Recommended Links of the Week (No. 342)

Welcome to another impressive edition of our weekly recommended links! Today you'll read about amazing things like a 1921 thief trap, terror from a baby monitor, the paradox of three pigeons and two holes, and the history of phone hackers. Don't miss a single word!

When the customer blackmails you: “Either you give me the food for free or I'll tear you apart online”: “It can also happen that the roles are reversed and it's the consumer who, boasting a great reputation on these portals or having hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter or Instagram, blackmails the restaurateur to get a significant discount or even eat for free. Always under the threat of sinking the establishment's prestige, however big or small, on the internet. We've spoken with five restaurateurs and restaurant employees who have suffered the consequences of this kind of extortionist 2.0. These blackmailers are a clear minority, they admit, though they're increasingly significant. And the best proof is that none of the restaurateurs wanted their restaurant's name to appear in the report.” There's a South Park episode about this.

Creepy stories of baby monitors: “'The camera played mysterious music and a voice told the father and son they were being watched,' Liz Melvin of the Ontario Provincial Police told Canadian Press. 'Obviously that's going to be worrying.' Waking up to the sound of a stranger's voice in a child's room is every parent's nightmare. And thanks to internet-connected baby monitors, many things have happened in the last two years. These baby monitor hacks will haunt you in your sleep (and hopefully make you change the default password on the monitor).” For a horror movie.

Thief-catching machine (1921): “The proposal was simple: a guard stayed hidden inside the machine, which externally had to look like another object, maybe a circular counter, or even a decorative element. However, in front of any suspect, the gadget could move thanks to its articulated wheel system and catch the unwary attacker like a mouse in a trap.” It seems straight out of the Batman of the 60s.

Out-of-control washing machine on a trampoline

Bus stops, the unexpected secret of Soviet roads: “When you think of 'Soviet architecture', the first thing that comes to mind is gray and monotonous concrete blocks lined up as if they were part of a North Korean parade. But in the happily extinct USSR you can find corners where creativity overflowed. Not in large congress palaces or massive government buildings, but in small bus shelters scattered here and there across the vast territory of the Soviet empire. Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig discovered this fascinating microcosm while cycling from London to St. Petersburg back in 2002. Over the next decade, he traveled more than thirty thousand kilometers through fourteen countries, from Estonia to Georgia and from Moldova to Kyrgyzstan, searching for those small explosions of imagination on the shoulders of Soviet roads.” Beautiful.

The Spanish video game genius who died before knowing success: “He was born in Avilés, but grew up and developed his professional career in Madrid. Paco Menéndez is one of the key names in the history of Spanish video games. A cursed name, since he died in 1999 before his third and final game became a cult work. Today, programmers Manuel Pazos and Daniel Celemín are working on a remake of his masterpiece: La Abadía del Crimen (The Abbey of Crime). Menéndez, self-taught in programming, was part of the studio that published one of the first games created in Spain. When Fred was released in 1983, he was still in high school.” When I was very young, I played many of his games without knowing him. It was a pleasure, Paco.

Beyond Schrödinger's cat, the new quantum paradox needs 3 pigeons and 2 holes: “Schrödinger's cat is one of the most famous thought experiments in physics. It describes a cat that, subject to the principles of quantum mechanics, is alive and dead at the same time. Now, two physicists have managed to take the famous problem one step further: Is it possible to place 3 pigeons in 2 holes at the same time without any of the pigeons sharing a hole?” The pigeons displace the cat.

Sponsored dreams - the future of advertising

When electric cars were more popular and better than gasoline ones: “At the beginning of the century, innovators from Hungary, the Netherlands, and the United States began to devise the first concepts of electric-powered vehicles. The electric car was one of the first automobiles to be developed; there were electric cars before the four-stroke engine on which Diesel, with the diesel engine, and Otto, with the gasoline engine, created the foundations on which the automobile is based today. In 1830-1840, Scottish businessman Robert Anderson designed the first pure electric vehicle. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Professor Sibrandus Stratingh of Groningen built reduced-scale electric vehicles with the help of his assistant in 1835.” What happened in between? HMMMM...?

Phreaking: a story of phone hackers, blue boxes and ingenuity: “In these days of the Internet where computing plays an absolutely predominant role in everything, where computers have reached refrigerators and where everything is smart-something, we are tired of hearing about hackers, hacking, computer security and everything else. We even have TV series on the subject — we insist, the good one is called Mr. Robot—. But what happened when the greatest example of high technology in any home was a telephone? There was also a group of people who dedicated themselves to tinkering with the telephone network to access technology that otherwise was not available to the public. They were known as phreaks, and they used a technique called phreaking.” Hackers were the ones from before.

How Age of Empires II is one of the most alive games today after 16 years: “Classics never die. That's the conclusion you reach when you see the great health of 'Age of Empires II', and we're talking about a game that was released on PC in 1999. This also has a very simple explanation: despite the sad disappearance of Ensemble Studios, the creator of the original saga, in 2009, Microsoft Studios rescued this franchise through various studios, such as Hidden Path Entertainment and SkyBox Labs, starting with 'Age of Empires II HD' on Steam in April 2013. From that moment on, it set out to rescue not only that successful RTS saga, but also another one that has enjoyed much prestige, such as 'Rise of Nations'.” I still play AoE2 and RoN.

Out-of-control mother with her drum kit

Why we can never be like Spiderman: “According to this relationship, as the volume and mass of an animal increases, the amount of body surface covered with adhesive must increase, which establishes a physical limit for the appearance of this ability in nature. Based on the size of geckos, scientists say, the animal would need to develop legs too large to be efficient. Humans, for example, would need to have 40% of our surface covered to be able to walk on walls like Spiderman, something beyond our physical limits. 'If a human, for example, wanted to walk on a wall like a gecko, they would need enormous, impractical feet - our shoes would have to be size 145', explains Walter Federle, co-author of the work.” With enough money, at least we can be like Batman.

Pascal Poot, the Frenchman who grows 400 varieties of tomatoes without pesticides and almost without water: “Pascal Poot is 52 years old, the son of farmers, self-taught (he left school at age 7) and has developed a method to grow 400 varieties of organic tomatoes with almost no water, agrotoxins or fertilizers. Pascal has been an organic seed producer for 20 years on his 3 hectares in the Herault region of France. There, the climate is very dry and the terrain is rocky, but despite the adverse conditions he has managed to get each plant to produce around 25 kilos of tomatoes. Poot collaborates with university agricultural researchers.” Genius!

The cancer treatment that has made multiple sclerosis patients walk again: “Steven Storey was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2013. This immunological disease attacks the central nervous system and spinal cord, causing problems with muscle movement, balance and vision. It occurs when a layer of protein, called myelin, that covers and protects nerve cells and helps send electrical signals from the brain to the rest of the body is damaged. Within a year, Storey went from being a fit athlete to moving around in a wheelchair. However, after receiving a treatment normally applied to cancer patients, his recovery has been astonishing.”