A Bizarre WWII-Era Supermaterial Made of Ice Is Making a Comeback

A Bizarre WWII-Era Supermaterial Made of Ice Is Making a Comeback

Steel was in short supply during the height of World War II, and there was nothing to be done but invent a replacement. One proposal was called Pykrete, a mixture of ice and sawdust that melted incredibly slowly. The idea faded away once the war ended—but now, a group of Finnish architects and engineers are reviving it. In a big, big way.

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via Gizmodo
A Bizarre WWII-Era Supermaterial Made of Ice Is Making a Comeback

KnifeRights.org Launches Legal Blade App – Mini Review Included

knife2KnifeRight.org has released a new app designed to help those with knives to navigate the legal quagmire of knife laws that are out there.  But there are two problems that I have with the app.  First and foremost, its a $1.99 app in the Google Play store.  Not all that much in terms of what […]

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The post KnifeRights.org Launches Legal Blade App – Mini Review Included appeared first on The Firearm Blog.


via The Firearm Blog
KnifeRights.org Launches Legal Blade App – Mini Review Included

BitTorrent Shows You What The Internet Looks Like Without Net Neutrality; Suggests A Better Way

If you’ve been following the whole net neutrality fight for a while, the following graphic may be familiar to you — showing what a potential "cable-ized" world the internet would become without strong protections for net neutrality:

At some point, someone created a similar version, that was specific to AT&T:
A little while ago, however, someone took the joke even further, and set up a website for a fake broadband provider, asking people to Join the Fastlane!, and it was pretty dead on in terms of what such a site might look like:
I particularly like this bit:
It’s now come out that this campaign (along with some associated billboards) has been put together by BitTorrent Inc., not all that different than the company’s billboard campaign against the NSA. Along with this, BitTorrent has put out a blog post explaining, in part, how we got here, but more importantly how we need to start thinking about a better way to handle internet traffic to avoid the kind of future described above.

The key issue: building a more decentralized internet:

Many smart researchers are already thinking about this problem. Broadly speaking, this re-imagined Internet is often called Content Centric Networking. The closest working example we have to a Content Centric Network today is BitTorrent. What if heavy bandwidth users, say, Netflix, for example, worked more like BitTorrent?

If they did, each stream — each piece of content — would have a unique address, and would be streamed peer-to-peer. That means that Netflix traffic would no longer be coming from one or two places that are easy to block. Instead, it would be coming from everywhere, all at once; from addresses that were not easily identified as Netflix addresses — from addresses all across the Internet.

To the ISP, they are simply zeroes and ones.

All equal.

There’s obviously a lot more to this, but it’s good to see more and more people realizing that one of the fundamental problems that got us here is the fact that so much of the internet has become centralized — and, as such, can be easily targeted for discrimination. Making the internet much more decentralized is a big step in making it so that discrimination and breaking net neutrality aren’t even on the table.

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via Techdirt.
BitTorrent Shows You What The Internet Looks Like Without Net Neutrality; Suggests A Better Way

Crack the Price Tag Codes for Major Retailers with This Cheat Sheet

Crack the Price Tag Codes for Major Retailers with This Cheat Sheet

The "secret" price codes used by popular retailers signal whether the price is as low as it’ll get or if it might go even lower. We’ve rounded up several retailers’ codes before, but here’s an even bigger list, which you can print out and keep in your wallet.

The list is compiled by the Rather Be Shopping blog and its informants. Retailers covered include American Eagle Outfitters, JCPenney, Kohl’s, Land’s End, and others we haven’t seen before. Here’s the printable cheat sheet:

Crack the Price Tag Codes for Major Retailers with This Cheat Sheet

Head to Rather Be Shopping for more details. The post is constantly being updated by Kyle James, so it might be worth revisiting in the future if your favorite store isn’t on the list.

Retailer’s Big Secret: Crack the Price Tag Code | Rather Be Shopping

Photo by paulswansen.


via Lifehacker
Crack the Price Tag Codes for Major Retailers with This Cheat Sheet

Living Off Grid in a Boeing 727

Living off the grid requires planning, investing and thinking outside the box. Such is the case for Bruce Campbell (not that Bruce Campbell), an electrical engineer who has made a home in a renovated Boeing 727. Yep, you read that right. Unique homes made out of reclaimed materials aren’t a new concept, but Campbell’s execution of[…..]
via AllOutdoor.com
Living Off Grid in a Boeing 727