Though NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is sadly nearing the end of its mission, the brave li’l orbiter is putting on quite the grand finale . Cassini, which is currently in its ring-grazing phase around Saturn, has just sent back some stunning images of the gas giant’s many rings. Read more…
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These Ultra Close-Up Images of Saturn’s Rings Are Mind-Blowing
It’s been said that the pterosaur, which can only be described as a bird-reptile-dinosaur- esque -thing, was the largest flying animal. This giant beast—which roamed the Earth during the Cretaceous period roughly 66.5 million years ago—was a reptile but not actually a dinosaur. Despite being winged, it wasn’t bird, … Read more…
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Flying Cretaceous Monster Ate Dinosaurs For Breakfast
schwit1 writes: You’ve heard of the Paleo diet, but the next big thing in health may well be the Paleo sleep schedule. A UCLA researcher studied three hunter-gatherer and hunter-farmer groups — the Hadza in Tanzania, San in Namibia, and Tsimane in Bolivia, “who live roughly the same lifestyle humans did in the Paleolithic, ” as NPR reports — and determined our ancient ancestors may not have slept nearly as much we thought, and may have actually slept less than modern Westerners. “People like to complain that modern life is ruining sleep, but they’re just saying: Kids today!” Jerome Siegel tells the Atlantic . “It’s a perennial complaint but you need data to know if it’s true.” Siegel found that members of the three aforementioned groups sleep between 5.7 hours and 7.1 hours per night. That’s less than is recommended for our health, yet the groups seemed very healthy indeed. (And if you’re feeling insomniac, some earlier Slashdot stories about sleep are also pretty thought-provoking.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Maybe You Don’t Need 8 Hours of Sleep After All
Most companies seek out the latest displays for high-tech billboards, but Forever 21 has decided to take a different route for this particular Instagram project. For the past year-and-a-half, the folks at connected hardware maker Breakfast New York have been building a “Thread Screen” for the company. It’s called that, because well, it’s literally a screen made of 6, 400 mechanical spools of multicolored threaded fabric. Those spools have five-and-a-half feet of fabric each, divided into 36 colors that transition every inch-and-a-half. They move like a conveyor belt, stopping at the right hue based on what picture they’re displaying — an infrared even scans the finished product to make sure each spool is displaying the correct color. According to Breakfast NY, which also created a smart street sign among other installations in the past, the machine weighs 2, 000 pounds and has over 200, 000 components. It’s a gargantuan display, and you’ll get the chance to control it from today, July 22nd, up until July 28th. When you post a photo on Instagram and use #F21ThreadScreen as a hashtag, the device’s accompanying software will take your image and optimize it for the screen’s 80×80 resolution. You’ll then get an edited video of your picture as the Thread Screen transformed to display it — check out this editor’s profile photo being ran through the system below to see an example of what you’re getting. If you’re curious about other people’s photos, though, you can also visit the project’s official website . F21 and Breakfast are live streaming the machine as it displays photo after photo for 24 hours from now until the project ends. Filed under: Misc Comments Source: Breakfast New York , F21 Thread Screen
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Forever 21’s ‘Thread Screen’ displays Instagram pics using fabric
ColdWetDog writes: You’ve always wanted one, of course. Zombies, the occasional alien infestation. The neighbor’s smelly roses. You just need to be prepared for things. You can get freeze dried food, AR15’s, enough ammo to start a small police action (at least here in the U.S. — YMMV), but it has been difficult to get a modern, portable flamethrower until now. CNET has a brief explanation on the XM42, which doubled its Indiegogo funding target in just a few days. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Commercial Flamethrower Successfully Crowdfunded
It’s okay to desire the finer things in life, but at what point do you draw the line between luxury and exorbitance? Probably somewhere well before this insane 200-foot long mega-yacht from CRN called the J’ade, which features a built-in garage that smaller boats can drive right into. Read more…
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A Super-Yacht With a Garage For Smaller Boats Is Luxuriously Obscene
Skype just made group video calling available to all users for free instead of being locked under Premium. Looks like someone is catching up to Hangouts. Read more…
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Skype just made group video calling available to all users for free instead of being locked under Pr
assertation (1255714) writes “Bill Gates and the founders of Twitter are betting millions that meat lovers will embrace a new plant-based product that mimics the taste of chicken and beef. Meat substitutes have had a hard time making it to the dinner tables of Americans over the years, but the tech giants believe these newest products will pass the “tastes like chicken” test. Gates has met several times with Ethan Brown, whose product, Beyond Meat, is a mash-up of proteins from peas and plants.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Bill Gates & Twitter Founders Put “Meatless” Meat To the Test
The NSA is monitoring thousands upon thousands of offline computers every day. It’s watching cellphone calls, location data. And if that wasn’t enough, a new report from the Guardian indicates it’s also scooping up around 200 million text messages a day. At random. Read more…
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The NSA Scoops Up 200 Million Random Text Messages Every Day
Sometimes a free trial comes along and you want to check it out, but in order to do so you have to enter a credit card number. Perhaps you don’t want to share that information just yet. That’s where GetCreditCardNumbers comes in. It creates “real” numbers you can use so you don’t have to give up your actual information. Read more…
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GetCreditCardNumbers Generates "Real" Numbers for Use in Free Trials