Zencyde

Between the 1930s and 1970s, billions of dollars were spent to build early-warning systems—often in the most remote parts of the world. But by the late 1980s, most of these sites had been abruptly shuttered—made increasingly obsolete by the emergence of satellite communications. Yet the hulking shells, discs, and towers often still remain.

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Tim Pietrusky nailed it. Select the text!

Meet Issus coleoptratus, an insect whose larva have interlocking meshed gears connecting their back legs. The gears help coordinate leg movements, helping the larva to jump fast and far.

Video Link

What looks like a duck but tastes like a potato? 73-year-old retiree Dorothea Clinton of Shropshire, England, dug up this unusual looking tuber from her back garden. "I just pulled it out of the ground and I thought, 'Oooh, it's a duck,'" she told Shropshirestar. "We normally eat everything we produce from the garden but I can't bring myself to eat this one, it's got a kind of strange sentimental value to me now."

Now that's a spud worth quacking about!

How do you make hash browns and eggs even better? By putting one inside the other, of course. Just soft boil your egg, wrap the raw hash browns around it and then throw it all in a deep fryer. If you really want a delicious heart attack though, you might try combining this and a Scotch egg so you can have eggs, sausage and potatoes all in one easily portable snack.

Link Via Food Beast

(Photo: NariNari)

With a bit of rice and seaweed, you can make little pandas. Here's a herd of them heading down to the curry pond for a swim.

While writing this post, I discovered that there is no specific collective noun for pandas. In the comments, suggest one.

Link

Some Gotham City social worker wasn't thinking through this placement. Andrew Bridgman and Julia Lapetit tell a Batman story more disturbing than what you may be used to.

Link -via Wolf Gnards

Ever think that a 1280×720 HD display wasn’t high enough definition? Well, how about a Quad HD display with four times that number of pixels at 2560×1440? That’s exactly what LG Display has done, showing it off to the world on a 5.5-inch rig that is also only 1.21mm thick with a 1.2mm bezel. For those techies who love a good ppi count, this display works out to have 538ppi. That’s right, 538ppi. I’ll be getting my jaw off the floor now.

It’s not quite 4K resolution, but it will allow you to watch Blu-Ray quality videos all from your smartphone screen, which when you think about it is actually pretty crazy. And as the demoed screen measured 5.5-inches, it’s not too hard to imagine this screen being featured on a smartphone sometime in the near future.

Can’t wait to see these on phones. Who else is excited to see all the cool tech LG Display has been coming up with this year? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Source: engadget

"You’re the worst thing that has ever happened to the universe, you owe everyone everywhere an apology for this burritobomination, and I hope your babies look like monkeys." @luckyshirt on Medium. The problem: dude constructed burrito like a pack of lifesavers, which ignores a primary user interface principle of burrito design, namely, the user typically consumes the content laterally.

Read on Ars Technica | Comments

Between the price of event tickets, concessions, parking lots, and online "convenience fees," going out for a simple night of fun can cost you an arm and a leg. If you're looking to get out of the house, here are some good ways to have fun without the exorbitant cost.

Reduce the Check When You Go Out to Dinner

Not only can eating out be expensive, but it will probably get tacked on to plenty of other events you'll go to. As such, this should probably be one of the first places you look to save money. The obvious ways to cut costs are to eat at cheaper restaurants or cook your own meals, but that isn't very fun, is it? Here are some things you can try to shave that check:

• Eat at culinary schools. Chefs have to learn to cook somewhere. Often, culinary schools will run educational restaurants that allow students to learn their trade by cooking for the public. You can get a nice meal for cheaper than you might at a regular restaurant.

• Find discounted vouchers. Groupon isn't the only game in town when it comes to finding deals on meals. There are plenty of places to get discounted vouchers for meals out. Restaurant.com, LivingSocial, and Amazon Local are great places not only to find deals, but to discover new restaurants in your area.

• Eat lunch, not dinner. If you have the choice between eating earlier and later, go for earlier. Dinner meals are frequently more expensive than lunch for a variety of reasons. Not only is competition for speed and turnover higher around lunch time, but it's easier to coax money out of people in the evening when they're relaxed.

• Have a small snack first. Your mother told you all your life not to snack or you'll ruin your appetite. You're an adult now, though, and it's time to break those chains. If you go to a restaurant ravenous, you'll be more likely to indulge in expensive meals. Everyone knows you should avoid going grocery shopping while hungry. Just apply that same logic to dining out.

• Skip the booze. I know, I know. This is supposed to be fun. However, the quickest way to burn through your funds is to start out by spending $8 per cocktail to increasingly impair your judgment (and then spend even more on a taxi home). If you really want to drink as part of your night out, withdraw a small amount of cash and stick to that budget.

See a Movie For Less Than a Fortune

Movie theaters are notorious for being expensive outings (though, compared to concerts or plays, they're among the cheapest shows you can see). They don't have to be, though. There are plenty of ways you can save on every part of the movie theater experience:

• Buy cheap movie passes. If you've got a AAA membership, you can usually buy passes for movie theaters for a few dollars less than you'll pay at the box office. Warehouse stores like Costco also often sell packages of tickets for 10 at a time for a cheaper per-ticket cost. It will cost a bit more up front, but if you know you'll use them, the bundle can save you a bundle.

• Go to a dollar theater. If you don't mind seeing films that are a few months old, you can try a dollar theater. Some theaters offer huge discounts on ticket prices by playing films after they've had their initial major theater run.

• Grab a snack before hand. It would seem like common sense, but the only reason concession stands are profitable is because people go to the theater hungry. There's one easy hack to avoid the eight dollar popcorn trap: eat and drink before you get to the theater.

• Enroll in rewards programs. Most movie theater chains like AMC and Regal offer a rewards program. Some may offer you a free ticket after every ten. Others will simply be a small amount of change off some concessions. Every little bit counts, though.

• Find a drive-in. Yes, they still exist, and they can be quite cheap. Because drive-ins have considerably less overhead (both figuratively and literally), they can charge less per ticket for a show. Plus, you have the added benefit of a more peaceful viewing environment, provided you don't let the screaming baby and the jerk on his cell phone into your car.

Rock Out Without Your Wallet Out

Concerts aren't exactly cheap, but there are ways you can cut down on the costs associated with getting your party on. Because nothing is more metal than being frugal.

• Buy tickets at the box office to avoid convenience fees. You didn't think something could get easier and cheaper, did you? Often, ticketing sites will charge a "convenience fee" that tacks an extra couple bucks on to your ticket price purely because you ordered online. Skip the fee by stopping by the venue.

• Avoid expensive food and drinks inside the event. Most concerts won't allow you to bring in your own drinks, but you can still cut down on costs by tailgating the event and eating your fill before you go in. Of course, you'll never, ever want to try to sneak your own drinks into the event. We would never tell you to do that.

• Find free shows at arts centers, colleges, and libraries. No, Mackelmore or whatever you kids listen to these days probably won't show up to your county's local library. However, on a given weekend, some place near you could potentially have live music going on for free.

Get Into Museums Without Paying a Finder's Fee

Museums can be fun. Listen, I promise, seeing dinosaur bones is just as exciting as seeing Iron Man 3. Or at least better than Man of Steel. Fortunately, educational attractions have a plethora of money-saving methods available to you:

• Attend "Free to the Public" day. Many museums offer a periodic event that allows anyone to come in and explore without paying an admission fee. Depending on the museum, it may be one day a month, or just once or twice a year, but if you're not in a hurry to go to a certain place on a schedule, you can eliminate the admission fee entirely.

• Take advantage of discounts. Bank of America, AAA, and other organizations offer discounts on admission passes for museums. Check with your bank, your employer, and any group you have a membership with to see if they have any discounts you can take advantage of.

• Get a Go Card. While it's only available in select cities, Go Cards can offer you a single pass that gets you into a ton of attractions for a single price. Go Cards are supported in cities including but not limited to New York, Chicago, San Diego, and Orlando. These include a number of museums, so if you're taking a vacation, try starting your itinerary planning here.

• Go to museums with suggested donations. Some museums don't have admission prices, in the strictest sense. Many will simply request that you make some donation, and offer a suggested amount. If you can afford it, it's frowned upon to pitch in less than the suggested donation, but if you have little cash and still want to learn something, just put in what you can. Don't feel guilty if you can't pay more, either. Museums need money, but the suggestion system exists so you're not locked out if you're hurting for cash.

Attend Sporting Events Without Fumbling Your Finances

Sporting events often involve a lot of cheering, a lot of drinking, and, I am told, some measure of getting rowdy tonight. Hank Williams Jr. made no mention of shrewdly saving your money. That doesn't mean you can't pocket some cash, though.

• Check out ticket broker sites. Sometimes, events just don't sell well. In those cases, you can almost always find some deals on tickets via sites like StubHub or RazorGator. You can even search through several broker sites at once on Ticketwood. Before buying tickets to any event, check out our guide to getting the best price on any admission.

• Get tickets from season pass holders. Often, season pass holders will shell out money for tickets to every game in a season, but only attend some. For them, it's cheaper to buy in bulk, but if they don't use a ticket for a particular game, you can always try to purchase them for less than the cost of paying for it outright.

• Honor the tailgate tradition to save money on food. Hot dogs don't cost $8, but you wouldn't know it inside of a stadium. Tailgating before a game isn't just a great way to have fun with your friends and family, it's your last chance to get a meal on your terms, instead of paying too much money for too little meat.

Neither a Spender, Nor a Beggar Be at Plays

Live theater isn't nearly as common in the shadow of movie theaters, but they're still a fantastic source of entertainment that guarantees a unique experience every time. Plus, going to plays is super classy.

• Volunteer for free admission. You may not be able to get into a Broadway show, but some smaller theaters have volunteer programs. Sign up to take tickets, direct people to their seats, or serve concessions and in exchange, the playhouse will allow you to view the show for free.

• Skip the floor seats and go for the balcony/mezzanine. It's most people's instinct to think the closest, most expensive seats are the best. This isn't always the case. While it may be difficult to see from far back in a large theater, thanks to modern audio systems, most of the time it's not that big of a deal. Save yourself some cash and get seats that have a better angle than the floor and save some cash.

• Don't buy at the door; buy during the off season. In some cases, ticket prices will be a bit pricier at the door. If you can order ahead of time, it may be worth it. Even better, though, is to buy during the off season of a particular show. If you can buy your tickets before the season starts, you may get a discount, as well as your choice of seating.

• Find an outdoor play. Shakespeare in the Park is popular for a lot of good reasons. The biggest one is because it's Shakespeare, but it doesn't hurt that the performances are (usually) free. You may have a hard time getting through the lines for tickets, which can sell out fast, but it will be worth it for a free evening of classic literary performances. While the most notable Shakespeare in the Park is held in Central Park, NYC, you can typically find similar events in other major cities.

Keep Mickey Away From Your Money at Amusement Parks

Let's be real. If you go to an amusement park, you're going to spend a bunch of money. Virtually everything inside the walls is designed to coax hard-earned cash from your pockets and it's all marked way up. However, you can still shave the price.

• Buy tickets online. As unlikely as the sentence may be, movie theaters could learn something from the amusement park industry when it comes to pricing. Buying passes online can get you a pretty steep discount. As a bonus, many parks have special lines that can get you through faster if you already purchased your passes.

• Get a multi-day pass. The biggest amusement parks are too big to get through on a single day. If you need to hit absolute rock bottom pricing, this may not be the trick for you, but if you can swing multiple days, you'll pay less per day and be able to take your time at the park, which is good because you'll need plenty of it.

• Don't eat anything from the park if you can avoid it. Theme park food and drinks are typically far more expensive than they need to be. What's worse is that many parks forbid your own food and drink to be brought in. Sneaking in your own grub is one way to save money, but leaving the park for a meal is just as helpful.

• No, seriously, use your AAA discount. If you detect any pattern here, it should be this one. With AAA, you can get discounts on theme park admission as well as total vacation packages, if you're traveling out of state to get there. Seriously, though. If you're looking to save money on things and you have a AAA membership, the discount site should be your first stop.

Regardless of what you do when you go out, there are plenty of ways to save money across the board. Don't think that being broke means you can't have a fun-filled night out on the town. Also, some of the tips for certain events on this list are universally applicable (like, say, AAA discounts), so be sure to try them all, where applicable.

Photos by Franklin Heijnen, Bob Cotter, yves Tennevin, Hans Splinter, Tim Snell, Amanda Slater, and Au Kirk.

The Honeywell Ademco 944WH-M Magnet is on sale at Amazon for the bargain basement price of $131,299,998.69! But you'd better hurry to snap up this bargain, because there's only three left in stock. You have to wonder how many were sold at the original price of $158,599,998.99. It's possible that only particle physicists with the backing of global supervillains would have use for this. But there are some glowing (and no-so-glowing) customer reviews.

I have been looking at this magnet for a while, but could no longer pass it up after the 17% discount. My personal space program will just have to wait.

I deducted two stars for ineffective packaging, as the UPS delivery driver could not get it loose from the side of his truck. They eventually had to just cut the side out of the truck. causing me to have to pay for repairs. On the upside, I now have a 1' by 1' square piece of UPS truck, which I use for a night stand.

Oh, also, when I set the box on my kitchen table, it pulled my fridge across the room, my car from my driveway, and the collar and tags from my neighbor's Cocker Spaniel. It compressed all of these into a Higgs Boson.

Shipping and handling is an extra $6.95. On the bright side, I hear it cures cancer. Link -via b3ta

(YouTube link)

A heavy storm in Keelung, Taiwan, dislodges a rock perched at the top of a hill. It comes to rest on the road, in a spot where the white car could have easily been, if the landslide hadn't nudged it over. Go back to the beginning of the clip to see the rock start to move. The white car did not get away unscathed, but it could have been so much worse. Here's what the boulder looked like in better weather. -via reddit

A century ago, the base of this table was a cart used in a French mine. Now, with a bit of alteration by Ducôté Design, it's a handsome table.

Link (Translation) -via Recyclart

Via Reuters "The Justice Department said it would refocus marijuana enforcement nationwide by bringing criminal charges only in eight defined areas - such as distribution to minors - and giving breathing room to users, growers and related businesses that have feared prosecution."

[Video Link] A US Embassy staffer has "departed" Malta after being filmed screaming expletive-laden threats at another driver on a narrow street. (Thanks, Matthew!)

You've probably heard of "Stockholm Syndrome," in which a hostage begins to sympathize with his or her captor, such as in stories about the Patty Hearst case. But where did the syndrome get its name? From a case of bank robbery in Sweden a year before Hearst was kidnapped.

The whole thing went down over a period of six days, from August 23 through August 28, 1973. On the first day, Jan-Erik Olsson strolled into Kreditbanken in central Stockholm, Sweden, and single-handedly held the place up. Of the two policemen who responded to the call, Olsson shot one in the hand and made the other sit in a chair, ordering him to sing something. (The policeman chose “Lonesome Cowboy,” in case you’re interested.) Olsson then took four hostages and started making demands: He wanted his friend and expert bank robber Clark Olofsson brought to the bank. He wanted 3 million Swedish Kronor. And he wanted a couple of guns, some bulletproof vests, some helmets, and a fast car.

Over those six days, the hostages came around to trusting the bank robbers more than the police. Read the rest of the story at mental_floss. Link

(Image credit: BBC)

Digging this twitter account: HalfPics. Above, a hand grenade.

We’ll have to admit that we were really jealous when [Shahriar] sent us a video he made, in which he casually explains how a $500,000 160GS/s 62GHz oscilloscope works and then starts playing with it.

Even though you need to be quite familiar with electronics to fully understand the oscilloscope’s inner workings, [Shahriar]‘s step by step explanation is still approachable for those who only understand the basics.

In the first half of the video he uses the manufacturer’s documentation which contains the oscilloscope block diagrams, so you’ll also learn about:

• timer interleaved Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs), which allows you to increase your input sampling rate by using several of them
• phase-locked loops, which use a reference clock to generate a much faster clock signal
• custom made dies and the materials used for high frequency electronic components

In the second half of the video [Shahriar] connects a pseudo random binary sequence generator and uses the oscilloscope to make several measurements that you’d typically want to know for high speed signals (jitters, eye quality factor…). He later performs a small experiment where he up-converts the frequency components of two random 3.12Gbit/s signals and tries to recall each original signal using the oscilloscope functions, making this part of the video a bit harder to keep up with.

Filed under: hardware

You can find galvanized steel pipes at Home Depots and construction sites all around the world. These relatively thin-walled steel pipes would make for great structural members if it weren’t for the fact they were covered in a protective layer of zinc. This layer of galvanization lends itself to crappy welds and some terrible fumes, but badass, TV personality, and hacker extraordinaire [Hackett] shows us how to strip the galvanization off these pipes with chemicals available at any hardware store.

Since the galvanization on these pipes covers the inside and the outside, grinding the small layer of zinc off these pipes is difficult at best. To be sure he gets all the zinc off this pipe, [Hackett] decided to chemically strip the pipes with a cup full of muriatic acid.

The process is simple enough – fill a cup with acid, dunk the ends of the pipes, and clean everything up with baking soda. A great way to turn scrap pipe into a usable material, make a cool paper mache volcano, and avoid ‘ol galvie flu

Filed under: chemistry hacks

We’re actually going to link to an old post from back in February because we think it’s equally as impressive as the most recent work. This is a 3D printed ornithopter powered by a rubber band (translated). The frame is much like a traditional rubber band plane. The difference is that after winding it up it doesn’t spin a propeller. The flapping of the four plastic membrane wings makes it fly like magic. Seriously, check out the demo below… we almost posted this as “Real or Fake?” feature if we hadn’t seen similar offerings a couple of years back.

The flight lasts a relatively long time when considering the quick winding before launch is all that powered it. But the most recent offerings (translated) from the site include the motorized ornithopter design seen above. It carries a small Lithium cell for continuous flight. These designs have a 3D printed gear system which makes them a bit more complicated, but brings steering and remote control to the party. If you want one of your own they’re working on a small run of kits. We figure it’d be a lot more fun to prototype and print your own. Sure, it’s reinventing the wheel. But it’s a really cool wheel!

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, toy hacks

The team behind the Femtoduino – an extraordinarily small repackaging of the Arduino – sent in a few videos from YouTuber [phineasIV], a.k.a. [Eric] that shows one of the smallest multicopters we’ve ever seen.

Because this isn’t a traditional quad or hexcopter, the control system is a little weird. Two of the motors and props are fixed along the vertical axis, while the rear prop is connected to a small servo to rotate from side to side. Still, the electronics are fairly standard for any multi rotor vehicle – a triple-axis gyro provides the stability of the vehicle coupled with MultiWii, while an amazingly small servo receiver, Bluetooth module,, Femtoduino, and a trio of brushless ESCs tie everything together.

The end result is a tri-copter that weighs about the same as the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter, but is just a bit smaller. As impressive as it is on video (seen below), we’d love to see this tiny robotic hummingbird in person.

Filed under: Android Hacks

C0R1D4N writes "A New Jersey Appeals Court has ruled that both sides of a texting conversation which resulted in a car accident could be held liable. The ruling came as part of a case in which the driver of a truck received a text message shortly before striking a motorcycle carrying two passengers. The court ruled that while in this case, the person sending the text wasn't liable, they could be if the circumstances were a little different. '...a person sending text messages has a duty not to text someone who is driving if the texter knows, or has special reason to know, the recipient will view the text while driving.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An 11-year-old girl was sent home from a week-long summer-camp on the Isle of Wight for smuggling in a chocolate bar; a fact that her teachers discovered after they opened a sealed letter addressed to her mother and read it. Her mother, who is unemployed and cares full-time for her autistic son, had to drive 160 miles through the night to pick up the child. She had saved for six months to pay for the trip. Teachers conducted a full search of the child's possessions -- including pulling out her suitcase lining -- to discover the banned chocolates.

"They had been planning the feast weeks before the trip and Holli was in charge of bringing the chocolate,” she said.

"It wasn't even at midnight. They ate the chocolate at about 9.30pm and it only went on for about 15 minutes. It's not like they were having a party or making noise.

"The teachers had no idea about it until they read Holli's letter to me.

"I am furious that they read her letter, it is like being in prison. It's not like she is five - she is 11 and deserves privacy in what she writes to her mum.”

"Holli said she was really upset because they emptied her toiletry bag into the sink and pulled out the lining in her suitcase.

"It was carried out in such a manner you would have thought they were running an international drug smuggling operation from their hotel room.

"I don't see how eating chocolate makes the holiday unsafe. They were not being naughty - they were just having fun."

Child banned from school trip for eating chocolate [Rosa Silverman/The Telegraph]

(via Free Range Kids)

If you've paid any attention to the Internet over the last few years you're probably aware that real life ducks are not exactly as friendly and personable as the ones in cartoons.

What if children's television reflected the fact that real duck life has more in common with, say, Oz, than Duck Tales? It would probably look a lot like this.

May be NSFW.

Video Link

At some point, the world of 3D printing had to fold back onto itself, leaving us all slack-jawed and wondering when 3D printers will start printing things for printers themselves? That moment is now.

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One in every thousand or so babies born today will suffer from Down Syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by the presence of a third copy of chromosome 21 that results in learning disabilities, a heightened risk of bowel and blood diseases, and a severely heightened risk of dementia later in life. But a radical new genome treatment method could hold the key to turning off that extra chromosome 21 like a light.

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Five-foot fence? Please. Parkour goat's got this.

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A woman who valet-parked her car at Rochester airport returned to find a notice informing her that the valet had searched her car, on orders from the TSA. The TSA does not search cars in the other garages, and they do not provide notice to valet parkers that their cars are subject to search. The TSA says it searches the parked cars because they are stored close enough to the terminal that a bomb could do serious damage.

John McCaffery, TSA, said, “No, those vehicles that are in the garage, short term long term parking, even if they carry pretty large amounts of explosives, they would not cause damage to the front of the airport. But for those who use the valet, the car could be there for a half hour or an hour so there is a vulnerability.”

News10NBC went to the valet parking and one of the attendants showed us the notice they put in the cars.

We asked, “You're required, they tell you, you have to search the car?” Valet Parking Attendant Frank Dettorre said, “I have to do it.”

My prediction: the TSA will erect a sign at the valet drop-off saying, "By valet parking, you agree that we can search your car." And that will be the end of it. Because in the 21st century, posting a notice of your unreasonable conduct is the same as getting consent for it.

TSA searches valet parked car [Berkeley Brean/WHEC.com]