Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee
When I first heard about this, I thought it was one of those speciality Tumblr blogs. But now, this is something authentic, something grand something on a gigantic awesomeness scale.
I just wish they had a better video player.
Benchwarmer — Chrome Extension for Dribbble
A brilliant little extension for Google Chrome that replaces the “New Tab” screen with six shots from Dribbble, even letting you can choose which feed you want the shots to show up from.
It’s a great utility to quickly glance at what’s happening on Dribbble before you move onto whatever website you wanted to open in the new tab.
Free Mobile Phones for All Poor Families in India
The government of India has formulated a genius of a plan that involves giving away a free mobile phone, along with Rs. 200 (~$4) worth of talktime to around six million families who are below the poverty line. The report says the scheme is going to cost the government Rs. 7,000 Crores.
I’m sure the families would be delighted to know that their favorite pizza place is now just a phone call away. Any entrepreneurs willing to start a “dial-a-roti” service?
Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000
Incredible use of HTML5/CSS3 and related web technologies to present their data. I’ve written about it on Beautiful Pixels, but make sure you visit the site in a fullscreen modern browser before reading about it.
Software That Can Identify Cities By Looking At The Architecture
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and INRIA/Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris have designed software that combs over thousands of Google street view images from Paris, London, New York, and more, then learns to tell the difference based on, say, the number of fire escapes (Hello, NYC). If it picks up on a lot of cast-iron balconies, that’s a good indication of Paris.
A very nice site that lists and links to all the Mac apps that have been updated with Retina graphics. You can also follow the updates on Twitter (@retinaapps) or subscribe to a weekly email.
I wish there was a search box though. Just a simple text box so that I can look up if app X has been updated yet or not.
Seeing Through Walls With a Wireless Router
[…] researchers at University College London, designed their detector to use these ubiquitous signals. When a radio wave reflects off a moving object, its frequency changes—a phenomenon called the Doppler effect. Their radar prototype identifies frequency changes to detect moving objects. It’s about the size of a suitcase and contains a radio receiver composed of two antennas and a signal-processing unit. In tests, they have used it to determine a person’s location, speed and direction—even through a one-foot-thick brick wall. Because the device itself doesn’t emit any radio waves, it can’t be detected.
Fascinating.
At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I didn’t use elsewhere. When I set it up, years and years ago, that seemed pretty secure at the time. But it’s not. Especially given that I’ve been using it for, well, years and years. My guess is they used brute force to get the password (see update) and then reset it to do the damage to my devices.
This was truly a full-throttle attack on Mat here. I’ve heard many reports of emails getting hacked into, but this is just terrible. I hope Mat recovers most, if not all his data.
And remember kids, let this be a lesson that no amount of backup is enough backup. There are a lot of options available today, so pick as many as you can and backup that data.