Sprint planning at ClientCorp. It's too late for me, but try to save yourselves 
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- 86 Viral Images From 2014 That Were Totally Fake - A nice reminder of all that rubbish you were fooled by on Facebook: ”We debunked a lot of fake viral photos this year. Eighty-six, to be exact. And that doesn't even include all those fake toilet photos from the Sochi Olympics, those fake Ebola cures, and all the lies that UberFacts helped spread. It was a busy year for fakes.”
- The 10 Most Bonkers Conspiracy Theories Of 2014 - And as if those pictures weren’t bad enough: ”We all know the most insane conspiracy theories of all time, but 2014 was a bumper harvest with a few kooky theories to rival any of those. They range from the laughably stupid, like the conspiracy around a certain rapper's lyrics, to the certifiably dangerous, the myth that Ebola is being spread by brave healthcare workers, putting them at risk.”
- Fictional bridges on Euro banknotes constructed in the Netherlands
- "The illustrations on the banknotes show generic examples of architectural styles such as renaissance and baroque rather than real bridges from a particular member state, which could have aroused envy among other countries. "The European Bank didn't want to use real bridges so I thought it would be funny to claim the bridges and make them real," [designer Robin Stam] told Dezeen."
- Abraham Lincoln and The Embalmer - "The assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865 shocked a nation… there was also the logistic nightmare of his funeral and the need to transport the President's body by train from Washington 250px-The_Assassination_of_President_Lincoln_-_Currier_and_Ives_2[1]D.C. to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Since the funeral train would retrace the route that Lincoln had traveled to Washington following his election, the body would be viewed by millions of mourners along the way during the numerous planned stops. All of which raised the question of how to keep the body preserved long enough to reach its destination." How techniques developed for preserving the dead of the Civil War became fashionable.
- Listening To Storage - The audiophiles are back, and have now convinced themselves that the way you store your digital music files affects how they sound, right down to which kind of microprocessor is in your NAS: ”QNAP1 was found to serve up music with a similar level of rhythmic drive and image soundstaging as a good CD transport playing directly into our system's DAC. If anything, there was perceptibly more 'drive', in the sense of bass euphony and articulation, but this came with increased level which made the sound a tad bass heavy… QNAP2 rendered the same song more tunefully. It was more organic and made more sense, the lines of melody and rhythm cooperating better. As well as showing better individual instrument distinction, the whole piece sounded tidier, tonally less messy without the roughened HF, and perhaps better integrated in musical intent.”
- I got left at the altar: turning heartbreak into artwork - When Shelby Swink’s fiancé called it off a week before the wedding, she gathered together family, friends, and photographer Elizabeth Hoard, together with lots of paint: ”My friend Carolyn didn't even wait for my photographer Elizabeth to say "go" — she just kind of threw the paint on me. The moment the paint hit my dress… I was free. All the disappointment, all the hurt… I just felt it leave me. I can't even describe how liberating and cathartic the experience was for me.”
- Stop Misquoting Donald Knuth! - Joshua Barczak on optimisation: ”The Free Lunch ended a long time ago, and there are indications that the multi-core free lunch won’t last much longer… We need to start paying as much attention to the performance, efficiency, and scalability of our code as we do to all the other factors. Will this waste resources is as important a question as will this break encapsulation or will this be maintainable.”
- The Plutonium Collector - ”During the holidays I noticed that Sanford Lawrence Simons had died of cancer aged 92 in Littleton, Colorado. In 1950 he became known to the press as the “plutonium collector” after he was arrested by the FBI for stealing a sample of the deadly new radioactive element from Los Alamos… Simons, who had trained as a metallurgical engineer, readily admitted taking the radioactive material, but he claimed it was just a “souvenir” of his time at Los Alamos, which he left in July 1946.” Nice souvenir
- The making of parchment - Henk de Groot explains what to do with all those goatskins you have lying around: ”How parchment was prepared before mediaeval times is uncertain. It is thought that salt and flour made acid in water was used but there is also the probability that chicken or dog excrement was used, and who knows what else!”
- 10 Comics That Shut Down Terrible Internet Arguments - "Is there a persistent Internet argument that you're just sick of responding to? Don't have the energy to explain the problem with the argument for the billionth time? These comics can help, countering those troublesome arguments with a few words and pictures." The perfect excuse to include David Malki’s “The Terrible Sea Lion”:
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