Twitter Will Release Its Two-Step Verification Soon

Wired is reporting that Twitter has a two-step verification system currently undergoing internal testing that Twitter hopes to roll out to its users "shortly". A two-step verification system would help prevent Twitter hacks from happening.

There aren't any details on how the two-step verification system would work exactly but hopefully it comes out soon. It's an embarrassment that Twitter has taken so long in implementing more security layers than just a simple password, especially since so many others (like Google, Apple, Dropbox, etc.) have added their own two-step verification systems. More here.

Earbuds Under $50 That Actually Have a Hope of Sounding Good

Apple EarPods—or whatever crap headphones came with your phone—aren't the best way to listen to music, but nice gear is expensive. You can't blame people for not wanting to spend a lot of money on something they're just going to lose or destroy. Well here's a $40 alternative to garbage that's almost certain to sound pretty good.

Since its first over-ear headphones came out a couple of years ago, Sol Republic has built its reputation on solid, aesthetically handsome gear that's cheaper than the competition's offering.

The buds have a newly designed drivers, tangle free cables, and your standard three-button remote. While they're not as striking to look at as other Sol Republic stuff, they've got an admirable minimalism—hopefully Sol Republic making sure the guts sound great. More here.

Nokia’s Asha 210 Is a Social QWERTY Phone Two Years Late

Just over two years after HTC released the Status—a QWERTY phone with Facebook integration that never even really mattered at the time—Nokia has decided to roll out its own version: the Asha 210.

Nokia's social phone does at least take into account current trends: in the West and Latin America, it will have a dedicated Facebook button; in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Africa that'll be replaced with a hardware button linked to WhatsApp. In fact, the WhatsApp tie-in will offers users free use of the service for as long as they own the device

In terms of the handset itself, it comes with a 2-megapixel camera, dual-SIM slots, and a series of new feature phone apps for photo editing and data transfer. None of which is particularly interesting, but then it does only cost $70 (and will start shipping in the third quarter of 2013). Instead, Nokia is going to be selling this phone on its social features.

At a time when even the cheapest smartphones offers a decent social media experience, though, it's tough to see how Nokia will carve out a market for the phone in the West. It may sell well in other regions, but given that Nokia's feature phone range is what's currently dragging it down, it seems an unlikely route to success for Elop and co. Add to that the fact that HTC already tried the idea with the Status—and saw it flop—and it seems an unbelievably poor move two years down the line. Still, at least it comes in some pretty Nokia colors. More here.

Building This Bike Is Almost As Easy as Making a Sandwich

The SandwichBike not only sounds delicious in name, it's delightfully customizable. It comes to you in the mail, and you assemble it all by yourself. And though that sounds daunting, it's supposed to be insanely easy.

The Sandwichbike was designed by Basten Leijh, who completely rethought what you'd think of as far as a traditional bike goes. For example, instead of a metal frame, its skeleton is a formed from two weather-coated pieces of layered plywood sandwiched together (thus the name). It comes to you in a flat box that has all the parts inside—the chain, the bolts, the pedals, and everything you need for your foot-powered vehicle. More here.

Put an Entire Galaxy Under Your Office Chair

A floor mat is unfortunately a must-have accessory if you don't want your office chair trampling down carpet, or tearing up a wooden floor. But thankfully you no longer have to just opt for a boring sheet of plastic. Underfoot Media creates chair mats printed with stunning images of the universe, so rolling over to get a printout feels like soaring across the galaxy.

Available in four-by-four foot squares for $185, or a slightly larger version for $220, the mats use awe-inspiring imagery captured by the Hubble telescope or the Spitzer space telescope. You might actually feel bad about putting what is essentially a work of art on the floor and rolling all over it, but on the other hand this is as close as most of us will ever get to enjoying a spacewalk. More here.

Turn Signal Gloves Vastly Increase Your Chances Of Surviving an Urban Bike Ride

Your average motorist is more used to sharing the road with other vehicles than cyclists. So instead of just relying on your arms to safely signal an upcoming turn, consider these $42 turn signal gloves which let both cyclists and motorists alike know where you're headed.

Usable with an included set of bike gloves or your own pair once they've been enhanced with a bit of velcro, the LEDs are triggered via a thumb-accessible button and can be used to signal a turn, or continuously flash for enhanced nighttime visibility. On a fresh set of batteries they'll flash for 120 hours straight, so you can safely get to and from work for days on end, or manually flash an SOS distress if you find yourself lost after a ride in the woods. More here.

How Canned Food Conquered the World

The BBC has a wonderful dive into the history of canning, tracing its origins from a technology designed to help expand and sustain the British Empire, to a miracle commodity of modern capitalism. And it almost failed before it ever got going.

Though he really stole the idea for canning from a Frenchman, Bryan Donkin is the man who developed the idea to help feed the Royal Navy. He was awarded a patent for the technology in 1813. Canned food was lauded by royalty and sailors alike—indeed, nobody had ever seen anything quite like it before. It made it possible to send familiar British food to sailors overseas, thousands of miles from home.

But the science of canning didn't get off to a perfect start. You see, canning preserves food, and keeps it fresh and tasty only so long as what goes in there in the first place was good. A scandal in the 1850s revealed that a huge amount of the canned "beef" being sent overseas was not fit for human consumption. Much of it wasn't even beef at all. The proprietor behind the operation implicated in the scandal ultimately cleaned up his act—as did the whole industry—and so canning survived long enough to become the supermarket commodity par excellence. Make sure to check out the whole BBC story here.

Razer’s Honoring Unauthorized 90-Percent-Off Coupon Purchases at a Huge Loss

Razer just said it's going to honor purchases made with a third party coupon that went viral this week, which gave users 90 percent off on the Razer UK store. That's kind of astounding.

The coupon was supposed to be used by a third party company to test Razer's shopping cart, but instead it got out and thousands of orders got through. It only included items on the UK store—so no Blade or Edge—but that's still a crazy amount of orders. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan said on a Facebook status update that even though it was likely to cost Razer a TON of money, since the items are being sold well under cost, it still wants to do right by gamers. So it's honoring all sales on single purchases, but canceling those ordering multiples of the same item. Those buyers can still pick up one of whatever they ordered. Solid move, Razer. More here.

Apple Keeps Your Siri Data for Two Years

You thought that time you asked Siri about the weird mole on your toe was just between the two of you? Wrong. According to Wired, Apple hangs onto your Siri data for two years.

Privacy groups have been asking after Siri's info hoarding habits for quite a while, but this is the first time Apple has given out the explicit details. Although Apple does keep your data, it says the snippets it saves are completely anonymous and only used to improve Siri.

Here's how it works: when you talk to Siri, your conversation is sent to Apple for analysis. Random numbers are generated to represent you and the voice data associated with the virtual assistant. This code is different from both your Apple user ID and your UDID, but it's filed with your Siri logs. Once a specific file is six months old, Wired says the number is "dissociated" from the clip, but the clip is still kept on hand for up to 18 months. And if you turn Siri off, all of the identifying factors are deleted. So even though it's all anonymous, perhaps you'll think twice about what you're gabbing with Siri about next time. More here.

This Predator Helmet Can Make Even the Tiniest Vespa Badass

Motorcycle riders don't get a lot of respect from other drivers on the road, but who's going to dare cut you off when you're cruising around looking like an intergalactic game hunter in this awesome Predator helmet. It's built on an actual motorcycle helmet so it's properly safety rated, but has been enhanced with a sculpted outer shell, a dreadlocks mullet, and even a tri-laser scope.

Optional add-ons include a carbon fiber outer shell, tiny metal spears on the ends of the dreadlocks, and even a hyper-realistic airbrushed finish. For $780 it guarantees even Vespa riders a modicum of respect on the road, just be on the look out for highway patrolmen covered in mud. More here.

Why Do We Cry?

It’s All About the Benjamin Ice Cubes, Baby

Ask for your paycheck in cold hard cash. Your boss will laugh at you. So the most obvious alternative is literal ice in the shape of hundred dollar bills.

They say if you wear enough diamonds your neck will freeze. But if you prefer your currency closer to liquid form, Gamago's new eight cube tray will only set you back eight bones. And as an added bonus, (and main purpose of ice cubes if we're being technical here) the Benjamin cubes will keep your chalice chilled. More here.

Here’s What’s Inside Google Glass’ Box

Even though we've seen Google Glass be leaked, be announced, be presented, be demoed, be worn, be used and even be mocked, it's always represented some far off future technology that we never were sure if it would ever be real (in a I can't believe it's already here kind of way). But it's totally happening guys. And this is what it looks like. Brandon Allgood got his hands on the Google Glass box and revealed what's inside the future.

It's wonderfully clean packaging that includes two different visors, a carrying bag, a power adapter, a power cord and Google Glass. It looks like people in the Google Glass Explorer program are getting there taste (or I guess sight?) of Glass, the world is never going to be the same! Or something like that. More here.

TomTom’s New GPS Watches Are Easily Controlled With a Large Cyclops-Like Button

A couple of years ago TomTom partnered with Nike for what was one of the first GPS sport watches that didn't look like some monstrous fitness accessory strapped to your wrist. But now the company is parting ways with the swoosh and releasing a set of TomTom-branded watches called the Runner and Multi-Sport for those who like to fanatically track their performances.

Available sometime this summer for a yet to be disclosed price, both the Runner and Multi-Sport feature GPS and GLONASS (the Russian version) satellite tracking for fast and accurate location pinpointing, motion sensors for counting footsteps when training indoors, a ten-hour battery with the GPS functionality enabled, and a relatively slim 11.5 millimeter thick housing. And like the Nike+ SportWatch, TomTom is sticking with a monochrome display that can be used to monitor distance, fitness goals, or a targeted performance pace.

Both watches also feature a large multi-directional button that can be used in wet conditions, or with gloves, to navigate the UI. But TomTom is distinguishing the Multi-Sport version from the Runner with a built-in swimming motion sensor, an included dedicated bike mount, and optional Bluetooth cadence and altimeter sensors. More here.

Here Are Google Glass’ Tech Specs

Google just released the official specs for Google Glass (after releasing the API too) and the futuristic frames come with 16GB (only 12GB will be usable) Flash memory, 5 megapixel camera for stills, 720p video recording, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth and a battery that can handle "one full day of typical use".

Fit
Adjustable nosepads and durable frame fits any face.
Extra nosepads in two sizes.

Display
High resolution display is the equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away.

Camera
Photos - 5 MP
Videos - 720p

Audio
Bone Conduction Transducer

Connectivity
Wifi - 802.11b/g
Bluetooth

Storage
12 GB of usable memory, synced with Google cloud storage. 16 GB Flash total.

Battery
One full day of typical use. Some features, like Hangouts and video recording, are more battery intensive.

Charger
Included Micro USB cable and charger.
While there are thousands of Micro USB chargers out there, Glass is designed and tested with the included charger in mind. Use it and preserve long and prosperous Glass use.

Compatibility
Any Bluetooth-capable phone.
The MyGlass companion app requires Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher. MyGlass enables GPS and SMS messaging. More here.

YouTube Celebrates 57 Years of VCR With an Analog Video Mode

Do not adjust your computer screens. There's no problem with YouTube, other than the fact that it's getting a little misty eyed—by choosing to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the VCR with a little added analog character on its digital videos.

On plenty of YouTube videos you can currently find a small VCR button: click it, and the video you're watching will start to display some of those wonderful (awful?) characteristics that your old cassette player used to provide. It's a quirky way of celebrating the Ampex VRX-1000—commonly considered the world's first practical videotape recorder when it was launched on April 14th 1956 at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters Convention. The device made a lasting impression on home entertainment, but thank goodness things have moved on. More here.

This Credit Card Sized Backup Battery Is a Different Kind of Charge Card

Unless you're completely killing your smartphone's battery on a daily basis, you don't need to haul around a massive backup battery. A single emergency charge is all most of us need for those days when we talk or stream more than we intended, which makes the Tarot's 1,500 mAh capacity the perfect balance of size vs. power.

At just 0.28-inches thick, Powerocks claims the Tarot is the thinnest backup battery you can buy. And while it's still considerably thicker than a credit card, it's certainly thin enough to slip into a heftier wallet. Like with any external battery the Tarot's got a USB port for charging/recharging and it's got enough capacity to fully recharge a single smartphone. So as long as you're not heading out into the jungle for a week, for just $35 it should easily serve all of your emergency power needs. More here.

Relax in Peace and Quiet Under This Sound-Absorbing Lamp

You usually don't expect a lamp to do much more than provide a little illumination and snazz up a room. But maybe it's time you should. Monica Armani's Silenzio lamps are made with sound-absorbing foam and fabrics so they chase away the dark and the decibels.

But don't expect that sitting underneath the Silenzio to be anything like putting on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. At the most it will help minimize echos and prevent sounds from deafeningly bouncing around a large room like an underground cavern. And if you live in a house full of screaming kids and barking dogs, it's probably a worthwhile investment. More here.

This Twisted Cabinet Wants to Strut Across Your Living Room

If you're not living inside some kind of Beauty and the Beast nightmare, all your furniture is mercifully inanimate, but the Walking Cabinet gets you halfway there. It won't actually stroll across your living room, but it looks like it wants to.

Designed by Markus Johansson, the walking cabinet appears to have been frozen mid-strut either on its way down some kind of a furniture fashion runway, or triumphantly headed home after a fantastic date with a beautiful coffee table. The illusion of movement isn't just an opporunity to make really bizarre anthropomorphic furniture jokes either; it actually allows multiple units to be slid together and connected into one, longer cabinet.

The Walking Cabinet is just a design project for now, so don't expect one to come strolling into a storefront near you anytime soon. But if you drink enough and tilt your head sideways, you should be able to get a similar sort of look out of all your current furniture. More here.

Don’t Worry Cyclists, There’s a Swiss Army Knife For You Now Too

Weighing just 99 grams and folding away into a compact package that's easy to pocket, Victorinox's new Swiss Army Bike Tool is the perfect weapon against misaligned handlebars and other on-the-road cycling emergencies.

Instead of a folding design, the tool disassembles into an L-wrench with an adapter for eight included bits, a set of tire levers, and a bright orange plastic case for holding everything together. But for $48, where's the token cork screw, plastic toothpick, and emergency nail file? More here.

The Sun Just Shot Off the Biggest, Most Spectacular Solar Flare of the Year

Early this morning, while most of us were resting peacefully in our beds, everyone's favorite flaming ball of plasma decided to give NASA's cameras a little show. More specifically, the Solar Dynamics Observatory managed to capture our sun's biggest solar flare of the year thus far.

Classified as an M6.5, it's not the hugest solar flare—that honor belongs to the X-class. But it was at least enough to cause a "moderate" radio blackout that has since subsided.

And if it seems like we've been seeing more solar flares than usual these days, it's because we have. The sun's 11-year activity cycle is approaching its maximum, which it should officially hit by the end of the year. So if these incredible images are anything to go by, we're in for a few more treats over the next several months. All of which we can safely enjoy thanks to our lovely, protective atmosphere. More here.

There’s Gross Alternative Fuel Just Hanging Out in the Sewers

Everybody knows about using oil as a fuel source, but London is putting a new spin on the concept. Soon the city will be mining its own sewers to bring up glorious globs of old cooking grease and melting them down into fuel. Delicious.

The chunks of fat, oil, and grease build-up—affectionately(?) referred to as "fatbergs"—have been an ongoing problem in London's sewer system. When the waste isn't just clogging up drains, it's making its way down further and clogging up the sewers. But now, a new power station is set to generate 130 gigawatt hours a year from the clogs—enough to power almost 40,000 homes. And that's a good enough excuse to go sewer-grease mining.

Some of the fat-generated energy will go back into running the local sewage works where the chunks of fat-ore are being mined, establishing a gross little cycle that should benefit just about everyone involved. Except maybe the grease-miners. And while using food-waste to produce energy is great, you'd ideally set up a way to do it that doesn't involve first clogging and then de-clogging sewers. But in the meantime this is a solid solution. More here.

Apple and Yahoo Are Working Together for Deeper Integration on the iPhone

Apple, which hates Google, is supposedly working with Yahoo, who will take anybody's love at this point, to figure out how "Yahoo's services can play a prominent role on Apple's iPhone and iPad", according to the WSJ. This actually shouldn't be too much of a surprise as data from Yahoo Finance and weather already pops up on the iPhone.

Apple and Yahoo are supposedly in talks about using Yahoo's content from Yahoo Sports (which is fantastic), Yahoo News and other Yahoo websites through Siri. It'd presumably be like how sport scores and stats can pop up in Siri right now—Yahoo would feed more of its content and data to iPhone users. That's not a bad thing.

The WSJ says Yahoo has also "contemplated ways" to replace Google as the search engine for iOS but the idea "remains a long shot" because of Yahoo's partnership with Bing (Bing powers Yahoo, after all). That would be a bad thing. A non-Google search engine would make for a worse experience. More content—especially if it's the good Yahoo content—on the iPhone could be a good thing. Siri needs to get better. Can Yahoo make it better? More here.

Intel’s Thunderbolt Is About To Get Twice As Fast

Thunderbolt's makin' like greased lighting. Intel has just introduced the newest revision of the interface and it will be capable of 20Gbps in both directions (as opposed to the previous 10). In other words, fast enough to transfer and play 4K video simultaneously. And it's all backwards compatible with old ports and cables to boot.

Intel just made the announcement at NAB 2013, but it'll be a little while until the speed hits end-users; production isn't scheduled to kick into high gear until 2014. Of course all that delicious throughput is limited to devices that support it, but it'll be a lovely burst for that small portion that do. More here.

The Best Coffee Mug Improvement Since the Handle

They say if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door. And the same will probably hold true for the first coffee shop to adopt this clever spoon-securing NOTA coffee mug designed by Lee Hae Seung Scott.

Often times a hot beverage will require more than just an initial stirring, having you either trying to find a clean place to keep your spoon in the interim, or leaving it in the mug and where it hits you in the face as you try to drink. Both are less than ideal solutions, but the latter is no longer an issue with the NOTA mug that features a set of built-in supports preventing a spoon from sliding around. It's as brilliant a solution as it is simple, and while not for sale, it thankfully doesn't look like a design that's too difficult to steal. More here.

Watching a Hummingbird in Slow Motion Is Still Pretty Majestic

Slow motion was invented to capture every single thing in slow motion. Explosions, cheetahs, robots, people and of course, hummingbirds. The detail you see in slow motion is always better than real life. What's amazing though is that even when you slow down a hummingbird, those damn birds still seem fast. But ticking down those wings for just a little bit brings out something new in them. They look so graceful!

Bruce Douglas Johnson shot the footage of hummingbirds in a feeder with a RED Epic-M at 225 FPS. More here.

Iridescent Skins Let You Just Tilt To Change Your iPhone’s Color

If you're tired of the iPhone's boring black or white color options, but would also like to avoid a bulky case or letting Colorware have at it with your device, you might want to check out Clear-Coat's new color-changing Aurora skin.

The $35 self-adhesive decal is applied to your iPhone the same way as a screen protector, but it includes panels to cover almost every inch of the device. And thanks to an iridescent finish, the Aurora skin has an ever-changing rainbow tint that lets you customize your iPhone's finish by just moving it about. Don't like orange? Just move two degrees to the right and you'll be happy. More here.

How Much Sugar Really Is in Food?

Sugar is sweet, sugar is delicious, sugar is lovely but sugar can be so terribly bad for you. How much sugar is in foods and drinks you love? Like a soda or orange juice or cereal or even baked beans? Sugar is everywhere! BuzzFeed made a video visualizing the actual grams of sugar in each food and to see the actual snuff is dizzying.

Spiked Ice Tray Lets You Freeze Up Untraceable Weapons

Well this seems kinda irresponsible. Fred & Friends claims this ice tray that produces 14 frozen spikes is actually designed to make your drink more badass—like a spiked collar. But what it's clearly failing to realize is that the tray is also an easy way to create 14 stabbing weapons that leave little to no evidence behind on a warm day. So here's to hoping the bad guys of the world don't have an extra $10 lying around. More here.

Scientists Can Read Dreams Using Brain Scans

A team of scientists claim to have developed techniques which allows them to read dreams via brain scans—and it could help us better understand what goes on in the brain while we sleep.

The team of researchers, from the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, in Kyoto, have been performing MRI scans while people drift into early stages of sleep. Just after participants fall asleep, they are awoken and asked about what they have seen. Each tiny mental image—from bronze statues to ice picks—is recounted and recorded, and the entire process repeated 200 times for each participant.

That gives the scientists a database of images, linked with brain activity, which can be grouped together into similar visual categories. So, cars, trucks and buses might all be linked under the category of vehicles, for instance.

From there, the scientists were able to analyze brain activity while participants slept, and attempt to predict what they were dreaming about. The results, published in Science, show that the researchers could predict what volunteers were seeing—at least at the broad broad category level—with 60 percent accuracy. Not perfect, but pretty impressive. Professor Yukiyasu Kamitani, one of the researchers, explains to the BBC:

"We were able to reveal dream content from brain activity during sleep, which was consistent with the subjects' verbal reports. I had a strong belief that dream decoding should be possible at least for particular aspects of dreaming... I was not very surprised by the results, but excited."

But this is only the start. Crucially, the scientists have only so far considered light sleep—and now the researchers are particularly interested in studying more vivid dreams which occur during deeper sleep. Next stop, Inception. More here.

Chefs of the World Rejoice: Your Days of Painstakingly Dicing Hot Dogs Are Over

Do you hear that? That cheering off in the distance? That's the sound of a million amateur chefs celebrating the fact that they no longer have to spend several minutes dicing hot dogs for their casseroles, easy meatloaf, or awful jello moulds. Because the Dog Dicer can turn a hot dog into a pile of diced processed 'meat' in less than a second.

For just $13 it's not just a one-hit wonder either. You can put everything from grapes, to celery, to cooked carrots under its multi-bladed guillotine and turn it all into a mound of diced, easy to swallow pieces. Dog/other foods Dicer, where have you been all my life? More here.

This Bookshelf Vase Keeps a Rose Next To The Wars of the Roses

Looking for a spot to keep a small flower arrangement that doesn't block people from having conversations at the dinner table? These ultra-thin ceramic vases are designed to stack amongst the books on your shelf so you can keep a rose next to The Wars of the Roses, a daisy next to an orchid next to Wild Orchids. It's available here for $33 in white or blue finishes, and sadly there's no Kindle Edition.

Facebook Home and HTC First

All of Facebook Home's innovations are good, in a vacuum. The gestures being used seem well considered and generally intuitive. But if you've ever tried navigating around an app—say, the Facebook app's sliding panels—on a phone that's more than a year or so old, you'll know where this can go wrong.

The S3 and One X are the oldest models running Home, and those should be more than capable for now. Facebook says it's adding "more devices in the coming months". That probably means just newer models that can handle the software load, but if Home does find its way to your old junker, be advised you might just end up with more Facebook than your phone can handle. More here.

Foldable Rain Boots Are Perfect For Finicky Spring Weather

You wear your rain boots to work, but when you get there, you want to stash them somewhere else. And you know what's good for that? These foldable Japanese wellies ($130).

They were originally designed with Japanese rice farmers in mind, so they can handle a lot of muck and general nastiness. And that's exactly the point of wearing rain boots in the first place. But they're not just durable, they're also compact thanks to the folding feature. That makes the boots extra handy because you can take them with you if there's threat of rain, or squirrel them away if the weather turns in your favor. That's pretty awesome, because rubber doesn't exactly breathe. More here.

This Is (Probably) the New Facebook Phone

Facebook has a big event planned Thursday to show off a new homescreen, reportedly, along with a "midtier" (read: cheap) phone. According to well-known tipster evleaks, this is it. It looks pretty boring, sure, but boring is a billion million times better than Facebook's last gawd awful swing at hardware. Baby steps! More here.

This Could Be the World’s Smallest Night Vision Camera

The CHOBi CAM Pro 3 looks like it's just barely larger than the compact flash memory cards our digital cameras once used, but it's still capable of snapping 11 megapixel stills, and recording full 1080P video. On a full charge you can expect to get an impressive 120 minutes of record time, but that's probably a bit shorter when shooting in the dark since you'll need to switch on the five infrared LEDs surrounding the lens.

And since the camera is so small, when using its night vision capabilities you only have a range of about three feet, but surprisingly the results don't completely suck. Especially since it will only set you back about $54. More here.

You Can Access Dropbox From Inside Yahoo Mail Now

If you're using Yahoo Mail, you don't have to worry about attachment size limits anymore—you can now access your Dropbox from right within your email account.

You can add files from your own Dropbox to any message, and you can save stuff people send you back to Dropbox as well. And the integration does away with file size limits, so you can send giant photo albums around to your family at will. That is, if you are actually using Yahoo Mail. More here.

The Pirate Bay Is Now the World’s Largest File-Sharing Site

While The Pirate Pay is certainly notorious, it's always oddly lingered in the mid-table when it comes to real-world file sharing. No longer, though: according to fresh analysis by Torrent Freak, the site has now sailed into the top spot as the world's most-used file sharing site.

While that is in part down to a gradual increase in the number of people visiting the site, Torrent Freak points out the real reason behind the success is in fact the fall in popularity of one-click hosting sites, like 4Shared, following the shutdown of Megaupload.

Less than two years ago those one-click download sites ruled the roost by a significant margin, and The Pirate Bay sat at a lowly sixth place. But since the Megaupload shutdown, most cyberlockers have implemented measures to keep pirates at bay—and seen a massive decline in user base as a result. Now, half of the top 10 file-sharing sites are BitTorrent-based, compared to just two back in 2011.

The figures—which include just English-language file-sharing sites—were calculated using several traffic comparison and analytic tools, according to Torrent Freak, including Compete, Quantcast and Alexa. You can see the leader table below, or read more over on Torrent Freak.

What If The Sun Disappeared?

This is actually a pretty great thought experiment. At first it might seem kind of pointless to talk about what would happen if the sun vanished, but it doesn't actually result in the immediate destruction of everything. Which is weird. Vsauce walks through a pretty nuanced description of how earth's natural systems would slowly fail, but over weeks and even years, not seconds. The cold would get us in the end, but extremophiles that live in deep sea volcanoes and thermal vents could survive for billions of years.

Scrambling Eggs Inside Its Shells to Make Scrambled Hard Boiled Eggs Looks So Fun

Here's a fun little cooking trick for you to try: scramble eggs inside its shell so that you can make scrambled hard boiled eggs. Meaning the entire egg will be perfectly golden all around. Delicious!

A Sculpture Made of 10,000 Balloons Redefines Balloon Art

Jason Hackensworth is a balloon artist, but not the kind that wears oversized shoes and has been the villain in a 1990 horror movie. He's known for his balloon sculptures of biological forms and creatures, like this anemone-like sculpture, currently on display in the Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

The installation is called Pisces. Made from 10,000-balloons, it's Hackensworth's interpretation of the Greek legend of Aphrodite and her son Eros escaping the monster Typhon by becoming a pair of intertwined fish. The image of the duo was later immortalized in the sky as the constellation Pisces. It took Hackensworth and his team nearly a week to blow up the balloons then weave them all together into this towering creation. Imagine how many balloons popped in the process. Anyway, it came together to create this amazing sculpture, which is on display through April 14. It's much more impressive than your average balloon animal. More here.

A Batman Coffee Table Bruce Wayne Wish He Had

Because we all dreamed about being Bruce Wayne once upon a time (or to this day), here's something you can get that he could never: a batman logo coffee table. Made by Charles Lushear of the Bohemian Workshop, the coffee table is carved from wood with hairpin legs and is a must for any comic book geek still living with his parents or someone who has a really understanding girlfriend (or boyfriend).

The bad news? You can't actually buy the Bat signal coffee table. DC Comics found out about Lushear's beautiful wood work and only allows him to display it on his website. Still, it's comforting knowing that at least one man can pretend to be Bruce Wayne. More here.

With an Arched Bookshelf You’re Never At Risk of an Avalanche

Designer Ivan Zhang has the perfect solution for anyone who's tired of angling the last book on a shelf so the rest of them don't perpetually fall over. Instead of some space-wasting bookend, he's simply added graceful arching shelves to this piece which tasks gravity with keeping them all standing.

The arched shelves also provide structural support, constantly pushing outwards which keeps the folding frame from collapsing when it's set up. And while function is definitely leading the way with this design, form is not far behind since the curved shelves don't look too bad either. More here.

Google Translate Will Now Work Without the Internet on Your Android Phone

Google Translate for Android will now offer downloadable offline language packs. So now when you're staring at a weird sign in a country where you don't speak the language, your phone will actually be able to help you.

This solves one of the hugely obvious problems with the translation app. When you're traveling abroad, you usually don't have access to the Internet. That also happens to be when translations are most useful.

The new language packs will be available in fifty (!) languages. They aren't as comprehensive as the real thing, but you don't need to translate fine literature. You just need to find the bathroom. More here.

A Wooden Chair That’s As Comfy As a Cushion

Whether at school, at the DMV, or at an over-crowded family get-together; we've all done time sitting on a cheap, uncomfortable wooden chair. But it doesn't have to be that way. With just a little flexible polymer added to the mix a wooden chair doesn't need a cushion to be comfy.

J.C. Karich's Rombo Chair is proof of that. The backrest and seat are composed of ash plywood segments connected in a diamond pattern using flexible polymer in between. The results are a chair that's still made of cheap components, but one that flexes under your weight providing an enjoyable spot to sit for a spell. More here.

The Sne Stand Cradles Your iPad In Its Graceful Curve

Each stand is hand-made from Baltic Birch plywood, and in the landscape orientation it holds your iPad at a comfortable 40 degree angle without hindering access to any of its buttons. There are no product shots of it being used in a portrait orientation, but presumably it's not impossible—just not ideal. Only 2,000 of the snes are being produced, which helps explain the $90 price tag for what is essentially a warped piece of wood. More here.

The Next iOS Needs to Look Like This

App Switcher Concept: Multitasking Redesign for iOS from Jesse Head on Vimeo.

Graphene Sponges: The New Lightest Material on the Planet

At this point, it'd be more of a surprise if graphene wasn't an integral part of a mind-bending, record-setting new technology. But, of course, it is. Again. Enter the lightest material in the world: graphene aerogel.

Aerogel is nothing new. All made primarily of air, different flavors of aerogel have been one-upping each other for the title of lightest for years now. The previous record holder was aerographite with a density of 0.18 mg/cm3, and now researchers at China's Zhejiang University have made some aerographene, which takes the crown with a density of 0.16 mg/cm3.

Building chunks of the almost-but-not-quite weightless material involves some high-tech freeze drying that can yield graphene sponges of arbitrary size. Professor Gao Chao, the research team's leader, says the process can easily be scaled up to an order of meters. And aside from being less dense than helium—an acheivement in and of itself—aerographene is extremely resilient and can mop up 900 times its weight in oil, making it potentially indispensable as a clean-up sponge.

The sponges may not be as immediately useful as say, terabit-down graphene antennas, but if/when there's another awful oil-spill, aerographene will be worth far more than its weight in awesomeness. Tack it on to the ever-growing list of graphene craziness. Some sort of graphene immortality can't be that far off, right? More here.

Hollow Fiber Optic Tunnels Can Blast Data at Practically the Speed of Light

We all want faster downloads, and developments like graphene antennas promise a speedy future. There is an upper limit—the speed of light—but that should be fast enough, right? Well a new kind of hollow fiber optic cable promises to get us 99.7 percent of the way there.

Developed by researchers at the University of Southampton in England, the new breed of cables makes use of good old-fashioned air to get the data really cooking. Technically, all fiber optic cables transmit data at the speed of light, but the transfer material can slow that down. And while the speed of light in air isn't close to max speed in a vacuum, it beats typical glass handily. Air-cables are 1,000 better than what we've got now, and can hit speeds of 10 terabytes per second.

Air-filled cables aren't a new idea, but in this iteration researchers have vastly improved the way light is bounced around corners, enabling not only blistering speed, but also reasonably low data loss of 3.5 dB/km. That still adds up at a distance though, so these crazy fast cables are most likely destined for supercomputer and data center applications, for now at least. But it's still a gigantic leap towards the ultimate end-game of high-speed data transmission. Then it's just a matter of rollout. More here.

Finally Someone Stepped Up and Designed A Way To Not Lose MagSafe Adapters

The $10 MagSafe to MagSafe 2 Converter is annoyingly expensive, but it's better than buying new gear. And now for $15 you can adopt an annoyingly expensive, but ingenious way to keep track of the tiny dongle. It's the Apple way.

The MagSafe Adapter Key Ring, created by Jonathan Bobrow, is 3D printed from stainless steel and uses the MagSafe converter's internal magnet to hold everything together. Bobrow claims that the magnet is much stronger than people might think, because usually we create torque from the charger cable to get it off.

There were some blissful years when MagSafes abounded and anyone who had a Macbook could find solace in a stranger at Starbucks if they lost their charger or their way. But in these treacherous, next-gen days only a steady diet of cash and 3D printing can save you. More here.

It Took Five Years To Make a Beautiful Android Phone

Android has become an enormous success in part by appealing to a lot of people who don't prioritize aesthetics. It's no wonder it's been ugly for half a decade. But finally, it's spawned a truly gorgeous object for everyone: the HTC One.

Google's take on phones was never meant to be pretty—it was just supposed to do all the things the iPhone could. All that mattered was that big touchscreen, and Computer Lite™ things like email and internet. And it did! It was rough, but hey, so was the first iPhone.

But as the software advanced into a fantasy cartoon playground for people who care about custom ROMs and spending hours tinkering with settings, the hardware stalled. Every new Android phone was like every other Android phone—and not in an Ah, slight refinement! way. Just a lazy way. Just a, Hey, let's make this part red now way. All smartphones are basically just glass rectangles, but the Android lineage has never cared to be anything more—never put any attention into powdering its pedestrian little face. More here.

You Should Wear a Red Shirt on Your Online Dating Profile

If you want to improve your chance of getting a date on any online dating site, you should wear a red shirt. Slate took a look at various studies comparing the same person wearing different colored clothes and each time, red was the most successful color. Do it. Change your online profile now.

It's like the secretly effective scarlet letter. One study showed a picture of the same woman bordered in different colors and the picture bordered in red was found to be more attractive and sexually appealing. It was the same woman! Another study showed 64 women on online dating sites. Their shirt was rotated between six different colors and red won out again. Slate says:

Twenty-one percent of their emails arrived when they wore red, whereas the other colors-black, white, yellow, green, and blue-attracted 14 to 17 percent of the total.

Moral of the story: wear red. It works for guys too. Read more about why here.

Pepsi’s Plastic Bottle Design Gets a Swirliie

Pepsi has redesigned the shape of its 16-ounce and 20-ounce plastic bottles for the first time in 16 years. Move the arrows on the slider above back and forth to see the a before and after comparison.

The slider isn't meant to be a 1:1 model, of the actual bottle sizes but it gives you an idea of the leaner look Pepsi is going for. The snazzy new shape sure has a refreshing plastic swirl to it, huh? It's more lively than the dated look from 1997.

AdAge reports that the new bottles will begin shipping in April but it could take until the end of the year for the nationwide turnover to be complete. More here.

A Sleek Clock Radio for Rocking out to Top 40 Hits

Maybe you're old fashioned and you just want to listen to the radio sometimes. Here's Lexon Design's Modern Titanium clock to satisfy your old school desires.

The AM/FM radio is $130 on the Fancy right now. Made out of aluminum (even though it has titanium in the name for some reason), it comes in white and black and has an auto-dimmer switch. It's otherwise simple and basic, but sometimes that's what you're going for. More here.

One Little Tweak Makes a Vastly Improved Soap Dispenser

There hasn't been much innovation in the soap dispenser world since self-pumping sensor-activated models entered the picture. But those can easily break and/or run out of batteries rendering their hands-free advantages moot. Which is why the simple design improvements of Joseph Joseph's new C-Pump are so brilliant.

The C-shaped dispenser is still manually operated, but it lets you use the back of your hand, which is presumably not the side that needs cleaning, to help minimize the spread of germs. After all, how often do you really clean the pump dispenser that you touched before washing your hands? The answer is probably never. So if for $27 you don't pass along that cold to someone else, the C-Pump design is more than worth its weight in liquid soap. More here.