Fake Lufthansa pilot tries to board airplane

Defecting Chinese spy offers information trove to Australian government. His testimony shows how Beijing’s spies are infiltrating Hong Kong’s democracy movement, manipulating Taiwan’s elections and operating with impunity in Australia.

Meetings at work should be seen as a form of “therapy” rather than about decision-making, say researchers.

Chess players make more mistakes on polluted days. Air pollution effects on cognitive functions. Bonus: The Effect of Traffic Pollution on Academic Performance

Merely 20% of the Tinder users in the sample have had one-night stands following Tinder use

Letting robots kill without human supervision could save lives [2017]

5 Ways Smart People Sabotage Their Success

More than a third of Ph.D. students have sought help for anxiety or depression caused by Ph.D. study, according to results of a global survey of 6,300 students from Nature.

Google made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones

Facebook, Google fund nonprofit think tanks shaping federal privacy debate

There Will Be No Turning Back on Facial Recognition

Jeff Bezos says Amazon is writing its own facial recognition laws to pitch to lawmakers

Faces and licence plates are among the details that can be clearly seen in a 195 billion pixels photograph of Shanghai [photo + read more]

China to take over Kenya’s main port over unpaid huge Chinese Loan [Thanks Tim]

The rise of ‘ghost kitchens’

Salon Kitty was a high-class Berlin brothel used by the Nazi intelligence service for espionage purposes during World War II. The Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS, or SD) took over the brothel, had the place wire tapped and all the prostitutes replaced with trained spies in order to gather data on various members of the Nazi party and foreign dignitaries.

Thai photographer Visarute Angkatavanich portrays Siamese fighting fish (Betta Splendens)

it’s a single shot of herself dancing to a tearful voicemail from her ex-boyfriend, asking her to take him back after he confessed to cheating

Chilean protesters using lasers to take down a drone.

pitfalls can be easily dismissed — like photos of the Earth from space, which flat Earthers believe are photoshopped

The rise of ‘facadism’ in London [Thanks Tim]

See Forever™ from the observatory at One World Trade Center. Choose to skip just the ticket line or all the lines. [Thanks Tim]

Women Missing Brain’s Olfactory Bulb Can Still Smell, Puzzling Scientists

A recent experiment by Microsoft Japan suggests with a 4-day workweek we may be more productive if we work less

Tech writer Alex Wilhelm found the deck SoftBank is using to explain what just happened with their WeWork clusterfork and it is AMAZING.

This Is How the U.S. Military’s Massive Facial Recognition System Works

Researchers in Japan and at the University of Michigan found a way to take over Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri devices from hundreds of feet away by shining laser pointers, and even flashlights, at the devices’ microphones. In one case, they said, they opened a garage door by shining a laser beam at a voice assistant that was connected to it. [NY Times]

how many times would I need people to stream my music on Spotify to pay for this double LP?

Efficacy of light therapy versus antidepressant drugs, and of the combination versus monotherapy

Is it dangerous to wake a sleepwalker?

Airplane Mode, a game that tasks you with sitting through a nearly six-hour transatlantic flight… in real time.

Her pills, all individual and artisanally crafted from various kinds of digestible matter, disappoint and refuse any shift to reality + If I can’t sleep at night is it because I am [redacted] - Part I & II

Closed Loop is a recording of two artificial intelligence models conversing with each other - one with words the other with images

New York train rider reports suspicious packages, turn out to be machines used to report suspicious packages

Man kept getting drunk without drinking. Docs found brewer’s yeast in his guts.

Australia wants to use face recognition for porn age verification

Man saves his nail clippings for a year and turns them into engagement ring

Men are funnier than women, study claims

Rats taught to drive tiny cars to lower their stress levels

MIT Taught Self-Driving Cars to See Around Corners with Shadows

You Got a Brain Scan at the Hospital. Someday a Computer May Use It to Identify You. The brain scans of 84 volunteers were used to create reconstructions of their faces, then tested against photographs. A facial recognition program correctly matched 70 subjects. [NY Times]

Fingerprinting isn’t yet as widespread as cookies, but it’s concerning because it’s much, much more aggressive.

Uber made a feature called “Copter” available to all of its users in New York City. A significant portion of helicopter traffic above NYC isn’t monitored. Since 1983, there have been at least 30 crashes.

Air pollution trigger hundreds more heart attacks and strokes, research suggests

Facebook alters video to make people invisible to facial recognition [ De-Identification Video Samples ]

Silicon Valley drug-fueled, sex-laced parties

It was June 6, 1984, and Tetris had just started its journey from behind the Iron Curtain.

What was Condé Nast? And what is Condé Nast today?

Why Thousands Are Watching The Decay Of A Decade-Old McDonald’s Burger

Emoji Frequency

Snoop Dogg employs a full-time blunt roller

Extreme sea level events will hit once a year by 2050, no matter whether climate heating emissions are curbed or not

the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions

Would you give up Google for $17,000 a year? The Federal Reserve wants to know

Alphabet’s Wing Begins First Commercial Drone Delivery Service in U.S., Beating Amazon, Uber

The expansion by Amazon Web Services into state and local elections has quietly gathered pace since the 2016 U.S. presidential vote. More than 40 states now use one or more of Amazon’s election offerings. Amazon pitches itself as a low-cost provider of secure election technology.

what’s happening today is the very opposite of the dot-com bubble

Two mathmaticians developed a new method for multiplying giant numbers together

Temperatures in Qatar – one of the hottest places on Earth – have risen so much that authorities have installed air conditioning in the open air including in streets and outdoor markets.

Gravity is not 9.8 m/s^2. That is just the global average. On this globe it is stronger in the red areas and weaker in the blue areas. + Gravity map reveals Earth’s extremes

Kylie Minogue’s Come Into My World, directed by Michel Gondry

curing a migraine headache

Electricity consumption in Europe in 1507

U.S. protects already extinct caribou herd

Nike Jesus trainers injected with ‘holy water’ from Jordan River, costing $3,000, sell out in minutes

Annoyed victim hacks back ransomware gang and releases all their decryption keys, along with a free decrypter.

Problematic sexual attraction research (Retraction of High Heels Increase Women’s Attractiveness)

When asked to answer questions quickly and impulsively, people tend to respond with a socially desirable answer rather than an honest one

Machine-vision systems use radio waves to see through walls and in darkness

How to weigh a whale without a scale

The World’s Most-Used Cryptocurrency Isn’t Bitcoin (Tether’s monthly trading volume is about 18% higher than that of Bitcoin)

Uber Technologies Inc. plans to buy a majority stake in online grocer Cornershop, a deal designed to extend its geographic reach and bolster profits by bundling food delivery with rides. + Uber scrambles into groceries with cornershop. Why?

The marketplace is sort of saying that after WeWork and Uber, there’s two types of companies in the unicorn space: ones that are overvalued and ones that are just going to zero.

Aliens may have bugged space rocks to spy on Earth, scientist says

Aliens will likely be discovered within 30 years, Nobel Prize-winning astronomer says

On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”) PDF

Typing speeds on mobile devices are approaching those on physical keyboards, a new study shows

Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

More than 250 people around the world have died taking selfies since 2011

Not a single child born in the U.K. in 2016 was named Nigel

Dior’s Kim Jones and Apple’s Jony Ive predict what our future will look like

Year 2038 problem

Meghalaya is a radical redesign of a train station, using a pile of dirt, Deleuzian theory, illegal plants, Xenofeminism, Dewey’s Aesthetics, and ionizing radiation.

Create a digital voice that sounds like you from a small audio sample [and then] replace recorded words and phrases with synthesized speech

Augmented-Reality-Sandbox

me interpretive dancing to movie company intros and me improvising to Theresa May’s resignation speech [Thanks Tim]

New starting-block cameras censored after female athletes protest. The cameras showed images of athletes’ intimate areas.

Man charged after deliberately farting during strip search, saying, “How do you like that?”

Traders Who Can’t Code May Become Extinct, Goldman’s Tech Pioneer Warns

Preference for high heels correlated with female self-perceived attractiveness

bullshitting frequency was positively associated with overclaiming and negatively associated with sincere self-presentation, honesty, cognitive ability, open-minded cognition, and self-regard

Smart TVs send private data to Netflix and Facebook

Google is reducing how much audio it saves for human review

North Korean hackers have new malware to target ATMs

The top 50 most-surveilled cities in the world

Piracy will Surge if More Legal Streaming Services Launch, Research Shows

Polling by phone has become very expensive, as the number of Americans willing to respond to unexpected or unknown callers has dropped. Back in the mid-to-late-20th century response rates were as high as 70%, according to SSRS, a market research and polling firm. But the Pew Research Centre estimates that it received completed interviews from a mere 6% of the people it tried to survey in 2018.

With more than 700 creations, Adrian Fisher is the world’s most prolific maze designer

CRISPR might be the banana’s only hope against a deadly fungus

The Pentagon notified Congress of its purchase of a microwave weapon system designed to knock down swarms of enemy drones with pulses of energy

Grumman X-29: The impossible fighter jet with inverted wings

Psycho was, and still is, a radical approach to serial killer films

Picasso’s The Old Guitarist is interesting for another reason. Art historians have long noted the presence of a ghostly woman’s face faintly visible beneath the paint.

How one stylist for Silicon Valley helps tech bros go “from boys to men.” “Many of her clients have zero fashion sensibility”

an ad blocker that works on podcasts and radio

French company liable after employee dies during sex on business trip

Google Maps shows sunken car where missing man’s body was found

Human corpses move around significantly as they decompose, according to an Australian researcher who observed a dead body over a 17-month period

Multiple students on campus have offered to pay their classmates to drop out of classes they are waitlisted for

Guizhou ended up with 40 of the world’s 100 tallest bridges. Read that again. I didn’t say China had 40% of the world’s tallest, I said a poor, small province in the interior with only 2.5% of China’s population has 40 of the world’s 100 tallest bridges.

A host of innocent-seeming items are contraband: savoury spreads like Marmite contain yeast and can be used in illicit brewing; chewing gum can be used to make an imprint of a key or lock; baby oil can make an inmate’s arms slippery, rendering them impossible to restrain. Cash is treated as top-level contraband. How the prison economy works

What Happens When You Don’t Pay a Hospital Bill The debt typically comes from out-of-network doctors who people thought were in-network, hospital stays, or ambulance rides.

This study reveals large deficits in the supply of potential male spouses

Fat Relocation Research [PDF]

A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked

Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from Smartphone Data

A space elevator is possible with today’s technology, researchers say (we just need to dangle it off the moon)

Why is movie theater popcorn so outrageously expensive?

Two Mathematicians Just Solved a Decades-Old Math Riddle (how do you solve x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = k, where k equals any whole number from 1 to 100?)

The Death of Alexander the Great: One of History’s Great Unsolved Mysteries

How much data is generated every minute

Alaskan map of the United States

Aging could potentially be reversed using human growth hormone, study suggests

Google Has My Dead Grandpa’s Data And He Never Used The Internet (Why is it okay that the internet is designed to be a surveillance machine?)

You gave them your data in exchange for a driver’s license. DMVs are making tens of millions of dollars selling it .

Feds served Google with a search warrant, asking for data that would identify any Google user who had been within 100 feet of the bank during a half-hour block of time around the robbery.

Alibaba designers used AI to shape New York Fashion Week looks

Artificial Intelligence, Human Capital, and Innovation [PDF]

“John Levee” updates the nonexistent weather every day to add realistic structure to the community-wide bit

How Apple’s Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls [NY Times]

Between 2010 and 2016 staff at the Shark Spotting Programme, established to warn swimmers when the three-ton predators approached beaches, reported an average of 205 sightings of the fish off the beaches of False Bay. In 2018 that fell to 50 and this year not one has been seen.

Jakarta has sunk by up to 4 meters, forcing Indonesia to build a new capital

Until 100 years ago, sturgeon were plentiful in the rivers and lakes throughout Europe and America, and caviar was an ordinary food for those who lived near these sturgeon-filled waterways — in some areas it was so common it was served as a free bar snack

How to Build a Pyramid

Leonardo da Vinci may have painted another ‘Mona Lisa.’ Now, there’s a legal battle over who owns it.

Aphex Twin on the Rephlex years

The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago [Thanks Tim]

this “surprise” engagement was nothing of the sort; rather it was a staged marketing stunt + fashionambitionist proposal [Thanks Tim]

Asymmetric Skinny & Wide-Leg Jeans, $462.00

Nasa said to be investigating first allegation of a crime committed in space (an astronaut accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse from the International Space Station)

Why is there a Braille message on my e-scooter? It’s not “how-to-ride” instructions. Blind people need to know whom to contact if they trip over them. [Washington Post]

Chinese murder suspect ‘caught by AI software that spotted dead person’s face’

YouTube removes videos of robots fighting for “animal cruelty”

Scientists Have Created a Vaccine for Cat Allergies, but You Can’t Have It Yet

The neurologist who hacked his brain — and almost lost his mind [Thanks Tim]

When the forum post author used an enthusiastic language style, he was perceived as more manipulative, less knowledgeable, and his information was perceived as less credible.

Are there systematic trends around the world in levels of creativity, aggressiveness, life satisfaction, individualism, trust, and suicidality?

We show that, according to numerous measures, those with tattoos, especially visible ones, are more short-sighted and impulsive than the non-tattooed

Life on alien worlds could be more diverse than on Earth

‘Plastic recycling is a myth’: what really happens to your rubbish?

She asked the doctor to locate a sperm donor. Scores of children born through artificial insemination have learned from DNA tests that their biological fathers were the doctors who performed the procedure.

US Escape Room Industry Report More: For around $30, you and a handful of friends/colleagues/strangers are “trapped” in some kind of space together and must collaboratively puzzle through a series of challenges to win your freedom.

A rash of marijuana thefts has Seattle growers wondering: Is the government leading the thieves right to them?

Companies are increasingly insisting their ads do not appear near articles or videos that contain any of a long list of words. Top 15 Forbidden Words: Dead, Shooting, Murder, Gun, Rape, Bomb, Died, Attack, Killed, Suicide, Trump, Crash, Crime, Explosion, Accident.

JPEG XL includes several features that help transition from the legacy JPEG format

I left my body in a Pizza Hut bathroom [Thanks Tim]

Man Hospitalized for 10+ Day Erection

Florida man reports handgun stolen during orgy at his home

Computers start to take over leadership functions once performed by human leaders, e.g., assigning tasks to human workers.

should we eat our research subjects? – it seems that Animal Studies scholars are divided on that issue; some do, some don’t

study found a strong correlation between adultery and workplace misconduct by corporate executives and financial advisers

91.4% of worries did not come true for those with generalized anxiety disorder

Jeff Bezos has done something that even the nonprofits receiving his millions remark is highly unusual: He has given them life-changing money with virtually no restrictions, formal vetting, or oversight

Self-Checkout Thievery“Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a total moron.”

Do We Create Shoplifters?

Scientists develop ‘artificial tongue’ to detect fake whiskies. The technology can also be used to identify poisons as well as to monitor rivers.

A research team is working on training mice to understand irregularities within speech, a task the animals can do with remarkable accuracy

When you go to a website and load a page, in the milliseconds that it takes for that page to load, there are real-time auctions running in the background that determine which ads to load on your page. Almost all online ads are delivered in this way. How Digital Advertising Markets Really Work

Hackers working for the Russian government have been using printers, video decoders, and other so-called Internet-of-things devices as a beachhead to penetrate targeted computer networks

Human life is fragile but tardigrades and other extremophiles show that life itself is in little danger of disappearing

Dark matter may be older than the Big Bang

When our cherished ideas are contradicted by the facts, we must avoid the human tendency to double down on those ideas

Dynamic Information Design with Diminishing Sensitivity Over News

Having mastered Space Invaders, chess, and Go, AI tackles video soccer

Most American books published before 1964 never extended their copyright, meaning they’re in the public domain today. Where to download these free Public domain eBooks

A team of scientists have unveiled a vodka which has been produced using grains and water from the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which they claim is completely safe to drin

Michel Foucault’s LSD Trip in the Valley of Death

Fart-proof underwear

Scientists are making human-monkey hybrids in China

Scientists create contact lenses that zoom when you blink twice

Facebook gets closer to letting you type with your mind

Apple has said that it will temporarily suspend its practice of using human contractors to grade snippets of Siri voice recordings for accuracy. Contractors “regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex” as part of their job.

women’s voices are becoming deeper in some countries

Employee happiness and business success are linked, study

Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

More than 1 in 4 delivery drivers are eating orders and Delivery drivers involved in Amazon theft ring

A two-track algorithm to detect deepfake images — can spot image manipulation at the level of single-pixels

How You Move Your Phone Can Reveal Insights Into Your Personality

Computers can’t tell if you’re happy when you smile. Emotion recognition is a $20 billion industry, but a new study says the most popular method is deeply flawed.

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Joseph D’Alesandro, 20, made nearly $2,000 a month from phone farming back in 2017. Other phone farmers said they’ve made hundreds of dollars a month from passively running apps on their phones.

The project, which launched in July 2016, now hosts 82 tools that can be used to decrypt 109 different types of ransomware.

How Over 25 People Got Scammed Into Working At A Nonexistent Game Company

evidence suggests it is possible for the vast majority of Americans to eat healthily and affordably

Bernie Madoff asks Trump to reduce his prison sentence

the method for taking a shit as an Apollo astronaut was horrifyingly simple

BrandoMOtv [Thanks Tim]

About 25% of American couples that eventually move in together do so after four months of dating, and 50% after a year. By two years, over 70% had moved in.

New study uses camera footage to track the frequency of bystander intervention in heated incidents

this study finds that brighter nights, those with a full moon and no clouds, have significantly more crime than nights without any moonlight

Never Commit a Crime When Your Phone Is Connected to a Wi-Fi Network

A Few Thoughts about Deep Fakes

Sand and gravel are being extracted faster than they can be replaced. Roughly 32 billion to 50 billion tonnes are used globally each year, mainly for making concrete, glass and electronics.

History’s Greatest Horse Racing Cheat and His Incredible Painting Trick

Why everything you know about nutrition is wrong

In 2019, blockchain has been piercing the food industry at an accelerated pace. According to recent research, 20% of the top-10 global grocers will use blockchain by 2025

An 1851 manual on making ice cream [via Austerity Kitchen]

I spent a day eating food cooked by robots in America’s tech capital [more Austerity Kitchen]

More than 400,000 people have joined a Facebook event page calling for storming Area 51

Facebook’s stock went up after news of a record-breaking $5 billion FTC fine

Google takes another run at social networking with Shoelace

To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

In a Constantly Changing San Francisco, Change is Constant — by A.I. Algorithm [Thanks Tim]

I’LL WASH YOUR PET

The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat

People keep spotting Teslas with snoozing drivers on the freeway

people judged that altering some moral facts was impossible—not even God could turn morally wrong acts into morally right acts. Strikingly, people thought that God could make physically impossible and logically impossible events occur.

In a technical tour de force, Japanese researchers created eggs and sperm in the laboratory. Now, scientists have to determine how to use those cells safely — and ethically.

An interoceptive illusion of effort induced by false heart-rate feedback

Cockroaches may soon be unstoppable—thanks to fast-evolving insecticide resistance

In recent weeks, hackers believed to be working for the Iranian government have targeted U.S. government agencies, as well as sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, sending waves of spear-phishing emails

China Snares Tourists’ Phones in Surveillance Dragnet by Adding Secret App — Border authorities routinely install the app on the phones of people entering the Xinjiang region by land from Central Asia, gathering personal data and scanning for material considered objectionable. [NY Times | Vice]

China may soon be home to half of the world’s most powerful supercomputing systems.

China’s Social Credit System Is More Kafka Than Orwell

Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press

James Joyce and the Writing of Odor 

Cincinnati Built a Subway System 100 Years Ago–But Never Used It

In 1999 Sweden banned the purchase—but not the sale—of sex. The idea of criminalising prostitutes’ clients is spreading

Deepfake revenge porn distribution now a crime in Virginia

Why pilots are seeing UFOs

The United States Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron “Thunderbirds” will fly over Hollywood in celebration of the upcoming film Captain Marvel during the afternoon of March 4, 2019. + U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds stunt team flying over Hollywood Blvd [Thanks Tim]

Popular Soccer App Spied on Fans Through Phone Microphone to Catch Bars Pirating Game Streams

How long does it take a man to collect his semen specimen in a busy infertility clinic? Patients accompanied by their female partners required significantly longer time to collect their sample.

Why a woman started lactating from her vulva: rare case study

In every single country, the average estimate of happiness is far lower than actual reported happiness

Recent research suggests that rates of extreme poverty, commonly defined as living on less than $2/person/day, are high and rising in the United States

Facebook’s AI researchers have developed a speech synthesizer capable of copying anybody’s voice with uncanny accuracy.

Smart devices are ripe for exploitation in domestic abuse scenarios because often one person, usually a man, controls the information technology (IT) for the house.

Student Used Snapchat Filter to Pose as Teen Girl, Ended up Busting Pedophile Cop

Men Are More Satisfied By ‘Bromances’ Than Their Romantic Relationships, Study Says [thanks GG]

Cocaine contamination in pubic hair

Woman banned from pooing in public has breached court order 20 times in two years

The Puzzle of Open Defecation in Rural India

The zero rupee note

Life expectancy in Canada has stopped increasing for the first time in more than four decades, due largely to soaring overdose deaths

US homicide rates fell sharply in the early 1990s, a decade that also saw the mainstreaming of cell phones – a concurrence that may be more than a coincidence, we propose.

Dead Duck Day also commemorates the billions of other birds that die(d) from colliding with glass buildings

Telegram blames China for cyberattack coinciding with Hong Kong protests + Telegram’s description of DDoS attack is the best

The Economic Effects of the 2017 Tax Revision: Preliminary Observations

How Much Do Museum Employees Actually Make? A Tell-All Google Spreadsheet Is Now Making the Rounds

This paper explores the law and economics of “literary fan art,” i.e. unauthorized derivative works by third parties that are based on someone else’s literary work product. What is the legal status of such fan art?

Dora Maar was one of the most important Surrealist photographers and the only artist to exhibit in all six of the group’s international exhibitions.

A digital ‘dress’ sold for $9,500

Using techniques coming from ultra intense laser science, we show that for high enough laser intensities, two lightsaber blades can `feel’ solid to each other.

A Visit to Chernobyl as It Transforms Into a Solar Farm

Instagram influencers are flocking to Chernobyl

It costs three times more to build a subway station in New York than in London or Paris.

Notable Women is an AR Experiment that lets anyone see 100 historic American women where they’ve historically been left out: U.S. currency. [Thanks Tim]

This Vancouver market is handing out embarrassing plastic bags to customers

Facebook Removed 2.2 Billion Fake Accounts This Year

Nine experiments show that slower responses are considered less sincere

These results partially replicate previous studies showing that larger glasses increase wine sales

A Laptop Infected With Six of the World’s Most Dangerous Computer Viruses Is Up for Auction. The Bid Is Now More Than $1.2 Million [artwork website]

Fortnite is the future, but probably not for the reasons you think

Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority voted to grant a $48,675,000 contract to the Boring Company to build a 0.83-mile, three-station version of the company’s Loop mass-transit system inside of Vegas’ sprawling, revamped convention center, which is currently under construction. The company would receive just over half of its payment after construction is completed, 70 percent after testing and commissioning, and the full payment only after it demonstrates it can daily move at least 4,400 people each hour.

The professor who beat roulette How a renowned researcher beat the odds, stumped casino owners around the world, and walked away with a fortune

When The Boys arrived, they found black suitcases waiting for each other [Thanks Tim]

Parents forget newborn baby in taxi on way home from hospital

Washington is first state to allow composting of human bodies

Florida politicians may expunge an old law that gives Disney World the right to build its own nuclear plant

Driverless electric truck starts deliveries on Swedish public road

Alphabet’s Wing drone deliveries are coming to Finland next month

Electric ‘flying taxi’ prototype unveiled by German start-up

At the moment, only one in 250 cars on the road is electric. Researchers have no idea when electric cars are going to take over

China says it’s created a facial recognition app for pandas

Baltimore ransomware nightmare could last weeks more, with big consequences. Houses can’t be sold, bills can’t be paid while city networks are shuttered.

boring speakers really talk for longer

acne is strongly positively associated with overall grade point average in high school, grades in high school English, history, math, and science, and the completion of a college degree. We also find evidence that acne is associated with higher personal labor market earnings for women.

We find a positive relationship between intelligence scores and fertility

Fetal facial expression in response to intravaginal music emission

our results suggest bilingualism may not enhance cognitive ability at 9.5 months

How a Harrowing Photo of One Woman’s Death Became an Iconic Pro-Choice Symbol

Uncontrolled bleeding during surgery can cause death. What if, instead of slow surgical stitching, you could rapidly glue a wound together? A new “bio-glue” — an experimental adhesive gel that is activated by a flash of light — has been proven to stop high pressure bleeding in the hearts of pigs.

Acid-free paper can last 500 years; stone inscriptions even longer. But magnetic media like hard drives have a much shorter life, lasting only three to five years.

No, someone hasn’t cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript

Ranking celebrity chef cookbooks by how many animals their recipes kill

A woman took a picture of three Irish men in Times Square. It took Twitter only an hour to track them down.

Pentagram’s new design for parking signs throughout New York City

Down with the sickness

Electric vehicles emit more CO2 than diesel ones, German study shows

French man arrives in Caribbean after crossing Atlantic in giant barrel

A “cyber event” interrupted grid operations in parts of the western United States last month, according to a cryptic report posted by the Department of Energy. If remote hackers interfered with grid networks in California, Utah and Wyoming, as the DOE filing suggests, the event would be unprecedented.

Teenager sues Apple over ‘facial recognition error’ that led to his arrest

Millions of people uploaded photos to the Ever app. Then the company used them to develop facial recognition tools.

Why do many people come to believe that they and others have a true self?

On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit [PDF]

San Francisco approves ban on cashless stores, follows similar moves in Philadelphia, New Jersey

New (australian) $50 note contains typo in word, discovered months after 46 million notes distributed

Reducing Crime Through Environmental Design: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting in New York City

Metal fraud cost NASA two satellites worth $700 million

Several years ago, there were rumors that metals might have an awkward cousin

Three Mile Island will shut down by September 30th

Burger King’s new Whopper is 0% beef

choice overload only appears in the absence of brand names, but disappears when all options contain brand names—either familiar or unfamiliar

out of 8.9 million dogs in the UK, 2.1 million were left alone in their owner’s home for quite considerable lengths of time. This is not always progressive towards a dog’s social welfare, which without being able to socialize may be inclined towards more negative and problem behaviors. Perhaps if they (i.e. dogs) could contact each other via the internet, their situation might improve?

All perching birds – the majority of the world’s bird population – originated in Australia, researchers report

research team developed a new concept of fire extinguisher optimized for space-use

The Big Kitchen at the World Trade Center, 1981

3M jacket makes automated sinks go bonkers [Thanks Tim]

Vagina Musuem

I just boarded an international @JetBlue flight. Instead of scanning my boarding pass or handing over my passport, I looked into a camera before being allowed down the jet bridge. Did facial recognition replace boarding passes, unbeknownst to me? Did I consent to this? You’re able to opt out of this procedure, MacKenzie. Sorry if this made you feel uncomfortable.

Hair detection in images is useful for many applications, such as face and gender recognition, video surveillance, and hair modelling

The French government has developed its own end-to-end encrypted instant messenger (IM) app to replace government employee use of Telegram, WhatsApp, and other third-party IM clients.

TikTok, the video-sharing app by the Chinese-owned Bytedance (the world’s most valuable startup), has a younger audience than Facebook, an algorithm that learns you, and different ideas about free speech

West Virginia Will Use Blockchain Voting in the 2020 Presidential Election

An Argument that Cybersecurity Is Basically Okay

Dozens of medical professionals in seven states were charged Wednesday with participating in the illegal prescribing of more than 32 million pain pills, including doctors who prosecutors said traded sex for prescriptions and a dentist who unnecessarily pulled teeth from patients to justify giving them opioids. [Washington Post]

dentistry’s struggle to embrace scientific inquiry has left dentists with considerable latitude to advise unnecessary procedures—whether intentionally or not

women with unexplained recurrent miscarriage had less oral sex

subjects, who despite their inability to use smell in daily life, consider themselves healthy

How superstitions spread

Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics

Botanically, hemp and marijuana are from the same species of plant, Cannabis sativa,1 but from different varieties or cultivars. Defining Hemp: A Fact Sheet (CRS report Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress)

“Her overall scheme has been to claim to be a wealthy German heiress with approximately $60 million in funds being held abroad”

Shakespeare home in London, where he wrote ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ found by historian

no one can be creative or productive all the time. (Even Beethoven had a 10-year gap between his eighth and ninth symphonies.)

If You Score Above 30 on This Test, You Might Be a Psychopath

Exciting New App Allows Users To Be Pawns In 26-Year-Old CEO’s Little Game [Thanks Tim]

Shoes made for someone with three feet by a master shoemaker in Berlin

“”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”-w”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"

According to a recent scientific study, the way to avoid mosquito bites is to listen to electronic music - specifically dubstep, specifically by US artist Skrillex [study]

Physicists Reverse Time for Tiny Particles Inside a Quantum Computer

A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again

Growing Corn Is A Major Contributor To Air Pollution, Study Finds

a cotton tote or a paper bag may be worse for the environment than a plastic one + organic cotton is worse than conventional cotton when it comes to overall environmental impact

More than 99.9999 per cent of all living organisms on Earth died. The Day the Dinosaurs Died

A doomsday fungus known as Bd has condemned more species to extinction than any other pathogen.

One wrong mutation and your beautiful daisy transforms into an eldrich horror

Here’s how many avocados it would take to kill you (also watermelon, coffee, dark chocolate…)

Man was mistakenly circumcised in mix-up at Leicester (England) hospital

Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to ‘shoot the messenger,’ deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable [PDF]

Peak velocity of elbow joint during hair combing activity for normal subject

A slowdown in image processing speeds up our perception of time passing as we age

For those who get the least amount of physical activity, replacing a half hour of sitting time with physical activity was associated with up to a nearly 50 percent reduction in mortality

Using stolen processing power to mine cryptocurrencies is a profitable criminal enterprise. But nobody realized the scale of the activity until now

The operatives utilized an arsenal of cyber tools, including a cutting-edge espionage platform known as Karma, in which Raven operatives say they hacked into the iPhones of hundreds of activists, political leaders and suspected terrorists.

New beer hitting the market can be used to develop Super 8 movie film. Kodak helped by testing it.

If intense warfare broke out tomorrow, India could supply its troops with only 10 days of ammunition, according to government estimates. And 68 percent of the army’s equipment is so old, it is officially considered “vintage.” [NY Times]

Since the 1950s, hundreds of dogs have jumped off this gothic stone bridge in a town near Glasgow. Many have ended up dead in the valley below. Researchers say there is a rational explanation, but in a land of superstition and mystery, others are not so sure. [NY Times]

not a phone in sight, everyone is just living in the moment, wish we could go back

denim “diaper”

Plane forced to turn back after mother forgets her newborn at airport

a $380K ‘flying motorcycle’

Q, the world’s first genderless voice

The Boombox Incident (The process for removing bald people from photos)

Quantum computing for the very curious

Seat Choice in a Crowded Café: Effects of Eye Contact, Distance, and Anchoring

The relation between shyness and creativity … shyness was negatively associated with creative imagination, but positively associated with aesthetic sensitivity.

Extremely precise visual long-term memories for frequently encountered objects

Nail Scissor as a Rare Foreign Body in the Urethra

Despite anecdotal evidence seen on television and in movies, there is zero actual research to support penetrating traumatic brain injury (TBI) as an intervention to kill zombies

MIT Historian alleges that scientists and officials representing the United Nations, the Red Cross, and the World Health Organization covered up evidence that hundreds of thousands of people died from radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. The scientific consensus was that the Chernobyl accident will, at most, result in the deaths of just 200 people over an 80-year life span. Previously: Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, it has become clear that radioactivity might be less harmful than originally thought.

$100,000-a-night Damien-Hirst-designed Las Vegas hotel room is the most expensive in America

Easy trick to stay positive