This past weekend saw the culmination of a small internet joke that snowballed into a ridiculous viral sensation. Columbus, Ohio native Zach "Danger" Brown wanted to raise $10 on Kickstarter to make a potato salad. He got $55,000 instead. So he used all the extra cash to throw a party, dubbed "PotatoStock."
Taters were mashed, mayonnaise was liberally applied, and hundreds of pounds of delicious spuds were consumed. Some local charities got a big cut of the funding. After the hangover...
Some monarch butterfly populations don’t migrate. They live in tropical areas of the world, and don’t get as much press as the North American populations that show up en masse on weather radars. But for scientists who study monarchs, they’re critical to understanding the bugs. They’re the reason that most researchers think that these insects first evolved in South America as a non-migratory species, and only started migrating a few hundred years ago, once they moved into the US. And, if a study published today in Nature is further supported, they’ll also be the reason that we were just plain wrong.
Microsoft is launching Sway today, a new app that’s part of the company’s Office family of products. It will sit alongside the regular Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote apps as a rich content creation tool. In its most basic form, Sway allows anyone to create a beautiful website from just images and text without any effort, and it’s all what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). Despite that, Microsoft is taking an interesting approach with Sway, using the company’s powerful Azure cloud servers to suggest page layouts and quickly render content on the fly.
Sway will format pictures and text in a way that its algorithm feels is appropriate, even picking colors from photos to apply to the site. Although the end result is on the web as a...
Come along with The Verge for the second season of Detours. We’ve traveled across the country to find the people, groups, and companies that are solving America’s problems in new and unconventional ways.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed homes, wasted businesses, flooded tunnels, and submerged subways. The storm brought tens of thousands of lives to a halt, and revealed New York City’s vulnerabilities to severe climate conditions and rising waters.
“I saw the devastation,” says Henk...
A fake smartphone app is being used to remotely monitor pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, according to a report from the New York Times . Researchers from Lacoon Mobile Security say the phishing scam is spreading across the messaging application WhatsApp, through texts that read: "Check out this Android app designed by Code4HK for the coordination of OCCUPY CENTRAL!", along with a link to download software. Lacoon says the software, once downloaded, can access a user's personal data, including phone calls, text messages, and the physical location of their smartphone. Code4HK — a developer community that has helped to spread information about the protests — tells the Times it had nothing to do with the texts.
The origin of the scam...
The new Concert Watch feature located in Cortana's Notebook will keep you updated on whether your favorite musicians are playing in a town near you. WP Central writes that all it takes to activate this function is accessing Interests and then adding Music from the list of categories. Concert Watch reportedly uses data from Seat Geek, a ticket search and recommendation engine. It is unknown as to how Concert Watch actually identifies who your most beloved bands are, but WP Central speculates it may be related to Xbox Music. The feature is currently being rolled out, so if it is not present in your version of Cortana, it will likely be soon.
