Today, I turned on my ceiling fan for the first time in months. I then watched as hundreds of furry spiders were flung across the room at high speed, in a circular pattern. FML
Who the hell is Microsoft Sam? OMG is that Clippy's real name?!?
Today, I was declined a sales position at a local store. As I headed out, I heard the interviewer telling a colleague, "Christ. That kid had less charisma than Microsoft Sam." FML
When footage of a flying hoverboard first emerged last month, many thought it was fake, because the relatively tiny device appears to be breaking the laws of physics. But the "Flyboard Air" from inventor Franky Zapata is real, spectacular and just se...
Google Fiber is available in Nashville, Tennessee, its fifth metro area, but for now is only installed in four apartment and condominium buildings, The Tennesseanreported yesterday.
"The milestone comes 15 months after Google Fiber announced Nashville as a new market," the paper said. "In the meantime, existing providers AT&T and Comcast have upped their own fiber rollout in Middle Tennessee and have begun offering the ultra-fast connection to area homes and apartments."
A Google Fiber official said it intends to "connect the lion's share of Nashville," including single-family homes, multi-dwelling units, and small businesses, but it's not clear when that will happen. A list of the four buildings where Google Fiber is already installed can be found here, along with a list of many more buildings where "fiber is coming." The four Nashville buildings where Fiber is installed have a little more than 1,110 housing units combined.
If your Windows computer is running Apple's QuickTime media player, now would be a good time to uninstall it.
The Windows app hasn't received an update since January, and security researchers from Trend Micro said it won't receive any security fixes in the future. In a blog post published Thursday, the researchers went on to say they know of at least two reliable QuickTime vulnerabilities that threaten Windows users who still have the program installed.
"We’re not aware of any active attacks against these vulnerabilities currently," they wrote. "But the only way to protect your Windows systems from potential attacks against these or other vulnerabilities in Apple QuickTime now is to uninstall it."
April 29th, 2016: This comic is inspired by a really great conversation I had at the Alaska Robotics Comics Camp last week! We were camping where there was no internet or cell service at all, and so we couldn't verify whether or not Kokomo is a real place (short answer: IT'S COMPLICATED). So all we could do was debate it, everyone trying to convince everyone else, and it was actually really really fun. It ended up on the list of "things to look up when we have internet access again". I would like to specifically thank Dylan Meconis and Jon Klassen for their in-depth Kokomo research once we returned to civilization!! We are still arguing it over email; life is full of challenges
The Longquan (Dragon Spring) Temple in Beijing is spreading Buddhist teachings with the help of an adorable, two-foot-tall monk. His name is Xian'er, and he's a robot with a touchscreen chest. The temple teamed up with a dozen local tech and culture...
Just when you thought you'd seen it all when it comes to pizza, one innovative pizzeria created this: a pizza box made of pizza, with a pizza inside it.
It comes from Vinnie's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, and is constructed of three separate pieces — the box, which is made of a fluffy Sicilian slice, the hard cover, which is made of garlic bread, and a smaller, normal pizza inside.
"I get ticked off when people ask for a box when they're eating here," Sean Berthiaume, one of the store owners, told BuzzFeed regarding the pizza's inspiration. "There's no point, it fills the the trash can. So I though, what if you could just eat the box?"
The store announced the new off-menu item April 27 on Twitter, and people freaked the hell out.
Lapland Northern Lights
Early spring in the northern hemisphere is good season for
aurora
hunters.
Near an equinox Earth's magnetic field is
oriented to favor interactions with the solar wind that trigger the
alluring glow of the
northern lights.
On March 28/29 the skies over Kaunispää
Hill, Lapland, Finland did not disappoint.
That night's expansive auroral curtains are captured in this
striking panoramic view that covers a full 360 degrees.
Local skywatchers were mesmerized by bright displays lasted
throughout the dark hours, shimmering with colors easily
visible to the naked eye.
And if you're whiskey drinkers like us, you may also like the iconic staple: the Manhattan. Since we work hard in the drink's namesake city, we felt it was our job — nay, our DUTY — to drink hard to figure out where we could find the best one.
Before we start on our journey, what IS a Manhattan?
History says the drink was born at the Manhattan Club in New York City in the early 1870s. Sadly, the place closed down and we couldn't try it out. For reference, though, the drink consists of:
• Whiskey
• Vermouth
• A dash of bitters
• Some sort of cherry as a garnish
Basically, it is a damn fine drink.
Dibrova / Getty Images
Since it's almost impossible to drink at every single bar in Manhattan (hey, maybe for a different post?), we enlisted the help of one of the city's premier bartenders: Karen Fu, currently of Llama Inn (which unfortunately isn't in Manhattan, but we digress). We took Karen's recommendations and set off on a daylong boozefest:
It wouldn't be a Dyson product if it didn't look distinctly different from other hair dryers
3 more images in gallery
British technology company Dyson, best known for its futuristic takes on vacuum cleaners and hand dryers, has turned its attention to the humble hair dryer—but it won't be cheap.
In fact, the device (full name: Dyson Supersonic) will cost £299 when it goes on sale in the UK in early June. That price tag is around twice as much as hair dryers used in high-end salons.
Dyson claimed to have invested £50 million and four years of research into development of the new technology, making it quieter and—apparently—less damaging to hair. The resulting device has a motor that the company said was eight times faster—and a lot smaller—than those used in the most popular hair dryers sold in Japan, where we're told 96 percent of the population owns one. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, Dyson's hair dryer will go on sale in Japan first.
An insane amount of money went into building it...and not everyone is sure how it was spent.
When Denver International Airport opened on Feb. 28, 1995, construction had fallen 16 months behind schedule, and $2 billion over budget. The final cost of the Denver airport was $4.8 billion, which is a lot of money. People wondered what it had gone toward. The airport itself is 35,000 acres, which is almost twice as large as the next biggest U.S. airport.
Thinkstock
The airport's runways look like a swastika.
An aerial view of the runways at Denver International Airport shows that they resemble the shape of a swastika. This is not a typical formation for an airport's runways. However, an airport representative has said that the runways are designed that way so that they can be used simultaneously no matter the weather condition, since none of the runways overlap. She told the U.K.'s The Telegraph, "We think the shape looks like a pinwheel."
Google Maps
The airport's dedication stone has imagery from a secret society.
The airport was dedicated on March 19, 1994, and a capstone was placed inside the airport to memorialize it. This dedication stone displays the Masonic symbol of a compass with a capital G inside. Underneath the symbol, the "New World Airport Commission" is credited with helping fund and build the airport.
What is the "New World Airport Commission"? Airport officials have said that it was a commission for the new "world airport,' but the wording calls to mind the New World Order conspiracy. New World Order conspiracists believe that there has been a small group of powerful people working together in secret throughout history toward establishing a single all-powerful global government.
The Masonic symbol ties into this conspiracy. Freemasonry is a very real secret fraternal society that's allegedly the largest in the world and may have existed as far back as the Middle Ages. Since this secret society has had many powerful members throughout history, people have long been suspicious that the Freemasons were looking to seize power. Perhaps they are involved in trying to establish the New World Order?
Not helping things: Conspiracy theorists have pointed out that if you add up the numbers in the airport's dedication date, you get 33, which is reportedly the highest level of Freemasonry. More helpful: This only works if you leave out "March," making it kind of a stretch.
During Monday night's 6–1 loss to the Washington Capitals, Philadelphia Flyers fans threw promotional bracelets onto the ice, earning their team a delay of game penalty.
The bracelets started raining down in the third period after Flyers right winger Pierre-Edouard Bellemare was ejected for checking Capitals defenseman Dmitry Orlov — who was pelted with a few bracelets himself.
The Flyers are down 0-3 in the series and are one loss away from being swept by the Capitals in the first round of the NHL playoffs.
Flyers right winger Wayne Simmonds tried to tell fans to cool it. He even stood with Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals on the ice, waving their hands in disbelief.
Landing a vehicle as large as a Dragon spacecraft on Mars would be unprecedented. (credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX announced an audacious plan on Wednesday to land an approximately 6,000kg spacecraft on the surface of Mars. This simple declaration from the uber-popular rocket company drew a ton of questions from all quarters, and Ars spoke to a range of people across the space industry to get some answers. How big a milestone would this be? Can SpaceX do it? Is the plan realistic? And why does Rice play Texas, anyway? (OK, we didn't actually try to figure out that last one.)
Is this really a big deal?
Oh, heavens, yes. No private company has ever launched a significant, independently financed expedition into deep space, let alone all the way to Mars. In fact, only two world powers have ever softly landed spacecraft on Mars. The United States has done so half a dozen times, and the Soviet Union did it once with Mars 3 in 1971—although the vehicle failed after sending back just 15 seconds of data. And all previous soft landings have been relatively small and light; SpaceX is talking about landing a Dragon weighing about 6,000kg on the surface of Mars. The previous landing heavyweight was Curiosity, at 900kg. Soft-landing a 6,000kg object on Mars would be a stunning achievement for NASA or any government-backed space agency. For a private company, it's unheard of.
Can they do it?
Why not? In just the last six months, SpaceX has successfully launched and then recovered the first stages of multiple Falcon 9 rockets, first landing them on the ground and then later landing on an autonomous drone ship. SpaceX is known for making bold promises, and—eventually—delivering on them. However, the company has missed deadlines before, and making the 2018 launch window to Mars will be a real challenge.
Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, paid a visit to the Perimeter for Theoretical Physicals in Waterloo earlier today. There, he encountered a sassy reporter who seemingly didn't expect him to know much about quantum computing. But, as it turns...
A remake of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is apparently in the works after the official Call of Duty Twitter account replied to a 16-month-old tweet with two emoji: pile of poo and jeans.
In December 2014, Angus Varderslott announced that he would "literally shit [his] pants" with excitement if he ever learned of a Call of Duty 4 remaster. Call of Duty 4 was a landmark title. It was the first Call of Duty game set in the present day, after a series of World War II-themed titles, and it set the standard for "cinematic" first-person shooters. While these days the series is derided as being rather formulaic and linear, the first Modern Warfare title held genuine surprises, with an extraordinarily tense sniper mission in the ruins of Pripyat (the Ukrainian city abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster) and the death of one of the player characters in the aftermath of a nuclear strike.
The tweet reply suggests that Varderslott had better take a trip to the laundry.
Today, after a 2-hour meeting, I rushed to take an urgent dump. Unbeknownst to me, my urine was not hitting the porcelain bowl, but rather the underside of the lid. As it pooled around the pedestal, it soaked my pants, underwear, and when I stood up to button my pants, it got on my shirt too. FML
Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of the biotech company BioViva, claims that her body's cells are 20 years younger after testing her company’s age-reversing gene therapy on herself.
The 45-year-old Seattle-area woman, who has no scientific or medical training, underwent the experimental treatment last September in an undisclosed clinic in Colombia. The unorthodox, overseas trial, which was designed to skirt US federal regulations, prompted the resignation of one of the company’s scientific advisors. George Martin, of the University of Washington, quit after telling MIT Technology Review, "This isa big problem. I am very upset by what is happening. I would urge lots of preclinical studies.”
Though details of the fast-tracked trial are unpublished, Parrish says it involved intravenous infusions of an engineered virus. That infectious germ carried the genetic blueprints for an enzyme called telomerase, which is found in humans. When spread to the body’s cells, the enzyme generally extends the length of DNA caps on the ends of chromosomes, which naturally wear down with cellular aging. In a 2012 mouse study, Spanish researchers found that similar treatment could extend the lifespan of the rodents by as much as 20 percent.
Fun fact that this article mentioning Cannibal Corpse made me remember: My cousin's band opened for Cannibal Corpse on one of their European tours. I would help translate their lyrics into English every now and then. They were called Defleshed.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
If you're not one of the five people who watched it, Southland was a TNT drama about the lives of a bunch of cops in Los Angeles ... except for the brief, magical moment when it was about Shaquille O'Neal talking about boobs.
It turns out Shaq was a big fan of the show and wished he could be in it. That's when he presumably said to himself, "Wait a minute, I'm Shaq! I can do anything!" So he called the producers and introduced himself as a police officer (which Shaq actually is), then sent them pics of himself dressed in his uniform and telling them he wanted to shoot next week. They obeyed, of course.
Dan Steinberg/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
If you get this photo and a single order in your email, you do it, whatever it is.
They didn't even bother making the scene look like it wasn't shoehorned in. We'll just go ahead and walk you through the scene that was created especially for Dr. Shaquille O'Neal, Ed.D. A fancy-pants funeral is beginning, and the hearse is a horse-drawn carriage. A couple of Southland mainstays, Officers Crenshaw and Lucero, are commenting on how the "mourners" are probably only there to get something out of the dead guy when fucking Shaq pulls up.
Shaq's character, Earl Dayton, is a cop who went to the academy with Crenshaw, and by happy coincidence, everybody has arrest warrants for someone at this freaking funeral. Earl's wife's boss apparently just got quite the enormous boob job, which everyone shrugs off as normal. After the pleasantries are over, Earl and Crenshaw show each other their respective arrest warrants, promise to keep an eye out for the others' guy, and that should be it. Shaq has to get the last word in, though, and tells Lucero to stop using so much hair gel as he drives away singing "La Bamba" to nobody in particular.
Dime Mag Wait, is he arresting himself? Since he's Shaq, we're pretty sure he can do that too.
It should be noted that Shaq loves this show for how realistic its portrayal of police work is, so maybe keep an eye out at the next funeral you're attending.
#1. A Whole Bunch Of Big-Name Celebrities Are Really, Really Into Metal Music
Christopher Polk/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
You'd think that as stressful as A-list actors claim their multi-million-dollar lives are, their music choices would be "A River Flows In You" on repeat until the end of time. Instead, a whole bunch of them are into metal, a genre once dominated by large guys wearing filthy T-shirts and even filthier beards.
Jim Carrey, for example, is a huge fan of trash metal -- in particular, Napalm Death:
A death metal band called Cannibal Corpse (exactly as hardcore as it sounds) had a cameo in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and of course that was completely Carrey's idea. He even changed the film's production schedule to accommodate the band, then quoted their newest songs to them when they met. The most impressive part is that this was before Bob Dole made them more famous by condemning them. Finally, Carrey's daughter married (and later divorced) the lead singer of Blood Money, which we'd think would make Carrey frown a little bit at metal singers, but nope.
On the lighter side of metal, Benicio del Toro is such a big Iron Maiden nerd that when he found out a production assistant on Guardians Of The Galaxy was the daughter of Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith, he freaked out and asked to take pictures with her. We wouldn't be surprised if he reverted to his Usual Suspects gibberish speak from the excitement.
Marvel Studios He reportedly sent the photos to a friend, who probably wondered "Why does Gary Glitter have my number?"
Then we've got Jada Pinkett Smith. She formed her own nu metal band, Wicked Wisdom, which has played at Ozzfest, jammed with hardcore punk band Bury Your Dead, and opened for ... uh, Britney Spears. But still. Smith is also a huge fan of Mastodon, Crowbar, and Skindred, which honestly sound more like names her son would give his cats than they do metal bands.
As a parting treat to you, here's Smith and Wicked Wisdom's most recent single:
The comparisons to "Getting' Jiggy Wit It" must get tiresome.
Deep inside us all behind our political leanings, our moral codes and our private biases, there is a cause so colossally stupid, we surprise ourselves with how much we care. Whether it's toilet paper position, fedoras on men or Oxford commas, we each harbor a preference so powerful we can't help but proselytize to the world. In this episode of the Cracked podcast, guest host Soren Bowie is joined by Cody Johnston, Michael Swaim and comedian Annie Lederman to discuss the most trivial things we will argue about until the day we die. Get your tickets here!
When footage of a flying hoverboard first emerged last month, many thought it was fake, because the relatively tiny device appears to be breaking the laws of physics. But the "Flyboard Air" from inventor Franky Zapata is real, spectacular and just se...
The Longquan (Dragon Spring) Temple in Beijing is spreading Buddhist teachings with the help of an adorable, two-foot-tall monk. His name is Xian'er, and he's a robot with a touchscreen chest. The temple teamed up with a dozen local tech and culture...
Lapland Northern Lights
Early spring in the northern hemisphere is good season for
aurora
hunters.
Near an equinox Earth's magnetic field is
oriented to favor interactions with the solar wind that trigger the
alluring glow of the
northern lights.
On March 28/29 the skies over Kaunispää
Hill, Lapland, Finland did not disappoint.
That night's expansive auroral curtains are captured in this
striking panoramic view that covers a full 360 degrees.
Local skywatchers were mesmerized by bright displays lasted
throughout the dark hours, shimmering with colors easily
visible to the naked eye.
Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, paid a visit to the Perimeter for Theoretical Physicals in Waterloo earlier today. There, he encountered a sassy reporter who seemingly didn't expect him to know much about quantum computing. But, as it turns...
