Most of us probably taken it for granted that our smartphones can tell up from down, but we probably only have the vaguest idea how. If pressed, we might mutter something about “accelerometers” and then try to change the subject. However, Bill Hammack is here to explain not only how your phone manages to be spatially aware, but his infectious enthusiasm will surely make you think that the humble smartphone accelerometer is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. See the video, after the break.

So far the promotional material for Ridley Scott’s forthcoming Alien prequel Prometheus have been stellar. We’ve had a TED talk from the future, a beautifully shot short film about a creepy cyborg, and other bits and pieces. The trailers have been fragmented, but a new three-minute international trailer fits a lot of those pieces together and shows us more of the film than every before.

It’s starting to warm up here on the East Coast, and pretty soon we’ll be inundated with monstrous bloodsucking insects. You could spend a lot of money on nasty bug repellents, or you could do what entomologist Steve Schutz of the Contra Costa Mosquito & Vector Control District did and build up a tolerance. Of course, he’s had over 15,000 mosquito bites a year for the for past ten years — but it’s never too late to start.

From the amazing minds at ETH Zurich that taught quadcopters to juggle now comes the wonderful marriage of the Kinect motion controller and a quadcopter. Using the Kinect and a birds-eye camera, the quadcopter follows the user’s movements as if possessed by a mesmeric trance. It can also do sweet flips when the user raises his or her left hand.

Now that the Kinect and quadcopters have been brought together, there is only one frontier left: Kinect hacked quadcopters playing Minecraft.

(via CrunchGear)

In 2002, Bram Cohen posted the first functional version of BitTorrent to a message board, laying the ground work for the workhorse of file transfers that we know and love today. According to an interview with TorrentFreak, that post received one response. Hardly an auspicious start. But the world quickly recognized the potential of a system that could easily move large files over the Internet and take advantage of users’ mostly unused up-stream traffic.

Cast your mind back, if you will, to a time before BitTorrent. A time when it actually made sense to burn large files to CD and mail them across the country. A time where high-quality audio or video files were simply not practical since no one could download them in a reasonable amount of time.  Those were dark days.

So today, raise a glass to BitTorrent! The system that let you download a movie before it was in theaters, brought you the entire discography of an artist, let you update WoW with breathtaking speed, and helped you build a collection of lossless recordings of Phish concerts. Happy Birthday!

(Torrent Freak via Hacker News, image via Phaedra)

Because modern humans must be entertained every moment of their waking lives, SEGA has developed a game system for urinals. A member of SEGA’s R&D staff mentions in the video above that this game is especially interesting since instead of interacting with fingers or hands, players will use their urine. The game system contains microwave detectors, with which it measures the speed of the urine and thus the volume. In SEGA’s explanation, it seems that the player who produces the most urine win the game. Other, more competitive games are being developed in which players will square off against previous urinal players.

The game is expected to go on sale soon, but so far only appears to be in a male configuration. Sorry, ladies. You’ll have to wait before taking full advantage of toilet-gaming technology.

(via Topless Robot)

When we think of electric cars, we tend to think fo zippy little vehicles that are recharged by plugging them in and waiting for the battery to be topped off. But some students at MIT think they can change that with a system that lets you fill up your tank with a liquid that gets you back on the road quickly, and fully charged.

It’s called a semi solid flow cell, and it is built on a oozing black substance the researchers have christened “cambridge crude.” Far from being anything like oil, it is comprised mostly of solid particles suspended in fluid. These particles carry the battery’s charge and are cycled through the battery system as it discharges.

In an electric car powered by such a battery, drivers would have more options for how to recharge.

If this isn’t ‘news you can use,’ we don’t know what is: The folks at Seattle Weekly have come up with a day’s worth of recipes using ramen noodles, craftily converting the dorm room staple into breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert options.

Heating up a quick bowl of ramen in the microwave, waiting exactly three minutes, and topping it with some hot sauce was the go-to meal every broke undergrad could appreciate. Fast. Simple. And kinda tasty–if you’ve just had another beer.

But this humble delicacy doesn’t have to stay that way. Nowadays, people are gettin’ fancy with the noodles, creating recipe after recipe with the main ingredient being . . . you guessed it: ramen! From breakfast dishes to classy dessert options, ramen can get you through a whole day’s worth of meals, all costing under $10.

Full thing here.

>>>See also: 10 foods you can allegedly make in a coffee maker.

(Seattle Weekly via Lifehacker)

The next time you terminate a program, or restart your computer using the CTRL+ALT+DEL shortcut, think of David Bradley; the IBM engineer that invented the command. During a gathering in 2004 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC, the veteran engineer revealed that he’d created the shortcut to save time, since his work required him to frequently power down and restart his computer. He says never intended to make the combination public but was prevailed upon by IBM who found it extremely useful.

Read on below to see a video of Bradley recounting the creation of this now-iconic shortcut, and watch as Bill Gates does not take a jab at Microsoft with the best of graces.

Aleix Llovet and Xavier Salueña were inspired by Doc Brown’s “Mr. Fusion,” the device that converted garbage into power for a flying time-DeLorean in Back to the Future. Though their creation does not fly, nor travel through time, it can run on garbage — specifically, aluminium can tabs. The pair built a remote control car called the dAlh2Orean that captures hydrogen created by the interaction of sodium hydroxide and aluminium. The hydrogen is then used to power an on-board fuel cell, leaving no polluting waste material.

Additionally, the remaining fuel material can be reprocessed, as the pair describes in their press conference.

The aluminium hydroxide can be converted in alumina throughout a calcination process. With the alumina, aluminium can be obtained, in this case is more pure than the aluminium is currently recycled, and the same purity which is extracted from opencast mines bauxite, which is very dangerous for the environment.

Their design isn’t going to be running an SUV any time soon, the engine provides just enough power go about 20 mph for 40 minutes. It does, however, demonstrate that there may be a plethora of untapped fuel sources already available to energy-hungry humans.

(dAlh2Orean via Engadget)