How many ways to soften butter can you think of? Off the top of my head, I can name the lazy cold-butter-on-really-hot-toast style, the precarious microwave method (unless done right), and well… that’s the extent of my experience from preparing butter on toast for breakfast. But there’s plenty more uses for melting butter other than breakfast (as I just learned), in particular for baking cakes and cookies:

If it’s not soft enough, the butter won’t cream well with the sugar (frequently the first step of baking recipes); it simply won’t get to the right light and fluffy consistency. And that could result in dense cake layers that fall flat. On the other hand, if your butter is too soft, your cookies will spread out all over your pan.

These butter-ficionados made it their mission to find out which softening methods work best and how long do they take. Oh, and by ‘softened’ they mean that the butter “easily bends without breaking and gives slightly when pressed.” 

Here are the results for your educational enjoyment. Follow the The Kitchn for more!

Photo: Pixabay

It’s pretty much inevitable that you’d come across an article like this as the year draws to an end. Not to mention it’s the season where some adults make frantically searching online for ‘the best gift to give a loved one’ look like a sport.

The top suggested tech products of 2019 are here. And sitting at #1 is the eyeglasses that has music playing and wireless calling capabilities and looks like it came straight out of a modern spy movie. Also making it to the top are: a Robot Unicorn that helps you learn coding, a ultralight drone that can technically fit in the palm of a hand, and a cordless vacuum that's slightly cheaper than its rival counterpart. 

Check out The Guardian for the full article. 

Photo: Bose Corporation

If you happen to be lurking the web and are interested to learn more about photography, try this list of various photography-related links that cover a range of topics including How To’s, People’s Choice Photos, Tips & Techniques, and Sample Shots.

In this weeks list of hand-curated links we find tutorials, special features and great photography to learn from and enjoy, all brought to us by some of the best people working in the field today.

There are useful suggestions for both the beginner and the hobbyist. You can learn what aperture settings pros recommend for maximum image quality. And the list isn’t limited to any one kind of style of photography, but allows you to access information about many other categories, even the fun and light style. 

I find the tutorials on holiday-themed photos particularly timely. Head over to the full article here. 

Photo: pxhere

A Kickstarter campaign is crowdsourcing funds for their ‘intelligent’ indoor dog toilet known as “INUBOX: The First Fully Automated Dog Toilet.” 

Clean, smart, heavy-duty & modern design. INUBOX captures, processes & contains liquid and solid dog waste in a hygienic way. After each use, it releases a treat for your dog’s training. Our patented process prevents bad odors & delivers an eco-friendly sealed bag for disposal. INUBOX is THE next step for your smart home.

The INUBOX comes with several unique features including a fragrance dispenser, multiple senors (weight, ultra sound, and thermal), touch screen, anti-scratch powder coating, and an automatic system for clean and efficient waste removal.

What do you think about this project? 

Check out their story here. You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

(Image credit: Inubox via Kickstarter)

Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs has now a stage editor feature thanks to the new update of the said VR game. This update lets players to be creative with their pig-destroying mischief.

This is the first-ever level builder for the series, according to developer Resolution Games. Players can place blocks, planks of wood, explosives and pigs in an environment, setting up challenging structural puzzles or cathartic domino-effect demolitions.

Resolution Games hopes to release an online version of the stage editing mode next year. This would allow players to share their creations with others and compete for titles like the most difficult and creative levels, or the highest score.

Angry Birds just got more fun!

(Image Credit: Resolution Games)

For the first time ever, determining whether the person behind a wall is the same person who appears in a given video footage, using only a pair of WiFi transceivers outside, is now possible, thanks to researchers from UC Santa Barbara.

This novel video-WiFi cross-modal gait-based person identification system, which they refer to as XModal-ID (pronounced Cross-Modal-ID), could have a variety of applications, from surveillance and security to smart homes. For instance, consider a scenario in which law enforcement has a video footage of a robbery. They suspect that the robber is hiding inside a house. Can a pair of WiFi transceivers outside the house determine if the person inside the house is the same as the one in the robbery video? Questions such as this have motivated this new technology.

More details about this study over at The Current.

(Video Credit: Mostofi Lab/ YouTube)

‘Oumuamua, the much-discussed interstellar space rock, is best viewed as a comet with strange properties and not as an alien space probe, astronomers at Yale and Caltech suggest.

The space rock is the first macroscopic object of clear interstellar origin that can be seen within Earth’s solar system. It has been traveling through space for millions of years before it entered the Solar System. It has a length of 900 feet.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii first discovered ‘Oumuamua on Oct. 19, 2017, more than a month after it passed its closest point to the Sun. They named the object after the Hawaiian word for “scout.”

In the months since then, ‘Oumuamua’s behavior has baffled astronomers. For example, the object has showed a small but persistent acceleration that could not be explained simply by the Sun’s gravitational pull. As observations came in, there were a number of reclassifications and revisions to theories: It was classified as a comet, then as an asteroid, and finally as an interstellar object. Theories about its origin include everything from being a planetary fragment to a spaceship.

Check out more details about this weird space object over at Yale News.

(Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

How would you respond to a rude customer? A thread about a highschooler who works weekends at a coffee shop has gained popularity on Reddit’s AITA. According to this recent post, the employee thought it would be a fun idea to get back at rude customers by asking the shift manager to pretend-fire her after a hot headed customer made a complaint about the coffee not being hot enough. 

Redditors on the r/AITA thread generally had mixed judgements on the situation, with some saying she was wrong for causing a big fuss and being unprofessional, others criticizing the customer and justifying her prank, and still there were those who said both the employee and customer suck. 

Read the original article from Bored Panda, they also share helpful suggestions from the “How to be Barista Guide.”

Photo freestocks.org / Pexels

Technology giants such as Facebook Inc. and Google will have to agree to new rules to ensure that they won’t abuse their market power and hurt their competition, the Australian government said, or else they will impose new controls over these tech giants.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will create a code of conduct to address complaints that the technology companies have a stronghold on advertising, the main income generator of local media operators.

The guidelines will ensure substantial market power is not used to lessen competition in media and advertising services markets.

[...]

The move tightens the regulatory screws on the online platforms, which have governments from the United States to Europe scrambling to address concerns ranging from anti-trust issues to the spread of “fake news” and hate speech.

The Australian government stated that the technology companies would need to agree to the new rules by November 2020 or it will be imposed upon them.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

According to a report which was jointly published by Goumin.com and Pet Fair Asia, urban residents in China have spent an estimated total of 202.4 billion yuan (about $28.8 billion USD).

The Chinese pet industry states that the number of pet cats and dogs kept by the Chinese urban residents is projected to reach nearly 100 million.

The number of pet dogs and cats kept by urban residents in China is projected to reach nearly 100 million, an 8.4-percent increase from a year ago, according to the study on China’s pet industry.

“I purchased tinned cat food from the United States, New Zealand, Japan and Thailand, and meat paste made from drumsticks, ox liver and pork to provide better nutrition and flavor,” a 28-year old woman said about her two cats.

I guess our love for animals can be seen anywhere and everywhere around the world.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Apple’s brand new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR are now available in Australia, and, if you add all the optional extras, buying one would cost you around a whopping $100,000. Buying it, however, would ensure that you have the best Apple computer there might be up to this day.

But in truth the components here are completely unnecessary for anything but the most intensive creative professional tasks like video game and VR development or 3D animation.

Find out more about the Apple Pro and the monitor, as well as the add-ons you might consider having, over at The Sydney Morning Herald.

(Image Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)

Archaeologists worked from 2011 to 2016 at a site called Beta Samati in Ethiopia. They uncovered a Christian church, a basilica to be exact, from the fourth century CE, which is when Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity. That makes it the oldest Christian church in sub-Saharan Africa. The site is only 30 miles from the ancient city of Aksum, the capital of the Aksumite kingdom, which controlled trade between most of Africa and the rest of the world.  

The excavators’ biggest discovery was a massive building 60 feet long and 40 feet wide resembling the ancient Roman style of a basilica. Developed by the Romans for administrative purposes, the basilica was adopted by Christians at the time of Constantine for their places of worship. Within and near the Aksumite ruins, the archaeologists also found a diverse array of goods, from a delicate gold and carnelian ring with the image of a bull’s head to nearly 50 cattle figurines—clearly evidence of pre-Christian beliefs.

They also uncovered a stone pendant carved with a cross and incised with the ancient Ethiopic word “venerable,” as well as incense burners. Near the eastern basilica wall, the team came across an inscription asking “for Christ [to be] favorable to us.”

Read more about the dig and what has been discovered there at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ioana Dumitru)

It's nice to see something focused on the good things that happened this year. That's an inspiring video, but to find out what people really searched for in 2019, check out the Google Trend report for 2019. Spoiler: the number one search term was Disney Plus. You can see by this graph that interest peaked during the week the service launched, and not when Baby Yoda first appeared.

A drug regularly used as an alternative to opioid painkillers might restore limb function to people who suffer have suffered spinal injuries, a new study by Ohio State University suggests. The drug is Gabapentin, which is also known by the brand name Neurontin.

Once a person suffers a spinal cord injury, a protein in the body can prevent the long, slender extensions of nerve cells, called axons, from regrowing. Gabapentin, OSU researchers found, might stop that protein from interfering with the regrowth of cells after an injury.

“What we found was quite surprising,” said Andrea Tedeschi, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Ohio State who co-authored the study. “The results of this study are very exciting, and this opens a number of possibilities.”

Learn more about the study over at The Columbus Dispatch.

(Image Credit: qimono/ Pixabay)

People in Thailand are in an uproar online since they heard that an unnamed all-female school has banned their students from having bangs. The policy of the aforementioned school was first broadcasted online on December 10 by the Education for Liberation of Siam, a student activist group.

The non-profit academic reformation community posted an image of the school's "contract" that were meant to be signed by students and their parents to show they agree to the ban.

In the description of the post, it describes the body of the contract.

"I (parent name) am the parent of (student name) who has acted wrongly," the contract reads. "I consent to the school carrying out regulations according to the rules without any arguments or conditions."

Students who do have bangs are required to pin them back using black hairpins at all times. There were no reasons given for the no bangs rule other than it's supposedly to help students stay tidy.

Many Facebook users are commenting on how ridiculous the bangs ban is.

(Image Credit: Facebook)