There’s not much of 2013 left, which is depressing for those who like to achieve things within a yearly timeframe. If you haven’t done what you need to do by the close of the year, you may see yourself as a thundering disaster or, if you’re sensible, you’ll know that 2014 will be the same as 2013 and you […]
Month: December 2013
How about giving a nerdy Doctor Who fan the ultimate gift this year — hacked access to a BBC server. That was the deal apparently on offer on some “underground” internet sites on Christmas Day, after a hacker allegedly gained access to a BBC server and tried to sell on his access method. According to […]
There are a lot of smartphone breathalysers out there, but they don’t tend to prioritise design aesthetic. It’s more of an ‘am I too drunk, yes or no,’ kind of thing. But the Lapka Bam Breathalyser is all about bringing form and function together. First of all, the Lapka is designed so you don’t need […]
People attribute a lot of annoying internet stuff to bots. Twitterbot followers, bots that sneak past spam filters, bots that send weird gibberish on messaging services. It sounds kind of tired, but maybe the situation is exactly as bad as everyone thinks. Security and cloud service provider Incapsula analysed 1.45 billion page views from 20,000 […]
There have been 13 robberies reported in New York’s Central Park so far in 2013. But in most of them the robber presumably takes stuff. That’s how that works, right? Things were different for New York Sports Club salesman Kevin Cook, though. He was walking with a friend in the lower part of the park […]
Drawning on an Etch A Sketch is hard. Well, it is if you want to do more than just make a horrible mess of angularity. But the squarish beauty of the line drawing toy is put to great use in this clever little animation that tells the story of André Cassagnes, its inventor. Put together […]
The Origin of the Candy Cane
First, let’s start by dispelling a somewhat popular myth that more or less goes like this: The white base colour of the candy cane symbolises Jesus’s purity; the red stripes symbolise Jesus’ blood when he died on the cross; and the J shape was chosen to represent the J in Jesus. While that makes […]
So you can fashion a piece of loose leaf into a paper crane? Snore. Behold the skills of Jiangmei Wu, who turns single sheets of Tyvek into incredibly intricate sculptures that glow from within. Wu’s Folded Light Art is the result of an impressive mix of old and new techniques; she designs patterns using Illustrator […]
NASA reports that rare, electric blue noctilucent clouds have reappeared over the South Pole, where the clouds are often spotted for five to ten days every year. NASA calls the clouds “a great geophysical light bulb” that are visible during the darkest nights. The clouds were spotted by NASA’s AIM spacecraft, which observed a “vast […]
This is a story about bison, Hollywood, and a glycoprotein. A rocky outpost off the coast of Los Angeles, Santa Catalina Island was originally home to exactly zero bison. In 1924, however, when the island was owned by William Wrigley Jr. of chewing gum fame, a film crew imported 14 buffalo for a movie shoot. […]