A recent survey by the company Survata actually showed that the 2,500 respondents were more concerned about Google having access to their personal data than the NSA, their bosses, their parents, or their significant others:
In case you need the reminder...
If you have location history turned on, Google will track where you go.
The European Union has called an extraordinary meeting of the bloc's 28 foreign ministers to discuss the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Sanctions "against those responsible for violence and use of excessive force" are expected.
Anti-government protests in Ukraine reached their most violent point on Tuesday as at least 25 people were killed and hundreds injured amid violent clashes between police and citizens.
The protests have evolved into a full-blown crisis on the ground. What happens now is critical to the geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West.
The crisis began on November 21 when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych snubbed a plan to sign an Association Agreement and trade pact with the EU after Russia persuaded the most populous former Soviet republic to stay in the Kremlin's orbit.
Citizens subsequently flooded the streets and made Independence Square, aka Maidan, their base in central Kiev. The confrontations between the opposition and Yanukovych's government have been escalating since.
From riot police using ancient military tactics to defend against attacks to streets engulfed in flames, the photos coming for the heart of the standoff are incredible.
The anti-government protesters remain defiant, with one man telling Reuters: "They can come in their thousands, but we will not give in. ... We will stay until victory and will hold the Maidan until the end."
Forget everything you think you know about face shapes and haircuts — it's probably all wrong.
All that nonsense about heart-shaped heads or oblong-shaped heads? For the most part, it just doesn't apply to the short, tapered, long-on-the-top haircuts popular with today's gentlemen.
According to barber Kyle Holbrook of Fellow Barber in San Francisco, you need to know only one thing about your face shape to get the most flattering haircut — whether your head is wider or longer.
In other words, is your face rounder than it is long, or longer than it is round?
It's really that simple.
A rounder, wider face should get a haircut that is tighter on the sides. This will give the whole face more length and balance out your proportions, thus giving you the illusion of having a less-round face.
For those with a longer, squarer face, ask for a longer length of hair on the sides and around the temples. This will frame your face and make it appear wider.
These two subtle shifts can make a world of difference on how your new haircut will look on you.
Of course, a good barber will do this automatically, but Holbrook warns that you should always take charge of your hair. Your proportions will thank you.
If you can make it onto ABC's hit show "Shark Tank," you'll have an audience of about 10 million people to show your product. It's why even entrepreneurs who lose out on a deal often report a notable uptick in sales following their appearance on the show, which portrays negotiations between small-business owners and a panel of potential investors dubbed "Sharks."
But for those who do get a deal, "Shark Tank" can change the trajectory of their business, turning a fledgling company into a national brand.
The following entrepreneurs took a successful pitch and maximized the potential of the Shark they partnered with through focus and determination.
Wicked Good Cupcakes
Danielle Vilagie and Tracey Noonan are a mother-daughter duo from Boston with a company that makes cupcakes in a jar. In season 4, they made a deal with Kevin O'Leary in which he invested $75,000 for royalties instead of equity. He made $1 from every cupcake sold until he made his money back, and then began receiving 50 cents per cupcake sold.
Since its appearance on the show, Wicked Good Cupcakes has expanded to a new production facility and a couple of new locations, and it is planning to bring in $3 million in sales by the end of this year, WCVB Boston reports.
Lollacup
Husband and wife entrepreneurs Mark and Hanna Lim created the Lollacup as an improvement on the standard sippy cup for toddlers. Their product is BPA-free and spill-proof, and its straw is designed to catch every last drop of a drink. In season 3, the Lims partnered with both Mark Cuban and Robert Herjavec for a $100,000 deal in exchange for 40% equity.
The Lims have brought in almost $1 million in sales, making the Lollacup the most successful children's product to come out of "Shark Tank."
Simple Sugars
Lani Lazzari was just 18 years old when she entered the tank in season 4 to pitch her skincare company Simple Sugars. She ended up making a deal with Cuban for $100,000 in return for 33% equity.
Within just 24 hours of her episode's premiere, Lazzari's sales jumped to $220,000 from $50,000, and she hit $1 million six weeks later. Today Simple Sugars products are in more than 700 retail locations and ship internationally. This year, the company has already brought in over $3 million in revenue.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday where food, football, family, and friends all converge.
But hosting Thanksgiving can be a nightmare. Between cooking all the sides, roasting your bird, and talking to your guests, it's almost impossible to remain on schedule.
Luckily there are a few easy hacks for cooking the best Thanksgiving meal of your life — and saving you from a few pitfalls. Keep reading to see our tips.
PREP
1. Peel garlic faster by microwaving it. Stick it in the microwave for 10 seconds and then peel the garlic with your hands — the cloves will slip right out of their casings.
2. Peel an entire bucket of potatoes in under 50 seconds. Earlier this summer, a Danish man discovered he could peel an entire bucket of potatoes in less than a minute by using a hose, a clean toilet brush, and a power drill. You can watch the whole video here.
3. Do all your chopping a day before. Carrots, celery, onions, and potatoes can all be pre-chopped and stored in the fridge overnight without losing any of their flavor. Keep the cut potatoes in water so they don’t turn brown and put the rest in Ziploc plastic bags.
SIDES/DESSERTS
4. Make stuffing the night before. You can make and chill stuffing in the fridge for 24 hours before taking it out and baking it the day of.
5. Add baking soda to potatoes for a fluffy texture. Just a pinch will do. The reason it works is because the baking soda reacts to the heat of the potatoes and forms tiny air pockets.
6. Make and freeze your pies ahead of time. Not only is it incredibly convenient to bake your frozen homemade pies, but it also makes for a better, non-soggy crust. Wrap the pie in plastic wrap or foil before freezing and add 20-45 minutes of extra cooking time to your recipe.
Note: This works well for all fruit pies, but for pumpkin pie, freeze the custard mix separately from the crust. Defrost the custard a day before in the fridge and thoroughly whisk it before adding back to the crust and baking.
7. Use a slow cooker for some sides to save oven space. Dressing, stuffing, casseroles, potatoes, and more can all be made in a slow cooker to save room in the oven (and cook to perfection without any oversight). Just search “slow-cooker Thanksgiving side dishes” and you’ll find a lot of good ideas.
8. Keep warm, finished items in a cooler. When you’re done making your sides but want to keep them warm while the turkey cooks, stick them in an empty cooler. You can also warm a brick in an oven, wrap with a dish towel, and stick that in there too to keep everything warm until serving time.
TURKEY
9. Buy a meat thermometer. If you want to cook a turkey perfectly, a meat thermometer is all you need to avoid dry meat. Turkey needs to cook to 170 degrees. Insert the thermometer into the thickest part of the turkey’s thigh (making sure you don’t hit the bone). When it’s 8 to 10 degrees away from your target temperature, remove the turkey and let it rest for a half an hour. It will keep cooking just enough to make it done without drying out the meat.
10. Get a second turkey, not a bigger turkey. A big turkey takes longer to thaw, longer to cook, and cooks less evenly. You’re more likely to get dry meat with a larger bird and it’s hard to carry, position, and carve a huge turkey. Instead, buy two smaller turkeys — it won’t change the cooking time and they'll be much easier to manage.
Rule of thumb says you should have a pound of turkey for each guest. For 15 people, two 10 pound turkeys should do just fine (with ample leftovers).
11. Dry brine your turkey— it will save time and effort. Brining a turkey used to be the classic way to prepare your bird, but it’s a messy, arduous process. The easier method is to dry brine your turkey, which essentially means you just rub it down with all of your herbs, salt, and pepper. Find out how to do it here.
12. Rub butter and herbs over and under the skin. Lift the skin up and slide little pads of butter between the skin and the meat. Rub in some herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage), add a little oil, put some salt on there, and add more butter on top. This will really make the skin crispy on the outside and the meat succulent.
13. Roast the turkey while you sleep. This is perhaps the easiest way to cook the turkey and you barely have to do anything. Season the turkey, drizzle in oil, and then roast at 450 for 45 minutes to an hour, until it becomes a golden brown. Then turn down the heat to 170 and let it roast away to the perfect doneness. At this level, it’s roughly an hour per pound (so a 20 pound turkey would take 20 hours).
14. Spatchcock your turkey. Spatchcocking (essentially butterflying your turkey) will cook the bird faster, more evenly, and is pretty simple to do. You can either have the butcher spatchcock it or you can do it yourself with some poultry scissors and a knife. Watch and learn how to do it here:
It also makes carving a breeze.
15. Forgot to defrost your turkey? You can still roast it. Let’s say you forgot to thaw your turkey in the fridge. It happens, but you should start roasting that turkey immediately. Take the recommended cooking time for a thawed turkey of your size and add 50% more time (so a turkey that should take 5 hours will now take 7.5 hours). You can baste, butter, and salt the turkey as you go along.
PRESENTATION
16. Make dinner a potluck to save table space. The concept of the Rockwell Thanksgiving table is tempting, but it’s so inconvenient and crowded. Instead, set up a potluck station in the kitchen and have everyone grab their plates before sitting down. This will streamline the entire process.
17. Carve your turkey the right way. Remove the legs and thighs first, then the drumsticks, then the wishbone, then the breasts, then the wings. Then slice up all the meat and transfer to a platter. Add a little bit of gravy to add more moisture and flavor, and serve.
Operation Enduring Freedom, the US's over-13-year-old campaign in Afghanistan, is just a few weeks away from ending. The next chapter in Afghanistan's modern history — one that's left all but the most remote corners of the country impacted by decades of conflict — is about to begin.
The country remains deeply troubled, with a resurgent Taliban, a highly suspect military, and an economy where the opium industry remains the largest single employer. But before the US invasion, before the Russian war, and before the country's Marxist experiment, Afghanistan used to be a far different place.
An astonishing collection of photos from the 1960s came to light in early 2013.
In the 60s, amateur photographer and college professor Dr. William Podlich took a leave of absence from his job at Arizona State University to work with UNESCO in the Afghan capital of Kabul, bringing his wife and daughters with him.
Later, his son-in-law Clayton Esterson found the late doctor's photos and put them on the web. The response was amazing.
Esterson told the Denver Post: “Many Afghans have written comments [on our website] showing their appreciation for the photographs that show what their country was like before 33 years of war. This makes the effort to digitize and restore these photographs worthwhile.”
This report was originally by Geoffrey Ingersoll.
On the left is a picture showing the photographer's daughter in a pleasant park. On the right is that same park 40 years later.
In the 60s, this blonde attracted looks in a still very conservative Afghanistan.
But many people also wore nice western clothes in the 60s, too.
Over the course of our lives, we only get a few thousand weekends. The most successful people know better than to squander them by laying around or scrubbing the floors.
She outlines how you can take control of your weekends by planning ahead, being selective with your time, and finally indulging what you love most.
This is an update of an article written by Carolyn Cutrone.
The first step to controlling your weekends is making conscious choices.
It's so easy to plop down on the couch on a Friday night or Saturday morning and watch TV, but falling into these routines will suck away the few free hours you have. Instead of doing something by default, choose to decide how your time is spent.
Vanderkam writes, "In a world of constant connectivity, even loafing time must be consciously chosen, because time will be filled with something whether it's consciously chosen or not — and not choosing means that the something that fills our hours will be less fulfilling than the something our remembering selves will likely wish we'd elected to do."
Make appointments for yourself, even if it's only to read a book.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee says you need to have a plan for the weekend, setting specific hours or minutes aside for activities you want to do.Then you have to commit.
Huckabee advises: "If you know you want to read a book, then get the book out and have it set aside and make plans to read it. Say it's going to be at 1. When that starts, get on it. Don't wait until that afternoon, then think — could I read? Or listen to some music? Or take a walk? Then you'll sit about wasting an hour of what little time you have figuring out what to do with the rest of it."
You have to be disciplined and commit to the decisions you make.
Planning actually makes weekends happier, and unlocks a key mechanism of joy.
Vanderkam cites Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert's 2006 book, "Stumbling on Happiness." In it, Gilbert argues that "the greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real."
Gilbert is talking about anticipation. Anticipation accounts for a huge chunk of happiness, which comes from thinking about the events we plan. Vanderkam writes, "As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer."
The technology industry is known for having been created by college dropouts like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison, but that doesn't mean these innovators didn't have meaningful undergraduate experiences.
Bill Gates became friends with Steve Ballmer at Harvard, Larry Ellison learned he was a pretty good computer programmer at the University of Illinois, and Steve Jobs considered his time at Reed College among the most valuable experiences of his life.
Meanwhile, Peter Thiel actually graduated from Stanford, but today he thinks college is such a waste of time that he offers $100,000 scholarships to students who want to drop out.
What can we say, everyone's experience is different.
Larry Page, University of Michigan
Google cofounder and CEO Larry Page had been a quiet child growing up in East Lansing, Michigan, but he began to find his footing socially while attending the University of Michigan during the early 90s.
There, he made friends with other students who loved technology and became editor of a newsletter put out by Eta Kappa Nu, an electrical and computer engineering honor society, according to a Business Insider story earlier this year.
BI's Nicholas Carlson reports that Page also developed a reputation for prescient predictions about the future — such as when he realized that cheaper hard drives would make PCs a lot more useful — and a desire to solve big problems regardless of whether the technology existed to do so.
Elon Musk, University of Pennsylvania
PayPal cofounder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk studied physics and business at the University of Pennsylvania, transferring from Queen's University in Canada following his sophomore year.
Musk's housemate at the University of Pennsylvania, Adeo Ressi, recalls at a 2010 event held by TheFunded.com that Musk did not drink and was "the biggest dork I've ever met."
Meanwhile, The New Yorker reports Musk loved first-person shooter video games, and he was so focused on his schoolwork that his mother would check on him to make sure he was eating and changing his socks every day, according to a 2012 Forbes story.
But in addition to all that studying and gaming, Penn's alumni magazine reports that Musk and Ressi made money by charging other students to attend parties they threw at their house.
Marissa Mayer, Stanford University
Yahoo president and CEO Marissa Mayer was already an overachiever by the time she enrolled at Stanford in 1993, having served as president of her high school's Spanish club, treasurer of its Key Club, and captain of both the debate team and pom-pom squad.
This intense focus on achievement continued in Palo Alto, where a former classmate describes her as having been "very smart and very serious," according to Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson.
Carlson reports that Mayer wavered from her initial plan to become a doctor, finding that she preferred the problem-solving skills used in computer programming to the rote memorization needed to succeed in pre-med classes.
As an upperclassmen, Mayer excelled teaching younger students in her symbolic systems major, a course of study that combines linguistics, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and computer science classes.
It's hard to buy gifts for a gentleman. They have to be tasteful, useful, thoughtful, and aesthetically pleasing. A gentleman, after all, has standards.
And think about it: Do you really think he'll like getting a single tie? Again?
Business Insider put together a list of creative items that might be the very thing a gentleman wants without knowing it.
After all, those are the best kinds of gifts.
Skip the tailor and get some handmade shirts.
Start the New Year looking sharp.
Send ShirtCycle your measurements, a photo, and details about your work place and wardrobe, and they'll send you three handmade shirts, tailored exactly to your taste.
Jawbone's Mini Jambox Bluetooh speaker is less than two inches thick, but delivers great sound quality. It wirelessly syncs up to your phone or tablet — making life way easier sans cords and plugs.
Interview questions like, "What's your biggest strength?" and, "What's you biggest weakness?" aren't as telling as they seem.
That's probably why most savvy CEOs and executives steer clear of these cliché queries and instead ask more meaningful ones.
In fact, many top execs have their one favorite go-to question that reveals everything they need to know about a job candidate.
Some prefer to ask more serious questions, while others believe that silly queries about costumes and the zombie apocalypse, for instance, best uncover an applicant's creativity.
This is an updated article originally written by Alison Griswold and Vivian Giang.
To make sure he hires candidates with the right fit, Hsieh typically asks the question: "On a scale of one to 10, how weird are you?" He says the number isn't too important, but it's more about how people answer the question. Nonetheless, if "you're a one, you probably are a little bit too straight-laced for the Zappos culture," he says. "If you're a 10, you might be too psychotic for us."
Another question Zappos usually asks candidates is: "On a scale of one to 10, how lucky are you in life?" Again, the number doesn't matter too much, but if you're a one, you don't know why bad things happen to you (and probably blame others a lot). And if you're a 10, you don't understand why good things always seem to happen to you (and probably lack confidence).
What didn't you get a chance to include on your résumé?
"Obviously a good CV is important, but if you were going to hire by what they say about themselves on paper, you wouldn't need to waste time on an interview," Branson writes. That's why he likes to ask: What didn't you get a chance to include on your résumé?
How would you describe yourself in one word?
The best candidates are the ones who know exactly who they are. That's why Dara Richardson-Heron, CEO of women's organization YWCA, always asks her candidates this question.
Richardson-Heron says she doesn't judge people on the word they choose, but it does give her insight into how people package themselves. She tells Adam Bryant at The New York Times that she likes when people take time to ponder the question and answer thoughtfully.
These buildings were the headquarters of Sears, Roebuck and Co., America's greatest retailer for seven decades.
Sears tested its products and printed the famous catalog in the complex just outside Chicago.
But in 1974, the company moved to the Sears Tower and these buildings were left deserted for 30 years. In that time, Sears went from being on top of the world to being one of the most distressed American brands.
While developers used some of the site to build the Homan Square area in Chicago, some buildings still remained empty and are considered historical landmarks.
Local photographer Martin Gonzalez took eerie photographs from inside the old headquarters. Despite the decay, many signs of the office life remain.
The hipster population is spreading nationally and internationally. Skinny jeans-wearing, beard-toting twenty- and thirty-somethings are flocking to areas where they feel right at home.
These are areas chock-full of trendy food trucks, like in Austin's East Austin neighborhood; theater festivals, like in the Shimokitazawa neighborhood of Tokyo; and thrift stores, like in Stockholm's Södermalm.
After scouring the globe, we found the most hipster neighborhoods in cities around the world.
Barranco, Lima, Peru
Barranco is the historic bohemian district of Lima. The neighborhood is known for its park, Bajada de Baños, in which the famous Lima landmark, the Bridge of Sighs (pictured), runs right through the hip district along the banks of the Pacific Ocean. Young people go to the bridge to hang out and make their way to the best bars and clubs in town.
Popular nightlife spots are Santos and Expreso Virgen de Guadalupe Café Cultural, which is a piano bar inside an old train car.
Belleville and Ménilmontant (19th and 20th Arrondissements), Paris, France
The inexpensive rent, artsy culture, and gritty exterior make Belleville and Ménilmontant some of the few hipster neighborhoods left in Paris. The two areas, which used to be wine villages for weekend getaways, are now very hip, closely related Paris neighborhoods.
The Parc de Belleville shows off the city's skyline and has trails for exploring and smalls cafes nearby to take in the greenery over a cup of coffee.
The neighborhoods are filled with restaurants, galleries, studio spaces, bars, and clubs; head to La Bellevilloise which operates as all of five things.
District VII, also known as Elizabeth Town, is the Jewish center of Budapest and is home to many of the city's historical landmarks. The area is also a hip hotel hub, where hotels like the Continental Zara and the VAM Design Center feature famous art exhibits.
Hipsters flock to Kiraly Street and Kazinczy Street for street food, pubs, kosher shops, and the best nightclubs in the city — particularly the well-known derelict "ruin pub," Szimpla Kert.
Young New Yorkers kicked off the holiday season on Thursday night at the fifth-annual Toast To Wishes, a charity event organized by Make-A-Wish New York's under-40 board.
The event took place at Marquee in Chelsea, and had been sold-out for six weeks. (Last year's event was so packed that the organizers had to limit the tickets this year to 650, down from 750.)
"[Make-A-Wish] really gives a child a reason to hope and to dream and to really want to live, at times when they might not want to," Zach Coopersmith, the co-chair of Make-A-Wish's under-4o board and partner at Leading Ridge Capital Partners, told Business Insider.
Coopersmith first came up with the idea for Toast to Wishes five years ago with a group of friends in the Hamptons.
"We were a few years out of school, we were enjoying going to clubs... and we said, 'Hey, could we put something together for a great cause and still have a lot of fun doing it?'"
Short answer: yes.
“With so many things to do, and so many places to give, why Make-A-Wish? For me it’s simple — and that’s the mission. The mission to grant wishes and strength and joy to children battling life-threatening illnesses. And for me, the impact that Make-A-Wish has on kids and their families dealt such a tough hand is unmatched, unparalleled," Coopersmith told the attendees.
Take a look inside one of young New York's annual charity events...
On Thursday, New Yorkers attended the 5th annual Toast to Wishes event organized by Make-A-Wish New York's under-40 board.
29-year old Zach Coopersmith, a partner at Leading Ridge Capital Partners, started the event — and it has grown incredibly over the last few years.
Since the rise of the Fidel Castro in 1959, millions of Cuban citizens have tried to illegally gain entrance to the United States, seeking refuge from the regime. Many of these people have attempted to enter the US using makeshift rafts to travel the treacherous 332 miles of water between Cuba and Miami. A great many have died along the way.
The emigrations reached a fever pitch in 1994 when Castro heightened restrictions on leaving, and the US Coastguard intercepted more than 31,000 Cubans during August and September of that year. Yet large numbers of exiles were not discovered and successfully made it Miami. Many of them still live in the city to this day.
Now, 20 years after one of the largest influxes of Cubans to the US ever, Reuters photographer Enrique de la Osa visited Miami and tracked down many of those refugees, photographing them and seeing what became of them after their perilous journeys.
Hanoi Lopez, 39, is seen here in the yard where he works as mechanic at a public school bus company in Miami.
Luis Soler, 53, is seen here with the two Emmy awards he won as creative director at the Univision TV network. Soler said he spent five days adrift with other migrants in 1994 before being picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Faustino Jose, 60, now owns his own jewelry store. Faustino, who was an industrial engineer in Cuba, said he studied all of Thor Heyerdahl's books about rafting before building his own and leaving Cuba.
Poker is a fantastic game, particularly alluring to competitive, creative types who love numbers. Business Insider's Eugene Kim has profiled some of Silicon Valley's biggest poker fans, and the game is also huge draw with the Wall Street crowd.
While I'm far from a serious, professional poker player, I do occasionally get a chance to enjoy a game with friends. And I also love math and statistics.
So I decided to look at some of the basic mathematics of the game. Here, I go through the probabilities of drawing each five-card poker hand from a deck of cards. These probabilities are handy to have in the back of your head in a poker game, and they are the reason why hands are ranked the way they are: a straight flush is way less likely than a pair, so this is why the straight flush wins.
The six-story mansion has 17,850 square feet, 10 bedrooms, eight fireplaces, an elevator, and a total of 25 rooms.
It also has 2,300 exterior square feet, huge windows, and tall ceilings.
The house was originally built as a single-family residence, but has since been split up into six separate units, according to Curbed, with the restaurant Crown occupying the ground floor.
The home was designed in 1900 by New York-based architectural firm Buchman & Fox and developer Jeremiah C. Lyons.
The previous record holder for priciest townhouse in New York was the Harkness Mansion on East 75th Street, which sold for $53 million to private equity mogul J. Christoper Flowers in 2006 according to The Real Deal.
Foldable bikes have always promised flexibility for bikers.
But most end up being far too inconvenient to ever use in a city. They are often too expensive, difficult to ride, and too big or heavy to realistically carry around with you.
It seemed as if finding a bike that is small enough to be portable, and lightweight enough to be carried around was unachievable.
But that’s where the aptly named the ‘impossible’ bike comes in.
This lightweight bike can be easily folded to fit inside any normal backpack, weighs less than 11 pounds and is a mere 17 inches tall when folded, according to CNET— plus, it's electric.
The designers of the bike realized that the only way to accomplish the challenge of making a bike completely portable was to build an entirely new bike design — one where the frame of the bike was built around circles instead of lines.
So, after three years of development, they created a bike that unfolds through a series of circles in four simple steps:
The bike is made from carbon fiber to ensure that it is extremely lightweight and durable. The connecting box in the frame’s middle is made from steel so that it can actually carry the weight of a person.
The ‘impossible’ even saves space by combining the function of the bike seat with the carrying case.
Through these steps, the 'impossible' transforms from a tiny backpack-sized package into a full scale e-bike:
The bike doesn’t actually have pedals, which means that if you run out of battery you’re pretty much out of luck. While this may seem like a major drawback, the designers explain that adding pedals or other chain structures would take up more space and make the bike heavier (and thus making it less portable).
The bike will be built with a brushless electric motor and will be able to travel up to 12.4 mph for 45 minutes.
At slower speeds, the bike can take a person about 15.6 miles before it needs a recharge, which is far longer than most urban commutes. The designers will also be making extra batteries available, so if you ever run out of battery on the bike, “you always can fold it into your backpack and walk to a close-by coffee shop,” to recharge, according to the Kickstarter page.
Other difficulties include the small wheels (which might pose a problem for commuters who face difficult road conditions like potholes) and that the bike has a weight limit of 180 pounds.
But overall, this seems like a pretty clever design for urban commuters. It would be perfect for getting around between public transport, or just for those exhausting days when walking home seems like an unachievable feat.
The 'impossible' will be available in three packages: white, black, and original carbon fiber color. The limited edition carbon fiber Kickstarter model will sell for $530 and will be shipped in August 2015.
For more information about the ‘impossible,’ check out the kickstarter page here.
Snowfall in Buffalo broke records this week, with the city getting more snow in two days than it typically does in a year.
More than six feet of snow has barricaded people in their homes and stranded them in their cars. The weight of the snow has already caused 30 roofs to collapse, and 13 people have died from either exposure or heart attacks.
Buffalo residents aren't usually fazed by snow. But the severity of this storm has caught many by surprise.
"This is western New York; we’re used to it,” Jack Fasanella, 62, a lifelong Buffalonian, told the New York Times. “But this is the worst I’ve ever seen. Even worse than the blizzard of ’77.”
The photos out of Buffalo are staggering.
In just the first snowstorm of the winter, Buffalo already saw eight feet of snow in three days.
While it's not official yet, this snowstorm may be the worst in Buffalo's history. The previous record for a single day in Buffalo is 33.9 inches on Dec. 10, 1995, NOAA reports. On Wednesday, 65 inches was reported in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga.
Not only was the snowstorm epic, but along with it came lightning. Buffalo news is reporting at least seven strikes during the storm.
With one location in the West Loop and one in Humboldt Park, Cemitas Pueblas specializes in cemitas, Mexican sandwiches with egg bread and sesame seeds containing varieties of meat, cheese, and vegetables.
Their famous Cemita Atomica has marinated pork, ham, and milanesa with avocado, chipotle sauce, and an abundance of Oaxacan cheese and costs $11. Their highly touted tacos only cost $2-3.
Cafecito serves traditional Cuban sandwiches and platters.
Cafecito's specialty is the Cubano sandwich — the traditional Cuban sandwich with roasted pork, ham, Swiss, pickles, and mustard. Also recommended is their twist on the Cuban, the Guava Q Sandwich, which combines roasted pork with barbeque sauce and caramelized onions to give it a tangy flavor. Sandwiches only range between $5-6
For something lighter, order some plantains or just grab a Cuban coffee or cafe con leche.
Crisp specializes in Korean barbeque and Asian fusion.
Crisp's unapologetic, hearty Asian fusion and Korean barbeque draws rave reviews for their friend chicken and wings. The Seoul Sassy Fried Chicken Prices boasts their "sassy" sauce, a combination of soy, ginger, garlic, and spices costing $8.95 for a half or $14.95 for a whole.
Their lighter Buddha Bowls allow diners to choose a variation of marinated vegetables on top of rice and fried egg for $7-10.
It's not just the iconic spires of New York and the sunny beaches of California that make the perfect settings for video games. You may not have realised it, but there have been plenty of virtual versions of London created just for video games.
Some are pixellated, sure, and others are hyper-realistic, but London has been the backdrop for a host of different games.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011). The blockbuster series visited London in 2011, in a mission that saw a terrorist detonate a chemical weapon in the capital.
Call of Duty managed to create a perfect likeness of the streets around Parliament.
Gran Turismo 5 (2010). The Japanese racing game included a photo-realistic racetrack set in central London.