Fatbob

Melissa in Ontario received this note — attached to a raw chicken breast and wrapped in plastic wrap — pushed through her mail slot several years ago. To this day, she says, “I’ve never been able to figure out what I did that was so horrible/distracting that it ruined the best orgasm of someone’s life and also what raw chicken has to do with it.”

related: Down and dirty down under

(434): Saw a girl on a walk of shame bend down and look in a pizza box by a trash can to see if there was still a slice left. That's when you know.

Would you like to supersize that molten plastic? (the toy, not the cheeseburger)

McDonalds is considering installing 3D printers in its stores to produce the pocket-sized toys which are a key part of their Happy Meals.…

National Geographic magazine has several features surrounding an article about rising sea levels. One is a map that shows where the world's current coastlines are and where they would be if all the world's icecaps, icebergs, and glaciers melted. If that happened, sea levels would rise 216 feet. That might not seem like much, until you realize how many people live in those coastal areas that would be affected. At the site, you can get a good look at every continent, including Antarctica, which shows the biggest difference of course. -via Digg

Thanks Addalaide

 

India's first-ever mission to Mars launched into space Tuesday, beginning the country's first interplanetary mission to explore the solar system

With a thunderous roar, India's Mars Orbiter Mission rocketed into space at 4:08 a.m. from the Indian Space Research Organisation's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, where the local time was 2:38 p.m. An ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launched the probe on its 300-day trek into orbit around the Red Planet.

"The journey has only just begun," said ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan after the successful launch

Read more...

More about Space, India, Nasa, Science, and Mars

Despite all the talk of the paperless office, for some reason most of us still seem to drown under piles of dead tree. But while we're all intimately familiar with the stuff, understanding where those weird sizing conventions came from never seems to get any easier.

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The world’s largest snack maker is widening its own market by mixing sweet with salty in its snacks — and is rolling out chocolate-covered Lay’s Wavy chips for the holidays.

The chip is initially a limited time offering sold only at Target stores, but could become permanent.

Read all about it

 

via

 Might be time for Mom to get to know her son a little bit.

 

Whether you need to know the part of the cow the brisket comes from, how many grams are in an ounce, how long to steam an artichoke, or how long fish keeps in the freezer, this graphic can tell you. Dubbed the "ultimate kitchen cheat sheet," it's packed with conversions, butcher's charts, food safety info, and more.

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The latest flavor of Android, version 4.4 KitKat, is just a few days old, but enthusiasts and developers alike have already gobbled down and digested it. Besides the tentpole features of improved power efficiency (thus better battery life on any device that runs it) and more sophisticated voice recognition, KitKat has several hidden tidbits for users to snack on.

TechSmartt put its new Google Nexus 5 smartphone through the paces to uncover 11 extras in KitKat and posted the findings in a YouTube video. Our favorite: The Easter Egg in the Settings that lets you spin a giant "K" over and over, plus the stylized Android logo made to look like a KitKat bar Read more...

More about Google, Android, Tech, Apps Software, and Mobile

Richard Garriot, of Ultima fame, is working on a new role-playing game called Shroud of the Avatar. The game was successfully Kickstarted back in the spring, and Garriot just shared twenty-five minutes of what the game looks like after six months of development. He narrates over the video and shows off player housing, the conversation system, crafting, and some combat.

Conversations with non-player characters will work by letting the player type in what they want to say, and the game will pull out key words to figure out the conversation. I personally love this, and it is far better than the current system of "good choice" or "bad choice" options that water down most modern role-playing games.

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Sync, a file synchronization service from P2P platform BitTorrent that works as a kind of server-less Dropbox, has picked up some good traction since launching earlier this year, with 1 million active users archiving and synchronizing some 30 petabytes of data on the service to-date (up from 8 petabytes in July). Now BitTorrent is hoping to turn up the volume on that usage: today it's releasing its first Sync API, which will let developers incorporate the service into their own apps as a way for users to access and share data.

On top of this, the company is also releasing a new version of Sync, 1.2, which will allow for native iPad support and faster transfer speeds of up to 90MB/second over LANs (with wireless slower).

This is not BitTorrent's first foray into APIs: the company in the past has also offered them for uTorrent and Torque for BitTorrent itself.

This latest move, however, is about courting a wider range of developers beyond those focused only on media file sharing. It's doing so with a couple of unique selling points: not only does BitTorrent claim that Sync works faster and better than many of the other services out there today; but it is also more private, in that the server-free, distributed nature of P2P architecture keeps data out of potentially creeping eyes.

There is backstory here: BitTorrent has been an outspoken critic of the NSA and what it has been doing in terms of accessing consumer data. Of course, this plays very much into BitTorrent's hand, architected as it is without centralized services for basic distribution. A cynical person might even say that this is simply good (and obvious) marketing.

Regardless, for those who care about data privacy, services like Sync offer a clear alternative to some of the other services out there for file back-ups. “We believe a decentralized Internet is a better Internet,” a spokesperson told me flatly.

The big question, I think, will be if a critical mass of consumers out there cares enough about this issue to make the move to BitTorrent-based services, and - with the release of the API - whether BitTorrent can court a significant amount of developers to believe in this idea to use its services, too. One million actives is a good start but considering the tens of millions using Dropbox and others, there is a long way to go.

BitTorrent, of course, comes with some baggage of its own. The company has been working hard to live down a reputation as a facilitator of illicit file sharing from the earlier days of the Internet. More recently, the company has been building up its reputation along another track: it has been positioning itself as the go-to place for those in the creative industries to promote and share their content when they want to bypass (or complement) Apple, Amazon and the other leviathans of online content distribution.

While Sync, as with other BitTorrent services, remains free for now, the company will eventually be working revenue into the equation.

“We'll be exploring monetization opportunities in 2014 but are not announcing such plans at this time,” a spokesperson told me. As with BitTorrent Bundles for packages of content and SoShare for file sharing, the idea will be to eventually add a freemium model to the service, charging for certain features or tiers of usage while keeping the core product free. “We'll always allow basic functionality for BitTorrent Sync to be available free of charge. We are still exploring monetization options for the API,” the spokesperson said. The earliest as most likely area for charging first will be in enterprise-level classes of service.

Although the API is being made public today, you can see some early examples of how it's being used in website deployment, social networking, and messaging. Playing on the privacy card, BitTorrent also suggests that the kids of apps that might be likely users of the Sync API include “free speech applications… that combat censorship, and support the free distribution of ideas and information” as well as “secure storage applications that… enable user privacy, and prevent dragnet data collection.”

“We are already seeing groups independently working on private and secure [services],” the spokesperson said. “We see this as the start of the next great wave of innovation for the Internet.”

You can see the full list of calls, and other details about the API, here.

Image: Flickr

First time accepted submitter stanga writes "Cornell researchers unveiled an attack on the Bitcoin mining protocol that enables selfish mining pools to earn more than their fair share. In a technical report the authors explain this attack can be performed by a pool of any size. Rational miners will join this pool to increase their benefits, creating a snowball effect that may end up with a pool commanding a majority of the system's mining power. Such a pool would be able to single-handedly control the blockchain, violating the decentralized nature of the increasingly successful Bitcoin. The authors propose a patch to the protocol that would protect the system from selfish mining pools smaller than 25% of the system. They also show that Bitcoin can never be safe from selfish mining pools larger than 33% of the network, whereas it was previously believed that only groups larger than 50% of the network were a threat to the system. The question is — can the miners operating today adopt the suggested fix and dismantle too-large pools before a selfish mining pool arises?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Japanese hamburger chain, Freshness Burger, found that while men loved their flagship large Classic Burger, women rarely ordered it. It turns out the women did not want to open their mouths wide in front of men, because a small mouth, or ochobo, is more attractive. That's not problem with noodles or food that can be cut into small pieces, but it's hard to eat a large sandwich without opening your mouth.  

The restaurant responded with a new burger wrapper called the Liberation Wrapper, which is folded in a way that covers the lower half of a woman's face as she bites into the burger. It is also decorated with the lower half of a model's face, in order to maintain the illusion of a dainty face with a closed mouth. The result? Sales of the Classic Burger to women are up 213%! -via Buzzfeed

I don't think of the Nintendo 3DS as being a powerhouse in terms of graphical potential, so this tech demo video of IronFall has me quite curious. Boasting some impressive lighting effects and textures, it also claims the game will run at a full 60fps.

It doesn't look as good as some Vita titles we've seen, but it also seems almost too good to be true on Nintendo's handheld. Plus, there's always the concern that even if it does manage the technical, the resulting game may not be as much fun as it is pretty to look at. If developer VDdev does manage to pull off both, IronFall could be a very hot title for the 3DS.

(Photo: Steve Johnson)

Norway has, by American standards, somewhat eccentric preferences for television programming. Several months ago, it showed a 12-hour program of a fire burning in a fireplace. It has also shown an 8-hour train ride and a 134-hour recording of an Arctic cruise ship voyage.

Last Friday, the network NRK planned to show half a day of knitting. But it’s actually faster-paced that you might think. A crew planned to set a new world record for shearing a live sheep, carding the wool, turning it into thread and then knitting a sweater. It’s called the “sheep to sweater” or “back to back” challenge. The current record of 4 hours and 51 minutes is held by Merriwa Jumbucks of Australia.

Rune Moklebust, the director of the program, calls the approach “Slow TV.” Rachel Martin of National Public Radio (USA) interviewed him about it:

MARTIN: The knitting program is about to happen. Can you give us preview of that? What can we expect to see?

MOKLEBUST: The first four and a half hours will be talking about knitting in every aspect, or almost everything, because we can't fit everything in. Around midnight, we will turn the pace down, if possible. Start with a record attempt - Guinness world record attempt - of the process from sheep to jumper.

-via Marginal Revolution

Kids are just the best. And dads who love their kids make them even better. Leon is a boy who was born without fingers on one of his hands. Instead of making him think he was different, his father Paul McCarthy made him believe he was special. In fact, McCarthy made a prosthetic hand with a 3D printer so his son could be excited to become a cyborg. And Leon totally is.

Read more...

No, seriously. The '80s had Rock 'n Wrestling, and today's kids get this... It's going to be a 13-episode series of 3-minute web shorts. CAMP WWE follows these unruly tykes as they body slam their way through their formative years. Proving to be a nightmare for teachers and other kids, their exhausted parents pack-up their future WWE Superstars with their masks, chains, kneepads and security blankets and send them off to Camp WWE, to be transformed into model citizens by the most terrifying counselor who ever lived, Mr. McMahon. Hmm....when I hear "masks, chains, kneepads and security blankets" I don't think of children at camp. I don't actually want to even go into what I think about. But like summer camp, it certainly involves tears at first. via press release

Less than a week after the reveal of Spinal, we get a nice little leak showing Fulgore as the final character for Killer Instinct's season-one roster. Yes, there is a God. The leak comes by way of Penny Arcade, who seemingly uploaded a character release schedule by accident, but quickly took it down and re-upload with a censored version. You can see both images below.

I'm not entirely surprised to see Fulgore as the final character, but I was getting a bit worried here. Between the game and soundtrack cover art, Fulgore and Spinal were the proverbial poster boys of the Killer Instinct series, so it's high time they got their time in the reboot's limelight. Sadly, I guess this means we'll have to wait until season two to get some T.J. Combo action going.

All thanks to Event Hubs for catching the screens!

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Thanks to the fact that Lucasfilm published it on the company's official YouTube channel, a lot of people have seen the original 1977 trailer for Star Wars lately

And thanks to the fact that Lucasfilm put it in an e-book, and a fan transferred it to YouTube without authorization, a lot of people have seen the newly discovered Star Wars blooper reel lately. (It was taken down over a copyright complaint, but now appears to be back; check it out, below, for as long as it lasts.)

Regardless, the genie is out of the bottle on this one, as shown Monday, when a mash-up of the original trailer and the blooper reel started circulating. Read more...

More about Mashups, Remix Culture, Star Wars, Entertainment, and Film

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steakplissken:

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I’m in love with this.

Rod Serling would approve.

edwardspoonhands:

wonderfulmustacios:

taktophoto:

Interlocked Coins Form Complex Geometric Sculptures

is that even fucking legal

WANT!

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cancerously:

superblys:

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thegoodlannister:

My sister got me a Thor bobblehead.

This is what I did with it.

since I’m a serious grown adult, I have a reply for you

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I AM CRYING

legitimately crying

My Yoda bobble-head has something to say…

it got better

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