October 28, 2017

Hack More Nazis

Hacking the Holocaust: Remembering the data pirates, forgers, and social engineers who saved thousands.
...Adolfo recalls when he stayed awake for two nights straight to fill an enormous rush order. “It’s a simple calculation: In one hour I can make 30 blank documents; if I sleep for an hour, 30 people will die.”
posted by Buntix at 10:00 PM PST - 17 comments

Everything You Need

Ten minutes to midnight on Tuesday, Jeremy J. Van Ert stepped into a walk-in beer cooler at a Kwik Trip convenience store in Marshfield, Wis. When the doors locked behind him at midnight, he decided that rather than shout for help, he would just camp out, police say. “He just decided to run it out for the night. It had everything that he needed.”
posted by Literaryhero at 8:31 PM PST - 40 comments

Tattúínárdǿla saga

Finally, a complete translation of the Saga of the People of the Tattúín River Valley [more inside]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:56 PM PST - 15 comments

You know who ELSE was a VP with insatiable ambition?

Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own dangers. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:55 PM PST - 150 comments

cheese + tea = cheese tea

Apparently "macchiato-like in form", cheese tea is a beverage topped with frothy, whipped cheese. Currently popular in China and Singapore, known as zhi shì chá in Mandarin, and now available in London at Asian tea chain Happy Lemon, this style of tea comes in flavours such as matcha, oolong, jasmine and black tea. Apparently the original Taiwanese recipe used powdered cheese, but adapted over time to use fresh cream cheese for a richer taste. In Los Angeles, options include creme brûlée cream and crushed Oreos over black milk tea. Refinery29: "'The rich cheese foam makes the tea taste even better.'" How best to drink? "When you drink this way, you can feel two layers of taste - cheese followed by tea". Not recommended to make in your Teforia.
posted by Wordshore at 4:33 PM PST - 55 comments

"I think people will look at growing and killing an animal as bizarre"

The business case for clean meat, as the fledgling industry's progenitors prefer to call it, could hardly be plainer. As emerging middle classes in places like China and India adopt Western-style diets, global consumption of animal protein skyrockets. […] But the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 90 percent of the world's fish stocks are now fully exploited or dangerously overfished. More than 25 percent of Earth's available landmass and fresh water is used for raising livestock. Only one of every 25 calories a cow ingests becomes edible beef. And meat processors often must pay disposal companies to haul away their inedible tonnage--hooves, beaks, fur, cartilage.
[more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:45 PM PST - 39 comments

We added ten people without hiring anyone.

How do you solve a noise problem in an open floor plan? [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:31 PM PST - 71 comments

''Dr. Smith," she interrupted.

"What!" he gasped, "the Lee Hopkins prizeman! You!" He had never seen a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his feelings only too clearly. "I am sorry to disappoint you," said the lady drily. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes on Women In STEM.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:17 PM PST - 14 comments

Animals With Balls

Bird plays bounce with golf ball. Crow plays balance with golf ball. Baby bear plays with golf flag. Eagle steals golf ball. Squirrels too.
posted by The Whelk at 11:37 AM PST - 9 comments

They weren't ready for this jelly

A team of scientists studying algae in sea ice were using a remotely operated vehicle to look for a dropped ice pick on the bottom of the Chukchi Sea when they caught a good look at a jellyfish dragging its oral tentacles along the bottom (Quirks and Quarks audio interview here). These sightings have been surprising, since scientists had assumed that the species survived winter only in a life stage called polyps–formless masses that cling to rocks and release little baby medusae in the spring. Abstract: Overwintering of gelatinous zooplankton in the coastal Arctic Ocean.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:29 AM PST - 6 comments

May the best Bot win

Halite is an open source artificial intelligence programming challenge where players build bots using the coding language of their choice to battle on a two-dimensional virtual board. [more inside]
posted by garlic at 10:20 AM PST - 6 comments

Carpark cuisine

A tatty car park under a railway line is squeezed between a busy road, an industrial site and a semi-derelict pub covered in graffiti. It’s one of the grittiest parts of east London and probably the last place you would imagine some of the trendiest eateries in the country to be preparing meals. But the grimy spot is just a short moped ride from the gleaming office towers of Canary Wharf and upmarket docklands apartments, and is therefore the perfect location for the latest idea from Deliveroo, the food courier service. It is setting up dozens of “dark kitchens” in prefabricated structures for restaurants that want to expand their businesses without opening expensive high street premises.
Sarah Butler, How Deliveroo's 'dark kitchens' are catering from car parks, The Guardian (28 October 2017). [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 10:18 AM PST - 14 comments

“...combat system is incredibly satisfying and strategic.”

Absolver: A martial arts-focused take on the Dark Souls formula that more than hits its mark [Polygon] “Absolver is a game about martial arts, but it also follows many of the philosophies inherent to martial arts [YouTube][Trailer]— especially the concept of focus. Developed by Sloclap, a team composed of former Ubisoft Paris developers, Absolver has received early comparisons to recent popular action role-playing games, such as the Dark Souls series. While there’s no denying some shared DNA in Absolver, it also has a feel and a tone that are very much all its own. That tone is, above all else, focused. Directed. Though ambitious, Absolver doesn’t let itself get caught up in trying to shove in too many details or make things too complicated. It’s about one thing — proving your hand-to-hand skills by beating up other “prospects” — and it does that one thing incredibly well.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:48 AM PST - 3 comments

First Female Video Game Designer

In 1976, Joyce Weisbecker programmed games for an RCA PC and console based on technology created by her dad–a significant achievement that went undocumented until now.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:56 AM PST - 9 comments

Who Was Harvey?

A mysterious artist who signed his art "Harvey" painted almost 200 album covers for Savoy Records and its subsidiaries in the 1960s. Most were gospel, but some jazz and blues covers have turned up. Producers at Savoy never knew his identity; they sent concepts to an address in New York, he sent his painting, and they paid him in cash. If you know who Harvey was, please contact site administrators.
posted by goatdog at 7:22 AM PST - 12 comments

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