IKEA Uses a Staggering One Percent of the World’s Wood

The easiest joke to make about IKEA is that few of its products—from shelves to meatballs—are made from what they seem. But even particleboard still requires wood—and a lot of it, when you’re selling 100 million products every year. Read more…        

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IKEA Uses a Staggering One Percent of the World’s Wood

Windows 8.1: Everything You Need to Know

Microsoft rolls out the next version of windows, 8.1, at its annual Build developers conference today. It’s a big deal. Windows 8 was a crazy ambitious step, what follows is just as important. This is what Microsoft’s taken from your months of feedback (or just, yelling). Read more…        

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Windows 8.1: Everything You Need to Know

Adidas Springblade: Shoes with Actual Springs Might Be a Good Idea?

Adidas has another new running shoe, this one even more divergent than its Boost shoe and its new foam . It’s a bunch of springs, basically, strapped to your foot. And it sort of makes a lot of sense. Read more…        

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Adidas Springblade: Shoes with Actual Springs Might Be a Good Idea?

A Typeface Designed To Thwart Spying Computers

If people are snooping on your textual communications and you don’t like it, there are a couple of things you can do. You can try to block the prying eyes, you can stop saying things you don’t want to be seen, or you can make your messages make no sense to the outside. The anti-authoritarian typeface ZXX is shooting for that last one. Read more…        

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A Typeface Designed To Thwart Spying Computers

How Americans Speak Differently in Various Regions, Visualized

Depending on where you’re from and where you’ve lived in the United States, you probably say things a little differently than people from other parts of the country. You’ve experienced this, but you’ve never seen how the regional dialects of the United States break down quite so cleanly. Read more…        

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How Americans Speak Differently in Various Regions, Visualized

China Criticizes US For Making Weapon Plans Steal-able, Alleges Attacks From US

Etherwalk writes “Huang Chengqing, China’s top internet security official, alleged that cyberattacks on China from people in the U.S. are as serious as those from China on the U.S. ‘We have mountains of data, if we wanted to accuse the U.S., but it’s not helpful in solving the problem.’ Huang, however, does not necessarily attribute them to the U.S. government just because they came from U.S. soil, and he thinks Washington should extend the same courtesy. ‘They advocated cases that they never let us know about. Some cases can be addressed if they had talked to us, why not let us know? It is not a constructive train of thought to solve problems.’ In response to the recent theft of U.S. military designs, he replied with an observation whose obviousness is worthy of Captain Hammer: ‘Even following the general principle of secret-keeping, it should not have been linked to the Internet.'” A few experts think China’s more cooperative attitude has come about precisely because the U.S. government has gone public with hacking allegations. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Criticizes US For Making Weapon Plans Steal-able, Alleges Attacks From US

Almost Flat: The Future of iOS Design?

‘Completely flat’, ‘like Android’, ‘Microsoft-flat’ etc., etc., etc. The talk about how Apple are going to ‘flatten out’ their UI style has set the rumour-mills ablaze with completely spurious conjecture. So I thought I’d add to it. However, let’s approach this not from ‘what one insider source told someone’ but instead from evidence of progression within some of the top iOS apps. Read more…        

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Almost Flat: The Future of iOS Design?

Intricate, Ultra-Accurate Blueprints of Botanical Life

Illustration and science have always gone hand in hand. If you want to understand something, drawing it is a good place to start. Macoto Murayama , a 29-year-old botanist and designer, goes even further: he carefully dissects and models flowers using 3D drafting software. Read more…        

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Intricate, Ultra-Accurate Blueprints of Botanical Life