A beautiful ring crafted (gold or silver) to look like a Golden Snitch from Harry Potter.
From Etsy seller alchemyhouse:
At this ring, have a look
It was inspired by a bookIf you’re a wizard or witch
You could use it to get hitchedIn gold or silver it may be bought
but official merchandise, it is not.
[Source: alchemyhouse on Etsy]
“Exploding Kittens” is an upcoming game by The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman that is currently up for funding on kickstarter. Just 20 minutes after being launched, the game reached its kickstarting goal, and then busted the 1000% mark after just an hour! As I’m writing this, the project has received over $1,123,466!
Exploding Kittens is a highly strategic kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette. Players take turns drawing cards until someone draws an exploding kitten and loses the game. The deck is made up of cards that let you avoid exploding by peeking at cards before you draw, forcing your opponent to draw multiple cards, or shuffling the deck.
The game gets more and more intense with each card you draw because fewer cards left in the deck means a greater chance of drawing the kitten and exploding in a fiery ball of feline hyperbole.
Another fantastic comic by Mr. Lovenstein.
Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!
Number one is a jerk, but when pushed too far, an eight can become infinite and limitless. That’s what often happens to bullies who go too far. I’ve seen it happen a few times in high-school. Victims end up getting really mad, and then they fight back.
To infinity… and BEYOND!
[Source: Mr. Lovenstein]
Watch as two video game legends fight each other: Fallout’s Vault Boy versus Skyrim’s Dovahkiin!
Oh come on. Everyone knows the Dragon would win this fight. Plus I thought Smithsonian was supposed to be a serious organization? Are they turning into another History channel?
Want a girlfriend or boyfriend, but don’t want to put in the time or effort or actually have a living person in your life? We have an app for that! It is called Invisible Girlfriend and Invisible Boyfriend and it does exactly what the name seems to imply. It creates a virtual partner for you to share your life with.
From Gizmodo:
How does it work—besides brilliantly? Well, after you download the gender-specific app, you pay the company money to send you messages and crowdsourced selfies. Then, you pretend these messages are from a real human and excuse yourself from real social interactions so that you can respond to your robotic lover. “Our inaugural service is $24.99 and includes 100 texts, 10 voicemails, and 1 handwritten note,” co-founder Kyle Tabor told Betabeat. “We’re looking to create both less and more expensive packages as we learn what our users need.”
I remember seeing the movie Her and thinking how lonely you would have to be to do that (and this is coming from a writer who lives and works alone). You knew the tech was close when watching the film. You just had no idea it was THIS close. Honestly, either did we. Still can’t decide if this is more sad than awesome, or more awesome than sad. Equal helpings of both, perhaps.
[Via Gizmodo]
Tags: app, geeks, Her, invisible boyfriend, invisible girlfriend, science fiction, tech, Technology, wtf
[Source: Up and Out Comics by Jeremy Kaye]
Once again a list of the most used passwords has revealed some obvious choices. And once again, that tells us nothing about the state of security.
As happens every year, SplashData (which by amazing coincidence is a password manager service provider) has published a list of the most common passwords, based on databases that have been hacked and then publicly released.
As also happens every year, the list is dominated by three main types of password: strings of digits in numerical order, strings of letters across the top row of a keyboard, and variations on the word “password.” This year it’s “123456” in top spot and “password” in second place.
And as happens every year, tech sites are full of analysis about how this tells us the public are terrible at choosing passwords and it’s a damning indictment of user stupidity that the most popular passwords are so obvious.
And as is now becoming something that happens every year, I’m going to point out this is nonsense. While, yes, many people do choose dumb passwords, this list proves nothing either way. Thinking it does is completely missing the circular logic involved:
The most popular passwords are bad because they are easy to guess. They are easy to guess because so many people use them.
In other words, no matter how good or bad the public is doing on security, the 25 most commonly used passwords will always, inherently, be stupid and easy to guess.
To get a better idea of how good password security is, we’d need to know factors like what percentage of people use predictable strings of characters or dictionary words, what length of password people are using, and whether people use the same password on different sites.
Indeed, the one genuinely useful statistic in the press release promoting the list, shows things are actually getting slightly better. Among all the passwords SplashData went through, the 25 most common made up 2.2 percent. That’s the lowest percentage in the five years it has been running the study.
What if your world fell apart in an instant, would you have the strength to rebuild?
This is the story of Dave Jacka, the first Quadraplegic man to fly solo around the coast of Australia. With only 6% of his physical body function remaining, that man did something that most of us will never accomplish in our lifetime.
A truly beautiful, inspiring and touching story that teaches us something about the true meaning of resilience.