Seagulls Torment Woman By Dropping Plastic Golf Balls on Her House

Well, here’s an odd little story that happened over in jolly old England recently. A woman living in Paignton, Devon started hearing strange clanking noises on the roof of her house, and decided to go outside and have a look. After investigating, she found a couple of orange practice golf balls sitting on her yard. She figured it was from some neighborhood kids playing around, and moved on with her life. But then the balls kept raining down.

seagull golf balls

Turns out that after much puzzlement, the brightly-colored plastic golf balls were coming not from kids, but from gulls flying overhead and dropping them on her roof.  Apparently, the seagulls think that the balls are mussels, and that dropping them will crack them open so they can get at the tasty morsel inside. I’m sure the gulls are very disappointed when they find out there’s a whole lot of nothing inside of them. Now why they decided to repeatedly use this woman’s house for target practice is anyone’s guess – maybe she ran over a seagull in a past life. So far, more than fifty of the balls have found their way onto the woman’s home.

What’s even more confounding is that nobody seems to know where the balls are coming from – after checking with many local golf courses, none of them use such balls for practice. Perhaps she can start her own driving range now.

[via Daily Mail]


DirecTV HR34 DVR ‘Genie’ recommendations and autorecording get previewed ahead of fall launch

DirecTV HR34 DVR 'Genie' recommendations and autorecording get previewed ahead of fall launch

DirecTV paired its HD interface with the five tuner, RVU ready HR34 Home Media Center DVR back in March, so what will it do next to take advantage of the multiroom boxes with five tuners and massive hard drives? The answer is Genie, a new feature / rebranding that should be very familiar to TiVo users, since its aim is to find other shows you might be interested in and store them on the DVR without being prompted. The folks at Solid Signal and DBSTalk have had an early preview of the fall software update that will enable it, and have both posted hands-on impressions.

Once the user enables the feature, after a few hours it begins episodes of shows similar to the ones they already watch and recording them automatically. The feature uses hard drive space that’s already reserved for DirecTV’s video on-demand (so user accessible recording space is not impacted) and works in selections available from VOD. Watching a program at your leisure VOD-style, setting up a series recording for a new favorite or blasting it from your drive is just a click of the remote away on the DVR or one of its multiroom extenders. Helping viewers discover new content is a field suddenly filled with competition, from the social networking based to Dish Network’s Hopper that records everything on primetime network TV and even filters out commercials. That Genie can let you watch already recorded episodes right away and pull from any broadcasts its finds may give it a leg up, but so far we haven’t seen recommendation systems good enough to promote switching from one service to another. Hit the source links for more details on how it all works, along with a video preview, also embedded after the break.

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DirecTV HR34 DVR ‘Genie’ recommendations and autorecording get previewed ahead of fall launch originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Sep 2012 19:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pilots Get iPads but Flight Attendants Get Galaxy Notes [Tablets]

American Airlines has been making the move to digital by giving their pilots iPads instead of paper heavy manuals, and the upgrading doesn’t stop there. American Airlines wants their flight attendants outfitted with tech, but they won’t be handing out more full-size tablets. They’re going with the Galaxy Note. More »

Double Amputee Shooting: Matthew Jacob Marin, Houston Officer, Kills Man In Wheelchair, Police Say

HOUSTON — A Houston police officer shot and killed a one-armed, one-legged man in a wheelchair Saturday inside a group home after police say the double amputee threatened the officer and aggressively waved a metal object that turned out to be a pen.

Police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said the man cornered the officer in his wheelchair and was making threats while trying to stab the officer with the pen. At the time, the officer did not know what the metal object was that the man was waving, Silva said.

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iPhone 5 jailbroken on launch day

Whenever a new iPhone arrives, it seems that there’s always a race to be the first to jailbreak it. Hacker Grant Paul claims that he’s already jailbroken the iPhone 5, less than 24 hours after the the newest iDevice launched in here in the US. Paul posted an image of the iPhone 5 home screen with a shortcut to Cydia to his Twitter account, indicating that he’s already managed to jailbreak the the handset.


Don’t get too excited though, because details are still painfully scarce. The jailbreak isn’t ready for prime time yet, and it seems that Paul merely wanted to tweet these images to claim the title of “first to jailbreak the iPhone 5.” If he actually did jailbreak the device, you can bet that Apple is pretty upset that he did it so quickly following the iPhone 5′s launch. After all, Apple already has a problem with people jailbreaking their iPhones, so the fact that one hacker managed to do it in such a short amount of time can’t be sitting too well with the company.

Some people are naturally expressing some skepticism that he’s truly jailbroken the iPhone 5, and to quell those suspicions, Paul posted more images of his iPhone 5 running Cydia. Jailbreaking an iPhone, as many of you already know, allows users to do any number of things, from running homebrew apps to unlocking additional functionality. Many use jailbreaking as a way to tether without having to pay extra, and with many carriers imposing additional fees for tethering these days, it’s an increasingly popular reason to jailbreak your device.

Of course, jailbreaking also allows users to install pirated apps, but the jailbreaking community will tell you that there’s much more to it than just free software. Though Paul has already jailbroken the device, it looks like other iPhone 5 users will be waiting a bit longer for the jailbreak to be made public, either by Paul himself or by someone else. Have a look at our timeline below for more recent news on the iPhone 5.


iPhone 5 jailbroken on launch day is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Write Something Heavy With This Concrete Roller Ball Pen [Design]

From the minds who brought you the concrete sketch pencil comes the implement you’ve been needing to flesh out your concrete collection: More »

Alt-week 9.22.12: Quantum Scotch tape, moving walls and scientific beer

Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

Altweek 92212 Quantum Scotch tape, moving walls and scientific beer

Sometimes, here at alt.engadget.com, we’re literally on the bleeding edge of technology. We get to explore concepts and ideas that are almost nebular in nature. Not this week though, where there’s a distinct utilitarian aroma in the air. The glittery overcoat of future science is replaced by the rolled-up sleeves of good old-fashioned engineering. A bit of sticky tape, a proof of concept omnidirectional bike and a hardware matrix wall. After all that, you’ll probably want a beer to wash it down with. Fortunately for you, it’s all here. This is alt-week.

Continue reading Alt-week 9.22.12: Quantum Scotch tape, moving walls and scientific beer

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Alt-week 9.22.12: Quantum Scotch tape, moving walls and scientific beer originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Sep 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Maps Problems Didn’t Stop iOS 6 From Having a Record-Breaking Adoption Rate [IOS 6]

Apple’s new, buggy maps have been getting a lot of negative attention recently, but talk is cheap. Even with all that whining, iOS 6 has proven to be the most quickly adopted version of the operating system, 122 percent faster than its predecessor iOS 5. Where it took iOS 5 five days to gain a 20 percent share of traffic, it took iOS 6 just over one day. More »

Game of Thrones Collectible Figures: A Song of Ice and Vinyl

I’m a huge fan of Game of Thrones. As a matter of fact, I’m going back and watching all 20 episodes again with my wife, now that she’s convinced that it’s an awesome show as well. But when I think about the series, it conjures up visions of backstabbing, blood, gore, violence, and sex. What I don’t think of are cute desk toys. That said, I still want all of these.

game of thrones daenerys targaryen

The guys over at POP! have come out with a series of big-headed, bug-eyed versions of some of the main characters from HBO’s award-winning fantasy-drama. Their goofy disproportionate, squared-off heads actually kind of remind me of Betty Boop for some reason.

game of thrones ned stark 150x150
game of thrones khal drogo 150x150
game of thrones tyrion lannister 150x150
game of thrones the hound 150x150
game of thrones whitewalker 150x150
game of thrones daenerys targaryen 150x150

The series includes 3-3/4 inch-tall vinyl figures of Daenerys Targaryn (with a tiny dragon, of course), Ned Stark (complete with head), Khal Drogo (infected wound sold separately), Tyrion Lannister (surprisingly the same height as all the other figures), the Hound (complete with sibling-induced facial burns), and a White Walker (I thought they didn’t exist.)  Though I really was hoping for a King Joffrey that I could throw darts at, or a Viserys Targaryen with a custom-fit gold crown.

The whole gang is coming out this December so you should be able to have them in your hands in time for the holidays. Winter is coming, after all. Pre-order them now over at Entertainment Earth for $9.99 (USD) each.

[via The Curious Brain]


How To Find Out If the Web Services You Use Every Day Are Making Money [Websites]

A lot of business is done on the Internet, but the model for making money there isn’t as straightforward as “sell a thing, make a profit.” So how do the web services you use every day make money? The aptly named “How Do They Make Money” has some answers. More »