The very convenient truth about beer is that, if used as directed, it will often get you drunk. Thank god. There are so many great things that don't get you drunk: socks, coffee, shuffleboard, you name it; if its name isn't "alcohol," it doesn't get you drunk no matter how otherwise excellent it may be.
Youth and startup success are practically synonymous.
It's no secret that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg all became successful in their 20s.
But research gathered by Babson College and Baruch College suggests that the best time to start a business is in your late 30s.
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2013 United States Report, entrepreneurs who start their businesses in their late 30s have the best shot at success.
The advantages: increased confidence, contacts, and opportunities.
You can see it in the below infographic from Clarity and Column Five Media.
SEE ALSO: How 14 Things That Happened To You In Childhood Shape You As An Adult
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Thinking of the perfect wedding present is no simple task.
Gifting the newlyweds a fresh set of silverware or kitchen appliance is beyond cliché, so sometimes it's best to take it back to the classic liquid gift.
Redditor Drowsy_jimmy created a gift that not only gets the party started and delivers a timeless video, but also captures Aunt Suzie taking a pull of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky
Simply put, a GoPro taped to a handle of booze is a great way to start a wedding party and a better way to remember what you'll inevitably forget.
From Jankenpopp and Zombectro, Windows 93: a playfully surreal online sim of a computer operating system that is aesthetically similar to Windows 95. As you can see, the desktop includes “Cat Explorer,” which includes some excellent bookmarks.
[via Waxy.org]
The latest version of Apple's OS automatically syncs your files to iCloud Drive, even files you choose to store locally. Apple encrypts your data, both in transit and in iCloud, with a key it knows. Apple, of course, complies with all government requests: FBI warrants, subpoenas, and National Security Letters -- as well as NSA PRISM and whatever-else-they-have demands.
EDITED TO ADD (10/28): See comments. This seems to be way overstated. I will look at this again when I have time, probably tomorrow.
EDITED TO ADD (10/28): This is a more nuanced discussion of this issue. At this point, it seems clear that there is a lot less here than described in the blog post below.
EDITED TO ADD (10/29): There is something here. It only affects unsaved documents, and not all applications. But the OS's main text editor is one of them. Yes, this feature has been in the OS for a while, but that's not a defense. It's both dangerous and poorly documented.
Meet B4RM4N, a smart connected shaker to pretend that you actually know how to mix cocktails. B4RM4N connects to your phone using Bluetooth and will tell you exactly what to do to make the perfect cocktail. And the best part is that you get feedback in real time to tell you precisely when to stop pouring. B4RM4N will cost you between $89 and $159 depending on how early you back the… Read More
There’s new Apple hardware out, and the people at iFixit are once again doing what they do best: disassembling the living crap out of it and posting pictures. This time, they’ve carefully torn down a new Retina iMac into its component pieces, and the images are illuminating.
The Retina iMac’s construction is essentially identical to the previous non-Retina iMac. There are no screws here: the thin aluminum body is glued to the display with a long strip of custom-cut adhesive. Prying that away gives you access to the machine’s internals, but then you’re left with the conundrum of how to get the machine back together when you’re done—the factory adhesive strip isn’t very reusable once it’s been removed.
Once inside, there are plenty of user-replaceable parts—the iMac’s CPU isn’t soldered and can be swapped out if desired, as can the hard disk drive, PCIe SSD, and RAM (the RAM is actually designed to be replaced through a small external port, so you don’t have to tear the computer apart to add more memory). The Radeon R9-class GPU is attached directly to the logic board, so upgrading that after the fact is out of the question.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
When it comes to finding mates, priorities vary widely by state.
The new book "Dataclysm," which uses data to examine human trends, shows what each state prioritizes when it comes to sex and love.
Somewhat surprisingly, states that are politically conservative — such as Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming — tend to prioritize sex over love.
Check out this visualization from the book, which maps answers to the question, "What's more important to you right now, sex or love?":
Ohio seems to be the outlier in the US. It's the only state that firmly prioritizes love over sex.
Most states are somewhere in the middle, but states in the north-central area of the US seem to be firmly on the side of sex.
Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid and author of "Dataclysm," explains in the book:
In fact, the explanation is rather banal: If you are looking for people to have sex with in a place like Pierre, South Dakota, your local options are limited. So you try a dating site to find what you want. It's simple selection bias in our data ...
Basically, because people living in certain areas of the country might be more likely to join dating sites than others, this data doesn't come from a representative sample of Americans.
Rudder also notes, however, that he's seen this trend again and again in OkCupid data — the north central and western US identifies as more sexually open, adventurous, and aggressive despite some states' conservative reputation.
Charts reprinted from "Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking." Copyright © 2014 by Christian Rudder. Published by Crown Publishers, an imprint of Random House LLC.
SEE ALSO: CHARTS: Guys Like Women In Their Early 20s Regardless Of How Old They Get
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As with many health habits, smoking rates vary from city to city.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, working with state health agencies, routinely gathers data on Americans' health habits and risks in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey program. The CDC recently released data from 2011 for almost 200 metro areas and cities across the US.
One of the risk factors the CDC asks survey respondents about is smoking. In their data release, the CDC defines current cigarette smokers as "respondents who reported they had smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime and, at the time of the interview, smoked every day or some days."
This map uses the 2011 data and shows the concentration of current smokers in each metro area:
Northern Utah and southern Idaho are home to the metro areas with the lowest proportion of smokers. The big Californian cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area also have a smaller proportion of smokers than other metros. Meanwhile, the South and Midwest have quite a few smokers.
Here are the ten cities with the highest concentration of smokers:
And here are the ten cities with the lowest concentration of smokers:
READ MORE: Watch The US Slowly But Surely Become A Nation Of Nonsmokers
SEE ALSO: Here's The Math Behind The CDC's Predictions About How Bad The Ebola Epidemic Could Get
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NPR producer Rebecca Hersher has seen the world's somewhat-heightened Ebola security protocols first hand
Hersher, who NPR says reported on Ebola in Liberia for the past two weeks, returned home on Tuesday and was (sort of) screened for the disease.
She tweeted each step of the process, from Liberia's Roberts International Airport to the security agents in Dulles, Virginia.
It begins at Liberia's airport, where she was handed a questionnaire seeking answers about her contact with Ebola, washed her hands with chlorinated water and had her temperature taken to check for fever. Read more...
More about Us World, Us, World, Air Travel, and EbolaJvitakAnd in WTF news...
When Nigel, an African grey parrot who was missing for four years, was reunited with his caretaker, the bird was chattering in Spanish, not the British accent he had when he disappeared. (The Daily Breeze)
Italy is no longer in a recession, thanks to its black market.
Because the European Union changed the way it calculates GDP to include illegal revenue from things like underground alcohol sales, drugs, and prostitution, Italy found out Wednesday that its 0.1% GDP decline in the first quarter of 2014 was actually flat— or 0.0% — bringing the economy officially out of recession.
The new data confirmed a 0.2% decline in the second quarter, but GDP needs to contract in two consecutive quarters to be in recession.
According to AFP, "Black, or undeclared, market revenues are also expected to help reduce Italy's debt to GDP ratio, which stands at a 132 percent, more than twice the EU ceiling of 60 percent."
SEE ALSO: CITI: Here's What The World's Big Economies Will Do In The Next 4 Years
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A giant database of intercepted Snapchat photos and videos has been released by hackers who have been collecting the files for years. Shocked users of notorious chat forum 4chan are referring to the hack as "The Snappening," noting that this is far bigger in scale than the iCloud hacks that recently targeted celebrities.
Underground photo trading chatrooms have been filled in recent weeks with hints that something big was coming. Last night it finally arrived: A third-party Snapchat client app has been collecting every single photo and video file sent through it for years, giving hackers access to a 13GB library of Snapchats that users thought had been deleted.
Users of 4chan have downloaded the files, and are currently in the process of creating a searchable database allowing people to search the stolen images by Snapchat username.
The database of Snapchat files posted online was hosted on viralpop.com, a fake competition website that installed malicious software on the computers of users trying to take part. That site has now been suspended and taken offline, although thousands of people have already downloaded the collection of Snapchats.
This is what the collection of intercepted Snapchat photos and videos looked like:
One news report claims that the hacked third-party Snapchat client was Snapsave. The popular Android app allowed users to keep Snapchat photos and videos, which automatically delete when viewed through the official Snapchat app. However, Snapchat's improved security meant that the app eventually stopped working, as the company began encrypting photos and videos.
But an anonymous photo trader contacted Business Insider to inform us that the site affected was actually SnapSaved.com. The service acted as a web client for the Snapchat app that allowed users to receive photos and videos, and save them online. What its users didn't realize was that the site was quietly collecting everything that passed through it, storing incriminating Snapchats on a web server, with the usernames of senders attached.
This is what SnapSaved looked like in Oct. 2013:
SnapSaved disappeared several months ago. Now the URL redirects to a Danish e-commerce site that sells set-top boxes and television antennas. The majority of the intercepted Snapchat photographs posted online featured overlaid messages in Danish.
4chan users claim that SnapSaved was indeed the source of the intercepted files:
We don't know whether the third-party Snapchat client, whether Snapsave or SnapSaved, was created with the purpose of intercepting images. It may have been the case that hackers accessed the servers of one of the sites, which had inadvertently stored the files, and rehosted the directory online.
4chan users claim that the collection of photos has a large amount of child pornography, including many videos sent between teenagers who believed the files would be immediately deleted after viewing. 50% of Snapchat's users are teenagers aged between 13 and 17.
Snapchat has a poor history when it comes to the security of users' data. In 2013 security researchers revealed that it was possible to find the phone number of any Snapchat user through the app. 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers leaked online on New Year's Day, and the company was forced to apologize. In Feb. 2014, hackers used Snapchat to send photos of fruit smoothies to thousands of people.
Business Insider reached out to Snapchat for comment on this story and we will update it when we hear back.
SEE ALSO: A New Snapchat Hack Sends Pictures Of Smoothies To People
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US-British scientist John O'Keefe and Norwegian scientists May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser won the Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for discovering an "inner GPS" that helps the brain navigate the world.
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You are a North American, and probably a male, and so you like bacon. Bacon good, you say, making that Tim Allen caveman face: Me like bacon. Me not want to eat unbacon food. Bacon make food better. Me put bacon on burger, in chocolate, around scallop. Me brush teeth with bacon toothpaste. Me make love to wife with bacon dick. Me like bacon!
From Alabama to Wyoming, craft breweries are making brews that blow the competition out of the water. Of course, everyone has their favorite home state beer, and opinions differ depending on who you ask.
We asked our friends at craft beer authority RateBeer.com to help us come up with the best beer in every state.
The majority of beers on this list are imperial stouts and IPAs, but higher ABV (alcohol by volume) beers seem to be trending in general. Did your favorite beer make the list?
Source: RateBeer
Source: RateBeer
Source: RateBeer
A former Reddit employee was holding a Reddit AMA about his termination from the company when the CEO of Reddit, Yishan Wong, stepped in to explain what really happened.
"I was fired," Reddit user (and former employee) Derhman writes.
When someone asked what, Derhman replies,
Officially: no reason. And I get this; I vaguely know how CA employment law works and that you limit your liability by not stating a reason. It's also really hard to work through in your mind.
The best theory I have is that, two weeks earlier, I raised concerns about donating 10% of ad revenue to charity. Some management likes getting feedback, some doesn't.
The reason I had concerns was that this was revenue, not income. That means you need ~10% margins to break even. This can be hard to do; Yahoo and Twitter don't. Salesforce does something similar, but it's more all-around, and in a way that promotes the product without risking the company's financials.
Wong immediately interjected with the following response (you can click for a larger image),
The next commenter replied with a simple "oh sh*t," which about sums it up.
Lesson learned: Don't hold an AMA about why you were fired from Reddit...on Reddit.
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First invented in 1903, the original Crayola box contained only eight colors, including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, and black. It sold for only a nickel.
A chart posted on Reddit shows how Crayola crayon colors have grown from eight basic hues to dozens in a little over 100 years.
Now, there are 120 colors in the Crayola color wheel. The names have evolved as well to include colors like “denim,” “screamin’ green,” “dandelion,” and “razzle dazzle rose.”
Stephen Von Worley, a visualization researcher at Data Pointed, created the visual crayon chronology with his pseudonymous friend who he calls "Velociraptor." They used Wikipedia’s list of Crayola colors and added the standard 16-count crayon box released in 1935 for schools to create the beautiful graphic.
The pair also figured out that the average growth rate of crayon colors was 2.56% annually, meaning that the number of colors doubles every 28 years.
So by 2050, our future children could be coloring with 330 different colored crayons.
You can see an interactive version of the so-called “Crayon-Bow” at Von Worley’s Data Pointed website that allows you to scroll over to see the crayon names.
SEE ALSO: These Gorgeous Postcards Are Some Of The First Color Photographs Of America
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LinkedIn is perhaps the most overlooked social network. But overall it is actually more popular than Twitter, generally considered the number two social network in the U.S. The latest data shows a higher proportion of U.S. adults on the internet (22%) have used LinkedIn, compared to the percentage who have used Twitter.
LinkedIn is a valuable platform for brands interested in its highly educated, relatively mature, professional audience.
In a new report from BI Intelligence, we unpack data from over a dozen sources to understand how social media demographics are still shifting.
Access The Full Report And Its 20 Charts By Signing Up For A Free Trial >>
Here are a few of the key takeaways from the BI Intelligence report:
The report is full of charts (over 20 charts) and data that can be downloaded and put to use.
In full, the report:
For full access to all BI Intelligence reports, briefs, and downloadable charts on the digital media industry, sign up for a free trial.
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NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do
Perhaps we should've gathered from iOS 8.1's expected launch date of October 20, but Apple's iPad—which was conspicuously missing from the company's September iPhone/Watch event—will be hitting the spotlight around that time as well.
Actually, reports Re/code’s John Paczkowski, it will slide in on October 16, putting its debut slightly ahead of the rollout for the mobile software. It also fits with Apple's pattern of October iPad announcements.
Let's consider what could be heading our way very, very soon.
Anticipation is high for a next-generation iPad Air, as well as a new version of the iPad mini. Rumors suggest there will be a new 12-inch version joining the 9.7-inch and 7.9-inch models, as well as the same Touch ID fingerprint scanner—the latter of which fuels speculation that the tablet will be capable of Apple Pay, the company's new mobile payments system.
It's a strange thought—who would carry around a big tablet to pay for things in stores?—and it would require a Near Field Communication chip, like the iPhones 6 have. Given that, there's a chance that the tablets could merely hook into Apple Pay to pay for online shopping.
Apple has also stayed curiously mum about its desktop and laptop offerings, so CEO Tim Cook and his crew could dedicate some time to chat about Macs, as well as OS X Yosemite, the desktop operating system Apple introduced, but still hasn't publicly launched.
However, the company just released the first candidate for Golden Master, one of the last few pre-release versions before the desktop software goes into wide release.
See also: Mac OS X Yosemite Takes Another Step Closer To Launch
Those computers and final desktop software will be key to the iOS-to-OS X integration that Apple promised when it announced its new iPhones.
That integration—designed to make switching between docs, webpages and more on iPhones, iPads and Macs easy and seamless—forms a cornerstone for features like iCloud Drive, the document syncing tool between Apple's mobile devices and computers. Until now, though, such features have been essentially half-baked. (And apparently kind of buggy.)
See also: Why Apple's iPad May Have Peaked
Hopefully iOS 8.1, the latest version of its iPhone and iPad operating system, will cure whatever glitches may still remain. The update is also expected to flip the "on" switch that officially grants access to Apple Pay functionality, as well as appease people upset about losing the Camera Roll that iOS 8.0 eliminated. There are strong suggestions that the new software will restore the familiar iPhone photo folder.
Fingers-crossed that this version doesn't kill features like some of its software predecessors.
As for the tablets that will be the foundation for Apple's next event, there's a lot riding on whatever the button-down and jeans–wearing executives have to show us. iPads have seen sales decline in recent years, so there's plenty of pressure on Apple to deliver announcements that reignite the public's appetite for new ones. We don't have long to wait now before we know whether a fire has been lit, or has in fact burned out.
Lead photo by Max Herman for Shutterstock.com
JvitakUmm.... wow.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Thanks to a couple of enterprising (or thoughtless) security experts and hackers presenting at Derbycon in Louisville, Kentucky, last week, BadUSB is now out in the wild — Or at least downloadable on GitHub. It's enough to make your stomach turn and certainly leave you wondering: How do I avoid BadUSB?
To know how to stop BadUSB, the seemingly unstoppable USB stick hack that can turn a USB memory stick into a system-lethal weapon, it's instructive to understand what it is and isn’t. BadUSB is not malware. It's not a file you can download from email or off an infected device that can then run rampant on your computer and network. BadUSB is, as the name suggests, a bad USB drive that has been altered to connect to a computer in ways that normal USBs do not. Read more...
More about Security, Malware, Usb, Tech, and GadgetsBeef cuts don’t have to be intimidating.
Whether it’s chuck, brisket, rib, loin, round, plate, or flank, the most important thing you need to know is how to cook it.
The experts at the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association created a chart of all the different kinds of beef cuts. It’s coded by what part of the cow it comes from and includes the recommended cooking methods like grilling, broiling, stir-fry, slow cooking, roast, skillet, or skillet-to-oven.
SEE ALSO: How To Pick The Perfect Cut Of Beef
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Ebola is ravaging West Africa.
Close to 7,200 people in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone have been diagnosed with the virus; nearly 3,400 have already died. Another 4,000 West African children have been orphaned since the virus broke out in Dec. 2013. These shocking numbers, along with the recent news that the US diagnosed its first Ebola, have spurned the question: Why doesn't the world simply seal the borders of the hardest-hit countries?
Put simply, preventing people from entering or leaving the three countries where Ebola is raging will do nothing to stop the virus from spreading. On the contrary, cordoning off Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone would likely make the outbreak worse.
Aside from being "simple and wrong," quick fixes like isolation will make it even harder to get help into the countries that need it, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden told reporters on Thursday. All isolation will do, said Frieden, is "enable the disease to spread more widely" in the most affected countries, which will in turn create "more potential for it to spread elsewhere and become more of a problem."
The longer the outbreak goes on, the more opportunities there will be for the virus to jump from the region. The first priority should be to focus all resources on containing the outbreak, not sealing off the area that needs the most help.
One of the biggest obstacles currently facing the three countries where Ebola is raging is a lack of people power.
This is the first time Ebola has broken out in West Africa, and most people there (many of whom lack access even to basic medical care) don't know how to diagnose it or what to do when someone becomes ill.“The whole country has been hit by something for which it was not ready,” Dr. Amara Jambai, director of prevention and control at Sierra Leone’s health ministry, told the New York Times.
Making it even harder for potential sources of aid to reach the country certainly won't help.
Affected countries need more health workers trained to organize efforts to locate, isolate, and treat all the infected patients. Then they need more people to investigate the network of people sick patients may have infected. Potential contacts must be monitored for 21 days, the total period of time someone can carry Ebola before showing symptoms.
In Sierra Leone, Ebola patients in many of the country's cities linger in holding centers guarded by police, where barely-trained staff wearing little to no protective gear provide the best care they can. International aid to the area has been too little and too late.
In Nigeria, the opposite has happened: As of last week, Africa's most populous country — and one of its major trade and transit centers — succeeded in containing the outbreak. With the help of support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the CDC, the World Health Organization, Unicef, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Committee for the Red Cross, the country's top doctors executed a quick and concentrated effort to contain the virus. Nigeria is also wealthier than the three main countries affected by the virus, and unlike in those countries, its outbreak began with a single person who flew into the country in July.
The people of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia need more attention, not less. They need to make sure their economies, already hollowed out by the crisis, do not grind to a complete halt. They need more support, including trained health workers; supplies like gloves, masks, and disinfectants; and money for treatment facilities.
The only way to do that is with a concerted, international effort.
The CDC advises Americans traveling to West African countries affected by Ebola to take several precautions to avoid infection, including avoiding contact with wild animals, staying out of hospitals where Ebola patients are being treated, and not touching the blood or body fluids of the infected, or the bodies of those who have died from Ebola.
West African airports, meanwhile, are routinely screening travelers, both by inquiring about their exposure to Ebola and checking for fever. The CDC is helping with those efforts. In the US, the CDC has reminded airlines that people can legally deny boarding to a passenger who is visibly ill. (Ebola patients are not contagious until they have symptoms.)
Officials have also asked workers in airports and on airlines to be on guard.
"We've provided guidance to pilots, flight attendants and others who are responsible for staffing our transportation infrastructure to ensure that if they notice individuals who are exhibiting symptoms... that the proper authorities are notified," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Wednesday.
The governments of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have, of course, also taken whatever steps they can to reduce the virus' spread, including limiting mass gatherings, instituting screenings at major points of travel, quarantining communities acutely affected by Ebola, and visiting homes to search for people who've been infected.
In this context, completely sealing the countries' borders would be an ill-proportioned response to a manageable level of risk — and one that would very likely make the outbreak even worse.
READ MORE: We Screwed Up On Ebola, And Now The Crisis Is Getting Much Worse
SEE ALSO: 12 Alarming Numbers About The Ebola Crisis
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I visited Samsung's headquarters in South Korea earlier this year. I saw a lot of cool stuff, including one of the labs where the company performs rigorous testing on its smartphones.
One of the craziest things I saw in that facility was a robot shaped like a butt that was designed to "sit" on Samsung phones over and over again to test durability and bending. It's supposed to simulate someone sitting on his phone.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a photo or video of the butt robot.
But Samsung delivered today. In what can only be a response to the iPhone 6 plus "BendGate" hooplah, Samsung posted a video to its corporate blog showing how its butt robots test the durability of the company's upcoming Galaxy Note 4 smartphone.
Now you can see what I saw!
The GIFs:
And the video:
(Via Huffington Post, The Verge)
SEE ALSO: The iPhone 6 Plus review
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JvitakHoly shit. Read the bolded quote.
Hong Kongers have taken to the streets of the city, furious that Beijing will no longer allow citizens to democratically elect their political leaders.
Beijing is just as furious. If attempts to block images of protests on social media like Instagram and Weibo are any indication, it will not tolerate dissent for long.
Behind closed doors, Beijing has been more direct.
In a meeting with Hong Kong leaders in August, Beijing's liaison to the island, Zhang Xiaoming, told Hong Kong leaders, “The fact that you are allowed to stay alive, already shows the country's inclusiveness."
According to Reuters, everyone in the room was shocked. It was a clear sign that Xi Jinping's China — a China of political-corruption drives and power consolidated in the office of the president — had a new vision for Hong Kong.
Since rejoining China in 1997 after being under British rule, Hong Kong has been able to elect its own leaders. That was the deal then-Chinese President Deng Xiaoping made with the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Hong Kong, along with Macau, would exist under a specific political identity — it would become a "special administrative region" until 2047. SARs don't have to be socialist like the mainland, and they can maintain their own legal systems.
At least, that was the case until Xi became president of China.
Now Beijing is going back on that promise. In a white paper written this summer, mainland leaders said that Hong Kong's constitutional autonomy was not "an inherent power." Instead of allowing fully democratic elections, Beijing wants to select the candidates who can run in Hong Kong in 2017.
Autonomy is over. In other words, it's time to conform to the mainland, or else.
SEE ALSO: Why Hong Kong protesters are angry
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