D G

The movie industry sees the illegal recording of movies as one of the biggest piracy threats and for years has gone to extremes to stop it.

It started well over a decade ago when visitors began sneaking handheld camcorders into theaters. These big clunkers were easy to spot, but as time passed the recording devices became smaller and easier to hide.

While recording a movie for strictly personal use is not illegal in UK cinemas (despite industry efforts to have the law changed), theaters continue to outlaw the use of recording devices. Most recently, Google Glass was banned, and phones and tablets need to be switched off as well.

In a code of conduct the movie industry and cinemas have agreed that employees will take immediate action when they spot someone with a recording device, but some cinema staff take these obligations way too far.

At a Cineworld cinema in Brighton Marina, UK, employees dialed the national 999 emergency number after they spotted a group of 12-year-old girls with iPhones and iPads at a showing of The Hunger Games.

The girls, accused of recording parts of the movie, were hauled outside where two police cars rushed towards the scene with flashing lights.

Although recording movies is not a crime in the UK (as long as there’s no intent to distribute), the officers still carefully inspected the devices for ‘bootleg’ material. After their search turned up nothing the girls were allowed back in. However, the teens decided to wait outside, reportedly in tears, until their parents came to pick them up.

Louise Lawrence, the mother of one of the girls, is outraged by the treatment. Not just the false piracy accusation, but also the fact that they were left out in the cold afterwards.

“Our girls were falsely accused, had the police called on them and then just left in tears. It’s outrageous. If they have done this to our children they will do it again,” she says.

A Cineworld spokesperson stresses that they apologized to the parents for the mistake, adding that it’s common procedure to take these actions.

“While we regret that the customers felt distressed, we are confident that the correct procedures were followed. If our staff see such behavior we expect them to notify the cinema management immediately and to call the police. However, we have taken on board the concerns expressed by the parents and we are reviewing how the policy is applied to younger customers,” she adds.

While movie theater staff could indeed call the police if they suspect that a commercial pirate is in their midst, a group of 12-year-old girls with iPhones hardly falls into the category.

And calling the national emergency number certainly seems to be taking things too far.

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

The post You can’t tell me you are a dog lover and DON’T adore these cute pictures! appeared first on ActingLikeAnimals.com.

The post Unborn chicks can communicate to their siblings and their mom from inside their shells. | The 29 Most Adorable Facts Ever appeared first on ActingLikeAnimals.com.

New peer-reviewed study shows two thousand years of global cooling. For those of you who live in southern climes, that sound you just heard was a hockey stick breaking on the ice.

submitted by esteflo [link] [383 comments]

Wouldn't decorating for the holidays be so much easier if you could simply have a decked-out Christmas tree delivered to your home that would then simply up and fly away on the 26th? That dream is now one step closer to reality thanks to Otto Dieffenbach from Flyguy Promotions who's created an RC flying Christmas tree that doesn't look too shabby.

Read more...

We have seen plenty of machines sort M&Ms or Skittle by color, but this new design posted over at Review My Life takes a clever new approach to sort the candies even quicker.

Read more...

Silicon Valley has one of the most in-demand real estate markets in the country, thanks in part to the prevalence of tech workers and their disproportionately high salaries.

Homes in Santa Clara County often sell for more than $1,000 per square foot. It's not uncommon for small homes that would be tear-downs anywhere else to sell for more than $1 million here. 

Our friends at real estate listings site Point2Homes helped us compile a list of Silicon Valley homes that are not exactly aesthetically pleasing, but that are listed for startlingly high prices nonetheless.

You may be surprised to see just how little your money will get you.

In Los Gatos, a 780-square-foot home costs more than $1 million.

Address: 194 Villa Avenue, Los Gatos

Price: $1.24 million

This charming, tiny home has two bedrooms and one bathroom. It was built in 1915.

 

 

This home only has two bedrooms, but it'll cost you nearly $2 million.

Address: 22350 Palm Avenue, Cupertino

Price: $1.65 million

This home dates back to 1925 and costs a whopping $1,549 per square foot. It's located in Cupertino, not far from Apple headquarters.

An adorably small home in downtown Mountain View costs almost $2 million.

Address: 620 Sonia Way, Mountain View

Price: $1.99 million

This 2,702-square-foot home near the Googleplex dates back to 1947. It has five bedrooms and five bathrooms. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

For years, McDonald’s franchisees have been complaining about an abundance of limited time offerings that use ingredients alien to the rest of the menu. But here’s an idea that some believe could invigorate the Golden Arches’ sagging sales without having to worry about millions of unsold frozen chicken wings.

Nick Chipman over at Dude Foods brings you the Big McRib, which is McRib meat on a Big Mac bun with all the Big Mac fixings (special sauce, lettuce, cheese, etc).

Full disclosure, while I’m an avowed fan of most fast food, I find most McDonald’s sandwiches not to my liking. So the idea of slamming together a Big Mac and a McRib is not exactly activating my salivary glands.

But Chipman, who had never actually had a McRib until recently, writes that this meat-swap to create the Big McRib makes it “even better.”

“With how iconic the Big Mac is I’m really surprised that McDonald’s doesn’t offer different variations of it like Burger King has done with their Whopper,” he muses.

Since McDonald’s obviously already has plenty of Big Mac components, it would seem like throwing other meats from its menu into that mix would be a no-brainer. It wouldn’t cost them any more or require that they keep any rarely used ingredients on hand. And McDonald’s could probably charge a premium, especially if you mix and match — one tier of McRib meat, another of beef or chicken.

You may be able to order a Big McRib once McDonald’s rolls out its “Create Your Taste” kiosk that allows customers to customize their sandwiches. However, initial tests of the program were limited to beef burgers and the company is just now introducing chicken to the program.

So apparently it’s time to hurry up and include McRib meat as an option.

[via FoodBeast]

Many Americans who call themselves white might be surprised to find out that they have some African ancestry. Especially in the South.

(23 and Me)

In a study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in December 2014, researchers used the ancestry data compiled by the commercial genetic testing company 23and Me to measure the percentage of African ancestry of people who self-identified as white. It turns out that self-identified white people who live in the South have the highest concentrations of African DNA.

(Read more: How a biracial woman grew up thinking she was white)

In South Carolina and Louisiana — the states shaded the darkest green on the map above — researchers found that one in 20 people who called themselves white had at least 2 percent African ancestry. And in a lot of the South, about 10 percent of people who identified as white turned out to have African DNA.

Racial mixture represents African female/European male couplings

The researchers also used genetic information to determine the genders of the specific people who were responsible for some Americans' mixed ancestry. They found that many more (19 percent) of the ancestors of self-identified black people were European male, while only 5 percent were European females. They could even pin down the timing: the mixture generally occurred in the early 1800s, when slavery was legal. That, of course, reflects what historians know about white slave owners raping enslaved women who descended from Africa.

Where black Americans have the most African ancestry

Just like white people in the South had the most African ancestry, so did black people. The lowest percentage of African heritage in people who called themselves black was found in West Virginia. Next: Washington State.

(23 and Me)

28 percent: the tipping point for identifying as black?

(23 and Me )

Comparing ancestry data to how people self-identified, the researchers found that Americans tended to identify as European-American, rather than African-American, when they had less than 28 percent African ancestry.

h/t Quartz

Further reading:

11 ways race isn't real

This insanely detailed map proves race is a social construct

Researchers have been thinking about race wrong

WATCH: '220 years of population changes in one map'

Earlier today, reports abounded that North Korea had suffered an unprecedented internet outage . While it remains unclear whether it's the result of a cyber attack or the country's longstanding technological woes, one thing is certain: you got jokes!

Read more...

2014 was such a weird year in games for me. If you had asked me last January how I thought this list would have shook out, I'd have been far off the mark. For one thing, I would have expected a slew of amazing new Xbox One and PS4 games taking up the top slots, but we all know that didn't happen for various reasons (maybe next year!). From the games that did make the list, some of my most anticipated titles of the year hit harder than others, while some of my absolute favorites turned out to be complete surprises!

Whatever my expectations were, I had an amazing time in 2014. Here are the titles that touched the black soylent mass of my heart the most this year.  

Read more...

submitted by CreepyFoodArt
[link] [31 comments]

Trees come in all colors, and it just takes a sense of humor to turn a blue one into Cookie Monster! Redditor enhydra-lutris did just that, with a couple of styrofoam balls and a pillowcase for his mouth. Next project- baking lots of cookies to hang as ornaments! Santa might have a little problem taking them away from him, though.

For the last 20 years, unassuming Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom has traversed the world, picking a spot, be it in Shanghai, New York, or Paris, and meticulously photographed what he saw. “I take between 1 and 80 photographs a day, almost every day, 12 months a year,” he says, referring to his “Photo Notes” project, which has now been turned into a book titled People of the Twenty-First Century. The “Photographic Journal,” published by PHAIDON, is the largest, most comprehensive work of his to date, and includes thousands of photos that, together, create a fascinating picture of mankind.

The “anti-sartorial” photographs of everyday people capture specific visual themes – people in red jackets, men with bare chests on roller blades – that are grouped together with the date, city and time range they were taken. And this combination and repetition is what makes the photographs so powerful. Viewed separately, they would hardly even catch our eye.

“I don’t use this diary to show what happens in my life but as a method of visualizing the development of my world view,” writes the artist. Much like the way stalagmites form in caves over hundreds of years, Eijkelboom’s landscape is the result of a methodical fixation to the banality of everyday life. Hans Eijkelboom’s “People of the Twenty-First Century” is available for around $26 (Via Citylab)