A new company called Uber simplifies the process of hailing a cab. Just activate an app on your smartphone, and Uber will send a car to your location. You won't even have to handle any money:

Uber calculates the total fee on arrival, adds tax and a mandatory tip, and then charges the whole fee to a credit card registered with a user's account. No money or cards change hands. GPS tracking prevents driver padding, and passengers can file a complaint about a circuitous route or wrong turns.

At the end of your ride, you can leave a review with Uber. But beware: the driver can do the same for you. So behave yourself or you may find it hard to get a ride:

At the completion of a trip, a passenger is asked to rate the driver; the driver, in turn, rates the passenger. Drivers who have poor ratings do not last long, Mr Kalanick says, while poorly-behaved passengers may have trouble securing a ride, since a driver can decline a fare if the hailer has a bad reputation.

News Story and Company Website -via Kottke | Photo: mattiaskristiansson

The Twinkie, nature's perfect food, can be used for almost any culinary purpose. Here's a recipe for a sushi-like production. You'll need fruit roll-ups, dried mango, candied fruits and dried fruits. And, of course, lots of Twinkies.

Link -via PJ Lifestyle | Photo: Hostess

Discreet affirmations of grace and style are the mark of a wine connoisseur. This is how you should present your wine in a way that communicates your breeding and upbringing. Now for sale on Craigslist: a 32-bottle wine rack made from a thousand pounds of automobile and motorcycle transmission parts.

Link -via Geekologie

"Put your hands up!"

"Okay!" BAM!

This specialized self-defense device appeared in a 1929 issue of Modern Mechanix. Samuel Schwarz designed it so that when the user raises his hands, he pulls strings attached to his fingers and activates a machine gun built into an armored vest.

Link -via io9

For some people, pockets aren't enough for their daily carry needs. So get a shoeshine box. Artist Robert Ulincy repurposed one for this curious assembly of objects.

Link -via Nag on the Lake

Previously by this artist: Ceci Est Une Pipe

Benjamin Harrison was President of the United States from 1889-1893. In the first year of his presidency, he recorded the following statement onto an Edison phonograph wax cylinder:

As president of the United States, I was present at the first Pan-American congress in Washington D.C. I believe that with God's help, our two countries shall continue to live side-by-side in peace and prosperity.

This is the earliest known recording of a US President. You can listen to it at the link.

Link -via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: Library of Congress

(Video Link)

Romanian police are searching for an insanely brave thief who tried to steal from the back of a truck moving down a highway:

Positioning their car just inches behind the moving truck, two gang members climb out of the sunroof. One manoeuvres himself onto the bonnet as the other holds onto his legs.

The thief on the bonnet then proceeds to break into the truck's rear door using specialist tools, which the police later recovered.

However, having opened the door the gang appear to decide against taking the lorry's contents, climbing back into their own car and retreating.

What were they looking for that was so disappointingly missing?

Link (warning: auto-sound) -via Gizmodo

Do you run through a lot of ideas before arriving at the right one? This desk by Soup Studio may be ideal for you. The Post-Itable is made for designers everywhere who just need to get a few ideas on paper.

Link (Google Translate) -via Make

Redditor Lycerius has been playing the same game of Civilization II for ten years. It's now the year 3991 A.D., the entire planet is irradiated, 90% of the planet's population from a peak number 2000 years ago is dead, and there appears to be a permanent military stalemate:

You've heard of the 100 year war? Try the 1700 year war. The three remaining nations have been locked in an eternal death struggle for almost 2000 years. Peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons. Even when the U.N forces a peace treaty. So I can only assume that peace will come only when they're wiped out. It is this that perpetuates the war ad infinitum. [...]

The military stalemate is air tight. The post-late game in civ II is perfectly balanced because all remaining nations already have all the technologies so there is no advantage. And there are so many units at once on the map that you could lose 20 tank units and not have your lines dented because you have a constant stream moving to the front. This also means that cities are not only tiny towns full of starving people, but that you can never improve the city. "So you want a granary so you can eat? Sorry; I have to build another tank instead. Maybe next time."

Link -via Kottke

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It's the New York Shower Hammers vs. the Deja Vu Dynasty. Ricky Laforge almost gets tagged on his way to the home plate, but he rolls in midair like a scene out of The Matrix and snatches the plate. Skip ahead to 0:40 to see the play. Content warning: some NSFW language.

-via Super Punch

Velociraptors may look cute, but they can also be a nuisance -- especially to chicken farmers. This is how you make the little beasts useful. Etsy seller Matt Mrbanac crafted this flask, presumably by boring out the claw of a slain velociraptor.

Link -via The Mary Sue

P.S. Be sure to check out our own selection of funny flasks available in the NeatoShop.

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Tackling the bartender at your local sports bar probably won't help you, but this vending machine is more generous. It toured bars in Argentina. When rugby fans wanted beer from it, they had to tackle it -- hard. A display on the front contemptuously informed customers when they weren't hitting hard enough.

Link -via Technabob

An industrial designer and an orthopedic surgeon realized that prosthetic legs don't have to be dull, ordinary and plastic. They could be extraordinary expressions of personal body art. So they founded Bespoke Innovations, a firm which designs and produces fairings that fit over pre-existing prosthetic legs. They're modular, so owners can swap out fairings to fit the fashion needs of different occasions. Check out their gallery at the link.

Link -via The Breda Fallacy

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This odd-looking rifle invented in 1854 by British engineer T.W. Treeby was an early attempt to vastly increase the ammunition capacity of rifles. At the time, rifles had to be loaded from the muzzle one bullet at a time.

The Treeby gun instead cycles fourteen individual chambers on a chain, each of which is preloaded and given its own percussion cap. Between each cycle, the user turns a handle to unseal and then reseal the barrel.

Link -via The Firearms Blog

Of course, you could have such a mirror already. It would just be curved enough to cover the blind spot to the rear and left of the driver. But that curve would also distort the image, leaving the driver uncertain about the location of objects in the mirror. Thankfully, Drexel University mathematician R. Andrew Hick's patented new design solves that problem:

Hicks’s driver’s side mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver’s side mirror. Unlike in simple curved mirrors that can squash the perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, in Hicks’s mirror the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are barely detectable. [...]

“Imagine that the mirror’s surface is made of many smaller mirrors turned to different angles, like a disco ball,” Hicks said. “The algorithm is a set of calculations to manipulate the direction of each face of the metaphorical disco ball so that each ray of light bouncing off the mirror shows the driver a wide, but not-too-distorted, picture of the scene behind him.”

Hicks noted that, in reality, the mirror does not look like a disco ball up close. There are tens of thousands of such calculations to produce a mirror that has a smooth, nonuniform curve.

Link -via OhGizmo! | Photo: Drexel University