STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Men React To Their Tinder Date Being Unexpectedly Obese

Ah the mysterious and social awkward world of online dating.

One app that is changing the way we hope to find love, the dating app Tinder shows you profile photos of individuals nearby and encourages you to swipe right to 'Like' them, swipe left to 'Pass'.

If you both happen to 'Like' each other, you've hit the jackpot and the app allows you to message one another. Whilst that might sound superficial to some, it's one of the most popular apps right now for hook-ups.

But what happens when you're attracted to someone, agree to meet up and then find out that their appearance is vastly different to their enhanced and curated profile photo? How would you react? Would you be feel lied to? Annoyed? Mislead? Or would you give them the benefit of the doubt and continue the date regardless?

That was all put to the test during a social experiment by YouTube pranksters 'Simple Pick' They cheekily enlisted the help of their attractive friend, match her with numerous guys on Tinder, before promptly dressing her up in a fake fat suit for the date....

So what happens when her excited dates meet her for the first time and are greeted with a little more than they bargained for....

[MIKA27]

HAVEN SMART LOCK

The smartlock has become a popular target for product innovators, but it seems that everyone has the same thought process – using outdated, vulnerable dead bolts. Haven challenges this, creating a a stronger smartlock for a safer future.

After some home break-ins within their Nashville, Tennessee neighborhoods, Alex and Clay decided to do something about it. And that something is Haven. The device is installed at the base of your door, using the house as the platform to secure the door. This solid wedge is slim and minimal, measuring in at just 0.8-inches tall, but has no problem keeping the door closed tightly thanks to the implementation of torque servo motors. Of course it is a smart lock, and that means it works remotely using your smartphone – but that’s not all it does on the “smart” end of the spectrum. Haven has also been outfitted with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, a backup battery, and a manual release to ensure you exit easily in emergency situations. There’s also a built-in accelerometer that detects forced entry attempts and alerts the homeowner. This new-age smartlock is gearing up to hit the retail market next year, and will carry a retail price of $269. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

THE WHISKEY WEDGE

While we prefer many of our favorite whiskies neat, there is certainly a time and place for a Scotch on the rocks. But as you may already know, ice can melt quite quickly, resulting in a watered down spirit. The Whiskey Wedge promises cold booze, without the unwanted dilution.

For years companies have been attempting to create ice that keeps your whiskey cold without diluting the actual spirit. And while there are a few options out there (from ice spheres to whiskey stones), there is still room for improvement. The team at Corkcircle think they have done just that. The Wedge comes with a special Double-Old Fashioned Whiskey Glass alongside a silicone mold. All you have is add water to the glass, insert the mold, and then throw it in the freezer. Due to the reduced surface area of the Wedge (think of a glacier), this thing will take much longer to melt than your standard ice cubes [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

KARAKOY LOFT IN ISTANBUL, TURKEY

You tell me: Is a 45-year-old bachelor lonely or lucky? We say he’s lucky. At least in this case where such a man gets to live in the brilliantly designed Karakoy Loft by Ofist in Istanbul, Turkey.

The longtime center of commerce in Istanbul, Karakoy is also emerging as a hip neighborhood, and that makes this place, with its plethora of natural light and iron rod storage setup, a natural fit. A host of renovations were made to turn this place into the swank setting it is now, including enlarging the small window openings on the front façade to help transform the living room into a balcony, covering the mezzanine’s surfaces with a cement-based material to provide a nice feeling for the naked feet, using Iroko wood for the continuous ceiling, and those funky floating stairs.

[MIKA27]

OMEGA SPEEDMASTER GREY SIDE OF THE MOON WATCH

Like the Dark Side edition before it, the new Omega Speedmaster Grey Side of the Moon Watch draws its inspiration from man's exploration of the moon. It begins with a 44.25mm grey ceramic case that's cooked at an insane 20,000º C for three hours to achieve the correct color, and continues with a sand-blasted 950 platinum dial that serves as an elegant backdrop to the black plated hands. The face is also home to two sub-dials and a date window, and a grey leather strap serves to hold the whole thing on your wrist while adding a touch of elegance befitting a timepiece inspired by humanity's first steps outside our own planet.

[MIKA27]

Chinese Officials Have Already Seized Hundreds Of Contraband iPhone 6s

China has long been home to a booming illicit “trade” for new iPhones smuggled into the country through ports like Hong Kong or Shanghai. And the iPhone 6 is no exception: Customs officials have reported that hundreds of 6s and 6 Pluses have been confiscated this month.

A story from the AP highlights several big iPhone busts this weekend, including one incident in which which two travellers entering the Shanghai airport. Between them, the duo was packing 432 undeclared iPhone 6s. But many more have been smuggled and confiscated elsewhere, including in this particularly dramatic situation:

Hundreds more were seized during three separate busts Thursday through Saturday in Hong Kong, including from men with a speedboat who were loading contraband onto a wooden sampan-style boat in a mangrove, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Meanwhile, a 31-year-old smuggler was apprehended at another checkpoint in Hong Kong carrying almost 70 iPhone 6s (and a few iPhone 6 Pluses for good measure) in his or her car, according to a press release from Hong Kong customs.

In the past, iPhones have been smuggled between Hong Kong and mainland China frequently — because they have sold for significantly less in Hong Kong. One report from 2012 claimed than 3000 iPhone 4Ss had been seized over two months at a port entry in Shenzhen, with travellers trapping phones to their midsections and ankles.

But this year, the iPhone 6 went on sale in Hong Kong (and the US and other countries) but not in China, where Apple is still awaiting government approval. Which in part helps explain why smugglers are going to great lengths to get them into the country — and why the government is trying to stop them. The New York Times also cites “an intensifying crackdown on corruption” amongst government officials in China as a reason for the busts.

Still, while China’s government may not look kindly upon it, there are clearly still plenty of smugglers willing to take the risk. In fact, the NYT even suggests that smugglers may have done their jobs too well — the flood of iPhone 6 devices mean that prices are actually dropping.

[MIKA27]

Laser Mapping Reveals A Hidden Cavern The Size Of Four Great Pyramids

In an age where every square kilometre of Earth’s surface is so easily photographed and surveilled, to be a true explorer — to see what no human has ever seen before — one has to descend into the bowels of the Earth. Armed with high-tech lasers scanners, cavers are slowly mapping that underground world. And now they have found the world’s largest cave chamber, equivalent in size to four Great Pyramids carved out underground.

The Miao Room is located under mountains in Southern China, a region whose landscape is dominated by soft rock easily eroded by water — a landscape full of caves, in other words. In 2013, a expedition funded by the National Geographic Society brought explorers and a laser scanner into cave that contains the Miao Room. (The cave was only found by humans in 2001.) This week, the explorers present evidence at a UK caving conference that the Miao Room at 380.7 million cubic feet is in fact the largest cavern by volume ever found.

But how does one measure a cave that is vast and irregular in shape? In the July issue of National Geographic, writer McKenzie details how the team used 3D laser scanner to map caves. The scanner works by analysing the amount of time it takes for a laser pulse to be reflected back. McKenzie describes what it looks like in action:

Our model is a Riegl VZ-400, used in architecture, engineering, and mining and now for the first time in caving. It’s a metal cylinder about the size of a human head and weighs 21 pounds, not including its two nine-pound batteries or the tripod or laptop and cables. When running, it sits at about eye level, spinning 360 degrees and taking up to 122,000 measurements per second of everything within a maximum 2,000-foot radius.

A few minutes later, an initial 3D rendering of the cave appears on a laptop screen. This is the only way to “see” a cave in its entirety. In a cavern as big as the Miao room, most flashlights fade before lighting up a complete wall or ceiling. Our human eyes can only see the cave in bits and pieces; our laser eyes see all.

Uphill from the giant Miao Room, 21 families from the Miao minority live under the roof of a cave. They first came, elders say, because of the reliable spring. The cave now contains a basketball court and, until recently, had a school.

Yangshuo was a sleepy village two decades ago, when foreign climbers and cavers began frequenting nearby formations. Today domestic tourists vastly outnumber foreign visitors.

[Fuzz]

OMEGA SPEEDMASTER GREY SIDE OF THE MOON WATCH

Damn, maybe it's time for me to get another Speedmaster....

[MIKA27]

Secrets From The Man Inside The Godzilla Suit

Haruo Nakajima helped bring one of Japan’s most iconic characters to life. In 1954, he was the first man to don a kaiju costume and star in Godzilla as the man inside the suit.

Recently, the 85-year-old actor spoke with Japanese magazine Josei Seven (via The Tokyo Reporter) about his experience.

Prior to filming, Nakajima visited the Ueno Zoo for a week to help him prepare for the role of Godzilla. “At that time, there was an elephant from India there called Indira and I observed how it walked,” he said.. Nakajima noted how the elephant put its entire foot on the ground at once with each step. “So Godzilla’s style of walking came from an elephant.”

Nakajima also studied the way birds moved their heads and how bears moved their limbs to help him bring Godzilla to life once filming started and he got into the 100kg Godzilla suit.

“One cut would take seven seconds,” the actor recalls, “and during the breaks I would wring the sweat out of my shirt into a jar. I also really stunk up the inside of that suit to an unbelievable degree.”

The work was hard, but well-paying. Still, at the time, he didn’t get the respect he deserved. “Back then, people didn’t speak positively of suit actors,” says Nakajima. “There’d be whispers going around that working inside (a suit) is not an acting job.” Certainly, those who knew better didn’t think that, though. Godzilla co-creator, Ultraman creator and all-around visual effects genius Eiji Tsuburaya thought Nakajima was key in bringing Godzilla to life.

Nakajima’s last appearance as Godzilla was in 1972′s Godzilla vs. Gigan. Even after he took the suit off, Nakajima still would occasionally get cameos in Godzilla films, and later worked at the bowling alley on the Toho Pictures studio lot.

[Habana Mike]

Secrets From The Man Inside The Godzilla Suit

Haruo Nakajima helped bring one of Japan’s most iconic characters to life. In 1954, he was the first man to don a kaiju costume and star in Godzilla as the man inside the suit.

Recently, the 85-year-old actor spoke with Japanese magazine Josei Seven (via The Tokyo Reporter) about his experience.

Prior to filming, Nakajima visited the Ueno Zoo for a week to help him prepare for the role of Godzilla. “At that time, there was an elephant from India there called Indira and I observed how it walked,” he said.. Nakajima noted how the elephant put its entire foot on the ground at once with each step. “So Godzilla’s style of walking came from an elephant.”

Nakajima also studied the way birds moved their heads and how bears moved their limbs to help him bring Godzilla to life once filming started and he got into the 100kg Godzilla suit.

“One cut would take seven seconds,” the actor recalls, “and during the breaks I would wring the sweat out of my shirt into a jar. I also really stunk up the inside of that suit to an unbelievable degree.”

The work was hard, but well-paying. Still, at the time, he didn’t get the respect he deserved. “Back then, people didn’t speak positively of suit actors,” says Nakajima. “There’d be whispers going around that working inside (a suit) is not an acting job.” Certainly, those who knew better didn’t think that, though. Godzilla co-creator, Ultraman creator and all-around visual effects genius Eiji Tsuburaya thought Nakajima was key in bringing Godzilla to life.

Nakajima’s last appearance as Godzilla was in 1972′s Godzilla vs. Gigan. Even after he took the suit off, Nakajima still would occasionally get cameos in Godzilla films, and later worked at the bowling alley on the Toho Pictures studio lot.

Wow, Godzilla to pin boy! Love the elephant walk though....

[MIKA27]

Why Hollywood Thinks the Pharaohs Were White

Holiday moviegoers will soon be treated to Exodus: Gods and Kings, Ridley Scott’s historical epic about how a brave Englishman ostensibly led the Israelites in a slave revolt against the first Welsh pharaoh. This isn’t the first time Hollywood has asked us to suspend disbelief and accept the discredited idea that white people have ruled every empire since the dawn of time, but it might be the first movie to actually rebuild fake models of the Sphinx just to make them look more caucasian. Worse, the film’s only dark-skinned actors—and the majority of ancient Egyptians of Ramses’ era, including rulers, would have been dark-skinned—are cast as unnamed servants and criminals. How did this happen?

Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings features an all-white lead cast in which all dark-skinned actors play unnamed roles as servants, assassins, and low-ranking guards, though some light-skinned people of color (such as Ben Kingsley, shown here) play supporting roles. In practice, the Egypt of Ramses II’s era had no documented racial hierarchy—and, more to the point, no white people.

While it would be easy to read Exodus: Gods and Kings’ casting strategy as reflecting only a mercenary effort to appeal to majority-white audiences by casting white leads, the idea that white people ruled ancient Egypt—and that darker-skinned Egyptians had an especially low social status—is one that European and American historians are only beginning to move past. The noted 19th-century American physician and historian Samuel George Morton, whose white supremacist views were considered fairly mainstream at the time, stated with certainty and little controversy that “[t]he valley of the Nile … was originally peopled by a branch of the Caucasian race” and that the “social position [of black people] in ancient times, was the same as it is now; that of servants or slaves.”

In reality, the idea of a black servant or slave class originated with the Trans-Saharan slave trade in the 7th century AD—about 2,000 years after the life of Ramses II. There is no evidence of any kind that ancient black Egyptians were in any sense an underclass; in fact, a 2012 genetic analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of Ramses III found that his own ancestry traced to paternal haplogroup E-V38, which originated in Sub-Saharan Africa. But Morton and his contemporaries knew nothing of DNA, and clearly found it impossible to comprehend the notion of the world’s oldest surviving civilization notbeing ruled over by white people. It probably did not help that Egypt had been intermittently ruled over by European empires after the conquest of Alexander the Great, each empire eager to establish some sort of ancestral connection between the people of Egypt and colonial authorities.

The historically implausible idea of an ancient Egypt led by white people, and staffed by legions of dark-skinned servants, has dominated European and North American portrayals for centuries. This has been true not only in Hollywood but also in art, as illustrated here in Frederick Goodall’s The Finding of Moses (1884). Note that both Moses and the Pharaoh’s daughter are portrayed as if they were white, with light-skinned women of color given supporting roles—and the sole dark-skinned servant standing behind the Pharaoh’s daughter, attending to her as a slave would.

Flash forward several centuries, and ancient Egypt remains—in the eyes of American popular culture—a conspicuously white civilization. But where most Hollywood filmmakers would be satisfied to quietly cast white actors to play people of color and leave it at that, Ridley Scott demonstrated a desperate, febrile sort of boldness when he made the decision to literally carve out a caucasian Sphinx so as to better conform to the ludicrous racial mythology he had inherited. When you’re reduced to gaslighting audiences about the facial features of a 4,500-year-old monolith, it’s probably time to reconsider your approach to filmmaking.

[MIKA27]

Self-Destructing SSDs Will Nuke Themselves If You Text Them A Code Word

Losing a laptop full of personal files like family photos is upsetting, but losing a laptop full of private corporate info and trade secrets is instead downright terrifying. So when you absolutely can’t risk misplaced data falling into the wrong hands, a GSM-equipped SSD drive that can remotely physically self-destruct guarantees the utmost of security and privacy.

As soon as you realise a laptop or other hardware with the SecureDrives SSD installed has gone missing, all you need to do is send a pre-defined text message to its unique cellular number and the drive will be immediately destroyed. And we’re not talking a quick format to erase its contents either. The SSD’s enclosure features built-in mechanisms that will physically destroy the flash memory chips inside, making the data completely unrecoverable.

But the drives include other failsafes for protecting your data if you’re not able to send the self-destruct text, or you don’t realise the drive has gone missing. The SecureDrives SSDs can also be programmed to automatically self-destruct when disconnected from a SATAII connector, when the battery is low and someone is trying to circumvent the fail-safe mechanisms, when it’s been shielded from a GSM signal for a set period of time, and even after a pre-determined series of finger taps detected through a motion sensor. And all of that works on top of 256-bit AES CBC hardware encryption protecting the actual data.

It goes without saying these drives will certainly cost far more than your standard SSD, including having to pay for the monthly worldwide GSM service. But if security is your number one priority, it sounds like they all but guarantee your precious data will be protected at all costs.

[MIKA27]

Antarctica Is Losing So Much Ice It's Throwing Off Earth's Gravity

Rising sea levels inundating coastal cities are the least of our global warming problems. According to a new report by the European Space Agency, the loss of snowpack along the antarctic ice shelf is throwing off Earth’s gravitational field. Yeah, pretty sure that’s bad.

SCIENCE

Antarctica Is Losing So Much Ice It's Throwing Off Earth's Gravity

ANDREW TARANTOLA TODAY 8:45 AM Share 7 Discuss 2 Bookmark

Antarctica Is Losing So Much Ice It's Throwing Off Earth's Gravity

Rising sea levels inundating coastal cities are the least of our global warming problems. According to a new report by the European Space Agency, the loss of snowpack along the antarctic ice shelf is throwing off Earth’s gravitational field. Yeah, pretty sure that’s bad.

For the last four years, the ESA’s GOCE satellite has circled the globe, mapping the Earth’s gravitational field in unprecedented detail. And between 2009 and 2013, the GOCE revealed, the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet has progressed enough to actually decrease the region’s gravity.

It’s just a small decrease, not like we’re going to see penguins floating off into space, but it is yet another example of how global warming is rapidly changing our planetary dynamic.

And this revelation is backed up by the findings of a number of other scientific satellites. The joint US-German Grace satellite has been detecting similar gravitational disturbances — albeit at a much coarser resolution — for more than a decade and the ESA’s own CryoSat satellite has found that West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s rate of loss has tripled every year since 2009 and has caused the entire continent to shrink by 125 cubic kilometres a year since 2011. At this rate, researchers fear that the collapse and dissolution of our Southern polar ice cap has become irreversible.

[MIKA27]

The First Full Colour Photo Of Mars From India's Orbiter

With India’s Mars Orbiter now successfully circling the Red Planet, it’s now beaming back its first images — like the striking full colour photo.

Snapped on September 28 from 74,500km above the planet, images like these will be used to analyse and probe the upper layers of the Martian atmosphere.

[MIKA27]

The 1984 Gallup Book That Predicted Terrorists Would Hold NYC Hostage

Some kids today are being told that what happened on September 11, 2001 was unimaginable. But that’s simply not true. We had imagined it — or something like it — for years, in about a thousand different ways.

Creators of 19th and 20th century fiction loved to destroy New York. There are few things more American than obliterating New York on the page. So when George Gallup Jr (son of the founder of the Gallup polling agency) opened the first chapter of his 1984 book about the possible futures of America with terrorists atop the Empire State Building, he wasn’t breaking new ground. But it doesn’t make his story any less chilling.

Below, we have an excerpt from the 1984 book Forecast 2000 by George Gallup Jr. He admits that his vision about terrorists taking New York hostage is “rather dramatic” and “reminiscent of various books and television specials that have come out in the last few years.” But he insists that just such a future is coming. Sadly, he wasn’t altogether wrong.

“I’m convinced from evidence that has been accumulating in our Gallup surveys and in the news media that this is just the sort of future we’ll surely be facing — unless we begin immediately to take certain countermeasures,” Gallup wrote. Here’s that future in vivid detail:

The year is 1997. The place is New York City. It’s a warm, sunny spring afternoon. Office workers are just cleaning up cups and papers from their lunches in Central Park, Bryant Park, and other favourite outdoor spots.

But then the unusual big-city tranquillity is shattered by news reports that begin to come through on portable radios scattered around the grassy patches. A terrorist group of some sort has taken over the observation deck on top of the Empire State Building. The terrorists claim they have set up and armed a nuclear device. It’s quite a big bomb, they say — more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As pedestrians gather in steadily growing clusters around the available radios, more information pours in: The terrorists are connected with some extreme anti-Israel faction. They have chosen New York City as their target because it has a larger Jewish population than any other city in the world — and also because much Zionist activity is centred there.

Their demands are nothing short of staggering: a $US1 billion extortion payment… freedom for scores of named terrorists in prisons around the world… a guarantee of the political division of Jerusalem and the establishment of a sizeable chunk of Israeli territory as a Palestinian homeland… their group is to be given absolute control over the designated portion of Israel…

The demands go on and on, and they’re topped off by a seemingly impossible deadline: The requirements must all be met by high noon the following day. Otherwise, the device will be exploded, and all of Manhattan Island and much of the surrounding area will be seared to the ground. Moreover, radiation will make the land for hundreds of miles around the explosion site uninhabitable indefinitely.

As the news of this threat spreads around the city, the reactions are varied. Most people stand or sit around just listening to the news. Some think the whole thing must be another Orson Welles joke — a phoney broadcast designed to simulate reality. After all, there have been many other such dramatic programs in the past, and this is certainly just another to draw in a wide listening audience.

Others accept it as a real event, but they’re sure the terrorists are bluffing about the bomb. Still others are optimistic for other reasons: For example, they’re certain that one of the government’s antiterrorist teams will either overpower the offenders or negotiate a settlement of some sort.

A number of people are too stunned to move. A few panic, and either break down in tears or start running to their apartments to gather their valuables together with the idea of getting out of the city.

As the day wears on and night falls on the city, it becomes apparent that the broadcasts are no joke. Growing numbers of people — many more than the commuter lines to upstate New York and New Jersey can handle — try to get out of the city.

Huge traffic jams build up, and there seem to be an unusual number of auto breakdowns and flat tires — more terrorist activity? people wonder.

As the night wears on, the terrorists hold firm to their demands, and the sense of panic rises. What if they’re serious? What if they really plan to explode that bomb? Increasing numbers of usually relaxed citizens begin to decide that perhaps they’d better waste no more time getting out of the city.

But many don’t have cars — a necessity in most cities, but not in Manhattan because of the extensive public transportation system. And those who do have cars find they can’t even get close to the tunnels and bridges that lead out of the city. The one exception is Long Island — but who wants to get stuck out there if a nuclear bomb goes off in Manhattan?

Daybreak reveals many strained, haggard faces on the city sidewalks and in the jammed-up autos on New York City thoroughfares. There seems to be no escape from this dilemma.

One attempt to overpower the terrorists has failed, with several attack helicopters shot down. Finally, high noon arrives. New Yorkers sit glued to their radios and TV sets, waiting with bated breath. The negotiations have broken off, but there’s still hope that the terrorists will make some sort of counteroffer. That’s the way this sort of game is always played, and most people believe there has to be a solution. After all, what’s the point in a bunch of terrorists blowing up an entire city when they’re in a position to get something, even if it’s not everything they have asked for?

The lull continues through four minutes after twelve, then five minutes. A growing number of listeners and viewers begin to relax. Something good must be happening. Then, the blinding light flashes into every dim corner of the city, and the roar follows almost simultaneously. But no one has heard the roar because the searing heat has destroyed all life.

Gallup died in 2011, so he was certainly around to see the terrorism of the 1980s, 90s and obviously 2001 unfold. Terrorism (perpetrated by both foreign and domestic actors) has been a part of American life for decades. But we want to believe, however stupidly, that it can’t get any worse.

We often use fiction to grapple with the difficult issues of the past, but it’s in futurism where we struggle with the line between implausibly horrendous and the horrendously implausible. With each new way that writers concoct to destroy New York, we are in some ways hoping that perhaps this will be the impossible. The history of futurism shows us that it rarely is.

[MIKA27]

This Is How Medieval Knights Fought Inside Their Clunky Armours

My uncle used to own an old medieval Spanish armour. I remember looking at it and thinking how the hell knights could fight stuffed inside those heavy and clunky metal suits. This video shows how: Reconstructing medieval fight techniques using combat treatises of that time as a reference.

[MIKA27]

The Creepiest Talking Raven Ever Will Be In Your Nightmares Tonight

Ravens are known for making pretty uncanny voice impersonations. This one has to be one of the creepiest I’ve ever heard.

[MIKA27]

A Super-Yacht With A Garage For Smaller Boats Is Luxuriously Obscene

It’s OK to desire the finer things in life, but at what point do you draw the line between luxury and exorbitance? Probably somewhere well before this insane 60m long mega-yacht from CRN called the J’ade, which features a built-in garage that smaller boats can drive right into.

Larger boats carrying smaller boats isn’t a new trend by any means; they usually serve as tender craft carrying passengers to shore when the yacht is simply too big to pull into a dock. But those boats are often raised and lowered using cranes. The J’ade is the first luxury yacht to feature an actual garage that floods, allowing an 8m speedboat to be driven right inside.

Once the smaller boat is secured, the flooded garage can be drained in just three minutes, reducing the weight the yacht’s pair of massive 1500kW engines has to push around.

As for pricing, if you have to ask you’ll want to just move along. This isn’t the kind of toy you order at your local boat show. It’s the kind of thing that’s custom-built and delivered to anywhere in the world you need it. But with capacity for 13 crew members and 10 guests, maybe you can find 22 friends who are willing to split the cost with you, and then work out a sort of time-share deal. Just remember that fuel costs alone are probably more expensive than just the speedboat this massive craft is designed to accommodate.

[MIKA27]

ROLLS-ROYCE GHOST SPOFEC BY NOVITEC

Novitec is a name that’s crossed our desks several times in the past. The tuner has built a reputation for modifying Ferraris, and now they’re looking to diversify their offerings with the Rolls-Royce Ghost SPOFEC.

SPOFEC, short for Spirit of Ecstasy (which also happens to be the name of the Rolls-Royce hood ornament), takes one of our favorite luxury cars on the road, and turns it into a complete beast. While the tuners won’t state exactly what they do under the hood, we do know that in order to achieve the Earth shattering 700-horsepower output a new performance exhaust has been added to the mix alongside some “plug-and-play” engine management. This increase in power helps the massive sedan sprint to 60 miles per hour in 4.5 seconds. A nice facelift was also provided, although not needed, which includes a set of rims available in a multitude of color options and a complete body kit, giving the Rolls a more aggressive look on the road.

[MIKA27]

JEFF GOLDBLUM WANTS TO MAKE YOU FAMOUS WITH REALLY GREAT LIGHTING

http://youtu.be/egIY7ushchU

GE has a new line of smart lightbulbs called Link. They could have done some boring advertising spots about your interconnected smarthome, but instead they got Jeff Goldblum to be hilarious, bizarre and slightly creepy as “Famous Person” Terry Quattro. We’ve never wanted to buy lightbulbs more than we do right now. Check out the video.

[MIKA27]

INHERENT VICE – OFFICIAL TRAILER

How do you make a movie out of a Thomas Pynchon novel? I have no idea, but it helps if you start with one of his more accessible books and you happen to be Paul Thomas Anderson.

Based off the 2010 novel from Pynchon of the same name, Inherent Vice features Joaquin Phoenix as the drugged-up detective Doc Sportello as he digs into the whereabouts of a missing former girlfriend. It doesn’t hit theaters until January, but I’d recommend buying tickets as soon as you can.

[MIKA27]

U-BOAT WORX SUPER YACHT SUB 3

Designed to fit inside the vast majority of super yachts, the aptly-named U-Boat Worx Super Yacht Sub 3 is inarguably a toy for the rich — but what a toy it is.

Available with either a 150 or 300 meter depth rating, this personal submarine holds up to three people, and offers features like luxury leather seating, a large entrance hatch, auto-pilot, sonar, optional underwater navigation, climate control, and the ability to let you make your own underwater documentaries when you tire of drinking champagne on your sun deck.

[MIKA27]

GOOSE ISLAND THE MUDDY BEER

There aren't very many breweries with as solid of a reputation for brewing Imperial Stouts as Goose Island in Chicago, and the latest to hit shelves continues that tradition.

The Muddy is a new Imperial Stout celebrating the 1940's blues scene in Chicago, brewed with black licorice and Belgian dark rock candi sugar. The 9% ABV hides nicely in this rich, chocolatey brew along with some dark fruit and subtle licorice notes — making it an ideal sipper heading the American fall.

[MIKA27]

Could A Simple Pill Make You Mentally Stronger?

Camp Mackall, North Carolina, is home to the US Army’s ‘survival school’. Here, soldiers take part in survival, evasion, resistance and escape (SERE) training. This is among the toughest of all US military training programmes.

Take the resistance component. At a mock prisoner-of-war camp, complete with concrete cells, razor wire and fake graves, ‘prisoners’ are put through simulated interrogations that generate “intense and uncontrollable stress”, in the words of a journal paper by a team led by Professor Dennis Charney and Professor Steven Southwick, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Yale University respectively.

Charney and colleagues realised that the survival school was a perfect controlled environment for the study of acute stress on the human body. They got permission to expose regular and special forces soldiers to tests before and after the training, and before and immediately after mock interrogations. These tests revealed that blood levels of a brain chemical called neuropeptide Y (NPY) correlated strongly with the soldiers’ ability to cope. Those with more NPY performed better during the interrogations. What’s more, the special forces soldiers, known for being especially cool under stress, had significantly higher levels of NPY compared with regular troops, both before and after the training. Twenty-four hours after the programme had finished, NPY levels in the special forces soldiers were back to their baseline, while those in regular soldiers were still considerably lower.

NPY is triggered by stress. It helps to curb the release of the hormone noradrenaline, which plays a crucial role in the fight-or-flight response. So more NPY means you should recover from stress faster — and so, in theory, be more resilient. Countless animal studies have shown that doses of NPY can reduce anxiety and fear. “[We have] thousands of papers on NPY in animals. Then we have this observation in humans, and then there’s the genetics,” says Charney. The genetic work suggests that people who have a form of NPY gene that means they naturally produce less are more prone to anxiety. Variations in NPY, then, seem to be important for understanding the neurobiology of resilience, Charney says.

The obvious next question is, what happens if you give NPY to people? Could NPY in drug form boost resilience? Or even treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? Charney and his colleagues have created an NPY nasal spray. They tried giving patients with PTSD a single dose. As this had never been done before, the dose was low, “and we weren’t seeing much,” Charney says. Then, in 2013, another paper came out on rats, which showed success with a nasal spray at what would be a much higher dose for people than Charney’s team had used. Seven days after being put through a traumatic experience, rats that had got a dose of NPY right before the trauma, or immediately afterwards, showed significantly fewer signs of depression and anxiety than untreated rats.

In spring 2014 the US Food and Drug Administration granted approval for Charney’s proposal to try higher doses with PTSD patients. This research is now taking place. By spring 2015 “we’ll know if it works — or not,” Charney says.

[MIKA27]

Windows 10 Hands-On:

It’s finally official: Windows 10 is on the way. It’s the Windows to rule all Windows — a single operating system for PCs, phones and tablets — and it’s coming in 2015. But you don’t care about any of that. You just want to know about the goddamn Start Menu already, right?

So, here it is!

Yep, that’s most definitely a Start Menu. What can it do? Basically, everything your beloved Windows 7 Start Menu can do, plus pin Windows 8′s useful information-at-a-glance Live Tiles on the right.

You can perform your universal searches:

Resize and re-arrange your field of Live Tiles:

And stretch out the entire Start Menu interface as you see fit:

But amazingly, the Start Menu is only one of the refreshing and overdue updates for Microsoft’s latest OS. Remember when Windows 7 wowed you by letting you snap windows into place just by dragging them to either side of the screen? Windows 10 has Snap Fill and Snap Assist to make that feature way, way better.

If you drag, say, your Calendar app to the left, not only will it responsively scale to a smaller more manageable size as you do…

…but you can also simply drag any other window into the remaining space on your desktop to immediately fill up that entire space, take advantage of ALL the real estate you have to offer. That’s Snap Fill.

Meanwhile, Snap Assist will lie in wait, patiently biding its time until you try to snap an app to one of the screen’s sides or corners, and then SUDDENLY, STRIKE… by automatically suggesting that you fill in the remaining space on your desktop with one of your open applications! It’s a definite time-saver.

Hold down the Windows key and hit Tab, and you can see all your open apps at once, as well as your different desktop workspaces at the bottom of the screen. (We weren’t able to drag an app to a different desktop, though, which is a bit of a bummer unless Microsoft fixes that before release.)

Not last (we didn’t see everything) and perhaps not least, Windows 10 can natively run apps from remote desktops — not on your own physical PC — and remind you which ones are actually running via the cloud with these little grey bars beneath the relevant icons.

One of the many, many things we couldn’t get pictures of is Windows 10′s new touchscreen-friendly Charms Menu. Although Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore demonstrated that Charms still exist on stage, it wasn’t present in the build we tried after the event.

A Microsoft rep told us that Windows 10 won’t actually have a Charms Menu unless you’re using it on a touchscreen, and even then Microsoft hopes to encourage app developers to build the touchscreen buttons right into their apps rather than use a global menu.

We also didn’t see the tablet docking and undocking concept mode, codename Continuum, which may allow Windows 10 devices to switch up their user interface when they recognise that you have a keyboard attached. Belfiore showed off a video on stage, but it wasn’t here today.