40 years ago, antitrust law put strict limits on mergers and acquisitions, but since the Reagan era, these firewalls have been dismantled, and now the biggest companies grow primarily by snapping up nascent competitors and merging with rivals; Google is a poster-child for this, having only ever created two successful products in-house (search and Gmail), with all other growth coming from acquisitions and mergers.
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Fran Blanche explains "the greatest effect ever created" in the recording studio: plate echo.
Get out your good headphones and prepare to experience the awesome sound of plate echo through this 1980 vintage Ecoplate II! Thanks for watching and enjoy!
For musicians, clubgoers or anyone in the thick of a loud environment, earplugs aren't just an option. If you plan on keeping your hearing through sustained exposure to levels over 85 decibels (roughly the sound of a blender), they're a must.
The good news is, most earplugs will muffle the sound. The bad news is, that's exactly how it sounds: muffled. If you love music as much as you love your ears, Vibes Hi-Fidelity Earplugs are a high-tech alternative.
Thanks to specially designed tubes in the casing, Vibes can filter sound selectively, lowering the volume by 22 dB across frequencies while keeping (and in some cases enhancing) clarity. They're made to be discreet, with a nearly invisible profile and three interchangeable, washable tips to fit any ear size. And they've got staying power in any environment too, thanks to a detachable cord that clips onto each earplug.
The social networking service Twitter says it has shut down some 5,000 accounts that were acting as automated pro-Trump propaganda bots. Before they were doing this, they were spewing Saudi propaganda, so they're presumed to be linked to the Saudi state. (more…)
I have a small collection of How and Why Wonder Books that were published in the 1960s and 1970s. The interior and cover art is great. According to Wikipedia, there were 74 titles in this series of illustrated kids science and nature books. Flickr user X Ray Delta One uploaded 10 covers from the series.
I have a few different LED headlamps, but this one is by far my favorite. It features a band of LEDs that throw light in a wide area in front of you. It lights up the entire area around you, as opposed to LED headlamps that illuminate just a spot. It uses 3 AAA batteries and has an easy on-off touch sensor switch.
Said Dorsey to staff: “Some of you will be very supportive of our meeting [with] the president, and some of you might feel we shouldn’t take this meeting at all."
Los Angeles County public health officials are urging people who have not been fully immunized against measles to contact their healthcare provider to get the vaccine immediately. On Monday, they said they’re investigating a measles cluster, after receiving a number of reports of residents acquiring the virus, which is preventable by vaccine.
Cesar Sayoc, the The Florida man who pled guilty to mailing 16 package bombs to news networks and public figures he perceived as enemies of Donald Trump, may or may not be insane. (more…)
Perhaps it is the burlap couch upholstery, but my aged eyes missed the KABAR and thought this was a handcrafted Spork that some Seattle-area artist must have designed just for my pal. Because who doesn't want a super cool Spork?
I was told to wait for it. Then I was sent this photo and it became clear the Spork was made by famed US Military hardware enthusiast fan-favorite Ka-Bar, and not some artisanal Spork maker.
I am sort of disappointed the fleetingly imagined trend where Game of Thrones enthusaists are all eating with their own custom version of a Casterly Rock Spork, just like Tywin used, died so quickly. I am ordering a KaBar Spork for my camper van.
Rosa Golijan is a privacy engineer at Google. She snapped this photo of a seatback video display in a Japanese taxicab. The text says:
This taxi tablet is using a face recognition system with an image received by the tablet's front camera. The image data is used to estimate gender in order to deliver the most optimized content.
The gender estimation runs once at the beginning of the advertisement program and the image data is discarded immediately after the estimation processing. Neither the tablet nor the server records the data.
GB Studio' looks like a cool way to quickly build retro-games using visual scripting. You can play the games on a mobile phone, a Raspberry Pi, Itch.io, the web, or even a Gameboy. It's free and runs on OS X.
Tatsunori Iwamura, 61, professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Japan's Matsuyama University, was busted for teaching his students how to make MDMA (aka Molly/Ecstasy) and 5F-QUPIC, a cannabinoid agonist. At some point, Iwamura had a license to manufacture illegal drugs for academic purposes but it had expired. From The Guardian:
Local drug enforcement authorities believe 11 students produced the drug (MDMA) under Iwamura’s instruction. Four students, along with an assistant professor, have also been referred to prosecutors, Kyodo said.
The university said it would discipline Iwamura and the assistant professor once the investigation had ended.
“We sincerely apologise for causing serious concern to students and their parents,” said Tatsuya Mizogami, the university’s president, according to Kyodo.
"Ocular dominance" is defined as "the priority of one eye over the other as regards preference of use or acuity of vision." Awareness of your dominant eye is important for photography, golf, baseball, and archery. The above video explains how to conduct the Miles test to determine your dominant eye.
Architecture hacker/maker Ben Uyeda of HomeMadeModern designed and built his house out of shipping containers in the high desert of Joshua Tree, California. And he documented the process in fascinating detail.
