New research out of MIT shows that small changes to in-vehicle technology, such as the font automakers choose for an infotainment system, can have a significant effect on just how much a driver is distracted. The research adds nuance to the debate on distracted driving, and it could forever change the look of your dashboard.

The study was a collaboration between MIT’s AgeLab and Monotype, a font designer and holding company whose portfolio includes some of the most commonly used typefaces, and who first suggested the link between font and driver distraction.
via < … Read More → "Study: Typefaces key to reducing driver distraction"

Google Street View is now available under the sea. Six coral reefs around the world, including The Great Barrier Reef, can now be explored using Google’s panoramic technology (video). The imagery was captured by Google partner Catlin Seaview Survey.
via Laughing Squid

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A programmer found nearly 100,000 unprotected usernames and passwords on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ servers, according to his analysis released today. The IEEE is now working to clean up the mess.

The IEEE is a well-known organization for technologists, and has over 400,000 members. Romanian programmer Radu Dragusin discovered the IEEE’s login credentials were left publicly available, and unencrypted on its FTP server on September 18. There he says he found “99,979 unique usernames” and passwords. The servers also showed all of the member activity on … Read More → "IEEE accidentally reveals nearly 100K user passwords"

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Several Navy SEALS recently parachuted into Dodger Stadium to impress the crowd. They had to maneuver themselves in from pretty high – it’s about a four-minute drop – but executed it perfectly! And the great thing for us is that one guy was wearing a camera so we can see, if not feel, what the dive was like.
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Mars Rover Curiosity is above all a robot geologist, but that’s not stopping it from tracking weather on the Red Planet as well. And what strange weather it is. The latest exciting result from Curiosity: atmospheric pressures at some places on Mars swing wildly throughout the day.

We’ve long known that temperatures on Mars can vary widely over the course of a single Martian day, as its thin atmosphere and lack of stabilizing oceans make it particularly sensitive to the coming and going of the suns rays. But what we … Read More → "Today on Mars: Curiosity records hurricane-like air pressure swings"

NASA has just published the most detailed view of the Universe ever taken. It’s called the Extreme Deep Field—or XDF for short. It took ten years of Hubble Space Telescope photographs to make it and it shows some the oldest galaxies ever observed by humans, going 13.2 billion years back in time.

It’s a mindblowing, extremely humbling view. Not only for what it shows, but for what … Read More → "NASA publishes the farthest view of the universe yet"

Fifty years ago this week, The Jetsons premiered. It only lasted 24 episodes (not including the mid-1980s “revival”), but it truly embodied the tech optimism of the time. In the world of professional futurism, The Jetsons (like a lot of science fiction) can be a great provocation for discussion. For example, every episode is filled with examples of futuristic tech that never happened, at least in the way that we imagined them in the 1960s. (Roomba vs. Roomba!)
via Boing Boing

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At first glance these photos by Andre Ermolaev look like twisting abstract paintings, but in reality are aerial photos of rivers flowing through Iceland’s endless beds of volcanic ash.
via This Colossal

More here (totally worth checking out) 

Today marks the release of The Preservation Hall 50th Anniversary Collection, a four-disc box-set spanning the Preservation Hall band’s storied history from 1962 to 2010, with guest vocals and instrumentation from Richie Havens, Tom Waits, Pete Seeger, Andrew Bird, Yim Yames and Del McCoury.

Preservation Hall is the legendary New Orleans club whose eponymous house band frequently host some of the greatest talents in jazz music. I drop in … Read More → "Preservation Hall 50th anniversary collection: four discs of New Orleans jazz with some cool guest appearances"