Idiots Who Are Deathly Afraid of Wi-Fi Have Found a Town in West Virginia That Bans Wireless Signals for 13,000 Square Miles [Wtf]

I always thought it would be a hilarious conspiracy if all the wireless signals that invade our invisible space was really screwing with our health. I wasn't serious though! These people are—they avoid Wi-Fi like the plague.

"My face turns red, I get a headache, my vision changes, and it hurts to think. Last time [I was exposed] I started getting chest pains - and to me that's becoming life-threatening"

That's Diane Schou, she's one of the 5% (!) of Americans who think they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS). Symptoms of EHS include skin burning, muscle twitching, chronic pain, etc. and is caused by exposure to cell phones, Wi-Fi and other electronic devices, basically they're allergic to modern life. I don't mean to demean other people's beliefs and/or health problems but...

What the fuck.

Schou's husband, bless his heart, built a Faraday Cage for her to live in—it was a wooden frame with two layers of wire mesh and a door that could be sealed shut. All the more better to block out the signals, you know? That's where Schou spent much of her time before she found her safe haven: Green Bank, West Virginia. Green Bank is part of the US Radio Quiet Zone—wireless signals are banned 13,000 miles across to prevent interference with the giganto radio telescopes in the area. Green Bank is slowly emerging as the destination du jour for these Wi-Fi 'fraidy cats—no one carries cell phones, no one uses wireless tech and people can breathe now!

According to the BBC, dozens have flocked to the area and are now able to live a normal life. As normal as crazy people can get, I guess. [BBC via BoingBoing, Image Credit: Rob Wilson/Shutterstock]

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Airplane Crash Victims Found at Sea Thanks to iPhone Signal [IPhone]

A military airplane with 21 people aboard was lost over Chile's sea this weekend. It disappeared from radar and the authorities didn't know where it crashed. Surprisingly, they started to recover their bodies thanks to Apple's Find My iPhone feature.

Remains from the CASA 212 from Chile's Air Force were found floating in the sea near Tierra Banca and Playa Larga, in a zone between the islands of Robinson Crusoe and Santa Clara, and Juan Fernández airport.

The crash point was located thanks to one of the victims' relatives. The victim had an active iPhone at the time of the crash. Presumably out of desperation, the relative tried the Find My iPhone feature that Apple offers for iOS devices. Surprisingly, the phone appeared on the map in the computer, according to one of the military officials in charge of the search operation:

One of the passengers carried [an iPhone]. When it fell into the sea, it was located and one of the relatives sent us that information.

It's surprising that the iPhone survived the impact and continued to work, even more so because the crash was really extreme, according to the military sources:

None of the pieces so far recovered is bigger than 50 centimeters (20 inches) which confirms that the airplane suffered a high fragmentation [on impact]

The search teams—on the image—are now trying to recover the bodies from the bottom of the sea using two Proteus 1000 robots, but the weather conditions are extremely bad at this time. Military divers will start the recovery as soon as the conditions clear up, but four bodies have been found already. [Infobae—Thanks Fran Velazquez!]

Note: Someone changed the headline after publication by mistake. The title has been reverted to the original. —JD

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The Grossest Things Accidentally Found in Hot Dogs Are Even Grosser Than You Think [Wtf]

Hot dogs. Juicy, succulent, mouth savoring meat. A pink mixed mash of deliciousness. See hot dog, want hot dog, eat hot dog. That's what I think, at least. I might have to think twice though. Some truly disgusting stuff is sometimes found in a hotdiggity.

The NY Times sent a FOIA request to the USDA asking to see the complaints the USDA received about foreign objects in hot dogs and um, it ain't pretty. I know hot dogs aren't exactly the shining saint of natural, healthy human food but I didn't expect it to be this bad. Here's a list of the grossest things that managed to finagle its way into the pink tube we all know and love (and probably ate this past weekend):

small piece of glass
worms
maggots
bone fragments
plastic
piece of an eyeball
piece of metal
"something green"
rat leg
"someone has ejaculated in these hot dogs"
Band-Aids
rubber glove
lock washer
"winged insect that resembled a dragonfly inside the package of hot dogs"
razor

There's more too, I could only look at about half of the 64 case files the NY Times received before grossing myself out. All of these "foreign objects" were in complaints filed with the USDA from 2007 through 2009. Having these case files doesn't mean they're all true but it does mean the USDA investigated these claims to a certain point.

Luckily, in most if not all cases, the USDA determined that there was no "pattern of neglect at the packing plant" and just notified the company that handled the hot dogs. To be fair, foreign objects inside hot dogs are still a pretty rare occurrence. Think about it, there are 20 billion dogs made every year and only a few cases include "foreign objects". That's not too bad of a rate, I suppose? Whatever. I'm never eating a hot dog again. Or at least I won't eat one today.

Check out the entire case files of complaints here: Scribd [NY Times, Image Credit: nito/Shutterstock]

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How a Robotic Telescope Just Found the Youngest Supernova Yet [Space]

See that little, growing white dot? That's the youngest supernova ever discovered and the closest to Earth in a generation.

The lucky Galileio to spot this momentous event was The Palomar Transient Factory, an automated system mounted on the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope in Southern California. As it scans the night sky, the PTF transmits the collected data to the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center where a cadre of of supercomputers apply advanced computer-learning search algorithms to analyze and identify potentially important objects. Coordinates to these points are then distributed to astronomers worldwide for further inspection.

PTF 11kly—as the supernova has been ID'd—is a Type Ia located in the the Pinwheel Galaxy, part of the Big Dipper constellation about 21 million light years away. That's unfortunately too far away to see with the naked eye but luckily too far away to pose any threat to the planet. It's just the fifth Type Ia supernova to explode this close to the Earth since 1572. To find one just a few hours after it went critical is unheard of and will provide invaluable insight into how they develop.

Type Ia supernovae are formed when White Dwarves—a star that's already burned through its fuel and ceases fusion—undergo a secondary fusion reaction after siphoning material off a companion star, releasing massive amounts of enrgy. These supernovae are incredibly valuable to science because the peak luminosity between these types of supernova is so uniform that they can be used as standard candles in measuring interstellar distances.

[Berkeley Labs via Popular Science - Type Ia Supernova Wiki]

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A Man Found a Mysterious, Possibly Mafia-Connected Safe Inside a Casino Wall and Plans to Open It Live on the Internet [Security]

Mike Laub recently bought Bill's casino in Lake Tahoe and was in the process of renovating the building. But when he started tearing down walls, Laub found a four foot tall, black locked safe that was hidden underneath a staircase and sealed off behind a wall.

What the hell? How did no one know about this? What could be so important to seal the safe off completely? To not even let it be accessible, even. That's the question that'll be answered in the next few days.

Laub thinks the safe belongs to a previous owner of the casino, Richard Chartrand. Chartrand was killed in 1968 when a bomb exploded underneath his car as he backed out of his driveway. Hm. Casino owner + money + bomb death + the 60's = Mafia anybody? That's what the speculation has always been at least. So if Chartrand was killed by the Mafia and the safe belongs to Chartrand, it doesn't take a wiseguy to know that the Mafia would take a keen interest as to what's inside. And though the mafia might not be as powerful as they once were, things could get mighty interesting once that safe pops off.

But while Mike Laub was talking to the press about how bizarre the safe was, his son, Jordan Laub has promised Reddit that he'll open the safe live online. In his words, he'll be there before the newspapers with a blowtorch and in charming teenage ignorance, says he's not worried about the mafia. The way I see it, the contents of the safe can go one of two ways: 1) whatever's inside is big enough that the mafia is going to kill someone over it or 2) it's going to be very disappointing (like Capone's vault). I'm hoping there's a third scenario. [Tahoe Daily Tribune via Reddit via @kn0thing, Image Credit: Adam Jensen/Tahoe Daily Tribune]

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