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15 Mar 15:26

Gang Jailed For Total Of 34 Years For England's Biggest Ever Burglary

by Patrick Smith
Philip.paulsson

What a crazy story.

The gang responsible for pulling off the £14 million Hatton Garden jewel heist, the biggest burglary in English history, have been jailed for a total of 34 years.

The gang responsible for pulling off the £14 million Hatton Garden jewel heist, the biggest burglary in English history, have been jailed for a total of 34 years.

Met police

In total, six men were sentenced on Wednesday at Woolwich crown court, for their part in plotting a raid on the Hatton Garden Safety Deposit Box business in April 2015, in which cash, gold and jewellery was stolen.

Judge Cristopher Kinch said the burglary was "in a class of its own" and sentencing guidelines did not apply. Prosecutors had previously argued that the 10-year maximum sentence for conspiracy to burgle should be ignored.

The case captured the public's imagination as details emerged of the meticulously planned raid, executed over Easter weekend, in which the gang – with a combined aged of 442 at the time of the raid – used a diamond-tipped drill to bore through the vault wall so they could prise open 73 deposit boxes.

Only £3.7 million of the stolen goods were recovered – the location of the rest of it is unknown.

Three men who have been described as the raid's ringleaders – who had pleaded guilty to plotting the raid before a criminal trial began in September last year – were each jailed for seven years, of which they will serve half, minus 10 months already spent in prison on remand.

LINK: Here Are The Jewels At The Centre Of The Hatton Garden Heist Trial

(L-R) John Collins, Daniel Jones, Terry Perkins.

*John "Kenny" Collins, 75, who acted as the gang's driver and whose white Mercedes was tracked by police to the scene of the crime, the first step in identifying the gang.

* Daniel Jones, 61, who was described during the trial as "an eccentric Walter Mitty character" with a long criminal record who liked to wear his mother's dressing gown and a fez, had a copy of Forensics for Dummies at his home and later showed police where some of the stolen loot was buried in Edmonton cemetery.

* Terry Perkins, 67, a well-known career criminal who was jailed for 22 years for taking part in a separate £6 million theft in 1985.

According to reporters in court, both Jones and Perkins thanked the judge after being sentenced.

Brian Reader, 77, who was referred to in court as the "master" of the heist even though he lost heart and didn't enter the vault after the gang encountered difficulties gaining entry, was not in court because he is receiving treatment for prostate cancer in hospital.

Reader was jailed for his part the theft of gold bullion worth £26 million in 1983 and now is now due to be sentenced separately on 21 March if he's well enough.

James Scobie QC, acting for Reader, told the court on Monday that his client is gravely ill and may only have months to live, having suffered a stroke following two falls while at Belmarsh prison.

Reader's solicitor criticised the Met police for sending armed officers to stand guard over him while he waited for a scan while on release from Belmarsh prison on Saturday, Sky News reported.

Two men were also sentenced on Wednesday for their part in the raid, having been convicted after pleading not guilty at a long-running trial, which ended in January.

They are William Lincoln, 60, aka "Billy the Fish", and Carl Wood, 59, who were convicted of conspiracy to burgle and of conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property. Wood was jailed for six years, while Lincoln was sentenced to seven years.

Lastly, plumber Hugh Doyle, 49, who has been out on bail, was found guilty of converting of transferring criminal property, and was jailed for 21 months, suspended for two years.

LINK: This Is How The Hatton Garden Jewel Thieves Were Caught

(L-R) William Lincoln, Carl Wood, Hugh Doyle.

The mysterious thief known only as "Basil", who let the gang into the Hatton Garden building on the night of the raid, is still at large. There remains a £20,000 reward for information that leads to his arrest – Met police detectives admitted at a briefing in January that they had no leads.

Philip Evans QC, for the crown, told the sentencing hearing this week: "The identified perpetrators of this conspiracy, although senior in years, brought with them a great deal of experience in planning and executing sophisticated and serious acquisitive crime, to assist them in carrying out this, which had become known as the largest burglary in English legal history."

Met police

In October last year, Daniel Jones led detectives to the cemetery and showed them some of his share of the loot. Jones had written a letter to Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt from prison complaining that Scotland Yard had ignored his offer to show the spot them where jewels, gold and gemstones were hidden.

"I want to do the right thing and give it back," he wrote.

However, he failed to tell the police about the rest of the stolen goods, which were hidden in the same cemetery, in two bags stashed under a memorial stone for a family member.

Met police

After the sentencing, the Met released video evidence shown during the trial of officers uncovering stolen jewels that were stashed under a gravestone at Edmonton cemetery.

View Video ›

Met police

LINK: Everything You Need To Know About The £14 Million Hatton Garden Jewel Theft


15 Mar 14:22

Everything You Should Know About Sound

by Tim Urban
Philip.paulsson

TIL: neither animal(cats or dogs) can hear pitches as low as we can. In fact, neither animal can hear the lowest seven keys on the piano—who knew.

This post is part of Mini Week, where I’m posting a new mini post but not actually mini as it turns out every weekday this week.

___________

I’ve always been a little confused about sound. So for “Tuesday’s” “mini” post, I decided to do something about that.

We think of sound as something we hear—something that makes noise. But in pure physics terms, sound is just a vibration going through matter.

The way a vibration “goes through” matter is in the form of a sound wave. When you think of sound waves, you probably think of something like this:1

ezgif.com-optimize

But that’s not how sound waves work. A wave like that is called a transverse wave, where each individual particle moves up and down to create a snake situation.

A sound wave is more like an earthworm situation:2

earthworm

Like an earthworm, sound moves by compressing and decompressing. This is called a longitudinal wave. A slinky can do both kinds of waves:13

slinky

Sound starts with a vibration of some kind creating a longitudinal wave through matter. Check this out:4

red dot

That’s what sound looks like—except picture an expanding ripple of spheres doing that. In this animation, the sound wave is being generated by that vibrating grey bar on the left. The bar might be your vocal chords, a guitar string, or a waterfall continually pounding down into the river below. By looking at the red dots, you can see that even though the wave moves in one direction, each individual particle only moves back and forth, mimicking the vibration of the gray bar.

So instead of a curvy snake wave, sound is a pressure wave, which causes each piece of the air to be at either higher-than-normal pressure or lower-than-normal pressure. So when you see a snake-like illustration of a sound wave, it’s referring to the measure of pressure, not the literal path of movement of the particles:5

Wave

Sound waves can go through air, which is how we normally experience it. But it can also go through liquid2 or solid matter—much of the jolting that happens during an earthquake is the result of a huge sound wave whizzing through the earth (in that case, the movement of the fault is serving as the gray and red bars in the animations above).

How about the speed of sound? Well it depends on how quickly the pressure wave can move in a given medium. A medium that’s more fluid, like air, is highly compressible, so it takes longer for the wave to move, while water is far less compressible, so there’s less “give” to slow the wave down. It’s like two people holding an outstretched slinky between them—if one pushes their end toward the other person, the wave will take a little time to travel down the slinky before the other person feels it. But if the two people are holding a broomstick, when one pushes, the other feels it immediately, because the broomstick is much less compressible.6

So it makes sense that the speed of sound in air (768 mph / 1,234 kmph under normal conditions) is about four times slower than the speed of sound in water, which itself is about four times slower than the speed of sound through a solid like iron.

Back to us and hearing. Ears are an evolutionary innovation that allows us to register sound waves in the air around us and process them as information—without ears, most sound waves would be imperceptible to a human with only the loudest sounds registering as a felt vibration on our skin. Ears give us a magical ability to sense even slight sound waves in a way so nuanced, it can usually tell us exactly where the sound is coming from and what the meaning of it is. And it enables us to talk. The most important kind of human communication happens when our brains send information to other brains through complex patterns of air pressure waves. Have you ever stopped and thought about how incredible that is?

I was about to move on, but sorry, I can’t get over this. The next time you’re talking to someone, I want you to stop and think about what’s happening. Your brain has a thought. It translates that thought into a pattern of pressure waves. Then your lungs send air out of your body, but as you do that, you vibrate your vocal chords in just the right way and you move your mouth and tongue into just the right shapes that by the time the air leaves you, it’s embedded with a pattern of high and low pressure areas. The code in that air then spreads out to all the air in the vicinity, a little bit of which ends up in your friend’s ear, where it passes by their eardrum. When it does, it vibrates their eardrum in such a way as to pass on not only the code, but exactly where in the room it came from and the particular tone of voice it came with. The eardrum’s vibrations are transmitted through three tiny bones and into a little sac of fluid, which then transmits the information into electrical impulses and sends them up the auditory nerve and into the brain, where the information is decoded. And all of that happens in an eighth of a second, without any effort from either of you. Talking is a miracle.

Anyway—

The ear can discern many qualities of a sound it hears, but two of the most fundamental are pitch and loudness.

Pitch

Pitch is all about wavelength—i.e. how far apart the pressure waves are:7

Wave 2

The shorter the wavelength, the higher the pitch. Humans can hear frequencies as low as 20 Hz (which is a 56 ft /17 m long wave) and as high as 20,000 Hz (.7 in / 1.7 cm). As you age, you lose your ability to hear the highest pitches, so most of you probably hear nothing when you listen to the frequencies approaching 20,000 Hz (your dog will disagree). But you’ll have an easier time hearing the lowest part of the range.8 The reason you can feel low sounds, like low bass notes in music, is that the wavelength is so long that it actually takes 1/20th of a second for a full wave to pass your body (hence 20 Hz).34

Loudness

The loudness5 of a sound we hear is determined by the amplitude of the pressure waves. In the animation above, the high and low-pitched sounds depicted have the same loudness, because the pressure curves at the bottom of the animation are the same size vertically. Louder sounds have a larger oscillation between the low and high pressure sections of the wave—i.e. loud sounds have higher high-pressure and lower low-pressure parts than quiet sounds.

For sounds through the air on Earth’s surface, the average of the high-pressure and low-pressure parts of the wave is our normal atmospheric pressure—what we call 1 “atmosphere” of pressure. So a sound wave might have a high pressure component of 1.0001 atmospheres and a low pressure component of .9999 atmospheres, and a louder sound might be 1.01/.99 instead—but in both cases, the average of the two is 1 atmosphere.

We often measure loudness using a unit called the decibel (named after Alexander Graham Bell). If you want to be confused, read the Wikipedia page on decibels. It’s a super icky unit. And rather than bore us both by explaining it, let’s just talk about how we use decibels to measure sound.

The scale of loudness has a very tiny minimum. The faintest sounds are far softer than any human could hear—even softer than any of our finest scientific instruments could detect. But depending on where you are, sound has a hard maximum. The reason is that sound isn’t a thing in itself—it’s a pressure wave moving through a medium. And since, as we talked about, the average of the high and low pressure points of a sound wave has to be the normal pressure of the medium, loudness is limited by the fact that eventually, the low pressure point hits zero-pressure—a vacuum. Since the low pressure can’t go any lower, that’s the max amplitude of a sound wave on the Earth’s surface and the loudest a sound can be here.

The convenient thing about decibels (dB) is that the absolute faintest sound detectable to the human ear is, by definition, 0 dB—we call that “the threshold of hearing.” Scientists do their best to study sounds far down into the negative decibel scale and there are man-made rooms on Earth that register as low as -9.4 dB—where it’s so quiet you can hear the blood pumping through your own brain—but we can only hear sounds in the dB positives. The loudest a sustained sound can possibly be on Earth’s surface is 194 dB—which is when the amplitude of the sound wave is so intense that the low pressure part is a perfect vacuum (the wave alternates between double the normal atmospheric pressure and no air at all—not something you want to be present for). Let’s take a look at the full scale, starting with the really quiet.

One thing to keep in mind is that with decibels, each increase of 10 dB doubles the loudness. So 20 dB is twice as loud as 10 dB, 30 dB is four times as loud as 10 dB, and 80 dB is 128 times louder than 10 dB.69

Decibels Chart

The scale stops at 194 because there’s no such thing as a louder sound on Earth’s surface. But we can go beyond here in two ways:

1) Shock Waves

When enough energy is released to pass the 194 dB mark, it’s too much to create a sustained pressure wave because we’ve bottomed out on low pressure—but things still happen. Very, very intense things.

At 194 dB, there’s a maxed out wave alternating between double the normal pressure and a total vacuum—but once we get to 195 dB, the energy stops moving through the air and starts pushing the air outward with an expanding vacuum. The more dBs above 194 there are, the farther reaching and higher-impact that vacuum bubble will be. It expands outward as a rapidly-growing half-sphere:10

bomb 1

On the edge of the bubble is a barrier of super-compressed gas, and when this barrier sweeps over the land, it usually flattens whatever’s in its path:11

bomb 2

As the hemisphere expands, it loses energy and eventually dissipates. But if you found yourself in the path of a shock wave before that happened, you’d have a bad time. First, the impact of the super-compressed barrier would be like hitting a brick wall (in the same way and for the same reason falling on water from a bridge is like falling on concrete). Second, compressed air is hot. Third, it wouldn’t just hit all parts of your body, it would go through your body, and if it were powerful enough it could turn your bones to powder and your organs to soup.

Here are some famous 194dB+ events:

Saturn V launch: The Saturn V was a beast, and the sound waves from its launches were so intense that they could light grass on fire a mile away. Even at three miles away, an observer would experience ear-splitting 135 dB sound.12 Rocket launches create such a powerful sound, that space agencies flood the launchpad with water as the rocket launches to absorb the sound so the force of the pressure wave doesn’t damage the rocket.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs: According to sources I read, these clocked in at well over 200 dB. The shock wave was so charged that it traveled 7 mi / 11 km in 30 seconds.

The 1883 Krakatoa volcano eruption:13 I’m overwhelmed by the amount of things I need to tell you about the Krakatoa. Let’s do bullets.

  • Krakatoa is an island in Indonesia, and the eruption happened on August 27, 1883.
  • The eruption completely annihilated the island, sent an enormous amount of debris 17 miles (27 km) high into the sky at half a mile per second. It also caused one of the most deadly and far-reaching tsunamis in history. In total, the eruption killed 36,000 people.
  • But the most amazing thing about the eruption was its sound. It made arguably the loudest sound on Earth in modern history.
  • It was so loud that the shock wave extended far enough to rupture the eardrums of sailors 40 miles away.
  • 100 miles away, the sound was still 172 dB, enough to permanently destroy someone’s ears or even kill them. Wherever you are, think of a place that’s about 100 miles (161 km) away. Now imagine something happening there that causes a sound so loud where you are that if you were screaming at the top of your lungs directly into someone’s ear when the sound hit, they wouldn’t be able to hear that you were doing it. For comparison, the Saturn V launch sound was at 170 dB 100 meters away. Krakatoa was higher than that 100 miles away.
  • The sound cracked a foot-thick concrete wall 300 miles (483 km) away.
  • The sound was heard all the way in Australia (where it sounded like a distant canon ball being fired) and even as far away as Rodrigues Island, 3,000 miles away. 3,000 miles away. I’m currently in New York. Imagine if something happened in California or in Europe that I could hear in New York. I can’t even.
  • After the sound eventually got far enough away that humans couldn’t hear it anymore, barometers all over the world were going nuts for the next few days, as the sound waves circled the Earth 3.5 times.
  • Finally, you know the famous painting The Scream? Well you know how the sky’s all red for some reason? The sky is red because the painter, Edvard Munch, was inspired to paint it after seeing the Krakatoa-caused red skies all over the Western Hemisphere in the year after the eruption.

It was a big eruption.

2) Other Mediums

There can be louder sound than 194 dB—just not on the Earth’s surface. There can be louder sounds in the ocean, in the land, or on other planets. The gas giants in our Solar System, for example, have denser atmospheres than Earth’s, which allow for higher pressure wave amplitudes, and with incredibly fast winds and powerful storms, there’s plenty of opportunity there to make loud things.

What isn’t loud is almost everything else in space. You’ve probably heard the term, “Sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum,” but it makes sense now, right? Sound is pressure waves through matter. If there’s no matter, there’s no sound. There can be immense heat, and radiation, and force, but to a nearby observing human, it’s all dead silent.

If, hypothetically, there were air filling the universe, then suddenly things would get very loud. Forget the terrifying concept of the sound of a supernova—just the dumb sun sitting there hanging out would ring in at an astounding 290 dB. According to one solar physicist, we’d hear that on Earth as a 100 dB sound—the volume of a motorcycle—all the time, every day, everywhere. Be happy that sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum.

One last thought—

Researching for this post and learning about what sound is gave me a new perspective on the tree falling in the forest with nobody there to hear it question. I now think that no, it doesn’t make a sound. It makes an air pressure wave and that’s it. The concept of sound is by definition a biological being’s perception of the pressure wave—and if there are no ears around to perceive the pressure wave, there’s no sound. It’s a little like asking, “If humans go extinct, and somewhere in the post-apocalyptic rubble, there’s a photo of a beautiful woman lying there—is she still beautiful?” I kind of don’t think she is. Because the only thing that’s beautiful about her is that humans found her beautiful, and without humans, she’s no more beautiful than the female beetle a few feet away, rummaging around the rubble. Right?

___________

Three things I want you to read:

If you’re into Wait But Why, sign up for the Wait But Why email list and we’ll send you the new posts right when they come out. Better than having to check the site and wonder!

If you’d like to support Wait But Why, here’s our Patreon.

And the full Elon Musk post series is now available as an ebook.

___________

If you liked this, here are a few more Wait But Why explainers:

How Tesla Will Change the World

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence

Putting Time in Perspective

 

Sources
The awesome GIFS: Dan Russell and ISVR
CDC: Noise and Hearing Loss Prevention
US Department of Labor: Occupational Noise Exposure
Nautil.us: The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times
UNSW: What is a Decibel?
Decibelcar.com: Decibel Equivalent Table
Make it Louder: Ultimate Sound Pressure Level Decibel Table
NASA: Sound Suppression Test Unleashes a Flood
Idiom Zero: How Loud is the Sun?
Gibson.com: It Might Get Loud: The 10 Loudest Rock Bands of All Time
GC Audio: Decibel (Loudness) Comparison Chart
Mathpages.com: The Speed of Sound
Turn it to the Left: Noise Levels
Extreme Tech: Can a Loud Enough Sound Kill You?
Abelard.com: Loud Music and Hearing Damage
Soundproof Cow: Loudest Sound Ever Heard
Chalmers: Quantum microphone captures extremely weak sound
born.gov.au: The eruption of Krakatoa, August 27, 1883


  1. Here’s a real slinky doing a longitudinal wave.

  2. Fun fact: The loudest animal on Earth is a blue whale, whose calls can reach an outrageous 188 decibels, far louder than a jet engine.

  3. If you want to see this in action, watch these two guys sit in a car while playing unthinkably loud bass music—at 2:11 you can see the guy’s shirt flapping about 20 times/second as the low and high pressure air passes through it (only watch the 10 seconds where I cued it up—I watched the whole video and it’s time I can’t get back now).

  4. Also—dog whistles sound silent to us but work on dogs because dogs can hear pitches as high as 44,000 Hz. Cats can go even higher—up to 79,000 Hz. But neither animal can hear pitches as low as we can. In fact, neither animal can hear the lowest seven keys on the piano—who knew.

  5. At first, I was using “volume” here but it seemed weird to use volume when talking about the natural world—like, you wouldn’t say, “What’s the volume of that waterfall?” So is volume just for man made things like stereos? In any case, we’ll be going with loudness.

  6. Going up by 10 dB multiplies the sound intensity, or the power, of the wave by ten—not two. But a 10x increase in power only sounds about 2x as loud to our ears, so for our purposes, the 2x increase is more relevant.


  1. GIF: ISVR

  2. GIF: GIF Soup

  3. GIF: GIF Soup

  4. GIF: Dan Russell

  5. GIF: ISVR

  6. Thanks to Christopher Reiss for that analogy.

  7. GIF: ISVR

  8. Thanks to commenter rebel28 for suggesting the pitch link.

  9. Sources for the info on this chart is down below. For each of these, I tried to find several sources that all agreed on the same number. It’s surprising, in general, how much disagreement there is online regarding dB figures.

  10. I couldn’t find the original source.

  11. http://s73.photobucket.com/user/rocket9244/media/Hiroshima-the-shockwave.gif.html

  12. https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/2h9y9g#ckr6mev

  13. Most of my info on this came from this excellent article on Nautilus

The post Everything You Should Know About Sound appeared first on Wait But Why.

11 Mar 16:20

Dark Sun over Ternate

Philip.paulsson

So really no one saw the eclipse in Singapore???

Dark Sun over Ternate A dark Sun hangs in the clearing sky over a volcanic planet in this morning sea and skycape. It was taken during this week's total solar eclipse, a dramatic snapshot from along the narrow path of totality in the dark shadow of a New Moon. Earth's Indonesian isle of Ternate, North Maluku lies in the foreground. The sky is still bright near the eastern horizon though, beyond the region's flattened volcanic peaks and outside the Moon's umbral shadow. In fact, near the equator the dark lunar umbra is rushing eastward across Earth's surface at about 1,700 kilometers (1,100 miles) per hour. Shining through the thin clouds, around the Sun's silhouette is the alluring glow of the solar corona, only easily seen during totality. An inspiring sight for eclipse watchers, this solar corona is the tenuous, hot outer atmosphere of the Sun.
11 Mar 05:54

This Guy Feeding Another Guy A Chip Behind Donald Trump Is A Thing Of Beauty

by Tasneem Nashrulla

“Makes Snacks Great Again.”

On Saturday, Donald Trump held a rally in Orlando, Florida.

On Saturday, Donald Trump held a rally in Orlando, Florida.

There was the usual talk of waterboarding, "nasty Little Marco," and "lying Ted Cruz." A man dressed up as Trump's wall with Mexico and a whole bunch of protesters were whisked away. Standard.

Brynn Anderson / AP

And then this happened: A guy lovingly fed another guy a chip right behind Trump.

And then this happened: A guy lovingly fed another guy a chip right behind Trump.

youtube.com

Look at the ease at which he sidles the chip into his waiting mouth.

Look at the ease at which he sidles the chip into his waiting mouth.

youtube.com


View Entire List ›

11 Mar 05:33

International Women's Day Explained For Men

by Tom Phillips
Philip.paulsson

Yay women! Woo!

What are women, and why should we care?


View Entire Post ›

10 Mar 06:01

Matthew McConaughey And Idris Elba Are Set To Star In Stephen King's "Dark Tower"

by Keely Flaherty

FINALLY.

This morning, Dark Tower fans awoke to some wonderful news from Stephen King: The long-awaited film adaptation of the 8-novel series seems to be happening at last.

This morning, Dark Tower fans awoke to some wonderful news from Stephen King: The long-awaited film adaptation of the 8-novel series seems to be happening at last.

Twitter: @StephenKing

And, perhaps even more exciting, we have our beloved gunslinger, Roland Deschain:

And, perhaps even more exciting, we have our beloved gunslinger, Roland Deschain:

Twitter: @idriselba

And our enigmatic villain, the Man in Black:

And our enigmatic villain, the Man in Black:

Twitter: @McConaughey


View Entire List ›

10 Mar 06:01

News in Brief: Ted Cruz Skyrockets In Polls After Head Permanently Sealed Within Iron Mask

HOUSTON—Bouncing back from a disappointing third-place finish in the Nevada caucuses, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz reportedly surged in the polls this week after having his head permanently sealed inside a 2-inch-thick iron mask. “Cruz has found new life with voters and is currently riding a wave of popularity into Super Tuesday’s primaries after his team made the shrewd strategic move to enclose the candidate’s head inside a 60-pound cylinder of wrought iron,” said political commentator Leslie Morrison, noting that voters have responded extremely favorably to the Texas senator’s face being completely concealed from view and every one of his talking points rendered inaudible by the thick iron casing surrounding his face. “Whether it’s the fear visible in his eyes through the thin slit in his mask, his muffled screams for help, or his repeated and entirely futile attempts to pry the riveted-shut metal covering ...











10 Mar 01:39

Baegel says FML

by Baegel
Philip.paulsson

LOL Nice.

Today, my psycho ex defaced my car. She didn't key it or slash my tires. She posted "TRUMP 2016" bumper stickers all over it. I don't know what glue they use, but it's been 2 hours and I haven't gotten any of them off. FML

09 Mar 23:40

Connor says FML

by Connor

Today, my girlfriend's dad has his 'overprotective father' down routine perfect. He gave me the "upset her and I'll hurt you" speech, then pressed play on a DVD and calmly left the room so I could watch security footage of him wrestling a wild bear in the woods… and winning. Damn. FML

09 Mar 20:12

Police Are Investigating A Gun Rights Activist Accidentally Shot By Her Son

by David Mack
Philip.paulsson

Haha nice. Glad the stupid parent got shot this time instead of the kid getting shot.

View Video ›

facebook.com

Officials in Florida are investigating whether a mom had safely stored a gun that was used by her 4-year-old son to accidentally shoot her.

Jamie Gilt, 31, was found shot in her vehicle by a sheriff's deputy in Putnam County shortly after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, officials said in a statement. She told deputies her son, who was sitting in the backseat of the car, had accidentally shot her.

Gilt was taken to hospital and is in a stable condition. The boy, who was unharmed, was reunited with other family members.

Deputies have notified the Florida Department of Children and Family Services of the incident.

"Our investigation has revealed that the firearm was legally owned by the victim and the child came to possess the firearm without the victim’s knowledge," the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday.

Under state law, it is a misdemeanor offense to improperly store a loaded firearm such that a child can gain access to the weapon. The Sheriff's Office said they are investigating how the firearm was stored in the car, but they have not yet been able to interview Gilt due to her medical condition.

Gilt runs a pro-gun Facebook community page called "Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense."

"This is a page to connect people that share a common goal," the page reads. "That goal is to protect and expand our 2nd Ammendment [sic] rights."

09 Mar 07:25

American Voices: World Faces Single Malt Scotch Shortage

The global supply of old single malt Scotch is running low and could remain in shortage for the next 10 to 15 years. What do you think?











08 Mar 20:13

This Bunny Eating Fruit Is Cute And Terrifying At The Same Damn Time

by Allison Bagg
Philip.paulsson

I'm gonna need a holy hand grenade.

Vampire bunny from hell!

THIS IS WHAT A WHITE, FLUFFY BUNNY EATING A BOWL OF BRIGHT RED FRUIT LOOKS LIKE. WHO KNEW?!

youtube.com / Via youtube.com

DID THIS ADORABLE BUNNY JUST EAT ITS CHILDREN?!

DID THIS ADORABLE BUNNY JUST EAT ITS CHILDREN?!

Via youtube.com

IS THIS A MURDER SCENE?!

IS THIS A MURDER SCENE?!

(Apparently it's something of a trend.)

Via youtube.com

THIS IS SO CUTE BUT ALSO SO SCARY.

THIS IS SO CUTE BUT ALSO SO SCARY.

Via youtube.com


View Entire List ›

08 Mar 15:20

Tim Sweeney is missing the point; the PC platform needs fixing

by Peter Bright
Philip.paulsson

FTFA: "The "consoleization" of the PC, like the consoleization of the smartphone before it, isn't motivated simply by some desire to seize control of software sales. It's motivated by the desire to make the PC not horrible."

LOL no. It is definitely to turn it into a walled garden a la Apple to try and make more money.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 is one of the few UWP games currently available. (credit: Microsoft Studios)

Epic Games' Tim Sweeney wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian saying that Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP)—the common development platform that covers Windows, Windows Mobile, HoloLens, and soon, Xbox One—"can, should, must, and will die." Sweeney's complaint is that UWP is locked down. By default, UWP apps can only be installed and purchased through Microsoft's store, and they have to run from a sandboxed environment. So some Windows features are, or will be, only available to UWP apps. In this way, Sweeney says that Microsoft is "curtailing users' freedom to install full-featured PC software, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers," especially as Microsoft makes some Windows features UWP-only.

Sweeney wants UWP to either be destroyed or made "open" in the same way that the traditional Win32 API is "open." This is in three parts: he wants UWP apps to be downloadable and installable from the Web by default (without needing to change any settings or enable sideloading), he wants third parties to be able to create their own storefronts for UWP apps, and he wants it to always be possible for developers to sell directly to users without Microsoft taking a 30 percent cut.

This is a strange complaint for two main reasons. The first issue is that the UWP lock-down is, overall, a positive thing. The second is that there doesn't appear to be anything preventing third-party downloads, third-party storefronts, and third-party billing right now.

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08 Mar 15:06

Arecibo Observatory spots a fast radio burst that keeps on bursting

by John Timmer
Philip.paulsson

Goldeneye!

That's a big dish! The Arecibo radio telescope. (credit: NSF)

From nowhere, they appear as a sudden surge of power in the radio spectrum. Then, a few milliseconds later, they're gone—and as far as we could tell, they never come back. They've picked up the name "fast radio bursts," but nobody's entirely sure of what produces them. Follow-up observations have generally failed to find anything interesting in their direction, and the bursts didn't seem to repeat, leaving everyone who cares about these sorts of things a bit mystified.

One possible explanation for their one-time-only appearance would be that they're the product of a process that destroys the object that creates them. Thus, if they were produced by the collapse of a neutron star into a black hole (to give just one example), there'd be no way for that to happen twice.

But a new study suggests that at least one of them has repeated, which would take cataclysmic explanations off the table. There are enough differences between this burst and previously observed ones, however, to raise the question of whether there might be several processes producing similar surges in radio emissions.

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08 Mar 12:22

There's A Crazy Conspiracy Theory That Ted Cruz Is The Zodiac Killer

by Sam Stryker

In a nutshell, WTF.

Pool / Getty Images

commons.wikimedia.org

The Zodiac Killer, who has never been identified or captured, gained notoriety for sending taunting cryptogram letters. The case remains open, and the 2007 film Zodiac was based off the killings.

The Zodiac Killer, who has never been identified or captured, gained notoriety for sending taunting cryptogram letters. The case remains open, and the 2007 film Zodiac was based off the killings.

Paramount


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08 Mar 07:38

Which Beer Are You Based On This Food Question?

by Danielle Kagan
Philip.paulsson

Blue Moon. Disappointing.

Crisp, cold, refreshing.

07 Mar 21:31

15 Times Workaholics Summed Up How Hard It Is To Job

by Angelo Spagnolo
Philip.paulsson

This is a pretty good show.

The struggle is real.

When you have to do anything slightly stressful.

When you have to do anything slightly stressful.

Comedy Central

But seriously.

But seriously.

Comedy Central

When you hear there's a drug test and you have to play it cool.

When you hear there's a drug test and you have to play it cool.

Comedy Central

When co-workers are concerned you may have a problem.

When co-workers are concerned you may have a problem.

Comedy Central


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07 Mar 21:13

A Couple Was Horrified When They Saw A Toddler Fall Out Of A Van

by Beimeng Fu

The video, which went viral in China, thankfully also shows that the child was quickly reunited with his grandfather.

The footage shows that the back hatch of the minivan was loose when the red light changed. The door popped open and boy just fell out and rolled onto the ground in the blink of an eye.

The footage shows that the back hatch of the minivan was loose when the red light changed. The door popped open and boy just fell out and rolled onto the ground in the blink of an eye.

Twitter: @XHNews

The driver of the van, later identified as the boy's grandfather, drove on unaware of the disappearance of his grandchild. Meanwhile, the brave little human wasted no time in getting up and immediately giving chase.

The driver of the van, later identified as the boy's grandfather, drove on unaware of the disappearance of his grandchild. Meanwhile, the brave little human wasted no time in getting up and immediately giving chase.

Twitter: @XHNews

You can see the boy come to a slow halt, realizing the van isn't going to stop, watching it roll further and further away.

You can see the boy come to a slow halt, realizing the van isn't going to stop, watching it roll further and further away.

Twitter: @XHNews


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06 Mar 19:56

Samsung starts shipping the world's largest capacity SSD

by Mariella Moon
Samsung has started shipping the 16TB (well, okay, 15.36TB) SSD it showed off at the Flash Memory Summit in California last year. The company says the positively tiny, 2.5-inch drive has the largest capacity among all the SSDs in the world. It still...
06 Mar 19:51

19 Mind-Blowing Ways To Use Baileys Irish Cream

by Katalina Kastravet
Philip.paulsson

Alchymilky!

Put some Baileys in your sweets.

Easy Baileys Chocolate Pots

Easy Baileys Chocolate Pots

Recipe Here.

Ciao Veggie / Via ciaoveggie.com

Baileys Chocolate Brown Butter Cookies

Baileys Chocolate Brown Butter Cookies

Recipe Here.

Peas And Peonies / Via peasandpeonies.com

Baileys Salted Caramel Mini Chocolate Tarts

Baileys Salted Caramel Mini Chocolate Tarts

Recipe Here.

A Mommy Too / Via amummytoo.co.uk

Mini Baileys Chocolate Cheesecakes

Mini Baileys Chocolate Cheesecakes

Recipe Here.

Baked By Rachel / Via bakedbyrachel.com


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06 Mar 19:49

Literally Just 17 Ridiculously Gorgeous Lip Art Looks You'll Want To Copy

by Nora Whelan
Philip.paulsson

Um.... what is all over her face in the last pic?

Meanwhile, my lipstick’s all over my teeth.

This look that makes you thankful for geometry class after all.

This look that makes you thankful for geometry class after all.

sarahmcgbeauty / Via instagram.com

A nude that's anything but basic...

A nude that's anything but basic...

girlgreybeauty / Via instagram.com

... and some very holler-worthy holly.

... and some very holler-worthy holly.

grinanddagger / Via instagram.com

This pout, which could have been painted by Pollock.

This pout, which could have been painted by Pollock.

rebellebeautyx / Via instagram.com


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06 Mar 19:48

Benedict Cumberbunnies Are Here To Creep You The Hell Out

by Alison Caporimo

Yummy yet terrifying.

Would you happily remove your own spleen to spend a moment with Benedict Cumberbatch?

Would you happily remove your own spleen to spend a moment with Benedict Cumberbatch?

You would, wouldn't you?

Wpa Pool / Getty Images

And do you froth at the mouth when you see a bar of chocolate?

And do you froth at the mouth when you see a bar of chocolate?

Yummmmmmmmmm.

Jupiterimages / Getty Images

Well then do I have something for you...

Well then do I have something for you...

Indeedy.

FOX

Chocolate bunnies + Benedict Cumberbatch = CUMBERBUNNIES

Chocolate bunnies + Benedict Cumberbatch = CUMBERBUNNIES

Jen Lindsey-Clark, creator and head artist of UK-based chocolate shop Chocolatician, is making Belgian chocolate rabbits with Benedict Cumberbatch HEADS.

chocolatician.com


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06 Mar 19:47

US bans vaping on commercial airline flights

by David Kravets
Philip.paulsson

My bro won't like this one bit.

(credit: Mike Mozart)

US transportation officials announced Wednesday that vaping on commercial flights is officially banned, just as is smoking the old-fashioned way.

The US Department of Transportation's decision to officially ban the use of electronic cigarettes on flights going to and from the United States ends any confusion as to whether vaping in the air is lawful.

"This final rule is important because it protects airline passengers from unwanted exposure to aerosol fumes that occur when electronic cigarettes are used onboard airplanes,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. "The Department took a practical approach to eliminate any confusion between tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes by applying the same restrictions to both."

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04 Mar 18:04

2016.03.04

04 Mar 18:02

greatest generation, meet greatest generation II: the greatest generation IN ALL POSSIBLE TIMELINES

archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about
← previous March 4th, 2016 next

March 4th, 2016: I have a new book coming out! It is called Romeo and/or Juliet and I think you will like it. That's what I think! I'm not gonna lie about it!!

– Ryan

04 Mar 11:53

2016.03.02

04 Mar 01:15

Oculus Founder: Rift will come to Mac if Apple “ever releases a good computer”

by Kyle Orland
Philip.paulsson

Sick burn.

It's been almost a year now since Oculus announced that the consumer version of the Rift virtual reality headset would only support Windows PCs at launch—a turnaround from development kits that worked fine on Mac and Linux boxes. Now, according to Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, it "is up to Apple" to change that state of affairs. Specifically, "if they ever release a good computer, we will do it," he told Shacknews recently.

Basically, Luckey continued, even the highest-end Mac you can buy would not provide an enjoyable experience on the final Rift hardware, which is significantly more powerful than early development kits. "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs," he said. "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs."

"So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it," he added. "Even if we can support on the software side, there's just no audience that could run the vast majority of software on it."

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03 Mar 20:37

Watch an autonomous drone deftly avoid obstacles

by Andrew Tarantola
Philip.paulsson

That's pretty cool.

Skydio, an aerial drone startup, recently released an impressive highlight reel of its first UAV nimbly avoiding obstacles as it followed a group of cyclists during their ride through Menlo Park, California. Unlike the new DJI Phantom 4, which will s...
03 Mar 17:18

Major scientific breakthrough with the creation of the first biological supercomputer

Philip.paulsson

Sweden and McGill, woo!

Researchers from the EU-funded ABACUS project have created a model biological supercomputer that is both sustainable and highly energy efficient.

Major scientific breakthrough with the creation of the first biological supercomputer

© Shutterstock

The model bio-supercomputer is powered by adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the substance that provides energy to all of the cells in a human body. The model is able to process information extremely quickly and accurately using parallel networks, in the same fashion that electronic supercomputers are able to process information.

However, the bio-supercomputer developed by the project team is much smaller and more energy efficient than the current generation of electronic supercomputers, being only the size of a standard-sized book.

The model bio-supercomputer was created with a combination of geometrical modelling and engineering expertise on the nano-scale. Importantly, it is the first step in showing that a biological supercomputer could realistically work in practice.

Small, portable and energy efficient

The circuit created by the researchers is around 1.5 cm square and instead of electrons being propelled by an electrical charge, as is the case with a traditional microchip, short strings of proteins (called ‘biological agents’ by the project team) travel around the circuit in a controlled way. These movements are powered by ATP, a biochemical that enables internal energy transfer among cells.

Traditional supercomputers use a large amount of electricity and thus heat up to such high temperatures that they need to be physically cooled in order to function effectively. To do this, many supercomputers often require their own dedicated power plant.

In contrast, due to being run by biological agents, the bio-supercomputer hardly heats up at all and is consequently much more sustainable and cost-effective. As the technology is developed further over the coming years and possible routes to larger-scale commercialisation are considered, this could become a major selling-point.

Calculating answers to major societal issues

Although the model bio-supercomputer has successfully and efficiently tackled a complex mathematical problem by using parallel computing in the same fashion as traditional supercomputers, the project team recognises that there is still a long way to go between the model and the development of a full-scale functional bio-supercomputer.

It is hoped that an eventual shift to bio-supercomputers will provide solutions to the growing problem of traditional supercomputers being increasingly unable to quickly calculate answers to some of society’s most pressing issues, such as the development of new drugs and ensuring that engineering systems work as they are supposed to. For these problems, computers have to simply go through all of the possible guesses before reaching the correct answer. This means that if the problem size increases even modestly, the computer can no longer solve it quickly enough to be useful.

Next steps: From science fiction to science

The project team has already begun to explore other avenues on how to push their research even further, and hope that other scientists will be encouraged to also construct new models using alternative biological materials.

The eventual goal would be to perfect the design for a new generation of smaller, more portable and more energy efficient bio-supercomputers that can fully replace traditional supercomputers.

Although the research team believes that it will still take some time for this to become a reality, a potential mid-term solution would be to produce a hybrid design, mixing traditional and biological technologies.

The ABACUS project, which received over EUR 1, 725, 000 of EU funding, is coordinated by Lunds University in Sweden, but the research that led to the creation of the model was spearheaded by a team at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, one of the ABACUS consortium members.

For more information please see:
ABACUS project website

03 Mar 17:11

High-speed video shows how water lily beetles sprint on water

by Mariella Moon
Water lily beetles are little speed demons, flitting from one pad to another at half a meter (1.6 feet) per second. Now, thanks to a study conducted by Stanford bioengineering assistant professor Manu Prakash and his students, the secret to its mode...