Floor796 is an ever-expanding animation scene showing the life of the 796th floor of the huge space station! The goal of the project is to create as huge animation as possible, with many references to movies, games, anime and memes....
This is a robust, locally hosted web-based PDF manipulation tool using Docker. It enables you to carry out various operations on PDF files, including splitting, merging, converting, reorganizing, adding images, rotating, compressing, and more. This locally hosted web application has evolved to encompass a comprehensive set of...
Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying...
Spain's High Court has ordered the suspension of messaging app Telegram's services in the country after media companies complained it was allowing users to upload their content without permission, according to a court source....
The Middlemist’s red belongs to the camellia genus and was imported from China as a luxury item in 1804, but was wiped from its native country. The credit for bringing the flower to Chiswick, West London, goes to a nurseryman from Shepherd’s Bush named John Middlemist, who the flower was named after....
When the Star Wars films aired in Chile, instead of cutting away from the movie for commercial breaks, the TV station “seamlessly” inserted ads for Cerveza Cristal beer. We’re talking Obi-Wan opening a chest to find a lightsaber for Luke and instead it reveals a ice-chest full of beer. Or the Emperor Force-reaching for a...
The slasher film took advantage of the copyright for AA Milne's classic tale expiring, and reimagined the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood as vicious serial killers....
Four weeks ago, GPT-4 remained the undisputed champion: consistently at the top of every key benchmark, but more importantly the clear winner in terms of “vibes”. Almost everyone investing serious time exploring LLMs agreed that it was the most capable default model for the majority of tasks—and had been for more than a...
Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim...
While the majority of the world's reefs are now under threat or even damaged potentially beyond repair, a new study reported in the journal Current Biology on March 8 offers some encouraging news: efforts to restore coral reefs not only increase coral cover, but they can also bring back important ecosystem functions, and...
There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of EA lately, but here’s some: the company just launched a bunch of classic games on Steam. The new (old) releases include nine games in total, spanning franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and SimCity....
THe Great Green Wall being built in Africa to halt the southern progress of the Sahara Desert is a favorite public works project of mine — it’s massive, ambitious, long-term, important, and if it works, the effect will repay the cost many times over. This video takes a quick look at some of the work being done on the wall in...
On June 5, 1981, journalists from around the world gathered at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to watch as the Voyager 2 spacecraft became the first man-made object to reach Saturn. In the aftermath of this historic event, the main attraction wasn’t NASA’s staff. It was fellow journalist Jerry Pournelle. Pournelle...
A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they're in. Here's a large-scale analysis of 73,921 movies from the last 80 years on how often, when and maybe even why that happens.
What did the year 2000 look like in 1900? Originally commissioned by Armand Gervais, a French toy manufacturer in Lyon, for the 1900 World exhibition in Paris, the first fifty of these paper cards were produced by Jean-Marc Côté, designed to be enclosed in cigarette boxes and, later, sent as postcards. All in all, at least...
Today, almost everything about our lives is digitally recorded and stored somewhere. Each credit card purchase, personal medical diagnosis, and preference about music and books is recorded and then used to predict what we like and dislike, and—ultimately—who we are....
Shrinking the computer chip is one of humanity’s greatest scientific feats. It has enabled the processing power that has digitalised almost every aspect of our lives....
We parents are caught in a paradox. We desperately want to keep our children safe and ensure their success. We are also often terrified that they will get hurt and that they will fail—so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. Yet many of those very efforts to manage our fears have paradoxically reduced our...
Varda Space Industries’ spacecraft, W-1, successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024. This marks the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on United States soil....
Questions like “Which browser should I use?” regularly come up on the r/browsers subreddit. I sometimes respond to these posts, but my quick replies usually only contain one or two points. To be honest, until recently I wasn’t even sure myself why I use Firefox. Of course it’s a pretty good browser, but that doesn’t...
New documents filed Monday, February 26 reveal that videogame giant Nintendo is taking action against the creators of the popular emulator tool Yuzu....
It is tempting to look for parallels with human empires. Perhaps it is impossible not to see rhymes between the natural and human worlds, and as a science journalist I’ve contributed more than my share. But just because words rhyme, it doesn’t mean their definitions align. Global ant societies are not simply echoes of human...
Vehicle theft is an issue that affects us all collectively. As cybersecurity and technology professionals, we recognize the importance of acting rapidly to reduce its impact on Canadians. That being said, we believe the federal government’s proposal, particularly the prohibition of security research tools, is ill-advised,...
Now there’s two words you don’t often see together. In fact, Google Trends lists zero occurrences of the phrase between 2004 and now. Even “German humor” produces a graph (albeit a rather flat one). But not only is there some evidence that Swiss comedy does exist, it might just be that being well-hidden is kind of its...
Before we dive into the crux of it all, can we just stop for a moment appreciate the fact that appreciation societies—whether fun or real ones—exist and are a positive thing in general? Keep it up!...
A set of smart vending machines at the University of Waterloo is expected to be removed from campus after students raised privacy concerns about their software....
A judge has dismissed a complaint from a parent and guardian of a girl, now 15, who was sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old after Snapchat recommended that she connect with convicted sex offenders....
June 1, 1952, was Whitsunday, and provided the young Michael Ventris with a convenient break from his duties as an architect. At the end of the day he would write his 20th Work Note on Minoan Language Research, with the somewhat disbelieving title, “Are the Knossos and Pylos Tablets Written in Greek?” Responsibility was...
I’ve read over 1,000 nonfiction books in my life, and these 33 are the most powerful of them all. I can honestly say they changed my life, who’s to say they won’t change yours too?...
Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline....
While flagship smartphones boast impressive features, spending $1,000 is not a prerequisite for a satisfying Android experience nowadays. If you’re in need of a new smartphone and have a budget of approximately $200, there are numerous excellent options available. Surprisingly, some of the best Android phones under $200 come...
Water molecules have been detected on the surface of an asteroid for the first time, revealing new clues about the distribution of water in our solar system....
The positively charged particle at the heart of the atom is an object of unspeakable complexity, one that changes its appearance depending on how it is probed. We’ve attempted to connect the proton’s many faces to form the most complete picture yet.
The project announced today the introduction of a new feature called “Sync & Backup,” which allows users to import bookmarks, passwords, and personal settings from other browsers to DuckDuckGo. Moreover, it enables users to move that data from one device to another or restore it on a new device in case they lose their...
In Chile, more than 130 people have died in this year’s wildfires — the deadliest in the nation’s history. In Colombia last month, wildfire smoke billowed just outside Bogotá, defying the city’s reputation for cold, wet weather. And in Argentina, a wildfire ravaged a forest that is listed as a World Heritage Site by the...
Floor796 ( floor796.com )
Floor796 is an ever-expanding animation scene showing the life of the 796th floor of the huge space station! The goal of the project is to create as huge animation as possible, with many references to movies, games, anime and memes....
TasteAtlas ( www.tasteatlas.com )
TasteAtlas is an encyclopedia of flavors, a world atlas of traditional dishes, local ingredients, and authentic restaurants....
Stirling-PDF: Locally hosted web application that allows you to perform various operations on PDF files ( github.com )
This is a robust, locally hosted web-based PDF manipulation tool using Docker. It enables you to carry out various operations on PDF files, including splitting, merging, converting, reorganizing, adding images, rotating, compressing, and more. This locally hosted web application has evolved to encompass a comprehensive set of...
Snapdrop: local file sharing in your browser ( snapdrop.net )
Inspired by Apple's Airdrop
This camera captures 156.3 trillion frames per second ( www.engadget.com )
Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying...
High Court orders temporary suspension of Telegram's services in Spain ( www.reuters.com )
Spain's High Court has ordered the suspension of messaging app Telegram's services in the country after media companies complained it was allowing users to upload their content without permission, according to a court source....
The Middlemist’s Red, rarest flower on earth ( www.southsideblooms.com )
The Middlemist’s red belongs to the camellia genus and was imported from China as a luxury item in 1804, but was wiped from its native country. The credit for bringing the flower to Chiswick, West London, goes to a nurseryman from Shepherd’s Bush named John Middlemist, who the flower was named after....
Beer Me, Obi-Wan! ( kottke.org )
When the Star Wars films aired in Chile, instead of cutting away from the movie for commercial breaks, the TV station “seamlessly” inserted ads for Cerveza Cristal beer. We’re talking Obi-Wan opening a chest to find a lightsaber for Luke and instead it reveals a ice-chest full of beer. Or the Emperor Force-reaching for a...
Razzie Awards 2024: Winnie the Pooh slasher film and Expend4bles named year's worst ( www.bbc.com )
The slasher film took advantage of the copyright for AA Milne's classic tale expiring, and reimagined the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood as vicious serial killers....
The GPT-4 barrier has finally been broken ( simonwillison.net )
Four weeks ago, GPT-4 remained the undisputed champion: consistently at the top of every key benchmark, but more importantly the clear winner in terms of “vibes”. Almost everyone investing serious time exploring LLMs agreed that it was the most capable default model for the majority of tasks—and had been for more than a...
Warner Bros. is now erasing games as it plans to delist Adult Swim-published titles ( www.polygon.com )
Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim...
Good news for coral reef restoration efforts: Study finds 'full recovery' of reef growth within four years ( phys.org )
While the majority of the world's reefs are now under threat or even damaged potentially beyond repair, a new study reported in the journal Current Biology on March 8 offers some encouraging news: efforts to restore coral reefs not only increase coral cover, but they can also bring back important ecosystem functions, and...
EA just added classics like Dungeon Keeper, SimCity 3000, and Populous on Steam ( www.theverge.com )
There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of EA lately, but here’s some: the company just launched a bunch of classic games on Steam. The new (old) releases include nine games in total, spanning franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and SimCity....
How the Great Green Wall Is Holding Back the Sahara Desert ( kottke.org )
THe Great Green Wall being built in Africa to halt the southern progress of the Sahara Desert is a favorite public works project of mine — it’s massive, ambitious, long-term, important, and if it works, the effect will repay the cost many times over. This video takes a quick look at some of the work being done on the wall in...
The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs’s Greatest Rival ( every.to )
On June 5, 1981, journalists from around the world gathered at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to watch as the Voyager 2 spacecraft became the first man-made object to reach Saturn. In the aftermath of this historic event, the main attraction wasn’t NASA’s staff. It was fellow journalist Jerry Pournelle. Pournelle...
Full Of Themselves: An analysis of title drops in movies ( www.titledrops.net )
A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they're in. Here's a large-scale analysis of 73,921 movies from the last 80 years on how often, when and maybe even why that happens.
Things Unexpectedly Named After People ( notes.rolandcrosby.com )
An incomplete and infuriating list
Lost Futures: A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000 ( publicdomainreview.org )
What did the year 2000 look like in 1900? Originally commissioned by Armand Gervais, a French toy manufacturer in Lyon, for the 1900 World exhibition in Paris, the first fifty of these paper cards were produced by Jean-Marc Côté, designed to be enclosed in cigarette boxes and, later, sent as postcards. All in all, at least...
BookPecker.com ( www.bookpecker.com )
14509 books in 5 bullet points. Browse summaries of thousands of books and add new items to your reading list.
Debunking the Myth of “Anonymous” Data ( www.eff.org )
Today, almost everything about our lives is digitally recorded and stored somewhere. Each credit card purchase, personal medical diagnosis, and preference about music and books is recorded and then used to predict what we like and dislike, and—ultimately—who we are....
Inside the miracle of modern chip manufacturing ( ig.ft.com )
Shrinking the computer chip is one of humanity’s greatest scientific feats. It has enabled the processing power that has digitalised almost every aspect of our lives....
Why Children Need Risk, Fear, and Excitement in Play ( www.afterbabel.com )
We parents are caught in a paradox. We desperately want to keep our children safe and ensure their success. We are also often terrified that they will get hurt and that they will fail—so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. Yet many of those very efforts to manage our fears have paradoxically reduced our...
Varda Capsule Reentry - Five Minutes from LEO to Earth ( www.youtube.com )
Varda Space Industries’ spacecraft, W-1, successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024. This marks the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on United States soil....
How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find Its Targets—and Vladimir Putin ( www.wired.com )
In its 10 years of operation, Grindr had amassed millions of users and become a central cog in gay culture around the globe....
Why I use Firefox ( xn--ime-zza.eu )
Questions like “Which browser should I use?” regularly come up on the r/browsers subreddit. I sometimes respond to these posts, but my quick replies usually only contain one or two points. To be honest, until recently I wasn’t even sure myself why I use Firefox. Of course it’s a pretty good browser, but that doesn’t...
Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu ( overkill.wtf )
New documents filed Monday, February 26 reveal that videogame giant Nintendo is taking action against the creators of the popular emulator tool Yuzu....
Ant geopolitics ( aeon.co )
It is tempting to look for parallels with human empires. Perhaps it is impossible not to see rhymes between the natural and human worlds, and as a science journalist I’ve contributed more than my share. But just because words rhyme, it doesn’t mean their definitions align. Global ant societies are not simply echoes of human...
Vehicle thefts - Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero ( saveflipper.ca )
Vehicle theft is an issue that affects us all collectively. As cybersecurity and technology professionals, we recognize the importance of acting rapidly to reduce its impact on Canadians. That being said, we believe the federal government’s proposal, particularly the prohibition of security research tools, is ill-advised,...
Swiss Maps Are Full of Hidden Secrets ( www.atlasobscura.com )
Now there’s two words you don’t often see together. In fact, Google Trends lists zero occurrences of the phrase between 2004 and now. Even “German humor” produces a graph (albeit a rather flat one). But not only is there some evidence that Swiss comedy does exist, it might just be that being well-hidden is kind of its...
Every Single Frame ( www.everysingleframe.com )
Explore movies frame by frame in random order from critically acclaimed films to gain a new perspective on the art of cinematography.
Spotube: An open source, cross-platform Spotify client ( github.com )
Open source Spotify client that doesn't require Premium nor uses Electron! Available for both desktop & mobile!
Security List ( security-list.js.org )
Curated lists of tools, tips and resources for protecting digital security and privacy
The lethal doses of 55 substances ( infosec.pub )
“Sign Appreciation Society”: Here’s A Facebook Group That Shares Signs Worth Seeing (74 Pics) ( www.boredpanda.com )
Before we dive into the crux of it all, can we just stop for a moment appreciate the fact that appreciation societies—whether fun or real ones—exist and are a positive thing in general? Keep it up!...
'Facial recognition' error message on vending machine sparks concern at University of Waterloo ( kitchener.ctvnews.ca )
A set of smart vending machines at the University of Waterloo is expected to be removed from campus after students raised privacy concerns about their software....
Snapchat isn’t liable for connecting 12-year-old to convicted sex offenders ( arstechnica.com )
A judge has dismissed a complaint from a parent and guardian of a girl, now 15, who was sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old after Snapchat recommended that she connect with convicted sex offenders....
Intuitive Machines: US company makes historic Moon landing ( www.bbc.com )
Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus robot near the lunar south pole....
Cracking the Code of Linear B ( antigonejournal.com )
June 1, 1952, was Whitsunday, and provided the young Michael Ventris with a convenient break from his duties as an architect. At the end of the day he would write his 20th Work Note on Minoan Language Research, with the somewhat disbelieving title, “Are the Knossos and Pylos Tablets Written in Greek?” Responsibility was...
33 Powerful Books That Might Change Your Life ( markmanson.net )
I’ve read over 1,000 nonfiction books in my life, and these 33 are the most powerful of them all. I can honestly say they changed my life, who’s to say they won’t change yours too?...
Google announces Gemma, its open models for AI research ( 9to5google.com )
Gemma is Google’s new “family of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models” aimed at AI developers and researchers....
How Google is killing independent sites like ours ( housefresh.com )
Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline....
Ancient Underwater Megastructure Not Created Naturally, Scientists Say ( futurism.com )
Scientists have found a giant wall underneath the Baltic Sea — and they're pretty sure humans made it....
Affordable Android Excellence: Best Smartphones Under $200 in 2024 ( www.gizchina.com )
While flagship smartphones boast impressive features, spending $1,000 is not a prerequisite for a satisfying Android experience nowadays. If you’re in need of a new smartphone and have a budget of approximately $200, there are numerous excellent options available. Surprisingly, some of the best Android phones under $200 come...
Water found on the surface of an asteroid for the 1st time ever ( www.space.com )
Water molecules have been detected on the surface of an asteroid for the first time, revealing new clues about the distribution of water in our solar system....
Dream Theater ( www.metafilter.com )
OpenAI unveils Sora, a near-photorealistic text-to-video model with unprecedented coherency.
Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’ ( www.quantamagazine.org )
The positively charged particle at the heart of the atom is an object of unspeakable complexity, one that changes its appearance depending on how it is probed. We’ve attempted to connect the proton’s many faces to form the most complete picture yet.
DuckDuckGo Introduces E2EE Backup and Sync Feature on Browser ( restoreprivacy.com )
The project announced today the introduction of a new feature called “Sync & Backup,” which allows users to import bookmarks, passwords, and personal settings from other browsers to DuckDuckGo. Moreover, it enables users to move that data from one device to another or restore it on a new device in case they lose their...
Why is Latin America on fire? It’s not just climate change, scientists say ( www.nature.com )
In Chile, more than 130 people have died in this year’s wildfires — the deadliest in the nation’s history. In Colombia last month, wildfire smoke billowed just outside Bogotá, defying the city’s reputation for cold, wet weather. And in Argentina, a wildfire ravaged a forest that is listed as a World Heritage Site by the...