Zothecula writes "Though the idea of sleeping inside a concrete tube probably doesn't sound that appealing, architect firm T3arc have found a way to make sleeping inside a pipe not only comfortable but also a holiday experience. Mexico's Tubohotel, which opened in 2010, is a unique and affordable holiday destination created from recycled concrete tubes. Located approximately 45 minutes south of Mexico City in the village of Tepoztlan, Morelos, the rooms of the hotel are stacked in a pyramid shape, reflecting the Aztec pyramid of El Tepozteco that overlooks the town."

gregmon writes "An Austrian follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has finally won the right to don the religious headgear of his choosing (a spaghetti strainer) in his driving license photo. After a three year battle with the un-enlightened Austrian authorities, Niko Aim can now wear his colander in all official photos."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the German government are working on a $10 million project to provide innovative sanitation facilities to 800,000 Kenyans over the next five years. From the article: "The goal is to find 'innovative solutions' for sanitation in poor urban areas. Gates says it's time to move on from the era of the classic toilet. He points out that, despite all the recent achievements, 40% of the world's population, or some 2.5 billion people, still lives without proper means of flushing away excrement. But just giving them Western-style toilets isn't possible because of the world's limited water resources." I wonder what the toilet version of The Blue Screen of Death is.

Vrtigo1 writes "I keep a Pentium Pro CPU on my desk underneath my monitor because it reminds me of simpler times. Every once in a while I want to revisit the old days of the original Doom, the phonebook-sized Computer Shoppers, when you looked forward to the demo CD that came with Computer Gaming World because the Internet was too slow to distribute software, and when Falcon Northwest's Mach V was the envy of many a geek. IRC is just about the only technology I can think of that's still in use today and still looks the same as it did in the early nineties. So where do you go when you need to regress back to simpler times and get your nostalgia fix? I foolishly trashed my old tech mags, and there isn't a whole lot online that has survived from that long ago."

smitty777 writes "A recent article in the Journal of Biogeography describes research showing that 15% of the snails devoured by birds on a Japanese island can survive the digestive process. This is thought to be the mechanism by which the snail populations can migrate from island to island, similar to the way plant seeds are deposited. From the article: 'In the lab, scientists fed the birds with the snails to find out whether any survived the digestive process. "We were surprised that a high rate, about 15 percent, of snails were still alive after passing through the gut of [the] birds," explained researcher Shinichiro Wada.'" As bad as riding in a bird's digestive tract sounds, I'd take it over flying standby on a puddle jumper.

Chicago car salesman Thomas Stuker has set a record by accumulating an astonishing 10 million air miles on United Airlines. In the past 29 years Thomas has flown almost 6,000 times - racking up a total mileage that would circle the Earth 400 times. From the article: "Mr Stuker has already been highly rewarded with access to a special lounge at the airlines hub in Chicago, first-class upgrades as a matter of course and even a plane named after him on the fleet."

A new app from CBS interactive can help you figure out the trouble with tribbles once and for all. Star Trek PADD for iPad includes all the official data on ships, aliens, technologies, an episode guide, and uses a Starfleet-like interface. Live long and prosper.

Joe Gutheinz, a former senior investigator for NASA's Office of Inspector General, has made it his goal to collect all 230 moon rocks presented by the US to governments around the world, and put them in a museum. Deadliest Catch Captain Coleman Anderson wants to keep his little piece of the moon. Anderson says he found the rock in the trash mixed with debris following a fire at an Anchorage museum in 1973. He's kept it as a good luck charm ever since. "Our astronauts and their descendants are not permitted to have an Apollo 11-era moon rock to sell for their own enrichment and neither should a private citizen who acquired one in a less-noble manner," Gutheinz said. An Alaskan judge will now decide who legally owns the rock.

ndogg writes "The open source Python projects Pantyshot and Upskirt have caused quite a stir within the Python community, and catalyzed the leaving of one of their developers (a woman whose native language is not English.) The original developer, Frank Smit, has renamed Pantyshot to Misaka, but that too has suspect etymology, as Violet Blue points out."

Dangerous_Minds writes "ZeroPaid is reporting on an attempt in Sweden to recognize filesharing as a religion. The religion's website calls this 'Kopimism' and says that sharing of knowledge is sacred. Apparently, Swedish authorities were not convinced. A recent report shows that the attempt failed to convince the authorities to recognize Kopimism as a religion."

smitty777 writes "FitBit is a wearable device created to track calorie usage based on activities. Unfortunately for some users, one of those is sexual activities. The information gained from the device is uploaded to the users online web account, which is searchable by Google. From the article: 'Yikes. Users of fitness and calorie tracker Fitbit may need to be more careful when creating a profile on the site. The sexual activity of many of the users of the company’s tracker and online platform can be found in Google Search results, meaning that these users’ profiles are public and searchable.'" It's just a matter of time before a line gets crossed and a relationship gets ruined by trying to post the largest Fitbit numbers for the evening.

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Atlantis shuttle is set to launch this Friday, and its crew will be testing an innovative device that can recycle human urine into a sugary sports drink. The bag uses forward osmosis technology and features a semi-permeable membrane capable of isolating water from virtually any liquid. Recycling urine in this way has a significant effect on a ship's payload, and considering that a single pound adds $10,000 of cost, that slight weight difference can translate to serious savings." CT: I'm at Kennedy Space Center now, tweeting as @cmdrtaco. And I think I'll stay away from the sports drink.

mache writes "It's scary when you find two completely unrelated areas that you are passionate about merged. It happened to me with BBQ and hacking home network infrastructure. People have taken old Linksys WRT54G (and their derivatives) routers and made them into automatic temperature controllers for BBQ smokers. They support Wi-Fi and even have a web browser to monitor progress."

An anonymous reader writes "A NY based lawyer has submitted an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office claiming first use of the term bitcoin on June 22nd, 2011. The evidence of first use in the form of a letter detailing his wife's offer to sell "bitcoin" for $17.50 on June 23rd. A pdf extolling the virtues of bitcoin has also been uploaded to his law firms webpage."

DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly writes "Many geocachers will be thinking twice when planting their treasure in an urban space as one geocacher found out in England after the police cordoned off the center of a small West Yorkshire town and the Bomb Squad was called in. From the article: 'It was a normal busy Friday morning in the small West Yorkshire market town of Wetherby when someone working in a café spotted a man acting a bit suspiciously on the street. He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Wild Facebook parties tend to occur when a Facebook Event invitation to a typical small gathering is mistakenly posted publicly, and then goes viral. This results in injuries and arrests as hundreds or even thousands show up for a party meant for a handful of people. A recent wave of these out-of-control Facebook parties has left German officials and politicians trying to figure how to deal with the trend."

jfruhlinger writes "If you first went on line in the '90s, you probably remember a time when every e-mail you received was exciting, or at least relevant, and was worthy of your personal attention. One brave writer decided to take that approach to his present-day overflowing inbox. He read every email he received and dealt with them all, either by replying, filing, or unsubscribing. He even scanned his spam filter for false positives. It was a lot harder than he thought it would be."

athe!st writes "A new anti-microbial treatment that can make clothing — including smelly socks — permanently germ-free has been developed by US scientists. In a paper published in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces, Dr Jason Locklin and his colleagues state that the treatment kills a wide range of dangerous pathogens, including staph, strep, E. coli, pseudomonas and acinetobacter."

BoxRec writes "Scientists in England have developed a 3D chocolate printer that prints layers of chocolate instead of ink or plastic. 'Now we have an opportunity to combine chocolate with digital technology, including the design, digital manufacturing and social networking. Chocolate has a lot of social purpose, so our intention is to develop a community and share the designs, ideas and experience about it,' says lead scientist Dr Liang Hao."

Mightee writes "Graduates from Royal College of Art have discovered a way to turn hair cuttings that parlors throw away as waste into sustainable eyewear named Hair Glasses. The idea behind this is to 'Go Green' by stopping the use of Petroleum-based plastic frames and use an easily available, environment friendly and renewable resource."