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21 Jan 21:55

REM's "Losing My Religion" shifted into a major scale

by Cory Doctorow

Michael sez, "Someone has gone to the trouble (I don't know how but would suspect using Melodyne DNA or somesuch) of processing REM's minor-scale downer hit 'Losing My Religion' so that all the minor notes are now major. When I followed the link I thought it'd be a cover, but no, it's the original, processed. It's uncanny - the song is just as familiar as always but the impact is utterly different. Kind of like finding a colour print of a film you'd only known in black and white, or seeing Garfield minus Garfield for the first time. I like it."

Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion" (Thanks, Michael!)

21 Jan 17:57

Pioneira do videogame, Atari entra com pedido de recuperação judicial nos EUA

A Atari, a empresa que ajudou a criar a indústria dos games nos anos 70, entrou com um pedido de recuperação judicial nos Estados Unidos (capítulo 11 da legislação americana) nesta segunda-feira (21). O principal objetivo da empresa é separar-se da companhia que a controla e não dá lucro desde 1999, a francesa Atari SA, antes conhecida como Infogrames. A divisão dos EUA conseguiu um modesto lucro nos últimos anos.
Divulgação
Atari 2600, console da empresa lançado em 1977
Atari 2600, console da empresa lançado em 1977
Leia mais (21/01/2013 - 13h16)
21 Jan 16:25

10 Real Life Things That Would Be Easter Eggs in a Video Game

by samgill

Programmers have been hiding things in video games since 1978, when programmer Warren Robinett decided that he deserved some credit for programming the game Adventure.

He hid the words “Created By Warren Robinett” in a special room that you could only find by following a series of ridiculous steps. Since then, lots of programmers have gotten in on the Easter egg fun.

Well, the following ten places just might convince you that there are programmers in real life, playing with the Earth’s coding and leaving satisfying little Easter eggs for us to find, too. 

10 The Grave In The Parking Lot

Grave in a Parking Lot

Mary Ellis was promised something—that the man she’d fallen for in Rahway, New Jersey, would sail far away, but one day return to marry her. Mary went to the riverbanks every day, waiting for him to come back. He never did.

When she died in 1827, she was buried on her family’s land. That property was later sold to developers on the condition that her grave remain untouched—and that’s where it has remained ever since.

The land directly around her headstone is now the parking lot of a movie theatre and shopping complex, but there are plans to relocate her grave closer to the riverbanks, so she can keep watching for the sailor to return. 

9 The Movie Theater In The Bodega’s Storeroom

Rediscovered Hollywood Style Theatre

Above an East Village bodega in Brooklyn, New York, a secret lay hidden for decades—the remains of an ornate, Hollywood-style movie theater that was operational from 1926 to 1959.

Only the bodega’s owners—who’d been using the theatre as a glorified storage space—had any idea it was there until the bodega closed, and the theater was rediscovered by a curious photographer.

8 The Underwater Pyramids of Wisconsin

Underwater Pyramid

At the bottom of Rock Lake—an 80-foot (24 meter) deep fishing hole in Jefferson County, Wisconsin—are several odd structures resembling pyramids. 

Nobody knows how they got there or how long they’ve been around, but they’ve been mapped well enough to know that someone built them—either when the water level was much lower, or when when the Earth was ruled by fish-men.

7 The Center Of The Universe

Centre Of The Universe

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there’s a 3-foot (0.9 metre) diameter circle inside a larger 8-foot (2.4 meter) circle that has bizarre acoustics

When standing directly on the spot, any sound you make is ridiculously amplified, and if you’re standing outside the spot, any noise you make is so muffled it’s almost inaudible. Locals call it “The Center Of The Universe”, though no black holes or temporal disturbances have been reported so far. 

6 New York’s Hidden Vintage Subway Station

New York Hidden Subway

Passengers on the Number Six who get off at the end of the line are missing something—the train loops through a gorgeous, ornate, and completely abandoned station originally built in the 1900s.

Until recently, passengers were made to get off before the loop, but in recent years they’ve been allowed to stay on and are rewarded with this Easter egg. Who doesn’t like a quick burst of mind-blowing artistry to break up their mundane commute? 


5 Bog Standard Gallery

The Loovre

You could be forgiven for being a little confused upon wandering into the Bog Standard Gallery. Looking for a public toilet? You’ve found one. Looking for a public art gallery? Well, you’ve found one of those, too—possibly the smallest art gallery in the world. 

Occasionally called “the Loovre,” it’s been touring the UK since 2007.  It displays the curator’s collection of male and female toilet sign photos from all over the world.

4 The Headington Shark

Shark in a Roof

This is not what it looks like.  Actually, it’s exactly what it looks like—a house with a gigantic shark sticking face-first into its roof.  

This sculpture was commissioned in 1986 by the house’s owner who, when asked, had this to say about its meaning: “The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation.” Well, obviously. 

The Oxford City Council tried to have it removed as a danger to the public with no luck—it turned out the shark met building standards.

3 Barcelona Supercomputing Center

Supercomputing

You’re looking at over 2,500 dual-core IBM servers—one heck of a lot of computing power—housed inside Torre Girona, a nineteenth century chapel that was used as a place of worship for Catholic monks as late as 1960. 

Since 2005, it’s hosted the supercomputer known as Mare Nostrum. It’s the second most powerful computer in all of Spain, and at the time of writing, it’s ranked 465th in the world. It’s shared by the international scientific community, and is primarily used for human genome, protein and drug research. It also holds the distinction of residing in one of the last places you would ever expect to find a supercomputer.

2 Mill Ends Park

Mill Ends Park

Portland, Oregon, is home to the world’s smallest park and, with a total area of 452 square inches, you’re going to have a really tough time tossing a football around there. 

Created in 1948, Mill Ends Park was originally designed as a base for a light pole. But, Oregon Journal columnist Dick Fagan decided to pretty the space up with some flowers, and named it after his newspaper column.

Of course he embellished that story a little; his version involves a leprechaun and a wishing for a park of his very own (though he forgets to specify how big the park should be, of course).

1 Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport

Intergalactic Airport

There is a tiny public airstrip just outside Green River, Wyoming. It’s one-mile-long, unattended dirt runway with no facilities and a single lonely windsock. Not particularly notable—except for the fact it’s officially an intergalactic spaceport.

In 1994, the City Council passed a resolution designating it specifically for “inhabitants of Jupiter who might wish to take sanctuary in Green River in the event their planet is threatened by collisions from comets or meteors.” 

So far only non-E.T. aircraft have used the landing strip, but you never know. You just never know.

For more Floorwalker, you can visit him at his blog or on Cracked.com

The post 10 Real Life Things That Would Be Easter Eggs in a Video Game appeared first on Listverse.

21 Jan 14:19

Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and other Cold War Spy Toys

by Kevin Murray
via one of our Blue Blazer irregulars... (thanks!)
From Russian photoblog PhotoShtab.ru comes these great pictures of Cold War-era miniature gadgets
that KGB spies and others used to monitor, smuggle, and kill (via RussiaEnglish).

Seeing as we have just seen the new adaptation of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, these photos are a another great reminder of how paranoid and insane that whole 'Cold War' period was. (many more gadgets)

P.S. If you like seeing Cold War spy tools, your really need The Ultimate Spy Book, by historian H. Keith Melton. It is loaded with large glossy photos of the CIA's Greatest Hits, and the fascinating history of spies and their gadgets.
21 Jan 14:14

Business Espionage: AMD v. Ex-employees

by Kevin Murray
AMD has filed (and been granted) a request for immediate injunctive relief against multiple former employees that it alleges stole thousands of confidential documents. Named in the complaint are Robert Feldstein, Manoo Desai, Nicholas Kociuk, and Richard Hagen. All four left AMD to work at Nvidia in the past year.

The loss of Feldstein was particularly noteworthy, as he’d been the head of AMD’s console initiatives for years. Feldstein was behind the work that landed AMD the Wii U, PS4, and Xbox Durango.

The AMD complaint states that “He [Feldstein] transferred sensitive AMD documents, and in the next six months, the three defendants either did the same thing... 

AMD claims to have forensic evidence that three of the four defendants transferred more than 10,000 confidential files in total, with the names of the files in question matching “either identically or very closely to the names of files on their AMD systems that include obviously confidential, proprietary, and/or trade secret materials related to developing technology.” (more)
21 Jan 14:10

Photo



21 Jan 14:07

January 20, 2013


21 Jan 14:07

iammyurl: siderealsandman: So she became Secretary of State...



iammyurl:

siderealsandman:

So she became Secretary of State instead

bitches get it done

21 Jan 14:05

Dá medo só de olhar o cartaz. heyoscarwilde: What’s the most...



Dá medo só de olhar o cartaz.

heyoscarwilde:

What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss? 

No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh illustrated by Douglas Holgate :: via skullduggery.com.au

21 Jan 12:50

Should We Clone Neanderthals?

by Alex

Given the advances in biotechnology, it's just a matter of time before humanity can bring the Neanderthals back from the dead. Whether we should is a completely different story, according to genomics and synthetic biology pioneer George Church of Harvard University.

In this intriguing interview with Der Spiegel, Church explained that using synthetic biology to bring the Neanderthals back from extinction may actually benefit society:

SPIEGEL: Wouldn't it be ethically problematic to create a Neanderthal just for the sake of scientific curiosity?

Church: Well, curiosity may be part of it, but it's not the most important driving force. The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore the recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.

But first, you'd need an "extremely adventurous female human" to serve as a surrogate mother:

SPIEGEL: Setting aside all ethical doubts, do you believe it is technically possible to reproduce the Neanderthal?

Church: The first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, 10,000 chunks and then synthesize these. Finally, you would introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal. We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone.

SPIEGEL: And the surrogates would be human, right? In your book you write that an "extremely adventurous female human" could serve as the surrogate mother.

Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society.

Read the full interview over at Der Spiegel: Link

POLL: What do you think, Neatoramanauts? Should we clone the Neanderthals?

  • Yes - It'll be like Jurassic Park, but with people. Next, bring back the Hobbits!
  • No - Haven't you watched how Jurassic Park ended?
  • You're all wrong - Neanderthals aren't extinct. I went to high school with some of them.
19 Jan 16:37

Largest object in universe discovered

18 Jan 15:59

8 seasons are too much Ted

Submitted by: ath_zh
Posted at: 2013-01-17 21:07:50
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6358893

18 Jan 14:42

Advice Duck Knows Best

17 Jan 15:16

POR ISSO, EU DIGO QUE…

by admin

17 Jan 15:15

January 16, 2013


17 Jan 12:02

Como fazer um "rabo-de-cavalo" na sua filha em 3s

by noreply@blogger.com (Thiago TG)
Aprenda aí com o pai do ano.

Photobucket
que bruto! e genial ao mesmo tempo! hehaehueahuhauheuaheea

16 Jan 15:02

My company has a really strict dress code

Submitted by: madeyoulol
Posted at: 2013-01-15 00:58:53
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6336092

16 Jan 14:49

Inglewood Police Chase Jan 13, 2013 - Front Row Seat [Video]

by noreply@blogger.com (Damn Cool Pics)

What a twist ! I didn't expected that at all.



16 Jan 14:35

Creative alternate movie posters

Submitted by: mrforestkid
Posted at: 2013-01-14 22:53:41
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6335391

16 Jan 14:28

Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will

by George Dvorsky
Click here to read Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will Humans have debated the issue of free will for millennia. But over the past several years, while the philosophers continue to argue about the metaphysical underpinnings of human choice, an increasing number of neuroscientists have started to tackle the issue head on — quite literally. And some of them believe that their experiments reveal that our subjective experience of freedom may be nothing more than an illusion. Here's why you probably don't have free will. More »


16 Jan 14:27

タイムラインの写真

16 Jan 14:23

Witness Back to the Future II's homages to It's a Wonderful Life

by Lauren Davis
Click here to read Witness <em>Back to the Future II</em>'s homages to <em>It's a Wonderful Life</em> Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis is a great fan of that alternate reality holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life, and he's never made a secret of the fact that the Biff-ruled Hill Valley of Back to the Future Part II is an homage to the neon-filled Pottersville George Bailey travels through. This video, made by YouTube user skeejay, shows just how close Marty McFly and George Bailey really are. More »


15 Jan 17:13

Papercut Shadow Puppets by Su Owen

by kristen

My paper-loving heart went pitter pat the moment I laid eyes upon these awesome papercut shadow puppets by Su Owen. The whimsical, hand cut papercuts include circus and fairy tale-themed designs and smile-inducing details like the Circus Strongman’s tattoo and fuzzy armpit hair. Love it!

Papercut Shadow Puppets by Su Owen

Papercut Shadow Puppets by Su Owen

Papercut Fox Shadow Puppet by Su Owen

images from Su Owen

15 Jan 15:04

Animals with misleading names



Animals with misleading names

15 Jan 15:03

i-justreally-like-cats-okay: Calming CAT!

15 Jan 15:03

ianbrooks: The Ultimate Geek Monopoly Board by Chuck...





















ianbrooks:

The Ultimate Geek Monopoly Board by Chuck McGlade

Remember all those late nights you stayed up late playing Monopoly with grandma? Except the game never really ends and making the dog hump the hat is only funny the first seven times. Taking this into consideration, Chuck designed a series of Monopoly cards taken from classic fictional locations such as Winterfell, the Shire, Coast City, Paradise Island, Hell’s Kitchen, and Atlantis among myriad others you can check out or purchase in shirt form at his redbubble.

15 Jan 15:02

Photo





15 Jan 15:01

After being away from home for a week, this is what I found when I got back:

actualhedgehogmartinfreeman:

superpsychgeek:

littletechieasian:

image

GUYS.

I DON’T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND.

image

mY PARENTS PAINTED MY FUCKIGN DOOR.

IT’S ALL HAND PAINTED.

image

GUYS.

IM BASICALLY SLEEPING INSIDE THE TARDIS.

image

omg IT’S BIGGER ON THE INSIDE. *dead*

image

Your parents are wonderful parents.

15 Jan 15:01

Concept art by Mike Mignola — ATLANIS: The lost empire





















Concept art by Mike MignolaATLANIS: The lost empire

15 Jan 14:19

The fucking Mr. Delay is back! - Autor(Adão Iturrusgarai)