sneakernet

German multinational Puma would like to remind everyone that digital pedometers and quantifiable data aren’t exactly the newest thing under the sun with the revival of its vintage 1986 RS running shoe.
Cables are required, however, for changing the module in the heel and not for interfacing with one’s home computer. Steps and other fitness telemetry will be transmitted over Bluetooth for the limited reissue. Only eighty-six pairs will be made available worldwide and will probably unfortunately never see any actual street wear.

no₂

With the season of annual superlatives upon us, we quite enjoyed this curated gallery culled from the submissions to the National Geographic Photography Competition. The grand prize went to Jassen Todorov, violinist, photographer and flight instructor, who snapped this stunningly tragic image of thousands of automotive exiles, mothballed in the Mojave Desert.
An aircraft boneyard is just out of the frame and the assembled field of cars represent just a fraction of the millions that had to be idled. These Volkswagens and Audis from the model years 2009 to 2015 were not only not compliant with US Environmental Protection Agency and EU emissions for nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide standards but the engines were moreover designed to cheat—with so called defeat devices—during trials to pass testing. This is certainly a powerful and iconic reminder on how we all pay dearly for something so cheaply underestimated. See more stirring winners and worthies at the link up top.

use proxy

Via Kottke’s curated Quick Links, we enjoyed this collection of hypertext transfer protocol standard response codes illustrated with GIFs of entertainer Beyoncé. Here’s the one for client error code 408: Request Timeout. Check out more of the status codes at HTTBey that includes the two-hundreds, the success series and the three hundreds—the redirects.

the guardians

TIME magazine honours those fighting and dying on the front lines of the War on Truth as its figures of the year, highlighting the fact that coverage does not come without costs.
In addition to the murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi revealing the disdain that Saudi Arabia has for human rights despite a veneer of progressive reforms, three more covers highlight the sacrifice and insult that the press has faced this year—a mass-shooting on a newsroom in Annapolis, uncovering genocide taking place Myanmar and human rights abuses and disappearings in the Philippines in face of unrelenting adversity. Even more insidious than the open campaign of slurring the media, we offer for your consideration the dismantling of local news outlets, the watchdogs and implications that that has for its jurisdiction.