Tag: author

Crowdsourcing Confirms: Websites Inaccessible on Comcast

Bennett Haselton writes with a bit of online detective work done with a little help from some (internet-distributed) friends: “A website that was temporarily inaccessible on my Comcast Internet connection (but accessible to my friends on other providers) led me to investigate further. Using a perl script, I found a sampling of websites that were inaccessible on Comcast (hostnames not resolving on DNS) but were working on other networks. Then I used Amazon Mechanical Turk to pay volunteers 25 cents apiece to check if they could access the website, and confirmed that (most) Comcast users were blocked from accessing it while users on other providers were not. The number of individual websites similarly inaccessible on Comcast could potentially be in the millions.” Read on for the details. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Crowdsourcing Confirms: Websites Inaccessible on Comcast

Americans Are Riding Public Transit In Record-Breaking Numbers

Visit any major U.S. city and you’ll likely see the anecdotal evidence that use of public transit is steadily growing in popularity. Last year, however, Americans reached an important milestone: according to a new study by the American Public Transit Association , U.S. residents took almost 10.7 billion trips on transit, the highest number since 1956. Read more…        

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Americans Are Riding Public Transit In Record-Breaking Numbers

The World’s Thinnest LED Is Only 3 Atoms Thick

LEDs have come a long ways. From the early 70s when a bulky LED watch cost thousands of dollars to LG’s announcement last month that it had created an OLED TV as thin as a magazine , these glowing little bits of magic have become wonderfully cheap and impossibly small. But guess what: they’re about to get much smaller. Read more…        

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The World’s Thinnest LED Is Only 3 Atoms Thick

Add DIY Permanent Volume Markings on a Metal Pot

If you don’t want to always look around for a measuring cup, a Redditor shared a neat trick to make permanent markings on your metal pot. Most of the items needed should be in your house, or you can pick them up for very little. Here’s what you’ll need: Read more…        

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Add DIY Permanent Volume Markings on a Metal Pot

Why Daylight Saving Time Is Pointless

Ugh. You’re up an hour early, your body hates you for it, and even a gallon of coffee can’t get your day on track. Daylight saving sucks. But you know the worst part? It doesn’t have to be like this. Read more…        

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Why Daylight Saving Time Is Pointless

Where the Progress Bar Came From

We’ve all spent hours—maybe even days—of our lives cursing the slow crawl of the dreaded progress bar. But did you ever stop to think about how much worse it might be if the bar wasn’t there in the first place. Fortunately, thanks to one grad student’s genius idea back in the 80s , we’ll never have to find out. Read more…        

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Where the Progress Bar Came From

TechCrunch reports that your Facebook news feed is getting a design touchup.

TechCrunch reports that your Facebook news feed is getting a design touchup. Nothing major: new fonts, “bolder” images, and a simplified left sidebar. As for the glorious overhaul we were supposed to get last year—still no word. Read more…        

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TechCrunch reports that your Facebook news feed is getting a design touchup.

Ice Age Fossils Are Being Unearthed By L.A.’s Subway Construction

A 65-foot deep shaft being dug for Los Angeles’s newest subway line is filled with buried treasure. The so-called Subway to the Sea is still nine miles from the beach, but excavation has already revealed some creatures from the ocean floor… the prehistoric ocean floor! Read more…        

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Ice Age Fossils Are Being Unearthed By L.A.’s Subway Construction

When to Buy Your Plane Ticket, Based on Data from Four Million Trips

When you’re booking a flight, you don’t want to buy too far in advance—and be the guy who lost out on a price drop; nor do you want to book too late—and pay hundreds more for the convenience. When’s the best time to buy? CheapAir crunched the numbers from over four million tickets bought last year to offer some advice. Read more…        

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When to Buy Your Plane Ticket, Based on Data from Four Million Trips

World’s Tiniest Tweezers Grab Nanoparticles Using Nothing But Light

When you’re working with tiny nanoparticles, you need extremely delicate tools. Like, say, tweezers that can manipulate particles 1, 000 times thinner than a human hair without physically touching them. That’s exactly what researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences have come up with: optical nanotweezers that use light to move tiny particles in three dimensions . It’s not sci-fi anymore. Read more…        

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World’s Tiniest Tweezers Grab Nanoparticles Using Nothing But Light