Boing Boing

People are 113 times more likely to catch a cold when they're on an airplane, according to a 2004 study in the Journal of Environmental Health Research. Why? Because the inside of a plane is a cesspool of germs, that's why. (more…)

An "adversarial perturbation" is a change to a physical object that is deliberately designed to fool a machine-learning system into mistaking it for something else. (more…)

People with certain kinds of obsessive-compulsive disorder feel a need to repeatedly perform certain physical rituals or routines, such as washing their hands, to gain relief from obsessional thoughts. Now research suggests that when we see someone else perform an action, it triggers the same regions of our brains as when we do the action ourselves. (more…)

Why is it so hard for so many Americans to get their heads around the science behind climate change? Well, according to Rebecca Onion, it may be because of the way we have historically applauded little boys for their interest in physics and chemistry, but view these same little boys with a certain amount of suspicion when they grow up to be actual scientists, many of whom have been depicted in popular culture as "mad" and—wait for it—Russian. Over at Collectors Weekly, Lisa Hix spoke to Onion about her recent book, Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States.After World War II, Americans embraced the bounty of wartime scientific advances and a thriving economy: They now had cheap goods made out of high-tech plastic, streamlined appliances, and home TV sets. But they were also haunted by the specters of the A-bomb and the H-bomb. The burgeoning Cold War with the U.S.S.R. raised fears that workaholic Soviet scientists, laboring relentlessly under Communism, were making progress faster than American scientists, a competition that played out in the Space Race. Mainstream American pop culture attempted to assure people with images of the perfect suburban family defeating Communism through consumerism. However, American B-movies, comics, and pulp fiction were overrun with evil robots, monsters from space, radioactive mutants—and “mad scientists.” All of this affected how Americans regarded scientific education.“The fears spiked in Postwar America at particular moments,” Onion says. “When Sputnik became the first spacecraft launched into orbit in 1957, Americans panicked, like, ‘Oh my God, the Soviets have it over us. Whatever the great powers of science and technology are, they’re better at them.’ That launch created a lot of apprehension and fear that kids absorbed and processed. Tons of postwar popular culture addressed that combination of wonder and fear, especially about nuclear technology and space travel.”

Benjamin David was tired of the car traffic during his morning commute in Munich, Germany. So now he jumps into the Isar River and swims the two kilometres to his job. He packs his clothes, laptop, and phone in a waterproof floating bag. "You kind of really are in a natural, almost wild river in a very urban context, so there's lots of green and pebbles and what not, kind of pebbly beaches, and that's where I start," David said."And once you get further into the city … it becomes more like a pool actually, the atmosphere, and there's beautiful historic buildings to the right and left of the river, and I just drift by those and enjoy the view."(CBC.ca)

With 200 coins and a steady hand, you can build this stack of overhanging coins. [via The Kid Should See This]

Last January, a 28-year-old law student named Lina Khan published a 24,000-word article in the Yale Law Journal unpicking a half-century's shifts in anti-trust law in America, using Amazon as a poster child for how something had gone very, very wrong -- and, unexpectedly, this law student's longread on one of the most technical and abstract areas of law has become the centerpiece of a raging debate in law and economics circles. (more…)

Inspired by how Michigan artist Paige Breithart planted flowers in potholes in 2015, people around the world are doing the same. Open Culture has a photo gallery.Terry Bartrug shares this giant pothole that he filled with flowers along 8 mile road in Wetzel county near Reader. pic.twitter.com/jZiDlZ47U7— Jeff Oechslein (@JeffWTOV9) May 8, 2015Missoula vigilante draws praise, concerns for filling potholes with flowers https://t.co/kzLAX0WEbb pic.twitter.com/erwQpttK7k— KULR-8 News (@KULR) June 22, 2017

Last week a car was stopped for speeding near San Jose, CA. The officer, from the Campbell Police Department, asked for a license and registration paperwork, but when the passenger, a black man who was on his way to work, went to get paperwork, which was under his seat, the cop pulled out his gun and told the man to keep his hands where he could see them. He then called for backup. This video shows the passenger trying to talk some sense into the officer, telling the cop he was only trying to get what the officer had asked for, but for the nine minutes that was caught on video, sense doesn't make sense to this frightened cop.“Wow,” the passenger says in the video, laughing. “We’re looking for the f—ing paperwork, bro. Oh my God.”“I understand that,” the officer replies. “Don’t move, all right?”The passenger sounds indignant as his hands remain on his lap. “Why are you still pointing that gun at me, bro?” he asks the officer. “Why are you still pointing the gun at me, though? Record this sh-t. Why are you still pointing the gun at me, bro? My hands are right here.”“I understand,” the officer says.“No, you don’t understand,” the passenger protests, as the officer tells him to relax. “No, I’m not going to relax. Get the f—king gun off me.”More details in The Washington Post.

https://youtu.be/ZCKwAI-c1jUFor this fellow, finding a six-pound mushroom is equivalent to witnessing a double rainbow. It looks like a king boletus.

Shahak Shapia reported hundreds of racist, sexist, abusive or otherwise hateful Tweets. Twitter didn't delete them, so he sprayed them on the pavement outside the company's offices in Germany.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abjoYDzG8mA&feature=youtu.beOtter Wolrd (sic) has dozens of videos featuring otters doing cute ottery things, but the one embedded here shows a man drawing things in a sleeping otter's furry belly. [via Metafilter]

https://vimeo.com/22362676You may now enjoy the Tron Legacy Encom user interface in HTML. The original, as depicted in the movie, was designed by Bradley Munkowitz; the recreation defaults to github feeds, but has all sorts of possibilities to fool around with, such as Wikipedia (pictured) and the weather. README .TXT END. PROGRAM Hello User. This is a reproduction of the graphics in the boardroom scene in Tron: Legacy. If you have not seen that movie, check out this background material on the making of that scene before proceeding. To make this a bit more fun, the boardroom is configured to visualize live updates from Github and Wikipedia, with more streams to come. Click on a stream in the window to the right to continue. The boardroom visualization requires the use of WebGL and Event Source. The test below indicates the availability of these features on your system. This was created by @arscan as a learning exercise. It is not affiliated with Disney, Tron: Legacy, Encom, Wikipedia or Github in any way. The source is available on Github. The typeface is Inconsolata, of course.

After seeing a news article, emoji expert Keith Broni of Dublin, Ireland answered a job posting by London-based language firm Today Translations searching for the world's first emoji translator. After a lengthy process, the firm choose Broni out of a pool of over 500 candidates last month.Broni writes, "I sent in my application pretty much immediately... There is no doubt that emoji are powerful communicative tools, enabling emotional expression and understanding particularly where there might be traditional language barriers. However, we know that not every culture interprets the same emoji in the same way. By helping companies and organisations understand those differences, I plan to make a real difference in the world of global communication.”Part of his duties will include writing an "Emoji Etiquette Guide," consulting on the use of emojis in marketing, and analyzing emojis in a legal context.Previously: Emojis are like modern-day gargoyles to this Dutch architect

The British Museum has released this nifty 3D scan of the Rosetta Stone, which includes a nice autoplaying audio summary of its significance. (more…)

Spanish designer Alberto Lucas López created this gorgeous infographic that shows the proportion of native speakers of each major language. (more…)

Yumi Okita creates strikingly accurate and colorful moths and butterflies from thread and felt. (more…)

Korean artist Ji-Hee Lee makes all sorts of classic cameras as paper models, like this 1989 Rolleiflex. Here's a photo of the actual camera: (more…)

Carol Hladik was laid up on the sofa with an injury when she thought a fun blanket might help her feel better. The result was Disney princess-inspired crocheted dress blankets. (more…)

I chanced across Emoh Store's gorgeous astronomy rugs while googling for the daytime-TV conspiracy science classic "Fabric of Time," and immediately ordered one. (more…)

San Bernardino-based company Garner Holt Productions (GHP) took over all animatronic builds from Walt Disney Imagineering a few years back, according to The Disney Blog. Their latest figure is a super-expressive Abraham Lincoln bust, which they revealed at at a recent open house.GHP describe their figure, which uses a proprietary silicone skin mask, as the "most advanced humanoid robotic head ever created." On MiceChat, the company's founder Garner Holt writes:This is a figure we’ve been developing — the one at our open house is actually the “phase II” version of the concept — and the reaction was absolutely stunning (it was overwhelmingly positive at Comic-Con, too, where we showed a short video clip of the head in development). The Lincoln bust is part of GHP’s Expressive Head Project, where we’ve endeavored to add realistic facial expression to animatronics in order to add an extra dimension of lifelike movement (a subtle way of saying, “We crammed more than 40 unique motions into this animatronic head!”)...The skin is the real star of the figure, and is so malleable it can replicate wrinkling around the eyes, crinkling the nose, and a variety of strikingly lifelike creases that appear and disappear as the face moves from expression to expression—it’s incredible! Most importantly, it’s been thoroughly tested to prove it’s highly durable for theme park use...The animatronic Lincoln bust we showcased at our open house represents the current state of the art in mechanical animation. It’s also the first in a new line of super-expressive animatronic products we’re calling “The Living Faces of History,” which we will market not only to our traditional theme park clients but to museums and cultural centers as a means of bringing cutting-edge technology into alternative narrative-driven locations.

Panda Power Plant in Datong, China is a multiphase solar farm building panda-shaped solar arrays. (more…)

"Lust" is an initial coin offering based on the Ethereum blockchain platform, designed for prostitutes and their customers to exchange money for sexual services. (more…)

Youtuber Tucker Gott howls like a giddy child as he pilots his paramotor to McDonalds.Punctuated with delighted peals of "Yeah Buddy!" this video is full of gems. I especially enjoy Gott's observation of irony, flying over a cow and eating a hamburger that notionally lists "beef" as an ingredient.

Chris Ware is inarguably one of the greatest cartoonists of the last 50 years. In this short film produced by Ian Forster and Nick Ravich, Ware talks about the challenge of writing stories from the viewpoint of an African-American school teacher named Joanne Cole.From his home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, artist Chris Ware shares motivations and challenges for telling stories from the perspectives of others in his work. "I distinctly remember being told by my teachers, if you draw women, you're colonizing them with your eyes," Ware recalls of art school. "Do you not draw women and then maintain an allegiance to some sort of experience that only you have had? Or do you try to expand your understanding and your empathy for other human beings?"Though it might be uncomfortable, Ware strives to write from a place of empathy, expanding his stories to feature characters whose experiences differ from his own. Among these characters is African-American school teacher Joanne Cole, who appears in Ware's continuing comic series Rusty Brown. "I have to try to somehow push my limits and my understanding of how I feel through other people in what I'm doing," says the artist. "You risk falling on your face doing so, but that's a risk you have to take."Known for his New Yorker magazine covers, Chris Ware is hailed as a master of the comic art form. His complex graphic novels tell stories about people in suburban Midwestern neighborhoods, poignantly reflecting on the role memory plays in constructing identity. Stories featuring many of Ware's protagonists — Quimby the Mouse, Rusty Brown, and Jimmy Corrigan—often first appear in serialized form, in publications such as The New York Times, the Guardian, or Ware's own ongoing comic book series Acme Novelty Library, before being organized into their own stand-alone books.

The FBI monitored social media on Election Day 2016 to try and trace the source of a suspected Russian disinformation campaign that used "fake news," CNN reports. (more…)

Noted racist and current U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is sucking up to President Donald Trump this week by going on the attack against “leaks” on Friday. Sessions, who was too racist to get a job in Washington in the 1980s but is just racist enough to fit in 2017 warned of an impending crackdown on reporters and their sources, within the federal government. (more…)

On live CNN TV this morning Mexico's former president Vicente Fox did it again – he colored Trump's wall with the F-word and then had all sorts of other gem-like things to say about Trump. CNN's Alisyn Camerota was talking to Fox about current Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's even demeanor last January when talking to Trump about the wall (leaked transcript here). Camerota: Do you think the president of Mexico should have been more forceful in saying it's never gong to happen?Fox: Well you can use my word – we will never pay for that fucking wall.Camerota (suppressing nervous smile): "I apologize to our morning audience for the salty language this morning. Perhaps I should have taken that offer for the five-second delay." Other fun Fox quotes from the interview:[About Trump] "He's always lying to the American people." "That's incredible that the United States people is accepting a president that doesn't want media...he's trying to shut them down...that's the attitude of a dictator.""Trump has to learn that the US is a democracy.""How can we trust a US president that lies every minute of the day?"

Surprise: Comcast is accused of overcharging customers. A class-action lawsuit in California alleges the telecommunications company falsely advertises its prices for services by tacking on hidden fees.Via Streaming Observer:According to the class-action lawsuit, Comcast has hidden fees they call the “Broadcast TV Fee,” which has increased from $1.50 a month in 2014 to $6.50 today, and a fee known as a “Regional Sports Fee” that has risen from $1 to $4.50 since 2015. Comcast has increased the fees even for customers who signed multi-year contracts for fixed monthly rates, sneaking in the fee increases after signing.Comcast's lawyers tried to get the lawsuit thrown out of court by arguing that the hidden fees can be found in the “Subscriber Agreement” and “Minimum Term Agreement” portion of the customer contract. However, as Streaming Observer points out, these portions of the contract "do not specifically state that the media giant will charge a Regional Sports Fee or Broadcast TV fee."The judge didn't buy it. From his order:The motion to dismiss the breach of contract claim is denied. The plaintiffs have alleged the existence of a valid contract, which was created when [Comcast customers Dan] Adkins and [Christopher] Robertson submitted their order for Comcast services through Comcast's website. It is plausible to infer from the complaint that, by clicking "Submit Your Order," Adkins and Robertson agreed to pay Comcast's advertised price, plus taxes and government-related fees, in exchange for the services Comcast offered them. It is also plausible to infer from the complaint that Comcast breached its agreements with the plaintiffs when it sent them bills charging them Broadcast TV and/or Regional Sports Fees (alleged to be neither taxes nor government-related fees) in excess of the agreed-upon price, and when it subsequently sought to raise the amount of the fees.

Youtuber "Hot Dad" has broken out his Casio keyboard, some dark wraparound shades, and is asking an important question, "Can You Talk to People Around the World on the Internet?" in this retro, cyber-tastic music video. Previously: Guy makes great song from a Facebook conversation about a hedgehog image

The World Wide Web Consortium is pressing ahead with its project to standardize a DRM system for the web, without taking any legal steps to protect people whose legitimate activities would be impaired by the DRM system. (more…)

Rest in peace, Kosmo. (more…)

A friend of mine on Facebook posted a link to this wonderfully twisted and funny Twitter exchange between the brilliant Chuck Wendig (author of Zer0es, the Star Wars Aftermath trilogy, and one of my all-time fave books on scrivener-craft, The Kiss-Ass Writer) and Sam Sykes (author of The City Stained Red).Cue the backwards violin music and read the rest of the exchange here.[H/t Andrew Terranova]

I needed a pair of purple paisley bell bottom pants. Everyone does!Needed.These fit pretty true to size.Mens Run & Fly 60s 70s Vintage Grape Paisely Corduroy Retro Bell Bottom Flares via Amazon

My friend and fellow cartoonist Matt Wuerker pointed me to this incredible graphic novel that was just published online. House Without Windows, by cartoonist Didier Kassai and photojournalist Marc Ellison, uses an innovative mixture of cartooning, photos, fumetti, and 360-video to depict the lives of children in the Central African Republic.It is amazing, accomplished storytelling, but far more importantly, the stories being told, of children subjected to the horrors of chaos in that war-torn nation, are absolutely harrowing and heartbreaking.The title "House Without Windows" is a reference to the fact that media coverage of the crisis in this forgotten country has been minimal or nonexistent. I hope the tragic stories of these children can help correct that.width="900" height="673" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-538454" />

Writing science fiction can get you amazing access to thinkers, founders, and scientists whose work touches on the stories you tell. It’s one of the great things about my job. Sure, writing cover stories for Wired would get my calls returned faster! But countless science and tech leaders trace their interests back to tales they read as youngsters -- which has lent me great success in requesting research interviews for my stories.Rob Reid's After On is available from Amazon.Setting my books in the present-ish day, I try to keep things consistent with current technology and knowledge, so I conduct lots of these interviews. And I learn troves from them. But as I get excited about a new field, I become prone to giddy tangents about how it all works, or why it matters. Giddy tangents have a place in fiction – but a limited one, and they should be used sparingly.I conducted dozens of interviews while writing my new novel After On (which came out out on Tuesday). Focusing on the storytelling meant leaving out huge amounts of newfound learning that just didn’t fit. Which was the right decision! But it also felt like a lost opportunity. And so I’ve created eight podcast episodes that deeply explore areas that fascinated me during my research. I’ll be posting them to Boing Boing on a weekly basis, starting with Episode One, which is all about augmented reality:A quick word on how these episodes are structured. My co-host is grizzled podcasting veteran Tom Merritt, who has been presenting tech news and culture to the world for over fifteen years. We open the show together, then cut to a long-form interview with an expert in the field in question. Then at the end of the episode, Tom and I relate the interview back to the novel. Prior to this point, it is in no way necessary to read the novel in order to connect to the podcast (non-readers can just tune out for the final section). And this week, you can actually read the relevant section (pages 1-51 of the novel) for free on Medium, where it’s posted in three excerpts, here, here, and here.In this week’s episode, I interview Meron Gribetz, CEO of the trailblazing AR company Meta. AR is at a fascinating point in 2017. Meta, Microsoft, and their various AR competitors have invested literal billions in the field. Yet few people have had any AR experiences beyond the constricted aperture of Pokémon Go. This is about to change. Meta’s latest product (the Meta 2) is thrilling to use, and is finding major enterprise customers. Google’s much-maligned Glass product is also enjoying enterprise adoption. The narrow field of view on Microsoft’s HoloLens leaves me wanting more, but the company’s investment in the market is highly validating. And other shoes are surely yet to drop, from Apple, Facebook, and maybe even Snapchat. Meron is a great guide to his emerging market, which we cover quite broadly in our wide-ranging interview. The ethical issues that next-generation AR will raise particularly intrigue me. I explore some of them in my novel, and Meron has an interesting take on them. Here’s a quick guide some of the episode’s highlights:04:47– How a company that has raised $100MM began with a Kickstarter.09:34– Why Meta thinks AR’s near future is about productivity, not entertainment.25:03– Ethical issues of AR in the wild, and the concept of “public by default.”42:07– A neuroscientific take on how UI elements light up different brain regions.By the way, one of the coolest things about meeting Meron at his office is seeing his desk – which is literally a freakin’ plank! The man is eating his own dogfood, as the saying goes, by doing without a computer. And so he accesses the Web, email and more in AR space.I hope you enjoy this podcast, and that you’ll consider joining me for some of the coming ones. Boing Boing has been my cherished guide to the digital world for most of my adult life, and it’s a huge honor to be sharing my work here. The schedule is below, and/or you can subscribe on iTunes by clicking here, then clicking the blue “View on iTunes” button (under the square After On image on the left side of the page), then clicking “Subscribe” in similar location in the iTunes window.Episodes and release dates: Episode 1 (August 3): Augmented Reality. Guest = Meron Gribetz,CEO of Meta, one of the top AR companies. Episode 2 (August 10): Neuroscience + Consciousness. Guest = Adam Gazzaley, a UCSF neuroscientist whose work on using video games as clinical tools has appeared on the cover of Nature. Episode 3 (August 17): Digital Privacy + Government intrusion. Guest = Cindy Cohn, who runs the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Episode 4 (August 24): Synthetic Biology's Promise + Peril. Guest = Andy Hessel, a major synbio thought leader and a prime driver behind GP-write, which some view as the heir to the Human Genome Project. Episode 5 (August 31): Quantum Computing. Guest = Steve Jurvetson, prominent venture capitalist, and a board member of the world's largest quantum computing company (DWave) for 15 years. Episode 6 (Sept 7): Nihilistic Terrorism. Guest = Sam Harrisone of the country's most prominent and controversial commentators on this subject Episode 7 (Sept 14): Super AI Risk. Surprise guest. Episode 8 (Sept 2): Fermi's Paradox and the anthropic coincidences. Guest = Stephen Webb, British astronomer and perhaps the world's leading authority on Fermi's Paradox.

Troy Hunt, proprietor of the Have I Been Pwned? service, has made 306,000,000 known-cracked passwords available as a download -- you can grab the set and make sure that yours isn't among them, as these cracked passwords are the ones that are likely being used by hackers when they do brute-force attacks against encrypted password files. (more…)

As I was watching this video by Youtubers Mike and Alex of This is Mystical, I kept thinking to myself, "Why has this never been done before?"It seems like fencing with literal fences should be a thing. Yet my half-hearted internet search for "fencing sport with picket fences" brought up lots of, well, fences.So, touché to Mike and Alex for bringing the world this new sport and to Sam the "real fencing guy" for teaching us fencing's basics.

However sad things are at home, the trend worldwide is looking good. [via] Then consider this; and this:https://www.vidio.com/watch/68705-the-beatles-getting-better-lyrics

Amazon has a good deal on this set of fine mesh steel strainers today - $6.79 for three in different sizes. I bought them to replace the one we have that has a tear in the mesh and pokes my finger.

Christian D. Ott, a tenured professor of theoretical astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology, has resigned in the wake of an investigation that found he had harassed two students.From BuzzFeed:"This has been a difficult situation for our community," the Caltech statement said. Caltech declined to provide any further comment to BuzzFeed News, and Ott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.According to more than 1,000 pages of emails and chat messages submitted to the investigators, first publicly reported by BuzzFeed News, Ott had become infatuated with Kleiser, whom he then fired due to his feelings. He later confessed his actions in increasingly inappropriate and erratic emotional exchanges with Gossan.Gossan filed a complaint with the university's Title IX office in the spring of 2015, which Kleiser joined soon after. Prior to Gossan's complaint, Kleiser had no idea she had been fired for reasons unrelated to her scientific work.Kleiser is relieved that Ott resigned. But her experience with him, as well as the "lukewarm" response from many in the faculty to news of the problem, has led her to decide to leave academia once her PhD is complete."I didn’t see a lot of action on the part of people that I considered to be my role models in my field," Kleiser said. "So that’s kind of difficult, and I think that makes it harder to want to stay and eventually take a permanent position in a place like this."Christian Ott has resigned from Caltech. I don't think divisive is the right word here, we wanted him gone. #caltech #womeninstem #research pic.twitter.com/Oc3J4BYmbd— Claire N. Saunders (@ClaireNSaunders) August 1, 2017

Some guys at work have been feeding a huge spider that has been living inside a piece of web-covered equipment for a year. They shot this video, which reminds me a horror movie.

Trump gave a weirdly inappropriate, politically-laden speech to tens of thousands of Boy Scouts last week. Afterwards, the Head of the Boy Scouts gave a public apology, saying, "We sincerely regret that politics were inserted into the Scouting program."But in a Wall Street Journal interview, Trump said "I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.” The Boy Scouts said they never called Trump.From Time:“The Chief Scout Executive’s message to the Scouting community speaks for itself,” the organization said, referring to a July 27 statement from Michael Surbaugh, the Chief Scout Executive for the Boy Scouts of America, who apologized to anyone in the scouting community who could have been offended or alarmed by the political rhetoric in the speech.

In Jimmy Diresta latest video, he makes a case for his camera from a piece of leather. He molds the leather around a wooden form, uses a special kind of fork to make the stitching holes, adds a snap button, and tools it with a pattern. It looks great.

Wellington, New Zealand artist Kirsty Lillico won the annual $20,000 Parkin Drawing Prize for her piece seen here, titled "State Block." The work consists of a carpet scrap hanging over a string. "First of all, I've sort of re-represented a drawing made by someone else," Lillico said."Drawing, to me, it's not just about a pencil and paper. I'm using a knife and carpet and hanging it in a space to achieve the same ends."According to Lillico, State Block was inspired by someone else's architectural floor plan for a state-owned apartment."It's looking at the architectural (drawings) – positive, being black (drawn lines of an architectural design), and the negative being the spaces we occupy," she said.(Stuff.co.nz via Weird Universe)

Wayne Welsh, assistant police chief in Estherwood, La., posted a cartoon to social media depicting a mother holding a young girl under water with the caption "When your daughters(sic) first crush is a negro boy." KATC reports that he at first defended his posting in the initial outcry, but will lose his job all the same. (more…)

If you worry as much as I do about getting sun-damaged skin, this will be welcome news.Biomedical engineering researchers at New York's Binghamton University have a developed a new sunscreen, a think coating made out of DNA, that actually gets more effective the more time you spend in the sun. ScienceDaily reports:(Guy) German and a team of researchers developed thin and optically transparent crystalline DNA films and irradiated them with UV light. They found that the more they exposed the film to UV light, the better the film got at absorbing it."If you translate that, it means to me that if you use this as a topical cream or sunscreen, the longer that you stay out on the beach, the better it gets at being a sunscreen," said German.As an added bonus, the DNA coatings are also hygroscopic, meaning that skin coated with the DNA films can store and hold water much more than uncoated skin. When applied to human skin, they are capable of slowing water evaporation and keeping the tissue hydrated for extended periods of time.Thanks, Colleen!

Web technology has matured considerably in the last decade, and developers are continually in demand. If you're looking to add some skills to your resume, or are just interested in exploring the possibilities of the web, check out this Interactive Web Developer Bootcamp.In this course, you’ll get a comprehensive overview of full-stack development using modern tools. After learning the basics of HTML5 and CSS3, you'll delve into front-end development to build functional interfaces using Angular and jQuery. You’ll learn how to connect your interactive pages to back-end data, and build application logic for projects that include a blogging engine and an e-commerce platform. This course gives you access to 180 video lessons, comes with a companion ebook, and lets you get specific feedback from instructors.The Interactive Web Developer Bootcamp is on sale now for $29.

On the Tonight Show, actor Idris Elba and host Jimmy Fallon took turns singing songs karaoke-style with lyrics humorously mangled by Google Translate. To start, Elba belted out Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back," or "The Baby Escaped" after being run through translation. "I love large saplings that is the truth. A few of your siblings were here. That woman showed up and has small hips with a sleeve around your head."Jimmy then continued the fun with Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time" AKA, "Meet My Kids." For the final song, they sang a duet for "I'll Place Kindness on You," the Boyz II Men song formerly known as "I'll Make Love to You." "Shut your face, pray for dreams."