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

[MIKA27]

CHELSEA MILLER KNIVES

Brooklyn-based Chelsea Miller makes these beautiful kitchen knives from reclaimed horse-grooming tools. Chelsea´s father was a blacksmith and a carpenter, so she is used to working with her hands from an early age, she started making knifes in 2011 as a hobby, but they have since gained huge popularity and are now backordered 6 to 8 weeks. The bespoke Chelsea Miller Knives are handmade from reclaimed materials from her family´s farm in Vermont. The one of a kind knives feature a trademark non-cutting edge that is left serrated, perfect for grating stuff such as cheese and garlic.

[Fuzz]

*Spoilers*

This is an interesting release and question considering the regular Batman monthly just killed Bruce Wayne at the Conclusion of Endgame and made Commissioner Gordon the new Batman

Yeah, sure. We've seen him "killed off" before in Batman RIP and Final Crisis. We all know how this is going to end...

[polarbear]

Yeah, sure. We've seen him "killed off" before in Batman RIP and Final Crisis. We all know how this is going to end...

No doubt, but putting Gordon in a giant, robotic batman suit was an odd choice in the mean time

[Fuzz]

Yeah, that one got me scratching my head.

[MIKA27]

No doubt, but putting Gordon in a giant, robotic batman suit was an odd choice in the mean time

Yeah but like most comics, there never is just any one story arc but rather various so anyone killed off isn't necessarily dead, only to return in another iteration.

[polarbear]

Yeah but like most comics, there never is just any one story arc but rather various so anyone killed off isn't necessarily dead, only to return in another iteration.

This is what originally turned me off comics as I got older

It used to be that a character might have 2 or 3 different titles all running at the same time (Batman had Detective Comics, Batman, Batman and Robin ect) but they all had their own continuity. Lately it seems the lines between all the titles is a lot more blurred than it used to be and makes it hard (and expensive) to keep abreast of what's going on

[MIKA27]

This is what originally turned me off comics as I got older

It used to be that a character might have 2 or 3 different titles all running at the same time (Batman had Detective Comics, Batman, Batman and Robin ect) but they all had their own continuity. Lately it seems the lines between all the titles is a lot more blurred than it used to be and makes it hard (and expensive) to keep abreast of what's going on

Yes I agree 100%.

I found the worst of them was Spiderman and the many interations and story arcs confused me so I gave up on those a long time ago.

[polarbear]

Yes I agree 100%.

I found the worst of them was Spiderman and the many interations and story arcs confused me so I gave up on those a long time ago.

I used to love Spiderman back when all the various arcs kept to their own titles, but then Marvel started crossing them over, so an event that took place in Spectacular Spiderman would affect the Amazing Spiderman universe and I got sick of never knowing what was going on and having to buy 4-10 books a month just to try and keep up.

Thankfully, Marvel and DC put out regular trade paperbacks now, so its easier to keep track of each storyline, but waiting 6 months for them is a pain, especially when "New Comic Book Day" was the highlight of my younger years

Also, after the One More Day and Superior Spiderman story arcs I swore I was done with the Web Slinger

[Fuzz]

But now we have Spider Gwen!

[khamy]

stop buying cause the x-ray glasses didn't damn well work!

[MIKA27]

Meet The Crack Team That Designed The Tech In Age Of Ultron

You probably didn’t think about it sitting in the theatre, but all the technology in Avengers: Age of Ultron was designed by someone in the real world — from Stark’s Iron Man schematics to Cho’s medical scans. Who are the designers that built this world? Meet Territory Studio.

At one point in the film, Stark says to Bruce Banner, “We’re mad scientists. Own it.” That’s the underlying premise of the whole movie — Stark’s work as an engineer created Ultron, and he has to use those engineering skills to launch a counteroffensive with the help of the Avengers. It’s a story that hinges on design, engineering, and technology — and that’s where London-based Territory Studio comes in. They had to create a futuristic but believable lab environment for this mad science, and to do it, they drew from sources ranging from genetics research to architecture.

The results came from thousands of hours of careful research and planning. Stark’s lab, with its glowing gestural interfaces, is exactly where many technologists imagine our computer systems are headed. But for the film, the tech also had to reflect the dark mood of the story, too. Pulling off that mix of realism and symbolism is why the Territory Studio team is quickly becoming the go-to source for directors who need to depict futuristic technology in their films.

Blueprints, Bone Scans and Cell Biology

Territory’s work for Ultron is gritty and dense. The floating images that the characters interact with are packed with tiny datasets and glittering animations. It’s still the Avengers, sure, but it’s the Avengers in crisis.

The interfaces are dark and shadowy, packed with critical-looking information in massive quantities. Gone are the days of Tony Stark throwing blueprints around his lab for fun — this is technology designed to solve more pressing problems.

As Sheldon-Hicks tells me, the darker take on Marvel’s existing universe was inspired by research in the real world.

Take Dr Cho, for example. To create the medical tech we see her using in the film, Territory looked at everything from tissue scanning to the tech used in hospitals to visualise data. “It’s always fascinating to see the representation of data, and how critical that is,” says Sheldon-Hicks. “We did a lot of research about what’s going on in genetics at the moment. How would they be doing tissue transfusions in the future? How would 3D printing help in terms of surgery?”

The screens are shown for seconds at a time, but if you slow down to look closely, you’ll find an incredibly detailed syntax of visual information. At one moment, a flash of magenta curls its way through a nervous system while Vitruvian circles rotate over the body. We see a ribcage in high-def, curling with synthetic particles, while a secondary screen inspects a cell-like structure and numbers cascade by.

In Sheldon-Hicks’ words, it’s all about “understanding what a surgeon or a doctor might be doing, and then reflecting that back through the Marvel lens.”

Even though Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit had already been well-established, Territory was able to get the 3D model and elaborate on the interface that Stark uses to control it. In the movie, you’ll see the familiar shape of the suit and then see it broken down into super-detailed axonometric schematics that look like they’re ripped from an engineer’s desktop.

Obviously, industrial engineering drawings and medical imaging aren’t the most accessible visuals for the average viewer. Only a fraction of the audience would know what they were looking at, should they see the real thing. So the trick was to pull inspiration from those fields and transform it into imagery that the average movie-goer could understand in a second or less.

Sheldon-Hicks calls this “hero content,” meaning a visual or animation that’s able to communicate a plot point within a very short time.

For example, Banner’s graphics involved a lot of research into plant structure and cellular biology — a field few among us would be able to comprehend from real-world research materials. “The reality of these activities would just be spreadsheets, and databases, and graphs,” says Sheldon-Hicks. “But if we just presented those on a screen it wouldn’t be clear enough.” So rather than just fields of data, they added beautiful, shimmering images of plant body cross-sections and other descriptive imagery that you could understand in just a glance.

Each character has their own colour palette — when we’re looking at Banner’s work, the interfaces, typefaces, and animations are green-hued. Stark, of course, is red and orange, while Cho is more purple and red. The idea was to let each character have a distinct digital workplace — a window onto the collective 3D operating system that everyone works on together.

Racing Against Reality

Territory’s job is to imagine what the future of technology looks like. And they have to do it in a way that’s exciting to movie-goers. Even ten years ago, that wouldn’t be such a huge challenge. But the rate of change has sped up, the job of impressing the public has gotten harder in surprising ways.

“We almost become desensitised to the amount of innovation that’s going on,” says Sheldon-Hicks. “It feels like on a weekly or monthly basis there’s new technology that’s quite literally having an impact on millions of lives.” In an odd way, the interfaces Territory is designing in its studio are vanguards of technologies that are ultimately brought to market. That’s an idea that’s been around for a while, thanks to books like Make It So, which explores how fictional movie technology has influences real-life tech — think Minority Report‘s gestural interfaces.

But Sheldon-Hicks doesn’t necessarily think that their work will change how real-world UI works. Instead, he sees it almost as a parallel version of the real market. Territory is feeding off the same ideas and movements as real-world designers and developers. But they’re putting their “product” out into the world much, much faster — and in front of millions of eyes.

Still, in a world of Kickstarter and rapid prototyping, the movie makers sometimes get beat by their real-world counterparts. “Sometimes it feels like we can’t film quick enough,” he says. “Before the film comes out you’re seeing stuff coming through and thinking ‘oh, bloody hell. We thought we’d created something really ahead-of-its-time, and now someone’s doing it as a little project on the side.'”

There are definite ways in which Territory’s job differs from real-world design, though. One good example? They have to imagine — and design — the crappy parts of technology, too. And for film, that’s often a big part of the storyline and character development; Office Space‘s famous montage of printer destruction springs to mind, or the ghoul-sucking Proton Packs from Ghostbusters.

“Technology isn’t an extension of the human form,” Sheldon-Hicks points out. Drama springs from conflict — even when that conflict take the form of a spam pop-up on your browser. In fact, Star Wars gives us a perfect example of how less-than-perfect technology can play a role in a story: The Millennium Falcon.

“There’s something quite charming Han Solo kicking it around to keep it working,” says Sheldon-Hicks. “We still like to physically interact with those devices and have a personal connection to them.” Even in the future, slapstick humour and physical comedy still exist.

That interplay between fictional and real-world design is being torn down by both sides of the divide. The interfaces Territory built for Age of Ultron are fictional — but when Elon Musk is referencing Tony Stark’s gestural interface to explain his own version of the technology, the definition of “fiction” starts to seem less important.

A Hell of a Lot More Than Motion Graphics

Age of Ultron isn’t Territory’s first time at the space rodeo. Sheldon-Hicks and his team created the on-screen graphics and user interfaces for many of the biggest sci-fi hits of the past year — from Guardians of the Galaxy to Ex Machina. It was actually the production designer behind Guardians, Charlie Wood, who brought Territory along to work on Age of Ultron.

As Territory has become famous for imagining the technology of the future, it’s run into an interesting problem: It’s being approached by the very real-world companies whose work it seeks to imagine. Now, app developers, composers, architects, and technology companies are approaching Territory looking to get their input on real-world projects. Technically, Territory is a motion graphics studio. That description, these days, is wildly inaccurate.

In our interview, Sheldon-Hicks mentioned working with NASA on an upcoming project. In fact, he was talking about Territory’s work on the film adaptation of The Martian, the hugely popular novel that tells the story of an astronaut left stranded on Mars. The studio is working directly with NASA to imagine the interfaces humans will use to communicate between extraterrestrial explorers and Earth.

Last week, NASA itself launched a search for new ideas that could further along its project of putting humans on Mars. Oddly enough, a team of motion graphics designers from London might have a few.

[polarbear]

But now we have Spider Gwen!

I kinda dig the Spider Gwen run

Although I've only read a handful of issues

Its nice that there is a female Spiderman type character in the Marvel line up that isn't a spin off of Peter Parker

My 10 year Niece loves SpiderGwen for this reason

[MIKA27]

The Vindication of Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden’s most famous leak has just been vindicated. Since June 2013, when he revealed that the telephone calls of Americans are being logged en masse, his critics have charged that he took it upon himself to expose a lawful secret. They insisted that Congress authorized the phone dragnet when it passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act, citing Section 215, a part of the law that pertains to business records.

That claim was always suspect. The text of the law does not seem to authorize mass surveillance. A primary author and longtime champion of the law avowsthat Congress never intended to authorize the phone dragnet. And nothing like it was ever discussed during an extensive, controversy-filled debate about its provisions.

Now the wrongheadedness of the national-security state’s position has been confirmed.

A panel of judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the program Snowden exposed was never legal. The Patriot Act does not authorize it, contrary to the claims of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Michael Hayden, Keith Alexander, and James Clapper. “Statutes to which the government points have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here,” Judge Gerard E. Lynch declared. “The sheer volume of information sought is staggering.”

Other conclusions reached by the three-judge panel include the following:

• “The interpretation that the government asks us to adopt defies any limiting principle.”
• “We would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language.There is no evidence of such a debate ...”
• “Congress cannot reasonably be said to have ratified a program of which many members of Congress—and all members of the public—were not aware … only a limited subset of members of Congress had a comprehensive understanding of the program...”
• “Finding the government’s interpretation of the statute to have been ‘legislatively ratified’ under these circumstances would ignore reality.”

Consider what this means.

Telling the public about the phone dragnet didn’t expose a legitimate state secret. It exposed a violation of the constitutional order.

For many years, the executive branch carried out a hugely consequential policy change that the legislature never approved. Tens of millions of innocent U.S. citizens were thus subject to invasions of privacy that no law authorized. And the NSA’s unlawful behavior would’ve continued, unknown to the public and unreviewed by Article III courts, but for Snowden’s leak, which caused the ACLU to challenge the illegal NSA program.

Snowden undeniably violated his promise to keep the NSA’s secrets.

But doing so was the only way to fulfill his higher obligation to protect and defend the Constitution, which was being violated by an executive branch exceeding its rightful authority and usurping the lawmaking function that belongs to the legislature. This analysis pertains only to the leaked documents that exposed the phone dragnet, not the whole trove of Snowden leaks, but with respect to that one set of documents there ought to be unanimous support for pardoning his disclosure.

Any punishment for revealing the phone dragnet would be unjust.

Now that a federal appeals court has found that Section 215 of the Patriot Act did not in fact authorize the policy, punishing a man for exposing the program would set this precedent: Whistleblowers will be punished for revealing illegal surveillance. That’s the position anyone who still wants Snowden prosecuted for that leak must take, if the ruling stands. (Other federal courts have issued rulingspointing in contrary directions, and this latest ruling will likely be appealed.)

Consider how this federal court ruling informs the debate over state secrets generally. Civil libertarians have long warned that secret national-security policies undermine both representative democracy and our system of checks and balances.

And that is exactly what happened with respect to the phone dragnet!

Officials classified the program as a state secret, keeping it out of Article III courts. By doing so, they prevented the judiciary from reviewing the statutory legitimacy of NSA surveillance, subverting a core check in our system of government.

Its secret status stymied congressional debate, too.

And it undermined self-government, forcing Americans to judge their elected representatives in a state of ignorance about hugely consequential actions they’d taken.

The consequence: An illegal program persisted for years. This is a perfect illustration of why secret government programs are an abomination in our democracy. (For more detailed legal analysis of the appeals court decision see Orin Kerr.)

[MIKA27]

I kinda dig the Spider Gwen run

Although I've only read a handful of issues

Its nice that there is a female Spiderman type character in the Marvel line up that isn't a spin off of Peter Parker

My 10 year Niece loves SpiderGwen for this reason

Far better female hero than Wonder Woman IMHO

[MIKA27]

Mysterious Lost Gold of the Australian Outback

There is a certain irresistible quality to stories of lost treasures, an allure that captivates us and draws us. The idea that vast, untold riches lie out there just waiting to be found by someone is intoxicating, and captures the imagination. Tales of lost treasure come from all corners of the globe, and never cease to enthrall. One of the most famous stories of lost treasure in Australia is the story of one man who claimed to have found a vast reserve of gold out in the desolate wasteland of the Australian Outback, the search for which would end up playing like something from an Indiana Jones movie and would eventually lead to his death; a tale that would go on to become the stuff of legend.

The story begins in Australia in 1897, when a miner and prospector by the name of Harold Lasseter was prospecting for rubies in the MacDonnell Ranges, west of Alice Springs. During his excusion, Lasseter got lost while en route to the city of Carnarvon on the Western Australian coast, through perilous desert outback wilderness. As he made his way through the harsh wasteland, Lasseter reportedly accidentally stumbled across a vast vein of gold-laced quartz that he estimated as being around 7 miles long, four to seven feet high, and 12 feet wide, holding incalculable riches. He was unequipped to do anything with the find, but took a few samples of the gold, made a mental note, and continued on his journey. Lasseter became increasingly delirious from thirst and the heat, his horse died, and he was on his last legs when he claimed an Afghan camel driver took him to a surveyor camp where they nursed him back to health.

With the immense reef of gold steadily on his mind, Lasseter made preparations for another expedition to search for the location he had found. Some three years later, Lasseter went off once again into the outback, this time with a fellow prospector by the name of Harding, whose camp had saved him when he had been dying in the outback. It was a rather underfunded affair, mostly just the two of them seeing if they could find it again, and after setting off into the desert they amazingly were able to once again locate the treasure trove of gold, after which they took bearings with their watches and returned back to town with some samples.

Unfortunately, it turned out that their watches had not been working properly, so once again the location of the gold was elusive, and merely based on what Lasseter could remember.

Lasseter would subsequently be caught up in other prospecting pursuits; after all, this was the era of the Australian gold rush, when the seemingly endless reserves of gold popping up everywhere were driving the economy of this young nation. The lost vein of gold he found ever occupied his mind, though, and Lasseter looked for funding for further expeditions at every possible opportunity, but no one at the time was willing to risk a trek into such unexplored, forbidding terrain.

In 1929, Lasseter approached the Australian government telling them of the discovery he had made and pleaded for funding to launch a survey mission, but he was denied and the government made no efforts to follow up on his claims. Eventually, in 1930, Lasseter would find someone willing to listen to him in the form of John Bailey, who was President of the Australian Workers Union.

By this time, Australia was in the midst of its Great Depression, and so the lure of more gold out in the wilds was more attractive than it had ever been before. Bailey came to the conclusion that Lasseter’s claims could have some merit, and so used his considerable political and economical clout to put together an expedition to venture out into the Australian Outback in an effort to locate Lasseter’s gold reef. The 1930 expedition in search of Lasseter’s gold started off well enough. They were well-funded, well-equipped, and had in their possession two trucks and an aircraft, as well as experienced prospectors and bushmen. All things told, it was the most well-equipped exploration expedition Australia had ever seen. The expedition set out on 21 July 1930, not knowing that they were headed for disaster.

The 1930 Lasseter expedition

The original intent was to first find an area where a landing strip could be set up and that could be used as a staging area for further penetration into the wilderness. At Taylor’s Creek, around 240 miles west of Alice Springs, a good spot was found and an airstrip quickly constructed, after which the pilot returned in one of the trucks to Alice Springs in order to retrieve the waiting aircraft and bring in more supplies. When the aircraft arrived, the expedition continued its push further west into increasingly perilous terrain, where it was hoped yet another staging area could eventually be set up. By this time, progress in the rugged landscape was becoming exceedingly slow, around 2 miles per hour even with vehicles, but nevertheless the team was able to find a suitable location and build yet another airstrip at a place called Ilbilba. However, when the aircraft lifted off on its way to the new staging area, it suddenly experienced technical difficulties and crashed into the ground, severely injuring the pilot, who had to be brought back to Alice Springs for medical attention. The expedition would continue on without air support from this point on until it could be repaired.

Despite the unfortunate mishap, the expedition slogged west, where it was hoped that Lasseter would be able to recreate from memory the location of the priceless gold stores. It soon became evident that the trucks used by the expedition were woefully inefficient in the conditions they were facing. Large sand dunes blocked progress at every turn, as well as various treacherous gullies, ravines and canyons. Many of the obstacles such as sand dunes, scrub brush, and boulders had to be removed by hand, they were forced to backtrack and find alternative routes around insurmountable obstacles, and the team made overall very slow progress.

This continued until the expedition was faced with terrain that was no longer possible to navigate with their vehicles. The frustrated team was forced to turn around and head back to Ilbilba to wait for further instructions on what to do next. Lasseter went out on the aircraft to scout for any landmarks he may recognize, but the plane had such a limited range that it was nearly useless for covering such a large area and so it was sent off to Adelaide to be refitted with larger fuel tanks and a larger engine. Lasseter claimed to have seen some landmarks he recognized from a distance aboard the aircraft, but by this time many in the group were beginning to have doubts about whether Lasseter had any idea of what he was doing. He had still not provided any solid information on where the gold might be, and the whole operation was starting to take on the feel of just blindly stumbling around the Outback hoping to find a needle in the haystack. The expedition members were understandably skeptical about whether Lasseter had ever even seen any gold at all.

Nevertheless, Lasseter was fervently convinced that the gold was out there and ready to trek out overland towards the landmarks he thought he had seen at all costs. Considering that the terrain was impassable with vehicles, the company sent help in the form of a team of camels, along with a guide and hunter by the name of Paul Johns. The team set out overland with the camels, but the aircraft that was planned to be sent for aerial support had technical difficulties again and remained grounded.

The last known photograph of Lasseter, with camels and companion Paul Johns

As the team of camels continued on their trek, they began to enter territory that Lasseter claimed he recognized, and he told them they were getting close to the prize. Lasseter told the expedition to set up camp while he scouted ahead on his own to see if he could get a better pinpoint on the position of the gold. While he was out there, Lasseter allegedly once again found the enormous reef of gold, and he excitedly went back to camp to tell the others. The guide, Johns, was very suspicious of the claim, and was by now under the impression that Lasseter was a raving lunatic, a charlatan, and a liar, and a conman. Things became tense between the two and, when Johns accused him of hiding gold samples in his pockets, they had heated words with each other, with Johns allegedly pulling a pistol on Lasseter and threatening to kill him at one point.

It was under this tense air of animosity that the expedition headed back to their main camp at Ilbilba to tell the others so that they could mount another expedition to go mine the gold. At this point, no one else had even laid eyes on it yet except Lasseter, and the team were all highly skeptical. Even the leader of the expedition, Frank Blakeley, had had enough and was ready to call off the whole thing. When they got back to the main camp, Lasseter got together two camels and some special equipment and prepared to go back out into the desert with the intention of staking a claim on the site, marking its location, and bringing back some samples of the gold, despite the fact that no one else wanted any more to do with the man. He swore that he would successfully stake a claim on the gold and once again trudged out into the desert wilderness alone with the two camels. While out on his own, Lasseter was beset by disaster. One afternoon, both of his camels suddenly bolted, along with all of his supplies, and Lasseter was left there in the middle of the outback wilderness with no food or water. He nevertheless set out on foot once again, with no supplies, through the arid terrain, hellbent on reaching his gold no matter what. Along the way, Aborigines reportedly aided him with meager supplies of food and water, but he was mostly completely alone and fast losing strength.

This is where Lasseter’s ultimate fate becomes murky. When Lasseter failed to show up for several weeks, a rescue mission was launched to find him, led by an experienced bushman by the name of Bob Buck. For 11 weeks the search party scoured the Outback for any sign of Lasseter, and finally came across some Aborigines who claimed that they had indeed seen a lone white man staggering through the desert some weeks before and that he had died. The Aborigines took Buck to where Lasseter had finally collapsed and sure enough there were the desiccated remains of the prospector lying face down on the parched earth. Buck searched the body for any signs of a note, message, or samples he may have retrieved from the gold reef, but there were none.

Lasseter’s body was buried in a shaklow grave where it lay and Buck headed back to civilization. Later, some of Lasseter’s belongings, including a diary he had kept that described his ordeal, were found in a cave at a place called Hull’s Creek. In one of the last entries in the diary he laments:

What good a [gold] reef worth millions? I would give it all for a loaf of bread.

Lasseter’s grave

Although the diary mentions burying a sample of the gold in the desert, no word on its location, nor any map to where the reef could be, were found among these belongings. The diary does mention burying a map to the gold in his kit bag near where the camels bolted, which was eventually found and dug up 17 years later, but by that time it had disintegrated to pieces. It was later rumored that Lasseter had given a copy of the map to his wife but it was never proven. The location of the gold, and indeed if it ever existed at all, remained a mystery.

In the years since Lasseter’s death, the story of his gold reef has attained an almost legendary status. No map has ever been found, and no gold has ever been located even remotely near where Lasseter’s expedition had been searching, around 700 miles (1,100 km) west of Alice Springs. The only clues to where it might be are cryptic descriptions of nearby landmarks in the diary, such as three hills that “look like women in sunbonnets talking to each other” and another that resembles “a Quaker’s hat”. There are many who see the whole story as merely a legend or an old prospector’s story; just one more mysterious tale of lost gold. However, this has not stopped treasure hunters from attempting to find it, and “Lasseter’s Reef” has become somewhat of a Holy Grail for prospectors from all over the world. On occasion, there are even those who have claimed to have found it.

Darwin businessman Lutz Frankenfeld claimed that he found the location of the gold and had plans to mine the area after petitioning the Central Land Council for permission since 1994. After holding an exploration lease to mine the land, he said he is in negotiations with a mining company to develop the site and mine it. Frankenfeld claimed that he had located the reef through careful study of Lasseter’s diary and accounts of his last, deadly expedition to find the gold. He claimed that the site was 500 km west of Alice Springs, on the border of Western Australia and was now covered with sand due to flooding. Whether the gold has really been found or not remains to be seen.

Newspaper article from the era

Many historians, including Darwin historian Peter Forrest, are convinced that Lasseter made up the whole story and that no such gold reef exists, but there are others who disagree. One of those that believe the gold reef is very real is Lasseter’s own son, Bob Lasseter, who is now 87 and was 6 years old when his father died out in the desert. Bob now lives in Sydney, where he works as an engineer and inventor and has spent most of his free time over most of his adult life searching for his father’s lost gold. Bob has made several expeditions into the desert, along with his friend Luke Walker, an author and amateur filmmaker who has written about Lasseter’s story and sunk most of his life savings into making a film on Lasseter’s life titled Lasseter’s Bones. The two set out into the desert as recently as 2010 using an alleged map cobbled together from clues in Lasseter’s diary entries, but were forced to turn back due to rough terrain, yet they plan to return. Bob Lasseter claims that his purpose is not only to strike it rich but to also clear his father’s name, who was blasted as being a nut job, a liar, and a charlatan by the media of the day. Bob Lasseter is getting on in years and his days of prospecting are coming to an end, but he said:

I would like somebody to find that reef and reveal its position. I feel quite sure that that reef has got to be there somewhere.

For now, the location to the gold remains just as mysterious as ever, and will likely remain that way. With no way of knowing where it is, so few clues, and such vast swaths of outback to cover, looking for the gold is a tremendous challenge. There is also the further obstacle that much of the land lays within traditional Aboriginal territory, which requires loads of paperwork and special permits for prospecting. There is additionally the very real possibility that it never existed at all. However, the lure of lost treasure in the wild places of the world is powerful, and there will likely be those who continue to look for the gold well into the future. Until it is found, the story of Lasseter’s Reef will remain one of the great legends of the Australian Outback.

[MIKA27]

Tom Brady Suspended, Pats Fined $1M

According to a tweet by ESPN's Adam Schefter, Tom Brady has officially been suspended for four games following the deflating of footballs during the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts in January. The Patriots will also be fined $1 million while losing a 1st round pick in 2016 and a 4th rounder in 2017.

A report commissioned by the NFL found last week that there was “no deliberate attempt” by the New England Patriots to deflate footballs to gain an advantage over the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game—but that a Patriots locker-room attendant and equipment assistant “participated in a deliberate effort” to deflate balls after referees examined them.

“For the violation of the playing rules and the failure to cooperate in the subsequent investigation, the New England Patriots are fined $1 million and will forfeit the club’s first-round selection in the 2016 NFL Draft,” a statement from the NFL read. “Patriots employees John Jastremski and James McNally have been indefinitely suspended without pay by the club,” neither of which can be “reinstated with the prior approval of NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent…Tom Brady will also be suspended without pay for the first four games of the 2015 regular season for conduct detrimental to the integrity of the NFL.”

[MIKA27]

2016 DODGE VIPER ACR

When the standard Viper just doesn’t do it for you, there’s the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR – the fastest street legal Viper track car ever built.

The American Club Racer version of the iconic 2-door is equipped with an 8.4-liter V10 that pumps out 645 horsepower along with 600 lb-ft of torque through a Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual transmission. The American auto maker has also outfitted the model with 10-setting adjustable Bilstein shocks along with a set of Carbon Ceramic Matrix brakes by Brembo on all four corners. Of course the exterior has also been completely revamped with an adjustable carbon fiber rear wing, rear carbon fiber diffuser and a whole lot more, giving it that menacing appearance. Dodge will begin producing the vehicle during the second half of the year, but has yet to unveil pricing details.

[MIKA27]

NFTY PL+S BATTERY CHARGER

You’re not gonna believe this, but studies show most people actually don’t enjoy messing with a slew of battery chargers and their respective cables. So when NFTY PL+S makes a promise to be an all-in-one charging solution, they gets our attention.

Plugging into your car’s cigarette lighter, laptop, or a wall outlet, NFTY has four USB ports so you can charge multiple devices at once. Its built-in rechargeable lithium polymer battery has a capacity of 4000 mAh to give users an additional talk time of 3 hours, standby time of 71 hours, internet usage of 3 hours, and an estimated 30% battery boost. And unlike battery banks, NFTY has a built-in cable management system. Early birds on Indiegogo can grab one right now for $55. [Purchase]

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BEARD MAINTENANCE KIT BY BIG RED

Taming your glorious facial hair and keeping it looking pristine is no easy task, unless of course, you have the Big Red Beard Combs Maintenance Kit, the ultimate kit to keep your beard well nourished, maintained and looking it’s best. Included are a beard balm, two choices of beard oil, and choice of moustache wax or a second smaller beard balm. All products are made with 100% natural ingredients, and are stored in the included American Black Walnut slab.

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GAME OF THRONES CHARACTERS ILLUSTRATED AS CUTE DISNEY CARTOONS

Brazilian animation and illustration studio Combo Estudio recently unveiled a stylish new series that sees Game Of Thrones characters reimagined as Disney cartoons. They're so well illustrated that if you didn't know better, you'd swear that Walt Disney himself drew these by hand.

Characters include Brienne, The Mountain, Jon Snow and everyones favourite soothsayer Varys and even the shrewd Tyrion Lannister. Each has been crafted to that have that unmistakable Disney-like quality about them, from the colour tones used to their playful expressions.

In fact you could imagine any number of these characters starring in other Disney classics such as Aladdin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or even Peter Pan they're that good.

Whilst the world is in love with the smash-hit series, maybe Disney might consider releasing an animated version of the story for kids? Minus the various states of undress and brutal violence naturally. But if they were even thinking about it, here's all the inspiration they need.

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Flying Jetmen Stunningly Soar All Over Dubai In Amazing Video

Watch as Jetman Yves Rossy and his protege, Jetman Vince Reffet, take their crazy jetpacks to the skies of Dubai and tour the city like Superman would. It’s unbelievable every time I see them soar through the air like fighter jets, busting moves and tricks that only stunt planes dare try. Except they’re not in a plane and they aren’t Superman, they’re humans with jet packs strapped to their backs.

Your brand of crazy inspires awesome.

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Look How Extremely Large Europe's Extremely Large Telescope Will Be

This simple animation shows you just how immense the European Extremely Large Telescope is going to be compared to the Pyramids of Giza, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Statue of Liberty. It’s going to be Extremely Large.

The 100m high hemispherical dome of the E-ELT is under construction on the top of Cerro Armazones mountain at 3060m altitude, in the Sierra Vicuña Mackenna of the Chilean Coast Range. According to the European Southern Observatory, this revolutionary new ground-based telescope is going to be ‘Earth’s biggest eye on the sky’:it will have a 39m main mirror and will gather 13 times more light than the largest optical telescopes existing today. Moreover, the E-ELT will gather 100 million times more light than the human eye, eight million times more than Galileo’s telescope, and 26 times more than a single Very Large Telescope Unit. The E-ELT will gather more light than all of the existing 8m-10m class telescopes on the planet combined.

The E-ELT will be able to correct for the atmospheric distortions, providing images 16 times sharper than those from the Hubble Space Telescope, thus allowing detailed studies of planets around other stars, supermassive black holes, and the dark matter and dark energy which dominate the Universe. The E-ELT program was approved in 2012 and the construction was started at the end of 2014. As an integrated part of the Paranal Observatory, first E-ELT light is targeted for 2024.

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Silly Animation Imagines If Fast And Furious 7's Stunts Were Realistic

Some people think the Fast and Furious movie franchise is too ridiculous and dumb and filled with stunts that are even more realistic and dumb. Those people are so, so wrong. Because it really doesn’t matter how crazy it gets because it’s fun as hell to watch. You wouldn’t want to see the realistic version because they’d just be stuck in traffic all the time.

CollegeHumor pokes fun at the ridiculous stunts of Furious 7 in this silly animation and shows how the stunts would go down if they were more realistic. Spoilers, sort of!

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The US Is Finally Getting Access To A Promising Cancer Drug From Cuba

Tourism isn’t the only industry eager to benefit from the relaxing of the decades-long trade embargo against Cuba. Medical researchers on both of sides of the Straits of Florida now have the chance to collaborate with previously off-limits colleagues. Of particular interest to the US is a Cuban lung cancer drug that took 25 years to develop.

The US-based Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Cuban Center for Molecular Immunology just signed an agreement for work on the cancer drug called Cimavax, Wired reports. The so-called lung cancer vaccine reportedly costs the Cuban Ministry of Health about $US1 per shot to produce and is now offered free to the public. Under the agreement, the Center for Molecular Immunology will share research documentation with Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Roswell Park will use that documentation to apply for permission from the FDA to launch a clinical trial in the US.

Despite the name, it’s really more of a treatment than a vaccine. Cimavax targets a protein produced by tumour cells. In response, the patient’s body produces antibodies against the hormone responsible for the out-of-control cell growth in cancer (the hormone, epidermal growth factor, is also responsible for normal cell growth). This prevents tumours from growing or spreading to other parts of the body. Some existing cancer treatments in the US and Europe work in a similar way, but researchers at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute told Wired that they hope to investigate whether they can use Cimavax as a preventive treatment. They’re also planning to look into whether Cimavax might be useful against other types of cancer, in which epidermal growth factor plays a role.

Does it work? A 2008 clinical trial reported that patients who received Cimavax lived an average of four to six months longer than patients who didn’t, probably because the drug limited the growth of tumours and prevented metastasis. On the other hand, lung cancer remains the fourth largest cause of death in the island nation. Cuba, where about 23.8 people out of every 100,000 develop lung cancer, has the twelfth-highest incidence of the disease in the world. The US ranks third; lung cancer strikes 33.7 people out of every 100,000 here.

Cuba’s medical research industry is among the best in the world, which seems surprising, given the impoverished situation of most of its people. The Castro regime reportedly made preventative medicine a spending priority, enabling the development of drugs like Cimavax.

[MIKA27]

Camberley man, 51, sneezes out childhood toy dart end

A 51-year-old man been reunited with part of a toy dart that he played with as a child - after he sneezed it out.

Steve Easton, from Surrey, was overcome by a sneezing fit and "a very uncomfortable sensation" before he felt something make its way into his left nostril and slowly unfurl itself.

After he retrieved it, Mr Easton was unable to work out what it was until he phoned his mother, Pat.

She knew instantly it was a rubber sucker lost more than 40 years ago.

Mr Easton was at home in Camberley playing a game on the internet when it happened.

"It was a very strange sensation so I retrieved it to examine it," he said.

The rubber sucker became an object of curiosity that he carried around with him because people were so interested, but has since been thrown out.

Mr Easton said he had grown up being able to smell and blow his nose and added: "It doesn't feel any different. Nothing has changed as far as I'm concerned."

"It's the length of time," he said. "I'm not the first person this has happened to, but 43 years - it's quite out there isn't it?"

It was thought Mr Easton had swallowed the rubber part as a child - but X-rays could not find it

Mrs Easton, 77, who lives in Buckinghamshire, had taken Steve to hospital at the age of seven or eight, suspecting he had swallowed the sucker from the dart.

She said she had worried about it for years and was just glad it was out.

"I don't know what he did - you know what children are - whether he put it in his mouth, but he swallowed it.

"I was really worried so I took him to hospital and they X-rayed him and checked everything and they couldn't find it."

She said she had never known whether he had got rid of it naturally or whether it was still inside him.

"All these years later, it suddenly shot out," she said.

Steve Easton said he grew up able to smell and blow his nose