Fatbob

 When Bitsbox co-founder Scott Lininger learned to code, it was on a TRS-80 color computer his mom and dad bought him when he was a kid. He says he taught himself coding by copying from the book that came with the computer. Now a dad himself, Lininger wanted to offer his daughter the opportunity to experience learning to code much in the same way he did, but couldn’t find a service… Read More

New Era is best known as the purveyor of apparel for professional athletes and fashion-forward trendsetters. They've really left the nerds behind, and that's a huge missed opportunity embraced by these insanely loud fitted hats.

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Thanks Mike (from Spain)

 

The post Parental Worries appeared first on Bits and Pieces.

It turns out that with the addition of just two extra holes on a standard button and some strategic stitching, you can express yourself even more creatively with your fashion choices. Because these delightful Typo Buttons let you spell out messages down the front of your shirt, or on the cuff of a blazer.

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Thanks Bella

 

The post Alcohol probably won’t fix your problems… appeared first on Bits and Pieces.

The popular mint cigarette flavouring menthol may make smoking a harder habit to kick by increasing the number of nicotine receptors in our brains

We got a chance to go hands on with Mario Maker at E3 this past June and it was pretty awesome even if it felt a little bit, well, safe. New footage that premiered at tonight's The Game Awards in Las Vegas blew our previous conceptions out of the wat...

At the Game Awards tonight, the founders of Sierra Ken and Roberta Williams were honored with the Industry Icon Award for their work in the early days of videogame development. After Ken demonstrated his inability to adjust a mic stand, the pair turned control over to developers from Odd Gentlemen, who have been working on a new entry in the famous King's Quest series.

The trailer shows off the modernized adventure game, complete with a gold-hoarding dragon and a dancing weirdo. Check it.

With millions of visitors per day ExtraTorrent is one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet. Founded in 2006 the site has been around for a while, steadily growing its user base.

Over the years ExtraTorrent users have downloaded billions of files, and this week the site revealed the top 20 most pirated files of all time. The data gives a unique insight into the downloading habits of torrent users and comes with a few surprises.

While no exact download counts are provided the ExtraTorrent team told us that the top ten were downloaded at least 10 million times. This number represents the downloads of the .torrent files from the site where different releases of a music album or movie are counted as one.

One of the biggest surprises is that the top three is made up of music. Drake’s album ‘Nothing Was The Same’ is listed in first place, followed by the Maroon 5 track ‘Payphone’ and Jay Z’s album ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail.’

Iron Man 3 is the most pirated movie in fourth place, followed by The Expendables 3, which leaked onto the Internet three weeks before its theatrical release this summer.

The rest of the top 20, all music and movies, are listed below. While this data only applies to ExtraTorrent it’s a decent representation of what’s popular on other torrent sites as well.

1. Drake – Nothing Was The Same (Mp3 Album)
2. Maroon 5 – Payphone (feat.WizKhalifa Explicit) (Mp3 Track)
3. Jay-Z – Magna Carta Holy Grail (Mp3 Album)
4. Iron Man 3
5. The Expendables 3
6. Fast And Furious 6
7. The Hunger Games
9. The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug
9. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
10. The Amazing Spider-Man
11. Beyonce – 4 Deluxe Edition (Mp3 Album)
12. The Wolf of Wall Street
13. Rihanna – Unapologetic (Mp3 Album)
14. Lil Wayne – No Ceilings (Mp3 Album)
15. Justin Timberlake – The 20/20 Experience (Mp3 Album)
16. Daft Punk – Get Lucky
17. Kick (Bollywood movie)
18. Ariana Grande – Problem (ft. Iggy Azalea) (Mp3 Track)
19. Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides
20. Avengers XXX – (XXX)

The most pirated files include a lot of relatively new files. This can be attributed to the fact that ExtraTorrent has grown significantly over the years.

ExtraTorrent released the ten most downloaded files as part of a contest in celebration of the site’s 8th birthday. The rest of the top 20 was provided to TF exclusively.

With the contest the person with the most correct answers could win an iPad Air. Perhaps not a surprise, but none of the 3,000 contestants could name all titles.

The winner guessed seven of the ten correctly, but missed the top three. Most lists were heavily based on movies. For example, Drake’s ‘Nothing Was The Same’ was only mentioned in one entry, while Maroon 5 and Jay-Z weren’t listed at all.

Finally, it’s worth nothing that there are no TV-shows and only one porn title in the top 20. While both categories are relatively popular these downloads are usually spread over more files compared to movies and music.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Valve recently held a contest asking players to design the best Tomb Raider-themed customization items for Team Fortress 2 as a sly, interactive way to promote the Steam debut of Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. The publisher then specifically a...

(570): I don't know how to reply to him. 'I'm glad the ecstasy my friend tricked you into taking wore off'...? It just doesn't seem sincere.

This is so me.

via

Thanks Tammy

 

The post You can’t find your shoes… appeared first on Bits and Pieces.

A few years ago, the world of fine woodworking was presented with the Fletcher Capstan table. It’s a round table, able to expand its diameter merely by rotating the top. A gloriously engineered bit of mechanics move the leaves of the tables out while simultaneously raising the inner part of the table. It’s a seriously cool table, very expensive, and something that will probably be found in museums 100 years from now.

[Scott Rumschlag] thought his woodworking skills were up to the task of creating one of these expanding tables and managed to build one in his workshop. Like the Fletcher Capstan table, it’s a table that increases its diameter simply by rotating the table top. Unlike the commercial offering, this one doesn’t cost as much as a car, and you can actually see the internal mechanism inside this table.

The top of [Scott]’s table is made of three pieces. The quarter-circle pieces are the only thing showing when the table is in its minimum position, and are arranged on the top of the ‘leaf stack’. When the table expands, four additional leaves move up from beneath with the help of a linear bearing made of wood and a roller that slides along the base of this mechanical contraption.

The center of the table – the star – is a bit more difficult to design. While the leaves move up the stack of table tops with the help of a ramp, this is an impractical solution for something so close to the center of the table. Instead of a ramp, [Scott] is using a lifting lever and metal hinge that brings the star of the table up to the right level. Even though it’s a crazy amount of woodworking and fine tuning to get everything right, it’s not too terribly difficult to get your head around.

Videos, including one of the assembly of the table, below.

Filed under: misc hacks, slider

(John McNamee/Pie Comic)

Preach on, robot! Kids of all forms, organic and metallic, don't understand how fortunate they are. Back in my day, when a robot tried to kill me, it was only after I had walked to the robot factory uphill both ways in the snow. And when a robot tried to strangle me, I respected it. That was a robot trying to do quality work.

For those of us who wear jeans and t-shirts, the basics of suit fashion might pass us by. This chart helps men figure out which shoes and suit go with which occasion.

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Thanks Keith

 

The post Naughty Elf appeared first on Bits and Pieces.

Devolver Digital has announced it is publishing Enter the Gungeon next year.

Something about, "A gun...THAT CAN KILL THE PAST" just won me over. I don't even have to understand what it means. Plus there's table flipping cover and a giant pink laffy taffy laser. 

Apparently you are able to choose between a variety of playable characters, each seeking the legendary gun that can destroy their tragic pasts. Along the way, you'll slaughter hordes of Gundead and find weapons that shoots things like bullets and weapons that shoot things like, "a volley of rainbows, fish, foam darts and bees."

Cute rolling animation, cute enemies to explode, crazy guns. I'd like to play this on my Vita, but PS4 and PC/Mac/Linux will have to do.

'Legal tussles nearly killed us but we shipped on 7 Dec 1989'

Software guru Ray Ozzie has been celebrating the upcoming 25th anniversary of Lotus Notes by telling the story of its development in a series of tweets.…

tsu doh nimh writes: A new report from the U.S. Treasury Department found that nearly $24 million in bank account takeovers by hackers (and other cyber theft over the past decade) might have been thwarted had affected institutions known to look for and block transactions coming through the Tor anonymity network. Brian Krebs cites from the non-public report, which relied on an analysis of suspicious activity reports filed by banks over the past decade: "Analysis of these documents found that few filers were aware of the connection to Tor, that the bulk of these filings were related to cybercrime, and that Tor-related filings were rapidly rising. Our BSA [Bank Secrecy Act] analysis of 6,048 IP addresses associated with the Tor darknet found that in the majority of the SAR filings, the underlying suspicious activity — most frequently account takeovers — might have been prevented if the filing institution had been aware that their network was being accessed via Tor IP addresses." Meanwhile, the Tor Project continues to ask for assistance in adapting the technology to an Internet that is increasingly blocking users who visit from Tor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Now, this is how you sell a house!

A real estate broker in Ermelo, the Netherlands, found a great way to encourage prospective buyers to take a quick tour of this house: his companybuilt a roller coaster through it. There's a single-person car which whisks a potential customer through the house while speakers describe its amenities.

(Video Link)

-via Lustik

Gorgeous, procedurally generated Metroidvania, basically. It's joining an enormous group of games, yet they all seem to have a distinctive enough art style that I get excited for all of them. Though I'd rather play them on Vita than PS4, probably.

Oh well. Skytorn looks lovely. 

Update: Nintendo released an official statement to Destructoid on the supposed "discontinued" figures and, well, it's looking like they are "likely" gone. "We will aim for certain amiibo to always be available. These will be for our most popular characters like Mario and Link. Due to shelf space constraints, other figures likely will not return to the market once they have sold through their initial shipment."

Original story: Canadian videogame retailer Video Games Plus has reported that, "Nintendo has officially discontinued Marth, Wii Fit Trainer & Villager amibos [sic]," at least for the North American market. There has already been a shortage when it comes to folks trying to find these three in stores.

According to the retailer, "We tried re-ordering all 3 from our official Nintendo distributor and after them checking with Nintendo on availability, they told us those 3 characters are officially discontinued by Nintendo believe it or not."

If that's the case, better get yours now so you can sell them for $100 later. We've reached out to Nintendo for comment.

It's safe to say Goat Simulator has become a cherished part of video game culture. Now GAME is hoping to tap into some of that indie magic with a parody simulation title of its own. It's called Christmas Shopper Simulator and, well, it's a bit rubbis...