporations generally limit their altruism to charity, not to core product and business decisions. Apple likely sees a competitive advantage in privacy, especially when its biggest direct competition comes from advertising giant Google and the enterprise-friendly Microsoft. Apple believes consumers not only desire privacy, but will increasingly value privacy as a factor in their buying decisions.

Plus, even CEOs and product managers get creeped out when the government reads their email.

No doubt in my mind that Mogull is exactly right. Apple cares about user privacy, and they see it as a competitive advantage. Or if you want to be cynical, they care about it because they see it as a competitive advantage. Either way, it’s good for customers.

No, not creepy at all or anything. Why do you ask?

This can't end well: Instead of a "BORING!" call for résumés, Sober Lane, a pub opening next month in Dublin, wants the largely young-ish applicant pool for its 20 job openings to Snapchat a photo or video. "Forget Discretion!" is the company's advice in a Facebook help-wanted post that's really asking for it: "When making an impression, Sober Lane is our obsession, it's all about the session, let's hear your confession, if you want a profession." Owner Earnest Cantillon, who guesses his badass rhyming schematic has netted 800 messages so far, suggests applicants try to "make them think 'this is a person I would like to meet.'" Unfortunately perhaps, he forgot to stipulate "... in a SFW environment." [Journal]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: selfie-employed, snapchat, sober lane

Created by UK inventor Alex Shirley-Smith, Tentsile is an ingenious portable suspended treehouse that installs much like a hammock while offering the convenience of a multi-person tent. Simply locate any three anchor points and install the tent above ground where you’re immediately clear of threats from rain and a plethora of ground-based creepy crawly things.

The Tentsile system was first conceived by Shirley-Smith in 2010 and after an early concept went absurdly viral around the web in 2012 the company hired another designer, Kirk Kirchev. The team worked through a series of 14 prototypes before finally releasing their first production model, the Tentsile Stingray, at the end of last year. You can learn more about this backpackable treehouse over on their website. (via My Modern Met, This Isn’t Happiness)

No staff, no service.

It took David Rekke and his wife, Kimberly, almost four years to renovate a 1920s Valley City, North Dakota, bank building for their café, and stock it with coffee equipment, syrups, tea, a pastry case, tables, books, two pianos, and more. The one thing they forgot to add was employees. Okay, it wasn't an oversight, but the barista-less honor-system business model going on may be an industry first, North Dakota or elsewhere. "At the time I didn't realize how unique that was," Brekke tells KVRR. "I thought it just made sense. I found out later, by Googling, there really isn't anything else like it."

Don't expect pour-overs or single-origin goodness here — the shop uses idiot-proof pod coffee. Customers are expected to pour their own, then self-swipe at a card reader or slide money into a slot. Which, it turns out, they do: "People have been extremely honest," says Brekke in a shout-out to the locals. "When I add up how much has been taken and how much is in the till at the end of the day, people are 15 percent more generous."

Very cool. Also, the shop is showing Shrek tomorrow night, which you don't get at Starbucks.

Unique Coffee Shop Uses Honor System [KVRR]
This Coffee Shop Has No Employees and Customers Are Overpaying [Daily Coffee News]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: faith in humanity, coffee, north dakota, the vault

Ronald "Ra Diggs" Herron, a self-styled rapper and Bloods gang leader at the Gowanus Houses, was convicted of three gang-related murders yesterday, with prosecutors going so far as to show jurors his music videos and rap lyrics as evidence. [ more › ]

Nice episode of 99% Invisible on how New York City got rid of the graffiti on all of their subway trains.

For decades, authorities treated subway graffiti like it was a sanitation issue. Gunn believed that graffiti was a symptom of larger systemic problems. After all, trains were derailing nearly every two weeks. In 1981 there were 1,800 subway car fires -- that's nearly five a day, every day of the year!

When Gunn launched his "Clean Trains" program, it was not only about cleaning up the trains aesthetically, but making them function well, too. Clean trains, Gunn believed, would be a symbol of a rehabilitated transit system.

Remember, the train cars used to look like this:

Tags: graffiti   NYC   subway

Many Verizon Wireless customers are reporting that the carrier's online systems have been unavailable for well over 24 hours now. Complaints about the downtime are flooding Twitter; subscribers are currently unable to make online bill payments, and the carrier's upgrade / activation system also appears to be inaccessible as a result — at least in some areas. (Trying to purchase an iPhone upgrade through Apple, for instance, returns an error message.)

Calls placed to several Verizon Wireless retail stores confirm that the carrier is dealing with major problems at the moment. A Verizon spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the company is aware of and working to resolve the issue, which is affecting customers primarily in the...

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Aperture long ago lost to Adobe Lightroom, and today, The Loop is reporting that Apple is ceasing development of its professional photo editing suite, and putting it out to pasture. Say goodbye to that familiar 50mm lens icon.

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The ACLU reports [PDF] that when it made Freedom of Information requests for Massachusetts SWAT team records, the SWATs claimed that because they were organized as "law enforcement councils" (jointly owned by many police departments, with additional federal funding) that they were not government agencies at all, but rather private corporations, and not subject to open records laws.

SWATs are the white-hot center of the increasingly brutal and militarized response of US police forces, which have outfitted themselves with ex-Afghanistan/Iraq military materiel and have deployed it in an escalating violent series of attacks, largely as part of the war on drugs. As Radley Balko writes in the Washington Post, the SWATs' claim to be private companies doesn't pass the giggle test: they are funded by the government, pay government employees, and do the government's business.

The argument boils down to this: we are not the police, we are private mercenaries armed with automatic weapons and military-grade vehicles and equipment, and when we attack and kill in the streets of American cities, we do so as private soldiers who happen to be funded by the police departments' budgets.

The ACLU is suing the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council to challenge this ruse, but even if they win, this should be setting off alarm bells for anyone who believes in good government and responsible policing. The cornerstone of democratic legitimacy is a duty to the public, with all the transparency and respect that implies. When police forces up and down the state structure themselves to create and exploit a loophole that lets them obscure the details of their most violent, most spectacular screw-ups -- which generally result in gruesome injuries and deaths to innocent members of the public -- there is no way they can claim to be acting in the public interest.

The fact that the city governments that oversee these departments and the federal agencies that fund the LECs have been complicit in this suggests that this isn't a matter of police overreach, but rather is a policy that goes literally all the way to the top of the policing regulatory structure in America. Read the rest

Popular blocky sandbox game Minecraft is closing in on 54 million copies sold across all platforms, says Mojang's Patrick Geuder, who also added via Twitter that the console (Xbox 360 and PS3) versions of the game have now surpassed sales of the PC...

Speaking today at Google I/O, the technical lead for Project Ara, Paul Eremenko, showed off the progress his team has made since we saw the very early first prototypes this past April. He showed off a functional, form-factor prototype. Which is a nerdy way of saying that for the first time publicly, we saw a modular Ara phone power on. It took its sweet time, but after several rounds of supportive applause from the audience, it booted. And froze. But over the course of the session, the team kept at it  to get it past the boot screen (though to no avail). So not the most successful demonstration, but enough to show progress.

Eremenko also announced a challenge for developers. A $100,000 prize for a working module that lets a phone do...

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Governor Cuomo apparently took USMNT's "get out of work" excuse to heart—and Tweeted this letter, "#USA, NYS stands strongly behind you. I'm approving an extra hour for lunch today: http://on.ny.gov/TeamUSA #USAvGER pic.twitter.com/2TVnzqbY1A." [ more › ]

The retailer said the average hourly pay in its American stores will jump to $10.76, a 17 percent increase.

Apple is making its latest iPod touch available for a lower price than ever today, bringing it down to $199 with the launch of a new 16GB model. Notably, the new low-end option is available in all six colors that the iPod touch is offered in and includes a rear camera — last year, in an attempt to bring down the price, Apple released a 16GB model without a camera and only available in black and white for $229. That camera-less version is no longer available, and its replacement is certainly a lot more appealing of an offering. It's available in the US today and will launch worldwide in the near future.

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Well, this is a fascinating story. In May, Gizmodo posted a large collection of air traffic control towers —and you, the readers, added many of your own contributions in the comments. Now, the collection has helped inspire a set of beautiful posters devoted to the towers.

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Just not fried butter.

Margarine sales have taken a serious tumble while saturated fat has surged onto new heights, like absolutely nailing its first Time cover in the form of a pristine butter curl. Americans are expected to consume a recent record amount of the stuff, "nearly 22.5 sticks for every man, woman and child" per year. That's so much butter, in fact, it's giving itself a pat on the back. [WSJ, Related]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: butter time, butter, time

Cupcakes could quite possibly be one of the world's most perfect foods—a tiny cake, just for you!—were it not for those annoying wrappers you have to peel away. But thanks to Dr. Oetker, those are now edible too.

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As expected, the MTA board has approved Noma founder Claus Meyer's proposal for a Nordic food hall and brasserie in Grand Central. Now all there's left to do is sign the lease and begin construction. The New Nordic Food Hall, as it's officially called, should open in 2016. [NYO]

Diego González's Birostis is a clipper that uses a hydrofoil hull and can be propelled by sails but also by two front kites (which are out the shot.) According to Diego, "the idea of this design come from the novel Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi."

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Luis Suarez, the controversial Uruguayan soccer player facing a lengthy ban after appearing to bite Giorgio Chiellini in a World Cup match with Italy, is defending his actions. According to The Guardian, Uruguay's football association claims that images of Chiellini's shoulder have been Photoshopped to make the alleged bite marks seem worse than they are. Suarez fell to the ground clutching his teeth after the incident, while Chiellini pulled down his shirt in protest.

Although the referee didn't spot Suarez's lunge on Chiellini at the time, governing body FIFA has charged the Uruguayan player over the incident; he is likely to be thrown out of the World Cup at the very least, and could face a much longer ban from international soccer....

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Volvo answers a question I had about CarPlay and Android Auto:

Volvo Cars will also include Apple CarPlay interoperability in all new models based on the new Scalable Product Architecture. This will make it possible for Volvo car drivers to connect the most widely used smartphone platforms directly to their car’s touch screen display.

9to5Mac reports that Honda and Hyundai systems will be cross-compatible as well.