Amazing Northern Lights Time-lapse

Desperately want to see them in real life some time. 2013 is solar maximum, who's up for a trip? :)

Global Life Expectancy and Health

This site also has very detailed information on the causes of death in each country.

Reële huizenprijzen

Huizenprijzen in Nederland, gecorrigeerd voor inflatie,

VS en Nederland,

En de prijzen aan de Herengracht, Amsterdam, in bijna drie eeuwen,

"Broccoli" patent hearing cancelled

Taking into account the ruling of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO that methods for the production of plants which comprise conventional breeding steps as well as technical ones are not patentable under the applicable European patent law, the patentee has proposed to limit its original patent by excluding the breeding methods. Thus, only the broccoli plants as such remain protected.

[...]

French company Limagrain and Swiss group Syngenta filed notices of opposition to the patent in 2003 and maintained their challenge in subsequent appeals. They allege, among other things, that the patent protects an essentially biological method of breeding plants excluded from patentability under the European Patent Convention (EPC) binding on the EPO. The technical board of appeal hearing the two appeals stayed the proceedings and referred questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) with a view to obtaining clarification of the term "essentially biological processes for the production of plants (or animals)" and the associated exception to patentability.

'Broccoli' patent found here, same issue with the 'Tomato' patent.

Intel's roadmap to 4K displays

I guess we'll have to wait another year to get those sweet 8 megapixel screens

Hungry Birds

Timelapse of birds in our garden. Shot with my Galaxy S3 and Lapse It Pro. Speed 20X. Watch full screen and HD. Too bad the great spotted woodpecker I saw this morning didn't show up. Also the huge wood pigeons are missing.

 

Mind blowing animatronics

I had no idea they could do this, thought it was all really good CGI. Much better work than I've ever seen from any robotics lab trying to emulate animals and movements. This should be very applicable to future androids. My guess is it will be used for sexbots first :)

Tesla Model S is Motor Trend Car of the Year

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Drone camera captures Argentina's #8N protests

Hooray they are finally doing what we were thinking about quite some time ago. Too bad they didn't have these in Egypt. From this article:

 

Utrecht Centraal Station from the Air

Ultimate screen

We were recently talking about what the ultimate screen should be like. We concluded it had to be a paper-like display to work well outside. This screen seems to do that. While it's obviously still lacking in framerate and color it does seem to be on the right path. You'd only need to add a small backlight for viewing in dark conditions.

NASA astronauts performing gymnastics aboard Skylab

Skylab had a much wider room than the ISS has which allowed the astronauts to do all these maneuvers. First part is from the great documentary When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

Skittles Sorting Machine

More than a sundog

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