2014: The Year in Photos, September-December

A protester holds her hands up in front of a police car in Ferguson, Missouri, on November 25, 2014 during demonstrations a day after violent protests and looting following the grand jury decision in the fatal shooting of a 18-year-old black teenager Michael Brown. Protest marches sprang up in cities across the US on November 25, amid a tense security operation in Ferguson, the Missouri town at the center of the country’s latest racially-charged stand-off.





via In Focus
2014: The Year in Photos, September-December

New Hot Tub Time Machine Trailer? New Hot Tub Time Machine Trailer!

Having conquered the demons of their past in 1986; our plucky heroes from Hot Tub Time Machine are living the good life in a modern world of their own making. But sometimes leaving well enough alone just isn’t good enough so it’s back into the hot tub for Nick, Lou, and Jacob for another riotous romp through space-time. This time, however, they’re going back…to the future!

via Gizmodo
New Hot Tub Time Machine Trailer? New Hot Tub Time Machine Trailer!

Hear the terrifying sound of the A-10 tank killer’s gun in an attack run

Hear the terrifying sound of the A-10 tank killer's gun in an attack run

This video contains one of the most terrifying human-produced sounds you can hear in the planet: The screaming noise from hell of an A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8 Avenger gatling gun. Some of the very few who were on its reticle and survived say its banshee scream was the worst thing they have ever heard.

It is a demonic sound indeed.


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via Gizmodo
Hear the terrifying sound of the A-10 tank killer’s gun in an attack run

Replace a Lost Apple ID Recovery Key Before You’re Locked Out

Replace a Lost Apple ID Recovery Key Before You're Locked Out

Apple’s two-factor authentication is great, but like other services, it relies on a Recovery Key when you get locked out. Without that key, you can’t access your account if it’s hacked. The Next Web learned this the hard way.

The Next Web’s Owen Williams was locked out of his Apple ID and didn’t have his Recovery Key. If you’re using two-factor authentication, this is almost as bad as losing your phone. The Recovery Key is your safeguard to prove that you’re you—if someone attempts and fails to get into your Apple account, the only way back in is with the Recovery Key. Without your Recovery Key, you’re locked out of your Apple ID for good and all your purchases are gone. Apple makes this abundantly clear when you sign up for two-factor authentication, but if you somehow missed this memo, you can get a new Recovery Key pretty easily:

  1. Go to the Apple ID page and log in.
  2. Click "Password and Security"
  3. Click "Replace Lost Key" and click Next
  4. Make sure you actually print or save your key somewhere safe this time

You can only generate a new Recovery Key if you have access to your account, so do it now while you still can. Head over to The Next Web for William’s whole story.

The dark side of Apple’s two-factor authentication | The Next Web


via Lifehacker
Replace a Lost Apple ID Recovery Key Before You’re Locked Out

Reminder: Gift Cards Are Tax-Free, So Make Sure You Don’t Get Charged

Reminder: Gift Cards Are Tax-Free, So Make Sure You Don't Get Charged

Gift cards are a great way to get someone exactly what they want without giving them straight cash— and there are many ways to save on them. Here’s a tip to save some cash: Remember that gift cards are tax-free, so make sure you don’t get accidentally charged.

NerdWallet explains:

A final tip to getting the best deal: Gift cards aren’t subject to taxes in any state in the country, but it does occasionally happen that customers are charged tax nonetheless. If this happens to you (whether by accident or on purpose), let your cashier or online retailer know and demand the refund you’re entitled to.

For more ways to save on gift cards, check out the full post linked below.

How to Get Gift Cards for Less | NerdWallet

Image from 401(k) 2012.


via Lifehacker
Reminder: Gift Cards Are Tax-Free, So Make Sure You Don’t Get Charged

Access Your Mac’s Hidden Paint Program In Preview

Access Your Mac's Hidden Paint Program In Preview

Preview is awesome for a number of reasons, and writer Dave Winer points out that it also makes a great paint program.

While you can’t create new works of art using just Preview, it is a more powerful editor than it looks at a glance. Just open up any image in Preview, click the toolbox icon, and you’ll get a bunch of editing tools. You can easily make backgrounds transparent, annotate images, draw whatever you want as an image, and more. Preview doesn’t have the charm of MS Paint, but it does a bit more than you’d think.

A hidden Mac paint program | Scripting News


via Lifehacker
Access Your Mac’s Hidden Paint Program In Preview

Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco

Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco

Brittle, anemic Helvetica is simply not a good choice as a default display font Apple’s operating system. That’s why I’m pretty excited about this little trick to replace Helvetica Neue (the standard font that comes with Yosemite) with San Francisco, Apple’s new typeface designed in-house for the Apple Watch.

As you’ll remember, we first laid eyes on San Francisco when the Apple Watch was unveiled, although we didn’t know its name yet. All we knew is that it was efficient and effortlessly readable at tiny sizes. Apple claimed they’d developed the typeface in-house, but didn’t reveal more about the typeface itself until a few months later.

Now, San Francisco, as it’s called, is available for Apple Watch developers, so Github user Wells Riley put together an easy way to install San Francisco as the default display typeface on your Yosemite-running Mac.

Helvetica was designed decades before the computer and its thin, willowy letterforms were never the right choice for someone squinting at a screen all day. San Francisco was not only developed explicitly for a screen but also for a very, very small one, meaning that it reads even better at the slightly larger size you’ll see on your monitor.

I made the swap and here’s what I see. Before, with Helvetica Neue all over the place (hit expand to see at full size):

Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco

And after, with San Francisco:

Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco

And an additional side-by-side comparison. Before:

Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco

After:

Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco

And in animated form:

Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco

I can tell you as someone who has done my fair share of screen-squinting that this upgrade is absolutely welcome. Something about the slightly elongated letters and a little extra internal space makes all the difference (and the @ sign is just lovely—a revelation). Now I’d like the same fix for my iPhone. Maybe Apple will roll out a version of San Francisco optimized for the next OS? Change can’t come soon enough. [GitHub, h/t to Nate Schulman]

via Gizmodo
Trust Us, Change Your Yosemite Font From Helvetica to San Francisco