Amazon's usual price for this highly rated 8-inch Winco chef's knife is $14, but it's on sale right now for $10. I just ordered one. Read the rest

On April 7 David Perel posted a video to YouTube, writing: "Drone Smashes Through My 5th Floor Window and Into My Head! While sitting at my desk I heard what sounded like a missile followed by a huge bang and glass all over me. Turns out someone lost control of their drone. Lucky to be uninjured!"

A lot of people didn't believe Perel. On Medium, he wrote about the angry deniers who posted mean comments on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram about the video:

It’s incredible how many glass experts, drone experts, head trauma experts, video experts, psychological experts and experts of any kind exist when the troll nation descends. Experts abound but they all missed a single key fact: I was actually hit in the head by a drone!

The pinnacle of these accusations was a very personal attack from a guy with a ponytail who clearly loves his drones, but not the facts.

It’s now been four days since the incident and I am still fielding calls from news websites, radio stations and Twitter commenters.

Eddie Tipton, the 51-year-old former security director of the US Multi-State Lottery Association, was convicted last year of hacking a random number generator to fix a $16.5 million lottery prize in Iowa. Now it looks like he could have pulled the same trick Colorado, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Kansas, too. Tipton is in Texas, free on bond pending an appeal, and fighting extradition charges.

Wikipedia's description of how Tipton hacked the random number generator reads like the script from a crime drama:

Hot Lotto draws are conducted using a random number generator running on a computer in MUSL's Des Moines facility. The computer is in a "locked glass-walled room accessible only by two people at a time and then only on camera", and is not connected to the internet or any other networks. Tipton was let into the room on November 20, 2010 to manually adjust the time on the draw computer to reflect daylight saving time; it was alleged that while Tipton was in the room, he used a USB flash drive to install self-destructing malware on the random number generator computer, presumably to rig a draw. Tipton's co-workers described him as having been "obsessed" with rootkits at the time. It was also noted that on that day, security cameras were configured to record only for "roughly one second per minute," a change the prosecutors believed was made to prevent anything suspicious from being recorded.

I'll bet when Pennsylvania cops pulled Kimberlee Carbone over for not using her turn signal she didn't think it would result in her being shackled by her wrists and ankles to a hospital bed to get an internal inspection of her vagina and rectum.

Kimberlee Carbone was pulled over by New Castle police in November 2013, ostensibly because "she did not apply her turn signal at least 100 feet before the intersection." She was then subjected to a degrading five-hour ordeal that included a bogus DUI arrest, a search of her person and her car, a strip search at the county jail, and multiple probings of her anus and vagina at a hospital.

...

Still determined to discover contraband, Geiser "performed a second internal examination of [Carbone's] vagina and rectum," then instructed two nurses to perform a third. They also swabbed her vagina "for testing." After none of these inspections turned up evidence of a crime, Maiella told Carbone she was free to go. She was discharged from the hospital at 9:15 p.m., having spent an hour and a half there and a total of five hours in police custody.

Minneapolis-based Indeed Brewing company makes a seasonal beer called "Lavender, Sunflower Honey, Date Honey Ale." That's "LSD Ale" for short. It doesn't contain lysergic acid diethylamide, which is also sometime called LSD. But federal regulators have told Indeed Brewing that the illicit drug retains its sole right to use the acronym, so Indeed has to change its distinctive label.

Paste magazine says the ale has a "tingly kind of spice, like licking a 9-volt battery, but in a good way."

Indeed Brewing LSD Review - http://t.co/kk4riyTeLz

— Ale Republic (@AleRepublic) June 10, 2015

I guess the folks at Indeed Brewing don't have as much money and influence as fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent, which has been selling Opium since 1977. Read the rest

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

When Matthias Buchinger was born in 1674, he arrived without arms or legs. As an adult, he was under 2.5 feet tall. He lived to the age of 65, outliving three wives (his fourth wife outlived him, and he was rumored to have as many as 70 mistresses), and he sired 14 children. Most remarkably, Buchinger was an accomplished artist, magician, sharpshooter, and calligrapher. Buchinger's specialty was micrography: the art of writing tiny letters. He was famous throughout Europe. According to Wikipedia, “Buchinger's fame was so widespread that in the 1780s the term ‘Buckinger's boot’ existed in England as a euphemism for the vagina (because the only ‘limb’ he had was his penis).”

The author of Matthias Buchinger: "The Greatest German Living" is Ricky Jay, a famous magician, performer, historian of unusual performers, and writer. Jay’s biography of the extraordinary Buchinger includes many reproductions of Buchinger’s exacting pen and ink drawings, which he made holding a pen in his small fin-like appendages. Jay is a longtime collector of Buchinger original art, and this book includes several entertaining chapters about Jay’s personal interest in collecting Buchinger’s work and his interactions with other Buchinger-philes.

Read the rest

Martin Gardner wrote Aha! Gotcha: Paradoxes to Puzzle and Delight and Aha! Insight in the early 1980s and I love them both. Both books have excellent brain teasers with charming illustrations. They are both out of print, which is criminal, but Amazon has used copies for $0.01 (plus $3.99 s&h;).

Read the rest

The Trojan condom Dash button costs $4.99, but you receive a $4.99 credit after your first press, so it's actually free!

Even if you don't need condoms, you can hack Dash buttons and use them for other things. Read the rest

The animated graphics before the song starts are the best thing about this 1978 video. Donny and Marie's outfits are the second best thing. Their dancing is the third best thing. Their puffy hair-dos are the fourth best thing. The dancers with the giant bunny tales are the fifth best thing. The song is the second worst thing. The comedy routine at the end is the worst thing.

[via]

The only Osmonds song I really like is "Chilly Winds": Read the rest

The folks at This Old House use clear plastic plumbing to explain how bathroom sinks work, and how to unclog them.

We live in an old house and the pipes get clogged a lot. My favorite bathroom sink unclogger is the Drain Weasel.

See also: What do you do when you've got a plumbing clog? Read the rest

I was wondering how this "swing thing" kept going. I had to make the video full screen to see the power source. Very cool! Read the rest

Journalist Alejandro Alvarez took this striking photo of a campaign finance reform activist being arrested at a Democracy Spring demonstration at the US Capitol yesterday.

Read the rest

Dictionary.com set themselves up by posting the above photo with a quote from Abigail Reynold's 2008 novel, Pemberley by the Sea

Merriam-Webster was quick to attack its rival:

.@Dictionarycom There's no cream in that coffee.

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) April 11, 2016

Dictionary.com fired back:

@MerriamWebster Abigail Reynolds wrote variations of Jane Austen novels. So, this image is a variation of her quote. pic.twitter.com/YmalztcNZL

— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) April 11, 2016

Merriam-Webster either gave up or is preparing for a massive counter-attack. Read the rest

It's a shame that this Minecraft comic never happened. The art looks fantastic. Brandon Sheffield, video game director and webcomic writer, has sample character designs, screens, and a script on his website.

Read the rest

Everyone knows Monopoly is a bad board game (unless you play with alternate rules). It also takes hours to play, even after the runaway player has been identified. This graph says it all:

Monopoly Deal is a $5 card game that takes 15-20 minutes to play and has lots of player interaction, and no mind numbing roll-and-move mechanic. Many of the 110 cards in the deck look familiar (money, properties, utilities). There are also action cards which can be used to collect rent, steal another players' property, cancel an action card, or used as money. Best of all, even the richest player is at risk of losing, so everyone stays interested in playing till the end.

I think the standard rules are fine, but I'm curious if anyone has come up with their own house rules? Read the rest

Like many other corporations, Airbnb and Uber use offshore shell companies to avoid taxes. The companies aren't profitable yet, but they have set themselves up to avoid taxes once they become profitable.

Read the rest

"All Prior Art is a project attempting to algorithmically create and publicly publish all possible new prior art, thereby making the published concepts not patent-able."

So far, the project has generated 1,660,000 inventions.

1460392748-9803eaba-cda7-4761-b5c2-a4a15e5a5cf2

An adjustable visual optical element is provided, which may be supported, for example, by an eyeglass. The body comprises about 15 to about 30 weight % monoclinic phase zirconia. A door frame surrounds the suctioning front opening. The resulting fairway wood has a face closing moment of inertia that provides golfers with a feel similar to that of a modern driver or hybrid golf club.

Posted on

1460392741-c6465b9a-cc5c-4cd3-b124-e64e3799d1a4

A power transistor is disclosed. The two structures are illuminated by coherent radiation and the positive and negative diffraction beams of the input beam by the two structures are detected to discover the optical phase difference between the positive and negative diffraction beams. Preferably, the silicon layer includes a main region serving as an active element region, and the gettering region is preferably included in the remaining portion of the silicon layer excluding the main region. The connection between the base unit and the pluggable electrical unit is established initially only partially, and only to the read-only memory, after switching on the power supply to the pluggable electrical unit.

Posted on

1460392732-f680c260-ae94-44e4-9984-e97ebe27754f

Boeing achieves satellite diversity by having a large discrimination angle for a MEO constellation of communications satellites to limit interference in the Ku-band with GSO communications systems. In response to an incremental backup of a first logical volume, the system creates a second recovery point index file comprising a plurality of indices.