It seems that the robot vacuum cleaners that you have at your home not only can pick up the dust and dirt in your home. It can also pick up your private conversations. Computer scientists from NUS have demonstrated this capability through their work which was presented last month at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2020).

The novel method, called LidarPhone, repurposes the Lidar sensor that a robot vacuum cleaner normally uses for navigating around a home into a laser-based microphone to eavesdrop on private conversations.

[...]

The core of the LidarPhone attack method is the Lidar sensor, a device which fires out an invisible scanning laser, and creates a map of its surroundings. By reflecting lasers off common objects such as a dustbin or a takeaway bag located near a person's computer speaker or television soundbar, the attacker could obtain information about the original sound that made the objects' surfaces vibrate. Using applied signal processing and deep learning algorithms, speech could be recovered from the audio data, and sensitive information could potentially be obtained.

Learn more about this over at TechXplore.

Scary.

(Image Credit: National University of Singapore/ TechXplore)

Computerized axial tomography scan, better known as CAT scan, is an imaging technique which combines data from several X-ray scans taken from different angles in order to produce a detailed image of structures inside the body. And then there’s the cat scan, where you put a cat on a scanner and, well, scan it. We do the former for medical purposes, and the latter to alleviate boredom, and possibly for research purposes.

If you have a scanner and a cat at home, and if you have nothing worthwhile to do, then try scanning your cat, just like these people did. Check out the pictures of these cat scans over at Sad and Useless.

(Image Credit: Sad and Useless)

Because why not? Ugly sweaters are still sweaters that will keep you warm this winter season. And if I have to choose between a generic sweater and an ugly sweater, I’ll choose the latter for the sake of nostalgia. And I know I’m not alone when I’m saying this; I know you want an ugly sweater by Microsoft, too.

Available in MS Paint, Windows 95, and Windows XP varieties, the sweaters are pre-orderable in sizes small – XXXL for $70, with a portion of each sale being donated to Girls Who Code, a non-profit dedicated to closing the gender gap in tech. Unfortunately, the sweaters won’t ship until January 29th, 2021...

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Technabob)

Do you want to look sharp? McDonald's of Sweden knows that means that you're heading to the McDonald's branded barbershop in Stockholm. There, you can get the "Golden M" haircut.

Which looks like this. Fox News quotes a McDonald's representative:

“When we realized that people were wearing our Golden Arches, we had to act," said Staffan Ekstam, the marketing director at McDonald’s Sweden. "We started the M Barber Shop not only to guard our Golden M, but also to claim it once and for all. The salon is a celebration dedicated to our beloved ambassadors — a helping hand to guide them on how to keep their M’s in perfect trim, even when we can’t move around as freely as we usually can."

I look forward to a response by the hairstylists at Whataburger.

-via Dave Barry | Photos: McDonald's

A video of a woman getting revenge on another passenger for blocking her passenger seat television went viral on the Internet. Posted on TikTok, the video features a woman’s long blonde hair covering the screen on the back of her seat. The revenge involves chewing gum,  a pair of nail clippers, and a lollipop: 

Since it was posted two weeks ago, the video -- which was captioned “Whose side are you on?!” -- has been viewed more than 106.2 million times. 

Many viewers said they sided with the vengeful passenger, noting how the woman with her hair over the television kept flipping it back.

“I fully support their actions,” one person said. 

“They totally deserved that,” someone else said.

However, other viewers noted that the video was so absurd that it's unlikely to be real. 

“That HAS to be a wig and this is staged,” one commenter wrote. 

Another person added: “Come on that’s a wig!!! Totally staged!!! You think after she flipped it she didn’t feel all that stuff in her hair!”

Several other viewers also said the woman would have noticed the gum and lollipop in her hair. 

Do you think that the video was staged? 

Image screenshot via Fox News 

It’s that time of the year again when you’ll have to think about what gifts you should give to your friends. Fortunately, there are some articles out there on the Internet, such as this one, which might give you great ideas of what to give this season. Engadget suggests 5 DIY kits that make excellent gifts, for both kids and adults who love DIY stuff. Check out the site for more details.

(Image Credit: StackCommerce/ Engadget)

The Zodiac Killer, who murdered at least five people in 1968 and 1969 and claims to have killed many more, sent taunting letters to California newspapers. One of the messages consisted of a series of letters and symbols in a code that no one could decipher. Many tried, and we even posted about a guy who claimed to have solved it in 2011. Now a team of codebreakers operating in three different countries say they have finally deciphered the letter known as cipher Z340. 

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

The FBI has accepted their decryption. The video above explains how they did it. You can read more at the San Francisco Chronicle, or if that's blocked by a paywall, at Zodiac Killer Facts. -via Metafilter

This is the vegan dog leash made by Project Blu, a pet accessory business based in Wales. This leash, unlike other leash, is made from apple skins with an organic polymer. But don’t think that this dog leash is extremely weak just because it’s made of fruit, as this leash is stronger than the ones made of leather. Project Blu has other environment-friendly products aside from the leash, such as collars, harnesses, and even poop-bag handlers.

Through their Kickstarter campaign, they are offering, for a limited time, special early-bird prices available now…

[...]

And, with every sale made, the company plants a tree in partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects to help combat deforestation.

On a mission to remove pollution from the pet industry, Project Blu wants to revolutionize the pet product market offering products that are sustainable, affordable, and built to last.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Project Blu/ Good News Network)

pic.twitter.com/e3N00xCr5i

— Patty Jenkins (@PattyJenks) December 10, 2020

Disney announced a few details about the next Star Wars movie during a livestream Thursday. The movie is already titled Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. It will be directed by Patty Jenkins, who gave us the 2017 movie Wonder Woman. Jenkins posted the above video about the same time as the announcement.

Rogue Squadron is a known entity in Star Wars lore, referred to in comic books and video games, but the plot of the upcoming film is not yet known. It has been said that the story will take place after the events of The Rise of Skywalker, which gives it a blank slate for what happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is scheduled to premiere in 2023. -via Boing Boing

A mummified body buried near the Rio Grande between 1000 and 1400 years ago reveals not only a diagnosis, but his end-of-life care. A microscopic-level study of his digestive tract revealed the cause of death. The man suffered from Chagas disease, a parasite-born condition that led to a fatal case of constipation. With no cure available, his people went to great lengths to care for him.

For the last two to three months of his life in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of modern-day Texas, the man starved. The final meals he did consume seemed to consist entirely of a food that his people rarely relied on for sustenance: grasshoppers. First, though, his family or community took care to pluck the extraneous bits.

"They were taking off the legs," said Karl Reinhard, professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. "So they were giving him mostly the fluid-rich body—the squishable part of the grasshopper. In addition to being high in protein, it was pretty high in moisture. So it would have been easier for him to eat in the early stages of his megacolon experience."

Reinhard studied two other cases of hospice care in North America from hundreds of years ago, revealing how community members would do the very best they could to feed an ailing loved one. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Ryan Wood)

Engineer and madman Colin Furze (previously) had plenty of spare time during lockdown, and so he built a huge trebuchet. This video is about testing it and adjusting the aim. Watch him chuck a washing machine at about five minutes in! And a clothes dryer at 7:30. They also sling a bicycle and a heater, which don't get much distance, but display a lot of destruction, if you're into that sort of thing. -via Digg

Capture the Atlas has 25 winners in its Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition. If that seems generous, the photo above, titled “The Hunt’s Reward” by Ben Maze is an image of the Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights, taken in Tasmania.

Captured in this image is a trifecta of astronomical phenomena that made for some of the best astrophotography conditions one can witness in Australia, namely, the setting Milky Way galactic core, zodiacal light, and of course, the elusive Aurora Australis. On top of this, a sparkling display of oceanic bioluminescence adorned the crashing waves, adding the cherry on top to what was already a breathtaking experience.

The photo below, “Turbulunce,” was captured by John Weatherby in Iceland.   

The forecast on this night was for a solar storm, and it did not disappoint. After the first sign of green in the sky, the group decided to book it out to the Sólheimasandur plane wreck. It was a group effort, but we managed to light the plane from the inside with two colored LED lights that a participant brought. Hearing the group’s screams in the dark from seeing a KP6 aurora for the very first time was something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

That's only two of the 25 fantastical images you can see and read about in the winner's gallery at Capture the Atlas. -via Kottke

As you clean the cobwebs from the corners, you can take comfort in the fact that the ISS has spiders, too. Those are experimental spiders, deliberately taken aboard to see how space conditions affect web-building. In fact, spiders have flown into space for more than ten years, but now it appears there is a breakthrough in our understanding of the way orb spiders build webs in microgravity. From the research paper: 

Under natural conditions, Trichonephila spiders build asymmetric webs with the hub near the upper edge of the web, and they always orient themselves downwards when sitting on the hub whilst waiting for prey. As these asymmetries are considered to be linked to gravity, we expected the spiders experiencing no gravity to build symmetric webs and to show a random orientation when sitting on the hub. We found that most, but not all, webs built in zero gravity were indeed quite symmetric. Closer analysis revealed that webs built when the lights were on were more asymmetric (with the hub near the lights) than webs built when the lights were off. In addition, spiders showed a random orientation when the lights were off but faced away from the lights when they were on. We conclude that in the absence of gravity, the direction of light can serve as an orientation guide for spiders during web building and when waiting for prey on the hub.

It appears that in the absence of sufficient gravity, the spiders saw the light source as a substitute for "up." Read a short version of the study's findings, plus a look at previous experiments with spiders in space at Gizmodo. 

(Image credit: Richard Fuller)

Among the Thousand Islands (actually more than 1,500) at the headwaters of the St. Lawrence River between Ontario and New York is a tiny island named Just Enough Room Island. It's a privately owned summer resort that has just enough room for the single house that was built on it. Atlas Obscura describes it:

[..] Just Room Enough Island was purchased in the 1950s by the Sizeland family who were looking to create a holiday get away. They built a house on the tiny speck of land placing the walls right up to the edges of the island, creating a home that was just big enough to fit, and giving the island its quirky name. A pair of bench chairs were placed in front of the home and there was also a tree growing on one side. And that is all the room the island had.

Photo: Omegatron

Picture-taking will always be a part of any event in any season, so it would be great if you know some tricks that will help you take better photos. And if you’re someone who plans on improving your photography skills this holiday season, then you might consider attending the Nikon School Online classes. Until December 31, Nikon is offering their classes at the best price: free!

… you can stream all 11 of their photography courses just by signing up with your email.

They’ve added a class on how to take better holiday photos to their original lineup of 10—which also features courses on the fundamentals of photography as well as others focused on creating video content, landscape photography, portraiture, macro photography, and even how to photograph children and pets. Each one is taught by industry professionals and offers practical tips, tools, and lessons that will have you taking better shots in no time.

“The holidays are for making memories, and Nikon is meant for capturing them,” says the company. “Come by for ideas, insider tips, and the technical advice to help you get your best holiday shots ever—the more the merrier!”

You can stream all Nikon School Online classes on the company's website.

Nice!

(Image Credit: PIRO4D/ Pixabay)