Cooper Griggs

Hacker Samy Kamkar unveiled his latest triumph this morning: OwnStar, a tiny box that acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot and intercepts commands sent from a driver's OnStar RemoteLink app, allowing an unauthorized user to locate, unlock or start the vehicle. Si...

(via catsbeaversandducks:The Oatmeal)

Fact Check: Is Kansas City, Missouri home to an unusual subterranean complex known as Subtropolis?

Photographer Stephen Orlando (previously) captures the nearly imperceptible movement one makes when quickly sliding a bow along strings, the senses typically drawn to the sounds rather than appearance of the instrument being played. By using carefully placed LED lights and a long exposure Orlando can track these movements through space, following arms and bows with light trails that extend out from the body and instrument. These bright ghostly marks are captured through his photographic technique and not altered with Photoshop, making their distinct patterns all the more spectacular.

The Ontario-based artist was inspired by the lighting painter Gjon Mili, who also experimented with violins in 1952. Orlando explains:

A relative motion between the performer and camera must exist for the light trails to move through the frame. I found it easier to move the camera instead of the performer. The LEDs are programmed to change color to convey a sense of time. The progression of time is from left to right in the viola and violin photos and from top to bottom in the cello photos. Each photo is a single exposure and the light trails have not been manipulated in post processing.

You can see more of Orlando’s lit rainbow pieces on his Instagram and Facebook.

Giovanni Stanchi (Rome c. 1645-1672). Oil on canvas. 38 5/8 x 52½ in. (98 x 133.5 cm.) / Courtesy Christie’s

Old master work paintings are frequently cited for their depiction of historical events, documentation of culture, or portraiture of significant people, but there’s one lesser known use of some paintings for those with a keen eye: biology. One such instance is this Renaissance still life of various fruits on a table by Giovanni Stanchi painted sometime in the 1600s that shows a nearly unrecognizable watermelon before it was selectively bred for meatier red flesh.

Horticulture professor James Nienhuis at the University of Wisconsin tells Vox that he’s fascinated by old still life paintings that often contain the only documentation of various fruits and vegetables before we transformed them forever into something more desirable for human use. You can read a bit more about the science behind the changes in watermelons over the last 350 years here. (via Kottke)

Update: Greg Cato writes: “The painting depicts a rare outcome of sub-par growing conditions, known as ‘starring.’ It’s perfectly normal, still happens, and is not the result of selective breeding (although it would be cool if it were).” You can see an example here.

“I can’t define my hope by whether I will ultimately be successful. It’s not up to me. What’s up to me is that I get up every day
and I try to be honorable and I try to struggle. That’s the portion that’s up to me. That’s where my hope and faith resides.”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates, in conversation with David Remnick  (via newyorker)

What's happening over Bryce Canyon?

On August 5th, Lexus will finally reveal its hoverboard, which has been in development for the past 18+ months, to the public. Let that sink in for a bit: Lexus has created a working hoverboard in 2015, the year Marty and Doc Brown jumped to in Back ...

NASA's InSight Lander won't be reaching the red planet until 2016, but the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is already preparing for its welcome party. In order to make sure that it's at the right place to be able to receive radio transmissions from InSig...

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via http://www.reddit.com/

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Puerto Rican artist Alexis Diaz (previously) brings textures and patterns reminiscent of traditional engraving techniques to his murals of phantasmagorical creatures using only a paintbrush. Twisting tentacles, strange fusions of anatomy, beings wrapped in plants, all rendered atop colorful gradients create an unmistakable style Diaz has become famous for. You can see much more of his work here. (via Cross Connect)

If you've ever had to upgrade an iPhone months after launch, you've likely felt some anxiety: you need a new device right now, but you know you'll feel buyer's remorse when the next model shows up in September. T-Mobile thinks it can set your mind at...

by Tom Fonder

Nick Pourfard is 22-year-old artist, musician, and skateboarder currently combing his multiple talents into one package: guitars built from reclaimed skateboard decks. The San Francisco-based industrial design student taught himself woodworking to tackle the project which he branded as Prisma Guitars. Each instrument is 100% handmade and composed of skateboards that have been used or broken.

Recently, Pourfard had the honor of building a piece for Steve Harris of Iron Maiden. Pourfard explains, “I took every detail of his playing style and aesthetic into consideration. The bass has an off-white painted alder back with skate top featuring colors as close to West Ham as possible. I laser cut a custom mirror pickguard and bound the whole body in black and white to pay homage to his classic original bass.”

You can donate your own used or broken skateboards to Pourfard before they make their way into a landfill here. (via fubiz)

When Olympic athlete Ashton Eaton finishes an event, he feels better after dousing himself with a bottle of water, but that's not a very elegant way of keeping his head cool. That's why the decathlete teamed up with Nike to build this prototype face ...

Our sun blasts out over 50 percent of its energy as "near-infrared" light, but solar cells only harvest visible light. As a result, the best commercial panels only convert about 20 percent of solar energy to electricity. Researchers from UC Riverside...

After nearly 9 months of investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board has an official explanation for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crash. As suspected, the accident happened when the co-pilot triggered the "feathering" system (moving the...

Intel and Micron unveiled a novel new kind of non-volatile data storage device during a press conference on Tuesday. The chips, dubbed "3D XPoint" (pronounced "cross-point"), are being touted as the first new class of "mainstream memory" to hit the m...

A video posted by BEST GROUP NOMINEE 2015 MAMAs (@sautisol) on Jul 25, 2015 at 12:00pm PDT

msnbc:

shiftmsnbc:

Dance, dance, diplomacy! President Obama and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta made some smooth moves on the dance floor at a state dinner in Nairobi, Kenya.

Check out more from President Obama’s trip to Kenya!

my president.

Project PrintGREEN is turning 3D printers into on-demand gardeners after designing a “green” 3D printer in 2013. The printer produces living prints, printing customized objects in a variety of sizes and forms. The project was created at the University of Maribor in Slovenia, conceived of by students Maja Petek, Tina Zidanšek, Urška Skaza, Danica Rženičnik and Simon Tržan, with help from their mentor Dušan Zidar. The project’s goal is to unite art, technology, and nature, creatively producing living designs with the help of technology.

The “ink” in the machine is a combination of soil, seeds, and water which can be designed to print in any shape or letter. After drying, the muddy mixture holds its form and begins to sprout grass from the organic material. PrintGREEN’s slogan is a twist on the old conservationist motto, “think before you print,” telling their audience to “print, because it is green.” You can follow the project’s progress on their Facebook page here. (via My Modern Met)

The National Security Agency is apparently willing to make a clean break from the past now that the USA Freedom Act is forcing it to scale back its large-scale surveillance efforts. The organization now says that it won't analyze call metadata collec...

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