Bernie.rihn

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Armed with a pair of humble wooden chopsticks, a .74 cent plastic comb, and a few other minor modifications, Canadian musician James Hill can convert his ukulele into a ridiculous beat machine. Hill mimics a wide range of rhythmic genres from techno to hip hop in this brief clip shot at a sold-out 2011 show at Don Quixote’s International Music Hall in Felton, California. There’s a lot of build-up and preparation, the music starts around 3:45. (via Devour)

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A pair of crooks in Oklahoma made more than $400,000 with a whisper-thin gas-pump credit-card skimmer that they installed in Wal-Mart gas stations, using rental cars while they were doing the installation. Kevin Konstantinov and Elvin Alisuretove allegedly harvested their skimmers every two months or so, creating bogus credit cards with the data and then withdrawing cash at ATMs or sharing it with crooks in Russia and the former USSR. Brian Krebs details the technology, as well as a series of next-gen gas-pump skimmers that use tiny, unobtrusive Bluetooth bugs to harvest credit-card data.

Pump skimmers can be fairly cheap to assemble. The generic gas pump card acceptance device pictured left in the image above (Panasonic ZU-1870MA6t2) can be purchased for about $74. The pump skimmer scammers must love this model: It almost looks like it’s designed to hold additional electronics.

Investigators say the individuals responsible for these pump scams are able to ply their trade because a great many pumps can be opened with a handful of master keys. In the end, it comes down to a cost decision by the filling station owners: This story from Fox News about a rash of pump skimmers discovered earlier this month in Minnesota that it costs filling stations about $450 to re-key eight pumps.

Don’t Get Sucker Pumped

Daniel Arsham

The Walking Bostonian:

Recently the Boston Restaurant Authority has indicated a desire to reduce their minimum soda requirements in new restaurants.

These requirements have been in place since the founding of the BRA in the 1950s, in order to assure that every patron has access to at least one free soda with every meal. In some cases, the BRA had been requiring two sodas per customer.

This measure had been intended to reduce demand for the depleting supplies of on-street soda machines.

Over the years, minimum soda requirements have been blamed for causing over-consumption of sugary drinks. The obesity epidemic, some say, is directly related to the excessive number of soda drinks being forced upon restaurant patrons, whether they order it or not.

"We don't need to push a soda with every meal," Peter Mead, head of the Boston Restaurant Authority, said in a recent interview. He cited US census data showing that one in three Boston residents is between 20 and 35, and most drink water, juice, or beer primarily.

Critics of the new policy claim that elimination of minimum soda requirements will cause a terrible soda shortage, as restaurants may choose to devote resources to other products, such as food. They say this will put a strain on already-short supplies in on-street soda machines.

A local woman complained, "If the BRA gets their way then families will leave Boston and move to the suburbs where they can get soda for free."

Another explained, "While I appreciate the idea of promoting public health, the city's public water transporter, MWRA, is not good enough to replace soda for everyday needs."

"Shitstorm" has been inducted into Duden, the official German dictionary. It was a favorite among linguists, who admired its applicability to the plagiarism scandal that led to the resignation of Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Strangely, an equivalent German word was not created by stringing together 75 other German words. (via The Mary Sue)

gallowhill:

Yoko Ono - Ceiling Painting (Yes Painting), 1966

First you pray. Then, when you're in the air, you pray some more. If you land, you get a chance to pray again. Journalist Hamza Mohamed describes a recent flight to Kismayu, Somalia that begins with 150 people jockeying for the privilege of riding an airplane that spews black smoke from its exhaust.

Pill Passwords

"I take a vitamin every morning, what if I could take vitamin authentication?" Dugan asked, shortly before pulling such a pill out of her pocket.

"This pill has a small chip inside of it with a switch," she said. "It also has what amounts to an inside-out potato battery. When you swallow it, the acids in your stomach serve as the electrolyte and power it up, and the switch goes on and off. It creates an 18-bit ECG like signal in your body so essentially your entire body becomes your authentication token."

"It means my arms are like wires and my hands are like alligator clips [so] when I touch my phone, my computer, my door, I'm authenticated."

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

About this groundbreaking photo from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley:

"Almost as clearly as a textbook diagram, this image made by a noncontact atomic force microscope reveals the positions of individual atoms and bonds, in a molecule having 26 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms structured as three connected benzene rings."

"Nobody has ever taken direct, single-bond-resolved images of individual molecules, right before and immediately after a complex organic reaction," says Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

(via James McInerney)

letsbuildahome-fr:

Welcome Home to the first ‘Space Tumblrist’: Chris Hadfield

1. The Russian Soyuz space capsule, carrying US astronaut Thomas Marshburn, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, descends about 90 miles south-east of the town of Dzhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan, this morning. Photograph: Sergei Remizov/AP
2. And here’s Canadian spaceman, photographer and sometime singer Chris Hadfield giving a thumbs up shortly after the landing. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/AFP/Getty Images

Designed and constructed during the winter of 2012-13 for the UW furniture studio, this chair was inspired by the vintage telephone chair and the chaise lounge. I wanted a chair that fit me perfectly and in which I could sit comfortably with my laptop or read a book, but I did not want to be so specific with the function as to invite obsolescence. The chair is constructed out of Eastern White Maple (the wraparound desk and edge banding are solid wood, the seat and seatbacks are stable panel construction) and the frame is powder coated steel.
The chair was written about on theMAG.it, and was chosen for inclusion in the UW architecture department End of Year Show. Studio photos are by John Stamets; photos of me using the chair were taken by Bernie Rihn.

And you just watched a dog masturbate.

Banks Violette

See more of the artist’s work here: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/banks_violette.htm

Follow me on Twitter: jemmacraig03
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odditiesoflife:

Strange Insects

• Devil’s Flower Mantis - one of the largest types of praying mantis, they can measure up to 13 centimeters in length and have a range of coloring that allows them to mimic the Devil’s Flower, a type of orchid.
• Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar - before transforming into a beautiful fluorescent blue butterfly, its an armored, blood-red caterpillar with tinted visor shades for eyes and a quadruple row of blunt horns running across its body.
• Scorpionfly (Mecoptera) - neither scorpion or fly, what looks like a scorpion’s stinger on the insect is actually its genitals. 
• Calleta Silkmoth Caterpillar - with a massive color range and dangerous looking barbs, this caterpillar is something most predators avoid.
• Giant Prickly Stick Insect (Extatosoma tiaratum) - as the largest known stick insect, it reaches lengths of 20 centimeters. It is covered with large thorny spikes which double as camouflage and defensive armor.
• Goliath Beetle - can grow more than 4 inches in length and weigh about 100 grams in their larval stage. It is alleged to be mostly vegetarian.
  

NinjaFridge says, "I found this on reddit and it shows the contestants for Miss Korea 2013." Then he made this GIF. I think they all look pretty different from each other, but it's a fun animation anyway. (Via Kristie Lu Stout)

These are all amazing.

fluxinguranus:

procyonvulpecula:

pagannerd:

proxydialogue:

anneretic:

infinity-imagined:

The collision between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy.

the grand showdown

Andromeda is a bit bigger than us. So when that happens, Andromeda’s black hole is gonna consume our black hole in a vicious act of galactic canabalism. 

Which is an actual term used in astronomy apparently. 

“Galactic Cannabalism” sounds like an electro/death metal fusion band.

Galactic cannibalism is one of my favourite astronomical terms, but it doesn’t beat the term used for the stretching out into a long thin tube that occurs when something falls into a black hole (spaghettification) or the term used for a rock thought to be a meteorite but which later turns out to be an ordinary terrestrial rock (meteowrong).

fuck astronomy remains to be my favorite thing

that’s just impressive. 

iamthewight:

macmuffinpro:

How to properly use your PhD

I’ve always loved this gif but DAMN that had to hurt.

bit.code

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.