YouTube sensation Casey Neistat last week announced he was quitting his daily video blog and now we know why: his app, Beme, has just been acquired by CNN along with its 11-person team.

CNN announced Monday that it will shut down Beme and allow Neistat to create a new project to attract his online followers to the media company. According to The New York Times, Neistat will have full creative control to build a separate company that lets the audience share “timely and topical videos” and start conversations around current events.

“Casey has tapped into nearly six million really powerful viewers, most of which do not tune in to CNN,” Andrew Morse, global head of CNN Digital, told NYT. “To build this audience authentically, we believe we...

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One of my favorite things to look for and to photograph is bicycles. They have a great shape, make interesting shadows and you can shoot them standing still or moving.

I think it’s a common subject of many photographers including these:

The post Handlebars to Spokes – 20 Impressive Images of Bikes by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

While they’re not medicated in any way, these DIY lemon ginger cough drops are simple to make, a little sweet, and the ginger and honey will help soothe a sore throat ever so slightly. Enjoy with a cup of tea, or in between mentholated cough drops and cough medicine if you need something stronger.

The whole recipe is on Tastemade’s instagram (embedded above and linked below), so click through for everything, but you get the gist just by watching the video—you need plenty of honey, some freshly grated ginger, and the recipe calls for some mint extract as well. Mix everything up and let it simmer for a bit, then pour it into small coins on a silicone baking mat (or you could use parchment paper) to cool and solidify. Once they’re solid, peel them off, wrap them individually, and pop one when your throat is on the scratchy side.

Best of all, the inclusion of ginger means they could soothe an upset stomach too, so they’re worth keeping around for that as well. Just keep them in an airtight container, and they’ll last for ages.

DIY Honey Ginger Couch Drops | Tastemade (Instagram)

The recently-launched Waterjet Channel has been cutting all kinds of stuff with their high-power device, like these giant jawbreakers. Other good ones include an SLR camera:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssFlCSb_wLs

And a rubber band ball:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTgb_6owc2c

• Giant Jaw Breakers vs 60,000 PSI Waterjet (YouTube / Waterjet Channel)

Update 11/29: As presumed, the Pixel and Pixel XL will also receive Android 7.1.1 this coming Monday. This confirmation comes from Canadian carrier Rogers and is labeled as ‘Bug Fixes & Security Patches.’

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According to Vodafone Australia, Android 7.1.1’s consumer release to Nexus devices will coincide with next month’s security patch on December 5th. The OTA comes less than two weeks after the second Android 7.1 Developer Preview and brings Nexus phones and tablets to software parity with the Pixel and Pixel XL.

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Filed under: Google Corporate

 Diabetic health tracking startup Siren Care has created smart socks that use temperature sensors to detect inflammation — and therefore injury — in realtime for diabetics. Co-founder Ran Ma was working on growing biomass to grow back skin that had been damaged while at Northwestern University when she started learning how to treat diabetic feet and thought of making a… Read More

It’s been a couple years since I used a Chromebook on a full-time basis. Before I owned the MacBook Pro that I use today, I had one of the earlier Samsung-made Chromebooks. I loved it a lot. But in terms of raw capabilities and build quality, I knew I needed something more. So here I am today.

For the last week or so, however, I’ve been diving back into Chromebooks — specifically using the Acer Chromebook 14. Given this is my first real experience trying to use a Chromebook on a daily basis since one of the platform’s first generation laptops, it’s an understatement to say I’m impressed…

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Filed under: Google Corporate

Landscape photographer Melvin Nicholson captured this stunning shot of a ghost rainbow, aka white rainbow or fog bow, in Rannoch Moor north of Glasgow, Scotland.

Like rainbows, fogbows are caused by sunglight reflecting off water drops. However, as NASA explains:

The fog itself is not confined to an arch -- the fog is mostly transparent but relatively uniform.The fogbow shape is created by those drops with the best angle to divert sunlight to the observer. The fogbow's relative lack of colors are caused by the relatively smaller water drops. The drops active above are so small that the quantum mechanical wavelength of light becomes important and smears out colors that would be created by larger rainbow water drops acting like small prisms reflecting sunlight.

Starlings in flight are always beautiful, but what's most remarkable about The Art of Flying, a film by Jan van IJken about a massive flock of starlings, is the sound. (more…)

Strictly Paper blogs the work of Eric Standley, who uses lasers on hundreds of sheets of paper to create incredibly-detailed works of art. [via]

These laser-cut masterpieces, reminiscent of stained glass windows, are inspired by geometry found in Gothic and Islamic architectural ornamentation in an attempt to capture a reverence for the infinite. “I am interested in the conceptual migration from the permanence and massiveness of stone to the fragility and intimacy of paper,” he mentions in an artist statement.

Tennie White is a lab owner who became a relentless crusader for environmental justice for black towns and neighborhoods where giant corporations dumped toxic chemicals and walked away scot free; her work resulted in one giant company, Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation restructuring (under Lehmann Brothers' guidance) into a company that held all its pollution and pension liabilities (which went bankrupt) and a profitable division that held onto the assets built through all that pollution, which was sold off, erasing all responsibility for the executives who'd poisoned their workers and black communities. (more…)

The UK is about to pass into law sweeping surveillance legislation that will force ISPs and mobile operators to keep a complete record of every citizen’s browsing history for up to a year. This information will be accessible without a warrant to intelligence services, the police, and a number of other government agencies — including, bizarrely, the likes of the Gambling Commission and the Food Standards Agency.

While much of the legislation is concerned with how the government can track down serious criminals like terrorists and child abusers, it’s the wholesale collection of every citizen’s web activity that has a lot of people worried. After all, there’s very little oversight about how the information is accessed, and it’s private...

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You’re in a quiet place, you get a phone call, and a loud ring roars out of your phone. Volume Scheduler is a free app that can help you out when you’ve forgotten to silence your phone or set it to vibrate.

The app adjusts your phone’s ringing level based on specific times of day or days of the week. You simply schedule these times within the app and decide how loud you want your phone’s ring to be. You can also schedule your phone to silent or just have it vibrate.

It’s a simple, useful app for work or meetings, when you may want to hear your phone ring, just not as loudly as you need it in the car or at home. Check it out for yourself at the link below. It’s only available for Android, but AutoSilent is a similar option for iPhone users.

Volume Scheduler | Google Play

There are nearly 1.5 million applications currently on Google Play and with so many to choose from, finding interesting new experiences can be a hassle. As we have the last several months now, today we’ll be showing you another 5 Android apps that you should definitely give a shot…

more…

Filed under: Google Corporate

Family holidays can be stressful: you have to sit through hours of never-ending meals that run high on alcohol and carbohydrates, all the while engaging in meaningful conversations with relatives you barely saw all year. Add in the contentious election, and politics is likely to dominate many Thanksgiving tables — the perfect storm for some holiday-themed family drama.

This is where the live animal cameras come in. They’re everything you need to melt your holiday stress — because it’s never a bad idea to watch some cuddly panda bears play around in China or some badass jellyfish float around an aquarium in California. When Uncle Harry is yelling at Aunt May about how the family assets get divided or the Paris accords, you may need to...

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We offer an oasis of serenity for you. Feel free to bookmark this page whenever anxiety surges, or the human race makes you despair.

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Microsoft is bringing its popular version of Solitaire to iOS and Android today. While the game as existed on Windows for more than 25 years, the modern Solitaire Collection will now be available outside of Windows for the first time. Microsoft is offering its Solitaire Collection on iOS and Android free of charge, as the company hopes to gain more players to add to the 119 million who have played the game on Windows 8 and Windows 10.

The Microsoft Solitaire Collection for iOS and Android includes Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramid,and Tripeaks game types, alongside daily challenges for players. Microsoft is integrating Xbox Live into the game so you can sign into Solitaire and play with friends or earn achievements. Microsoft is also...

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The holidays are a good time to unplug and partake in activities that don't involve a room full of people blankly staring at a screen for hours on end. If you want to spend some quality time with your loved ones this Thanksgiving, what better way to do it then by crushing them enjoying some friendly competition in a variety of board games?

Here are our top picks of games to play this holiday:

Fluxx

Fluxx is a fun card game, with rules that are — as the name implies — constantly in flux[x]. A round of Fluxx starts simply: each player draws one card and plays one card on their turn. But as the game progresses, new objectives and modifiers get chaotically thrown around. Rules change from turn to turn and the way to win...

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 All right, don’t panic, but computers have created their own secret language and are probably talking about us right now. Well, that’s kind of an oversimplification, and the last part is just plain untrue. But there is a fascinating and existentially challenging development that Google’s AI researchers recently happened across. Read More

The UK is about to become one of the world’s foremost surveillance states, allowing its police and intelligence agencies to spy on its own people to a degree that is unprecedented for a democracy. The UN’s privacy chief has called the situation "worse than scary." Edward Snowden says it’s simply "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy."

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 DeepMind CEO and co-founder Mustafa Suleyman talks to TechCrunch about its expanded collaboration with the Royal Free NHS Trust, including a forthcoming health data API infrastructure. He also responds to concerns raised over the wide-ranging scope of the data-sharing arrangement. Read More

Where there is smoke . . .

There’s fire!

Fire is a tricky thing to photograph. It comes in many forms; campfire, match, bonfire, fire spinning, sparklers, candles, etc. It can also make for some stunning images. Check these images of fire out and see if you agree.

The post 21 Smoking Hot Images of Fire by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

This remarkable demonstration of a pigeon, a falcon, and an owl flying past six extremely sensitive high-end microphones shows just how quiet owls are when they fly. (more…)

YouTuber Murmiland, aka Ortwin Grüttner, created this one-of-a-kind rafting-themed marble run that takes nearly 3 minutes from start to finish. Follow one yellow marble in a sea of green glass marbles as they cascade down the carved wooden path. Lots of nifty little features. (more…)

 Tesla and SolarCity’s union is still very fresh, but the combined companies are already highlighting what they’ve been able to accomplish even just as partners. The SolarCity blog details a project in which SolarCity power generation and Tesla Powerpack-based storage helped the small island of Ta’u in American Samoa fix its spotty power problem and cut its reliance on a… Read More

 DeepMind Health, the division of the Google-owned AI company that’s focused on building links to healthcare providers to drive the application of machine learning algorithms for preventative medicine, has inked a fresh data-sharing agreement with the NHS Royal Free Hospital Trust in London. Read More

15 Great Unreleased Beatles Songs You Can Stream  

Link via The Presurfer.

If you spend a lot of time at a computer, you already know your hands can hurt and ache after long hours of work. Here are some easy stretches you can do at your desk to alleviate wrist and hand pain.

This routine focuses on opening up the wrists and stretching your muscles in a different way than when you type or use your mouse. You can see the whole ten-minute routine in the video above, but if you can’t watch it, here are a few key exercises to get you started.

• Put your hands in front of you with fingers spread wide. Close them into gentle fists (don’t clench) and open them up again. Repeat five times.
• Start with your hands open, then rotate your thumbs in small circles. Do five circles and then switch directions.
• Bring your hands together in front of your heart (prayer position) with palms and fingers flat against each other. Press your hands together to stretch your wrists. Hold for five to ten seconds.
• Lace your fingers together, extend your arms out in front of you and then bring them up and over your head. Your palms should be facing away from you. Hold for ten seconds.

If you don’t have time for the whole routine, do one or two exercises that feel best to you. Repeat the exercises as many times as feels comfortable.

Office Yoga for Wrist Pain | Do You Yoga (YouTube)

 Life’s two great certainties are death and taxes. UK startup Farewill is hoping to combine the two: this week’s it’s officially launching a subscription will-writing service. Read More