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Well, this is bad. OpenStreetMap, the Wikipedia of world maps, has been vandalized, with someone deliberately screwing up its data. Worse, the offending IP addresses seem to be coming from a set belonging to Google India. Careful where you drive. According to a blog entry at OpenGeoData.org: Two OpenStreetMap accounts have been vandalizing OSM in…
The last mouse I loved was the Apple Pro Mouse that I got at Steve Jobs’ MacWorld NYC 2000 keynote. Black, encased in clear plastic, it glowed like the Terminator. The new Thermaltake Level 10 M Mouse is the Terminator. It’s the antithesis of Apple’s design, and it works. I want this thing now. Heck,…
I still think the Segway has a lot of potential, but not until it reaches a reasonable price point. So in the interim, this Personal Rover could fill the gap, providing similar functionality at a fraction of the cost. Riding it looks like a cross between skateboarding and cross-country skiing, since steering the four-wheeled non-balancing…
Airports can be a daunting place to navigate, and trudging to your gate can be time consuming and exhausting. And since Segways are downright obnoxious, I like Gustavo Brenck’s Gig Pack concept which straps a collapsible scooter to your backpack. The scooter’s base and back wheel stash inside the backpack when you’re hoofing it, but…
If you’re anything like me, you play darts rarely. And when you do, you’re drunk. Ignoring the fact that that’s a dangerous combination, here’s how to try and maximize your chance of winning, ineptitude aside. The guys over at Data Genetics had a look into how people with varying skill levels should approach a game…
A lot of people obsess about fancy watches which are waterproof to 300 meters, have chronograph faces, or come with diamond-crusted faces. But I’ve got news for you: nobody ever made a watch any better than the humble digital Casio. Let me start with a disclaimer: I own a fairly expensive Oris. I forget exactly…
In Icons, the company responsible for the freaky-awesome Steve Jobs action figure, is stopping production because of legal threats from Apple and Jobs’ family. In a statement, Tandy Cheung, the Hong Kong businessman behind the doll said: “Though we still believe that we have not overstepped any legal boundaries, we have decided to completely stop…
Woz never fails to impress me. If the man has opinions, he doesn’t mind sharing them, whatever the consequences. I just didn’t expect him to openly admit to preferring many Android features over those of his iPhone. Speaking to The Daily Beast, Woz openly chatted about the pros and cons of Android. “My primary phone…
Aside from True Grit there hasn’t been a decent Western movie in years. No, Rango was neither a Western nor good. But Little Tombstone, made by students at ESMA Toulouse, makes me long for the days of the Spaghetti Western and shows, once again, why being an Undertaker is the superior career path. [Little-Tombstone via…
Strokes and Parkinson’s Disease can cause irreparable damage to your grey matter. However, one controversial experiment aims to replace the function of those damaged areas with neural microchips. For the experiment, a microchip is implanted under the skin of the rat’s skull with electrodes running a centimeter into the rodent’s cerebellum. The chip receives an…
Michelangelo spent only three years carving David. Da Vinci’s depiction of The Last Supper required just three. This giant model of the Rila Monastery by Bulgarian artist Plamen Ignatov demanded 16 years of dedication. Officially known as the Monastery of Saint Ivan of Rila, it is Bulgaria’s largest Eastern Orthodox monastery and the second-largest temple…
Ahead of Thursday’s NYC education event, Ars Technica reports via a leak source that Apple plans to announce a simpler way for authors to create and publish e-books as well as the iBook app’s adoption of the ePub3 standard. The WSJ also names publisher McGraw-Hill as a project partner. All these developments suggest Apple’s gearing…
The military’s UAV fleet will soon be getting a small addition—DARPA’s hummingbird-shaped covert surveillance drone. Dubbed the Nano Hummingbird, this Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) is built by AeroVironment. It’s designed for urban surveillance missions and has just passed DARPA’s Phase II technical milestones. It mimics more than just a hummingbird’s looks, mind you. By copying…
The USSR has a rather frightening history when it comes to photo manipulation. Over time they’ve decided to use their photo manipulation skills for good instead of, well disappearing people. In 1987 Glasnost and Perestroika were in full effect. So the tools that would have been used to remove an “enemy of the people” like…
While I have my home’s wooden floor covered in Chinese, Persian and Turkish rugs, I’d love to exchange them all for digital interactive rugs like this. One of them full of swimming crocodiles. [Buzzfeed]
In an ideal world, there’d be no surge protectors choked with chargers, or knots of cables behind bookshelves. This USB wall plate charger from RCA is an elegant solution to the madness around your wall outlets, and it doesn’t require an engineering degree to install. By elegant, this frustrated geek means that this wall plate…
Last Saturday, a hacking group calling itself “The Lords of Dharmaraja” claimed that it had obtained the confidential source code of Norton AntiVirus and that it would release the full code on Tuesday. Wait, that’s tomorrow. The Lords of Dharmaraja claim to have infiltrated secure servers belonging to Indian Military Intelligence and pilfered the code…
My nerd dream came true: 1) Open your Terminal in Mac OS X or Windows or Linux or whatever the hell you are running your toaster on. 2) Type telnet miku.acm.uiuc.edu. 3. Enjoy an endless nyancat loop in glorious ASCII. If it doesn’t work, make sure your terminal is in the correct mode (just select…
The chances of me getting eaten by a shark while surfing are slim. The chances of me getting pounded by a wave while surfing, that happens all the time. Fortunately I’ve never had a wipeout as bad as the guys in this video. Surfer Magazine posted the video for the Worst Wipeout of 2011 poll.…
Gone are the days when a rolling toolchest only held tools. At CES Craftsman (which really should be updated to Craftsperson) unveiled its new Contour Powered Series Tool Storage that adds a charging station and a Bluetooth connected sound system. A set of 220W speakers lets mechanics pipe their music from an iPod or Bluetooth…
