From the "what could go wrong?" department:
A startup claims it has launched weather balloons that may have released reflective sulfur particles in the stratosphere, potentially crossing a controversial barrier in the field of solar geoengineering.
Just explore this incredible isometric pixel art world in your browser. Filled with tons of little details and references.
An 8-bit accordion made from two Commodore 64s and some floppy disks. It sounds amazing.
An interesting theory on the Sapient Paradox, the question of why civilization came to be so late in the human species' evolution. We're about 200.000 years old but civilization is closer to 20.000.
The author posits that reputation/gossip control in small groups was the limiter to growth and that the structure of civilization helped dampen this need. However, social media has brought this "gossip trap" back on a worldwide level, risking a return to government by reputation.
I doubt things can be attributed to single causes like this but it's a compelling (and long) read.
There’s a universal rule that smoke alarms will always start bleeping out their low battery warning in the middle of the night.
Dries Depoorter built software to scan online public cameras and link them to geotagged instagram posts from the same location. Basically finding people from a single instagram photo and potentially tracking them across any public (or not) camera out there. Technically impressive, yet disturbing.
There was a video on the page too, but it seems to have been pulled due to a copyright claim from Earthcam who, I imagine, weren't very happy about their cameras being used for this.
