Archive for May, 2012:
Harvard Scientists Make Graphic Designers Look Lazy by Using DNA to Create a New Font [Typography]
Three postdoctoral students at Harvard Medical School—Bryan Wei, Mingjie Dai, and Peng Yin—have found a way to turn individual DNA strands into a fully-loaded font: all the letters of the Roman alphabet, punctuation marks, emoticons, and digits 0-9. More »
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Automated Typewriter Creates Never-Ending Story, Honoring Journalists Killed on Assignment [Video]
“On Journalism #2 Typewriter” is a typewriter installation that honors journalists who been killed worldwide between 1992 and present day, by writing generatively constructed stories about about them based on their published work and the existing data of their lives (via the Committee to Protect Journalists). More »
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The Black Keys: Gold On The Ceiling [Video]
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Would You Eat the Meat of a Robot-Deboned Chicken? [Robots]
Robots and other various non-human “workers” are increasingly performing the work and labor that was once the province of human hands. Often, it’s because the machinery is less costly than the salaries paid to flesh-and-blood workers. Other times, it’s because humans cannot perform certain tasks as well as a piece of machinery specially designed for the job. More »
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The Coolest Waterproof Backpack Money Can Buy [Daily Desired]
If you carry a backpack, you might feel like you’re in grade school. But you’re not, damnit, you’re a professional, and you need a tote that reflects that status. More »
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This Beautiful Retro Airplane Porn Is My New Desktop Background [Image Cache]
Gizmodo reader Rob Hall took this amazing photo of a MiG-17F performing a minimum radius horizontal turn with afterburner at the Warriors Over The Wasatch Airshow, which happened over Hill Air Force Base, Utah. It’s a beautiful plane and a beautiful shot. [Flickr] More »
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Usher Will Be Joined By Hologram Backup Dancers in Upcoming Concert [Holograms]
One hologram performance is enough for the year, and we’re already put that behind us with Tupac’s Coachella reincarnation. Now Usher is jumping on the virtual performance bandwagon—he’ll be appearing with digital backup dancers in a concert next month in London. More »
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This Adorable Rat on a Treadmill Used To Be Paralyzed [Video]
Besides being utterly adorable and begging for a tiny training montage, this rat is actually demonstrating an impressive medical treatment. Because just a few weeks prior, it was actually paralyzed with a spinal cord injury. More »
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Kickass Astronaut Plays the International Space Station Vacuum Like a Didgeridoo [Video]
Our favorite space station resident, Don Pettit, is back with a follow-up video to his demonstration of how sound waves behave in water droplets in zero gravity. More »
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Comptroller Accuses HP of Overcharging NYC $163m On 911 System
benfrog writes “New York City comptroller John Liu has accused HP of overcharging New York City $163 million on upgrades to its 911 system. According to a statement put out by Liu, an audit of the project revealed that HP did not perform up to spec on the contract between April 2005 and April 2008 and did not bill the city correctly for time and materials on its portion of the contract to upgrade the 911 system. According to Liu’s reading, the contract was supposed to cost no more than $378 million over five years, but the in January the city projected it would have already spent $307 by mid-April and had to award Northrop-Grumman an additional $286m to do a second part of the original contract, ballooning the cost to $632m, and Liu’s office is now estimating that cost overruns beyond this could be as high as an additional $362m. NYC’s deputy mayor for operations was quoted defending the contract.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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