We all want to save money, and I think that’s why we’re always into promos, deals, and discounts. With that in mind, Uber Eats Japan offers a great deal to its citizens: a 35% off the cost of your food.

All you have to do is utilize the app’s omochikaeri option when ordering.

And what’s omochikaeri mean? “Pickup.” In other words, Uber Eats is offering the discount to customers who are willing to go pick up their order themselves.

It’s pretty much a complete role reversal for a company whose whole business model is “give us money and we’ll bring you food,”...

But does this mean Uber Eats is unnecessary, or the same as just ordering takeout? Not really.

As strange as the promotion may be, a discount is still a discount, and since using the self-pickup option means you’re not paying any service or delivery fee, the entire discount is extra money in your pocket compared to placing an ordinary non-Uber Eats takeout order. Essentially you use Uber Eats as an ordering app in order to get the discount (which caps at 1,000 yen [US$9.50], which would be your discount for an order of 2,857 yen or more). Uber Eats itself also points out that placing your order through its app cuts down on time spent waiting in line and for your order to be cooked, since it’ll be ready and waiting for you at the counter (or fried chicken locker, if you’re ordering from certain Tokyo KFC branches).

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Uber Eats/ SoraNews 24)

Impossible Foods is no longer just focused on creating alternative meat products. The company has recently announced at a press conference that they are planning on creating plant-based milk. That’s right. Artificial milk, and they will call it Impossible Milk.

According to the company, it is not designed to be just another soy milk or nut-based milk alternative. Instead, it’s designed to function and behave just like the animal-derived cow’s milk.

In a demonstration from the company’s food lab, a researcher showed samples of Impossible Milk side by side [with] other plant-based milks like almond milk and soy milk, to show that the Impossible Milk looks much more like cow milk than the others. According to her, Impossible Milk is designed to be just as creamy as regular milk, and will not curdle in hot beverages like other plant-based milks will. She demonstrated this by mixing it in a cup of hot coffee, and it did not appear to curdle. Impossible Milk can also apparently be frothed just regular milk.

[...]

Impossible Milk is still very much in the development phase, and won’t be available for consumers any time soon.

More details about this over at Engadget.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Impossible Foods/ Engadget)

Thinking of a way to make wearing face masks “more pleasant and approachable”, Danish design studio Hej decided to create this set of face masks made out of food. While these face masks are not designed to protect you from infectious germs in the air, they sure do give one a more approachable look. But maybe you can wear one of these over a regular face mask.

Well, what do you think?

Via Laughing Squid

(Image Credit: Hejstudio_/ Instagram)

Losing someone, even a pet, is tough. Some people take a long time to accept their departure and move on. A woman from Cedar Falls, Iowa, lost her precious cat Mr. Tufts some time ago, leaving her in mourning. However, she decided to get a new cat that looks exactly like her previous furry companion. It’s not coincidence, because her new cat is a clone of the previous one, as Oddee details: 

ViaGen Pets is a pet cloning and genetic preservation company. They have extensive experience in cloning animals. The firm’s helped preserve the endangered Przewalski’s horse through cloning, for example.

Christman and the cat lady contacted ViaGen after Mr. Tufts had passed, asking about the possibility of cloning him. The company said that they could definitely do it, but it would cost the cat’s owner dearly.

Sounds like a deal with the devil, but no eternal souls were exchanged in this transaction. Only cold, hard cash. A total of $35,000 worth of it.

Apparently, no price was too high for our cat owner, since she coughed up the money. Christman sent the extracted genetic material over to ViaGen, and their experts got to work.

Melain Rodriguez, ViaGen’s client services manager, said they replaced the nucleus of a female cat’s egg with one of the frozen cells from Mr. Tufts. Then, they joined the egg and cell together and transferred the whole shebang to surrogate cat mother.

After a normal feline pregnancy and birth, Mr. Tufts Jr. entered the world.

Image via Oddee 

Maybe this program can help our archaeologists and historians to decipher old artifacts inscribed with a language they haven’t encountered or deciphered yet. The system’s creators, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), claim that the program can decipher a lost language without knowledge of its relation to other languages, as VentureBeat details: 

This CSAIL work, which was supported in part by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity and spearheaded by MIT professor Regina Barzilay, a specialist in natural language processing, leverages several principles grounded in insights from historical linguistics. For instance, while a given language rarely adds or deletes a sound, certain sound substitutions are likely to occur. A word with a “p” in the parent language may change into a “b” in the descendant language, but changing to a “k” is less likely due to the significant pronunciation gap.

By incorporating these and other linguistic constraints, Barzilay and Luo developed a decipherment algorithm that can handle the vast space of transformations and the scarcity of a signal in the input. The algorithm learns to embed language sounds into a multidimensional space where differences in pronunciation are reflected in the distance between corresponding vectors. This design enables the system to capture patterns of language change and express them as computational constraints. The resulting model can segment words in an ancient language and map them to counterparts in a related language.

With the new system, the relationship between languages is inferred by the algorithm; the algorithm can assess the proximity between two languages. Moreover, when tested on known languages, it can accurately identify language families.

Image via VentureBeat 

NASA announced plans to put 4G Internet on the moon. That’s right, the Internet is no longer an Earth-exclusive technology. NASA will partner with Nokia, designating the company as its official cellular provider. Maybe astronauts can now post selfies or statuses straight from the moon, as Paper Magazine details: 

Nokia is expected to upgrade to 5G from 4G over time, allowing astronauts to communicate through audio and video calls, among other things. The use of their internet and wireless communication will help with data transmission, including command and control functions, remote navigation of lunar robots, streaming high-definition video in space, exchanging biometric data, etc.

In a statement, Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer at Nokia, detailed the company's plans for moon mobile phone network technology: "Leveraging our rich and successful history in space technologies, from pioneering satellite communication to discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation produced by the Big Bang, we are now building the first ever cellular communications network on the Moon," he explains, "Reliable, resilient and high-capacity communications networks will be key to supporting sustainable human presence on the lunar surface."

Ultimately, according to Nokia, their and NASA's shared goal is to "deploy the first LTE/ 4G communications system in space" and "help pave the way towards sustainable human presence on the lunar surface."

Image via Paper Magazine 

Sure, perhaps a roach will be able to survive the radiation of a nuclear war. But can it take a 5.56 caliber round? Nope. Perhaps, though, this living tank can. It's called the diabolical ironclad beetle (Phloeodes diabolicus). You can drive a car right over it. The New York Times (sorry, but it's paywalled) reports:

In 2015, Jesus Rivera filmed a very unusual science experiment for posterity.

On the asphalt of a sun-soaked parking lot, he placed a mottled black beetle on a pillow of dirt and had a colleague run it over with a Toyota Camry. Twice.

Just about any other bug would have died. This one, a species called Phloeodes diabolicus, did not.

“Yeah, it’s still alive,” Dr. Rivera narrated matter-of-factly, as he prodded the still-intact beetle on the video. “It’s playing dead. But it’s still alive.”

Bashed beneath the wheels of a 3,500-pound sedan, the inch-long insect made it through without a scratch. It was a seemingly impossible physical puzzle that Dr. Rivera spent his doctoral career obsessively trying to solve.

Rivera's research revealed that this bug can withstand the force of 39,000 times its own weight. How? Through a multi-faceted armor system that would be an engineering marvel if it wasn't the result of evolution:

The ironclad’s exoskeleton, they found, was packed with proteins that seemed to enhance its durability.

It was also cleverly structured: Evolved from a pair of now-defunct forewings, the exoskeleton stretched across the insect’s back and hooked into a separate structure sheathing the insect’s belly, encasing the beetle in a shell with an airy buffer underneath.

Dr. Rivera compared the arrangement to an industrial-strength egg, with the yolk sloshing gently against a cushion of whites. “You can compress the shell without the yolk, or the organs, getting squished,” he said. Pressed from above, the exoskeleton would bow out slightly at the sides with just enough strength and flexibility to protect the delicate tissues within.

And where the two halves of the exoskeleton met atop the insect’s back, they interlocked like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “That provides strength at this interface,” Dr. Kisailus said.

A closer look at the exoskeleton’s interlocking lobes also revealed they each had an internal Russian doll architecture — a series of concentric layers that faithfully mirrored the shapes that contained them.

“Having these layers helps toughen the joint,” said Talia Moore, a roboticist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan who wasn’t involved in the study. “It allows some of the stress to be dissipated.” Any pressure put on the structure would get distributed throughout the labyrinth, rather than concentrating in a single weak spot.

“Even if it breaks, it wouldn’t significantly damage the beetle,” said Adriane Minori, a mechanical engineer at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s a fail-safe mechanism that nature has found — that’s something we can learn from.”

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Ken-ichi Ueda

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Instagram user Maria Lynn has pioneered a performance art style that I've never encountered before. She carefully arranges painted rice on boards, then jumps off a chair so that the rice hangs in the air for a moment--just long enough to display a visual image when replayed in slow motion. I'd love to see "Starry Night" displayed this way.

-via reddit

With the many things happening this year, one can become easily stressed and find it very difficult to relax. But if there are creatures who can find time to relax amidst trying times, it would be animals, and I think we can learn from them.

Ozzy Man Reviews brings to us a compilation of animals relaxing.

See the video. It’s cute and calming.

(Image Credit: Ozzy Man Reviews/ YouTube)

Simone Giertz wanted to get her dog to take a photo using her smartphone. Unfortunately, smartphones aren’t designed for dog paws, and so the dog, Westie Scraps, wasn’t able to take her photo. But is there a way for dogs to take their own photos? Giertz thought about it, and then came up with a brilliant idea of creating a photo booth for Westie.

And it really, really worked.

The automated machine has a pedal which can be triggered by the dog's paw and takes a photo but also dispenses a treat - so everyone is happy.

Simone shared the cute photos on Twitter - where they cheered up everyone.

Genius!

(Image Credit: Simone Giertz/ Twitter)

Gibbons love to swing on treetops. It’s in their nature. Unfortunately, it has become hard for them to do that because of the landslide that formed a huge gap on their forest in Hainan, China. The landslide has made roaming across the region to find food and potential mates very difficult for the gibbons. Thankfully, conservation scientists came up with a temporary solution to address the problem: by making a rope bridge that reconnected the trees.

And scientists have filmed the ape, a type of gibbon, climbing or swinging across in seconds.

Some used the ropes as a handrail, others swung by their arms and the most daring walked the tightrope.

[...]

All nine in the group mastered the rope bridge, save one adult male, which made a mighty jump from one tree to another, sometimes accompanied by athletic teenage companions.

Conservation scientists say the 18-metre-long structure could be an essential lifeline for the endangered species, while the forests are restored to their former glory.

Wholesome!

Learn more about this story over at BBC.

(Image Credit: Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden/ BBC)

This actor is clearly scared on this roller coaster but does his best to endure the ride. The final commercial only shows a few clips from the harrowing ride but watching the whole thing you have to be impressed by his dedication. You can see the final ad below

Final video with a few clips from the actor's ride of terror. Best line, "There are some things you want to do again and again." I don't think that applies here.

She should not have stolen it in the first place. This Canadian woman decided to return the ancient artifacts she stole after fifteen years of bad luck. The woman, named Nicole, went to Pompeii in 2005 and took two ancient white mosaic tiles, a piece of a ceramic wall, and fragments of an amphora case. Nicole returned these artifacts along with an apology letter, as Vice details: 

“I was young and stupid. I wanted to have a piece of history that no one could have,” Nicole, now 36, says in the letter.

Nicole has since blamed her heist on years of terrible luck, including two battles with breast cancer, a double mastectomy, and her family’s financial struggles.

“We are good people and I don't want to pass this curse on to my family or children,” the letter says. “Forgive me for the gesture made years ago, I learned my lesson...I am asking the forgiveness of the Gods.”

Nicole then writes that she plans to visit Italy soon, so she can apologize in person.

Image via Vice 

Your dog probably knows you so well (by your scent or something else) that it can recognize you even when you’re disguised well, or not at all. This dog owner tried to see if his dog can recognize him even if his face is completely covered by some sunglasses and a face mask. Will the dog recognize his owner while happily strolling in the park? Watch to find out!

Hey, some people believe that crystals and other sparkly objects can get rid of some of our impurities, so maybe metals can also do that for us? Believe it or not, copper has a long history of being used as ornamentation. But it wasn’t until the late 1970s that copper bracelets were marketed as a treatment for arthritis pain. Check out Discover Magazine’s full piece on the long history of copper here.  

Image via Discover Magazine