Hilarious recording of (update: fake) telemarketer talking to a loop, if enough people did this companies might give up trying to sell things to us over the phone.

Many people on the Internet (including me from time to time) seem to have too much time on their hands. This page analyses a song in which Kate Bush sings the digits of Pi and finds out that she is actually referring to a ring of trees.

This discovery of the ring of trees at the precise location that I decoded from the song completes the quick verification that there is indeed hidden information in the song, and that I am not chasing illusions.

[Via b3ta]

In addition to Plasma Pong, there’s also Paddle Power. It’s a single player game that adds a new dimension to Pong.

[Via b3ta]

Improv everywhere has done some very funny things: sending 80 people into Best Buy dressed like the staff, suddenly moving in slow motion while shopping and creating a time loop.

Venice from above and San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

[Via reddit]

TrackMeNot is a browser extension that protects web-searchers against surveillance and data-profiling. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e. covering one’s trail), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are essentially hidden in plain view.

I thought this Firefox extension was a great idea. The only problem was that it had a pretty limited word lists and it’s searches weren’t very human. What it really needed was a database of real search engine queries. Where could you find such data? Oh yes, AOL. So I’ve made a new version which uses about 40,000 AOL queries (you need to uninstall any previous TrackMeNot first).

It also uses the sequence which AOL searchers used, which looks realistic (eg “john smiht” and then “john smith”). I have also changed it to only target Google rather than MSN, Yahoo and AOL.

Note that it may search for anything an AOL user searched for, including many things you do not wish to be associated with, and the search will come from your computer! It is also incomplete and not very tested so use it entirely at your own risk.

I am sorry for the lack of recent posts. This trend is set to continue as I’ll be away over the next week. Normal service should resume before September.

Apologetically,
Splasho

I’ve seen a similar video to this before but was unable to track it down. A stroboscope is used to control the apparent rate of falling drops, slowing them down and then reversing them. I particular like the fact that they interact with the drops.

Goggles is a very enjoyable flight simulator using Google Maps images. I flew over my house!

Find out.

I’ve just created a conveyor belt which shows the rate at which babies are being born around the world - more than four each second. It’s amazing to contemplate. You can also enable an option to display the continent on which they were born and watch Asia grow. It uses data provided by the United Nations.

I’ve always wanted to write code with the function MakeBaby().

Update: this may also be of interest.