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Tattoos, just like hometowns, leave a permanent mark. If you harbor a special attachment to a city or town—even if you left long ago—inking it on your body forever is often a fitting tribute. In many cases, maps symbolize far more than just a street grid: It might be a city you’ve only dreamed about,…
A perverse fascination with nuclear fallout and blast radii isn’t that weird. Don’t you want to know how hard you and everything you know is going to disappear from the face of the Earth in the unlikely case that some maniac drops twenty kilotons of atomic death on your front door? Now you can see…
Android Police has gotten ahold of the alleged specs of Motorola’s upcoming Moto X smartphone, and they’re not very impressive. But at least that means you can afford it. The phone will allegedly have a 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm S4 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 4.7-inch 720 x 1184 resolution screen, a 2.1 megapixel camera on…
It sometimes feels like there’s a big data breach in the news every week—but some are far worse than others. This data visulization shows the world’s biggest data breaches to date, and how they compare over time. Put together by the team at Information is Beautiful, the interactive viz reveals some interesting trends. First, it…
When was the last time you held a roll of 35mm film in your hands? For a vast majority of folks, it’s been a while seeing as how most cell phones now pull triple duty as our comms, our cameras, and our pocket computers. But getting photos and files off your phone has always been…
As camera rumors go, this one’s pretty insane: Photography Bay is claiming that a reliable source has told it that Canon is testing “a pro-sized body like the 1D X” which packs a sensor with over 75 megapixels. Which: wow. As well as an insane sensor, Photography Bay also claims that the rear screen is…
A leak last week revealed details of Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet—and now freshly leaked press shots and a Best Buy adreaffirm its existence. The @evleaks Twitter account has published a set of press images of the rumored new tablet. It shows a few subtle tweaks to the existing design: gone are the dimples in…
Apple revealed late yesterday that its Developer Center had been forced out of action by “an intruder”—but a researcher has provided evidence to confirm that the downtime was a result of his identification of a security vulnerability. Apple claimed in a statement that an intruder had attempted to steal personal information about registered developers from…
Today’s XKCD raises an important question: what’s the most irritating ringtone you’ve ever had the misfortune to hear? Randall Munroeclaims that the Buzzing Mosquito takes top spot, though admits that in his eyes it was a close-run battle including Clock Radio Alarm, That Noise from Dumb & Dumber, and Recording of a Sobbing Voice Begging…
A hack has exposed the e-mail addresses and login details for every registered user of the Ubuntu Forums—that’s almost 2 million accounts. Time to change your password.
The Wall Street Journal is adding weight to rumors of growing iPhone screens sizes, publishing a report which suggests that Apple is testing larger displays for both the iPhone and iPad. Citing sources at suppliers in Asia,the newspaper claims that Apple is testing a 12.9-inch iPad design, alongside a range of prototype iPhones with larger…
Lego is a perfect medium for abstract art, and this sculpture is an amazing 3D interpretation of 2D Mondrian De Stijl art. Built by Veynom for the L13 BrickPirate contest “The Great Painters,” this build is an homage to Dutch abstract painter, Piet Mondrian. The build utilizes Mondrian’s strong, dominant color codes (a pure palette…
I’ve always liked this song. It’s made of layered voice tracks all sung by Imogen Heap and backed up with some keyboard synth shenanigans. Of course, we all remember it for the bridge aka the “mmm watcha say” portion, which was apparently featured prominently in the climactic scene of The OC series finale. I wouldn’t…
Photographer Michael Shainblum shot video footage in a bunch of cities: Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. They’re all famous cities that people photograph and explore every day so he wanted to do something different. And kind of out there. He moves from simple reflections to crazy kaleidoscopic effects to create…
In the U.S. most of us are lucky enough to have never lived in a combat zone or area of extreme violence where our personal safety is always at risk. But this backpack was designed for that scenario. The Rhino Skin pack is made of Kevlar and is meant to protect vital organs against flying…
With the NSA leaks going full force it probably won’t sound like news at all that a German cryptographer claims to have hacked a SIM card. But that’s never been done before (as far as we know . . .) so it’s kind of a big deal, and shows that millions of phones are potentially…
Joerg begins today’s video by saying, “As you know, I don’t like witches.” And in fact, I did not specifically remember this preference of his. But I can believe it. After watching a Harry Potter rerun this week, Joerg finally realized the hazard that quidditch and other flying broom sports pose to our safety. And…
Facebook Home had its Android-only release in April and it’s been sort of proliferating a little bit maybe? ever since. It lives in a weird space between operating systems and apps, but it’s meant to be something you don’t over-think. So don’t think about. Just let it be a mostly successful immersive experience. That’s it.…
I recently helped a friend pick out a USB-ethernet dongle for her MacBook Air. The Wi-Fi at her office goes in and out and she wanted to make sure she had a consistent connection when she brought her laptop in. That got me thinking that I haven’t used ethernet on my laptop in a long…
Okay so this whole thing isn’t ideal, but it’s also not as bad as it sounds. Basically on Tuesday there were two Navy AV-8B Harrier fighter jets that had launched from the USS Bonhomme Richard aircraft carrier and were doing a training exercise. They planned to drop bombs on Townshend Island bombing range, but were…
