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Joint Chiefs Chair: No, No, No. Don’t Attack Iran.
NEW YORK CITY — We are all screwed if Iran gets a nuke. And we may be just as screwed if the United States attacks Iran to keep Tehran from getting that nuke. Okay, I’m paraphrasing a bit. But that’s the core of the message from America’s top military officer, who reiterated his canyon-deep reservations about [...]
04.18.10 -
Why Intel Wants to Get into Energy
Intel showed off an experimental device last week in China that could someday substantially cut the costs of wiring homes and offices for energy efficiency, one more step in the company’s foray into energy. The device is a server/sensor that monitors the power consumption of the various appliances in a home or [...]
04.18.10 -
Saving Private Sheep: Mixing Physics and, uh, Sheep
You know what’s missing from most physics puzzler games? Sheep! Okay, so maybe you didn’t miss them, but somebody apparently did. Saving Private Sheep, an iPhone game from BulkyPix just released this week, has you rescuing sheep from the ravenous wolves below. Each level starts you with various types of objects and at least one weird pentagonal [...]
04.18.10 -
The Best of Geek on iTunes U
With the release of the iPad dominating the Internet right now, a lot of attention has been focused on how the introduction of a multitouch tablet will affect the educational environment. GeekDad’s very own Jenny Williams wrote a great post about how she thinks the new device will take off in the hands of kids. [...]
04.18.10 -
Doctor Who - a Most Excellent Adventure Begins Anew
Before people traveled through time in hot tubs, there were phone booths — and I don’t mean “Bill & Ted’s.” That comedic romp came out in theaters in 1989, the same year “Doctor Who” left the airwaves after more than 26 years of excellent sci-fi adventures. The pop culture icon came back at last in 2005 [...]
04.17.10 -
The Dogs of War: Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft
It’s hard to grasp the breathtaking scale of the epic war between Microsoft, Google and Apple. Billions upon billions of dollars. Entire industries at stake. This is the board. These are the pieces. If you think about it, what’s shocking isn’t the size of Microsoft or Apple, companies that are decades old, [...]
04.17.10 -
6 Questions and Answers About the Icelandic Volcanic Ash Cloud
It’s pretty hard to avoid hearing about the volcanic ash plume grounding flights all over Europe, caused by the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. It occurred to us here at GeekDad that many kids, and probably many adults, had some questions about the ash plume, why it was having the effect it is, and what [...]
04.17.10 -
Training Your Dragon on the Go
DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon has already proven itself at the box office. Combining understated 3D, quality CGI, an enjoyable story and enchanting characters, it’s a coming of age story for misfits everywhere. With Vikings. And also dragons. The question still remains, however, as to whether the success of the film itself will translate [...]
04.17.10 -
Record Store Day Spins Free Shows, Special Releases
As the music industry flails to find a viable business model in cloud jukebox services such as Lala and Spotify, a far more tangible medium for music consumption is making a comeback. As of November 2009, sales of vinyl records had risen 35 percent in just a year, according to The New York Times. Michael Kurtz, [...]
04.17.10 -
GeekDad Puzzle Of The Week Solution: The Locality Of The Vault
Congratulations to Todd Williams, who correctly solved this week’s puzzle and is the proud owner of a $50 gift certificate from ThinkGeek! Puzzle: 1294 651 49 516 534 257 385 576 702 38 1211 981 106 892 33 600 1322 807 10 188 1232 436 929 842 1113 4 240 480 6 969 1290 937 367 131 1262 778 [...]
04.17.10
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RoboGiveaway: Win a Meet-up With Mythbuster Grant Imahara at RoboGames!
RoboGames is the “World’s Largest Robot Competition” and an annual exposition of robotic art and mayhem here in the Bay Area, featuring ten different combat and automation challenges in dozens of different weight and design classes. You’ll see everything from flyweight sumo-bots to the killer 340lb-class heavyweight combat units tearing into each other for your [...]
04.17.10 -
School District Allegedly Snapped Thousands of Student Webcam Spy Pics
A webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district is broadening, with lawyers claiming the district secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students using school-issued laptops without the pupils’ knowledge or consent. Some of the images included pictures of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed,” according to a Thursday filing in [...]
04.16.10 -
Zune Hackers Create Toolkit to Make Apps, Games
A team of three developers has created a toolkit that can bypass Microsoft’s limitations on developing programs for the Zune. The kit allows independent programmers to create applications for the digital music player. “This is the first Zune hack that works,” Glenn Anderson, one of the creators of the toolkit told Wired.com. “People can now bypass [...]
04.16.10 -
Why It’s So Hard to Tell Which Tooth Has the Ache
When it comes to a toothache, the brain doesn’t discriminate. A new imaging study shows that to the brain, a painful upper tooth feels a lot like a painful lower tooth. The results, which will be published in the journal Pain, help explain why patients are notoriously bad at pinpointing a toothache. For the most part, [...]
04.16.10 -
Diplo Talks Sample of the Millennium, the Return of Fun and Other Musical Secrets
Say what you like about Major Lazer, but one thing the DJ duo is not is boring. That’s a pretty high compliment these days, when so many bands sound like carefully constructed hybrids of other bands we’ve heard before. Years of club DJing, producing tracks for mainstream and underground artists alike, and applying their unique musical [...]
04.16.10 -
Bush’s Illegal Wiretapping Tab: $612,000
The two American lawyers who were illegally wiretapped by the Bush administration asked a federal judge Friday to order the government to pay $612,000 in damages, plus legal fees for their attorneys. The demand (.pdf) comes two weeks after U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said the former administration wiretapped the lawyers’ telephone conversations (.pdf) without a [...]
04.16.10 -
Obama Lays Out New Vision for Asteroid, Mars Trips
Speaking at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center April 15, President Obama outlined a new plan for the space agency that would forgo sending astronauts back to the moon, but would send humans to an asteroid in 2025 and into orbit around Mars a decade later. The strategy would rely on private aerospace companies to ferry crew and [...]
04.16.10 -
Ingenious: Free Music If You Talk About It on Facebook or Twitter
After hearing about CASH Music’s new web apps, which allow artists or labels to give a free song to anyone who tweets or posts a Facebook update about their music, we’re wondering why nobody thought of this before. Artists are constantly encouraging their fans to spread the word about them; all that was missing was [...]
04.16.10 -
Spam Suspect Uses Google Docs; FBI Happy
FBI agents targeting alleged criminal spammers last year obtained a trove of incriminating documents from a suspect’s Google Docs account, in what appears to be the first publicly acknowledged search warrant benefiting from a suspect’s reliance on cloud computing. The warrant, issued August 21 in the Western District of New York, targeted Levi Beers [...]
04.16.10 -
Photos Surface of the Day Einstein Died
Ralph Morse, an ambitious photojournalist for Life magazine, covered a funeral in New Jersey on April 18, 1955. Now, 55 years later, Life.com is finally publishing the pictures he took that day during the funeral and cremation of Albert Einstein. Einstein died of heart failure at age 76 earlier that morning at Princeton Hospital. The hospital’s [...]
04.16.10
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Major Cable Providers To Share Wi-Fi Networks
Internet customers in the tri-state region will be delighted to hear that three of the biggest providers - Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner - just announced a deal to share Wi-Fi networks between each other. If you are, for example, a Time Warner user in New York, you will now be able to connect to any [...]
04.16.10 -
Morphing Stations Turn Avatar Fans Into Na’vi
It’s Na’vi Morph Day this Friday in Los Angeles, where visitors to The Grove shopping center can transform themselves into Avatar-like characters. The Avatar makeover relies on three morphing stations powered by Inwindow Outdoor technology. As shoppers approach the stations’ touchscreens, cameras capture their features and transform the images into virtual blue-skinned Pandorans. Once their morphs are [...]
04.16.10 -
Bad PR Forces Apple to Reconsider Banning Prize-Winning Satirist
Bending to bad publicity, Apple has asked Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore to resubmit the iPhone app it rejected four months ago because the app satirized public figures in violation of its policies. Fiore did just that Friday morning, even though he says he feels a bit odd about it. “I feel a little bit [...]
04.16.10 -
Telltale Boss: Most Customers Pay Upfront for Episodic Games
Dan Connors, the co-founder of Telltale Games, believes that episodic games are the future. But he doesn’t think gamers want to pay for episodes one chunk at a time. “Most people have migrated to our subscription model in our PC business,” the veteran game designer told Wired.com in a phone interview Thursday, the day that The [...]
04.16.10 -
Yahoo Beats Feds in E-Mail Privacy Battle
Yahoo prevailed Friday over Colorado federal prosecutors in a legal battle testing whether the Constitution’s warrant requirements apply to Americans’ e-mail. Saying the contested e-mail “would not be helpful to the government’s investigation,” (.pdf) the authorities withdrew demands for e-mail in a pending and sealed criminal case. For the moment, the move ends litigation over the [...]
04.16.10 -
Gallery: 8 Tablets That Aren’t Made by Apple
<< previous image | next image >> Few product categories get a second chance to make it big. Wristwatch calculators, 8-track tapes, mopeds, unicycles and Polaroid film are never going to be wildly popular again. But tablets are poised to make the kind of comeback that would make Robert Downey Jr. proud. PC makers have offered slates [...]
04.16.10 -
Giant, Origami-Style Crane Ascends Over Coachella
A giant art installation created to look like an origami crane will give concertgoers at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival a welcome relief from the Southern California sun this weekend. They might also find a little inspiration along with the shade. See also: Must-See Musical Acts at Coachella 2010 Inspired by the Japanese legend of [...]
04.16.10 -
Ning Fails at Free Social Networking
Ning, a brainchild of Netscape bazillionaire Marc Andreessen that was designed to let anyone make a social network about anything for free, won’t do it anymore. Each of the service’s 2.3 million networks’ users will disappear unless its creator either pays Ning or migrate the network to another platform. So much for “free” as the future [...]
04.16.10 -
Portable Scanner Doxie Adds some Zing to Scanning
Scanner-printer combos are one of those gadgets that gather dust in most houses. But Doxie, a lightweight portable, paper scanner that started shipping this week, could just make scanners cool again. “Document scanners are frustrating and poorly designed,” says Travis J. Hicks, chief operating officer of Doxie in a statement. “Doxie is portable, USB [...]
04.16.10 -
Army Researchers: Why the Kandahar Offensive Could Backfire
The southern Afghan province of Kandahar trusts the Taliban more than the government. And that’s according to a survey commissioned by the U.S. Army. Kandahar is expected to be the focal point of operations for U.S. and NATO troops this summer, but a poll recently conducted by the Army’s controversial social science program, the Human Terrain [...]
04.16.10
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Streamy Winners Redo Widely Scorned Awards Show
Felicia Day was not amused when, midway through her Streamy Awards acceptance speech Sunday, former Married … With Children star David Faustino jumped onstage and started humping her leg. In fact, most of the web TV talents who picked up trophies for their achievements at the 2nd annual Streamy Awards show disliked the Los Angeles ceremony [...]
04.16.10 -
Browse and Buy Videogame-Inspired Artwork
The entire collection of videogame-themed art shown at the Game Over 3 gallery exhibit is now online for your perusal. Some of the artwork is still for sale. Giant Robot San Fransisco posted images of all the work in the show Wednesday when the gallery closed. You’ll notice that many of the pieces are very [...]
04.16.10 -
Google Turns to HTML5 for Gmail’s New Drag-and-Drop Attachments
Google continues to use HTML5 to push its web apps into the future. The latest bit of HTML5 to feel Google’s love is drag-and-drop support, which is now a standard part of Gmail. If you’re using Google Chrome 4 or Firefox 3.6, you can now simply drag a file from your desktop onto a message [...]
04.16.10 -
Diesel Airplane Sips Fuel Like Its Automotive Cousins
It’s probably no surprise that it’s a European aircraft company leading the way in bringing diesel power to the world of general aviation. Austrian airplane maker, Diamond Aircraft recently received certification from the Federal Aviation Administration for its new, diesel powered DA42 NG. Diamond’s DA42 NG uses a pair of 2.0 liter Austro Engine turbo diesels [...]
04.16.10 -
TV-Hat, the Dork-Tastic Head-Mounted Theater
This week’s dumbest gadget award goes to the TV Hat, a baseball cap with an elongated peak from which hangs a “personal private theater”. It is a head-mounted blackout tent into which you drop your portable media player, wherein you can watch movies in the glare of the midday sun, or in bed next to [...]
04.16.10 -
Print from iPad, Cellphones with ‘Google Cloud Print’
After the lack of Flash support and the “missing” camera, one of the biggest complaints about the iPad is that you can’t print from it, with or without a wire. Google is about to solve this problem with cloud-printing, which will send your documents from a mobile device to any web-connected printer. I tend to view [...]
04.16.10 -
Renault’s Fluence Z.E. Headed For A Better Place
Renault has unveiled the final production versions of two new all-electric cars, one of which will be the foundation of the Better Place network in Israel. Prospective customers are now able to visit Renault’s website to reserve the Fluence Z.E. sedan and Kangoo Z.E. van, both of which have a 100 mile range and will be [...]
04.16.10 -
Exclusive First Look At New Backyard Sports Characters
A GeekDad exclusive first look! Check out the all new characters introduced in the upcoming Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers videogame for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, Wii, Nintendo DS and a downloadable Windows PC version shipping out May 25, 2010. Atari, one of the world’s most recognized videogame publishers, hits a home [...]
04.16.10 -
An Engineering Mind at The FIRST World Championships
This week at the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship, everyone’s favorite sarcastic engineer - Todd Sierer from An Engineering Mind will be covering the championship. Coverage will include exclusive interviews and a great behind the scenes look at the FIRST Championships, including the Moonbots Challenge co-sponsored by GeekDad. Check out the below interview with Steven [...]
04.16.10 -
Olympus Collapsible Wide-Angle Zoom for Micro Four Thirds
One of many things the Micro Four Thirds manufacturers are getting right is the lenses. Panasonic’s optics clearly show the benefits of its long association with Leica, and Olympus’ Zuiko lenses have been great since pretty much forever. These lenses aren’t cheap — this latest wide-angle zoom from Olympus will cost around $700 when it ships [...]
04.16.10
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Dork Tower Friday
Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad. Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.
04.16.10 -
Student-Designed $3 Pump Helps Wounded in Haiti, Rwanda
MIT doctoral student Danielle Zurovcik has invented a simple hand-powered pump that applies suction to an open wound to help it heal. Her device costs just $3 to make. By contrast, the cheapest portable (and electric-powered) pumps cost $100 just for a day’s rental. If the words “suction” and “open wound” in the same sentence make [...]
04.16.10 -
Hit Girl’s Revenge: The Kick-Ass Kids Are All Right
The movie may be called Kick-Ass, but you’ll walk out of the theater thinking “Hit Girl!” The preteen killing machine, decked out in mask, kilt and purple wig, is expertly portrayed by 13-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz. Swerving on a dime from sweet alter ego Mindy Macready to trash-talking Hit Girl, the actress single-handedly kicks the highly entertaining [...]
04.16.10 -
Bio-CNG Sciroccos To Run The ‘Ring
Volkswagen is returning to the famed Nürburgring circuit to make another run at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring race with its natural gas-powered Sciroccos. Three new Scirocco GT24-CNG racers join a field rife with alt-fuel cars, including two diesel Peugeot CRZs, and VW says its race cars feature “the most eco-conscious powertrain in the world.” In [...]
04.16.10 -
Sprocket Pocket: iPad Turn-Signal for Cyclists
Given that almost every time I fall off my bike, I land on my back, I probably wouldn’t stick an iPad in a rear-mounted pocket. But that doesn’t stop me wanting to try out the Sprocket Pocket, a home-make, iron-on iPad pouch for cyclists. Slide the iPad into the see-through plastic pocket and load up the [...]
04.16.10 -
Leica V-Lux 20 Leaked. Same As Lumix, Only More Expensive
If you want a capable 12 megapixel camera with a Leica lens and built-in GPS, we’d recommend the $400 Lumix DMC-ZS7 from Panasonic. If you want exactly the same camera, but are willing to spend an extra $300 or so for a red dot on the front, we instead suggest you take a look at [...]
04.16.10 -
Tron Legacy Reboots Space Paranoids Online
Tron Legacy doesn’t arrive until the end of the year. And yeah, the wait sucks. But soon you can while away that time playing Space Paranoids online. Don’t you feel better already? Like the joystick version shown off at Comic-Con International last year by 42 Entertainment, the internet iteration of Space Paranoids is a throwback to [...]
04.16.10 -
Penny Arcade Takes Applications for $10,000 Videogame Scholarship
Penny Arcade is taking applications for its $10,000 scholarship program. Cartoonist Mike “Gabe” Krahulik announced Monday in a blog post that applications are finally up for grabs. If you’re currently enrolled in school, have a minimum 3.3 grade point average and have the intention of entering the videogame industry, you’ve got a chance to win the [...]
04.15.10 -
Alt Text: Embrace Suicide Cuisine With New Fast-Food Delicacies
With the introduction of KFC’s Double Down sandwich monstrosity, we can take solace in one thing: America’s mad scientists are getting work. The Double Down — which consists of two boneless chicken filets that enclose two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of cheese and a mysterious substance known as Colonel’s Sauce — was clearly concocted [...]
04.15.10 -
Apple App Store Bans Pulitzer-Winning Satirist for Satire
Editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore may be good enough to win this year’s Pulitzer Prize, but he’s evidently too biting to get past the auditors who run Apple’s iPhone app store, who ruled that lampooning public figures violated its terms of service. Fiore irked Apple’s censorious staffers with his cartoons making fun of the Balloon Boy hoax [...]
04.15.10
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Must-See Musical Acts at Coachella 2010
The wide-ranging Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival kicks off Friday with a fat slate of stellar acts from the last century like Sly Stone, Public Image Ltd., Faith No More and more. But we’re keeping our eyes on Coachella’s 21st-century standouts (with a couple from the 20th for good measure). Scroll through our choices of [...]
04.15.10 -
Final Conspirator in Credit Card Hacking Ring Gets 5 Years
Damon Patrick Toey, the “trusted subordinate” of TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez, was sentenced in Boston on Thursday to 5 years in prison. He also received a $100,000 fine and three years’ supervised release, according to the Justice Department. Toey, 25, helped Gonzalez breach the networks of numerous companies through SQL injection attacks in 2007 and 2008 and [...]
04.15.10 -
Oldest Martian Meteorite Not as Old as Thought
The Allan Hills meteorite, named for the site where it was found in Antarctica, was once thought to contain fossil traces of life. That idea has been mostly dismissed, and now the rock also appears to be not quite as old as previously thought. The oldest known Martian meteorite isn’t so old after all. Though it’s [...]
04.15.10 -
Production Designer Syd Mead’s Blade Runner Collectibles Hit Auction Block
In his concept art for Blade Runner, Oscar-winning production designer Syd Mead pictured Los Angeles in 2019 as a dark, sleek dystopia — imagery that would influence sci-fi aesthetics for decades to come. Now the man who designed the future for Ridley Scott is offering some of his Blade Runner collectibles to the highest bidder. A [...]
04.15.10 -
Roboticist: This Is How Robots Would Kill Humans
When everything goes to hell and robots set out to exterminate mankind, this is how they will do it, according to a roboticist who’s writing a novel called Robopocalypse. “My robots do not throw people across rooms, then slowly stalk toward them,” Daniel Wilson told io9 in an interview about his realistic take on killer machines. [...]
04.15.10 -
DIY Airplane Combines Four Seats, Turbine Power and Jet-Like Speed
Flying the Remos GX to Florida was a lot of fun. And moving along at 130 mph while burning less than six gallons an hour is great — and affordable. But we’re no strangers to looking up the ladder to other options available for travel, especially if they include a cruise speed of 385 mph. Here [...]
04.15.10 -
Kick-Ass Giveaway: Tweet to Win Superhero Swag
While you’re standing around in line waiting to see Kick-Ass this weekend, post a quick photo to Twitter and you could win some superhero swag, courtesy of Lionsgate and Wired.com. And you will go, won’t you, after reading our review — “Peewee Star Sparks Rollicking Kick-Ass” — of the movie, which opens Friday? Entering is simple: Snap [...]
04.15.10 -
Networked Networks Are Prone to Epic Failure
Networks that are resilient on their own become fragile and prone to catastrophic failure when connected, suggests a new study with troubling implications for tightly linked modern infrastructures. Electrical grids, water supplies, computer networks, roads, hospitals, financial systems – all are tied to each other in ways that could make them vulnerable. “When networks are interdependent, you might [...]
04.15.10 -
Cyberwar Commander Survives Senate Hearing
President Obama’s pick to be the 4-star general at the head of the military’s new computer security and cyberwar command sailed through a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, while revealing virtually nothing about he plans for the new command. Lieutenant General Keith Alexander has run the National Security Agency for the last five years, and was nominated [...]
04.15.10 -
New Fanboy Fest C2E2 Puts Focus Back on Comics
By Michael Moreci, guest blogger At last tally, the official number of comic book conventions that take place across the United States fell somewhere between “a whole lot” and “I can’t believe there’s really that many.” From San Francisco’s WonderCon and San Diego’s massive Comic-Con International to Wizard World’s myriad events, there’s no shortage of conventions aimed [...]
04.15.10
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NSA Official Faces Prison for Leaking to Newspaper
A former senior National Security Agency official was slammed with a 10-count indictment Thursday after allegedly leaking top secret information to a reporter at a national newspaper. Thomas Andrews Drake, 52, was a high-ranking NSA employee with access to signals intelligence documents when he repeatedly leaked classified information to the unnamed reporter, who ran stories based [...]
04.15.10 -
Icelandic Volcano’s Ash Plume as Seen From Space
A NASA satellite captured an image of the ash plume from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano’s Wednesday eruption. We can see the ash plume from the event sweeping east just north of the United Kingdom en route to Norway. The plume has disrupted air travel in western Europe, The New York Times reports, because of (well-founded) fears that [...]
04.15.10 -
Why NASA Is Sending a Robot to Space That Looks Like You
A humanoid robot will visit space for the first time in September aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, NASA announced Wednesday. The Robonaut 2, which was co-developed by NASA with General Motors, will serve as an assistant to the humans on board the International Space Station, using the same tools developed for astronauts. While plain old robots, such [...]
04.15.10 -
AC/DC’s Iron Man 2 Soundtrack Packs Comics Extras
AC/DC’s collector’s edition soundtrack for Iron Man 2 comes loaded with extras, including a limited-edition reprint of The Invincible Iron Man’s first issue. The $38 deluxe compilation AC/DC: Iron Man 2 lands Monday as a collector’s edition CD/DVD (pictured right). The reprint of the 1968 comic that’s part of the package is adorned with a variant front [...]
04.15.10 -
To See How OpenID Can Work Well, Look at Stack Overflow
OpenID, the decentralized identity system that dispenses with usernames and passwords in favor of a single, portable web identity, promises to eventually change the way we login to our favorite websites. While OpenID holds great promise, the reality today is that users sometimes don’t understand it. It’s an entirely different experience than a traditional login, so [...]
04.15.10 -
As Apple Barricades Flash, HDTV Embraces It
Everyone from Steve Jobs to a member of the Mozilla team we spoke to at SXSW blames Adobe Flash for crashing their technology, and the lack of support for it on the iPhone OS — even for apps that began their lives as Adobe creations — has sparked controversy all over the web. Adobe even [...]
04.15.10 -
Pentagon Networks Targeted by ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of Probes (Whatever That Means)
U.S. military networks are seeing “hundreds of thousands of probes a day,” according to alarming new statistics revealed this morning by the Army general nominated to head the U.S. military’s new Cyber Command. But beyond that scary headline, it’s not clear if the threat is what it’s cracked up to be. In a Senate Armed Services [...]
04.15.10 -
Prospective U.S. Cyber Commander Talks Terms of Digital Warfare
For years, the military has worried about the vulnerability of the United States to cyberattack — and how and when to return fire in digital warfare. Now, the issue is taking center stage, as the Senate considers the nomination of an Army general to head the military’s first four-star Cyber Command. In a hearing this morning, [...]
04.15.10 -
Review: Peewee Star Sparks Rollicking Kick-Ass
Profane, violent and bursting with loony adrenaline, Kick-Ass stomps every superhero cliche into shreds, then uses the splinters to fuel the finest and funniest action movie of the year. Based on Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s comic book series, the R-rated Kick-Ass, opening Friday, stars the affable Aaron Johnson as ordinary high school nonentity Dave [...]
04.15.10 -
Chinese ‘Leaf’ EV Breaks Laws of Physics to Go Green
A Chinese automaker has taken every half-baked idea anyone’s ever had for eco-friendlier motoring and used them all in a wild concept car, the laws of physics be damned. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. is rolling into the Expo 2010 Shanghai China with the Ye Zi — literally, “Leaf” — concept that’s topped with a plastic leaf, [...]
04.15.10
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Aviation Alt Fuel Hopes to Get the Lead Out
Over the past year, there has been a lot of buzz in the aviation industry over the use of alternative fuels. While most of the attention has been focused on the big jets burning some kind of biofuels for the airlines or military, those flying the smaller airplanes are also looking into alternative fuels. A small [...]
04.15.10 -
Twitter Plans to Launch its Own URL Shortener
SAN FRANCISCO, California — Twitter has announced it will start its own URL shortening service for tweets from its official apps. Twitter CEO Evan Williams made the announcement Wednesday night at Chirp, the Twitter developer’s conference. It happened casually, during a Q&A session with attendees. Williams sees the lack of an official Twitter link shortening service as [...]
04.15.10 -
T. Rex of Leeches Found in Amazon Swimmers’ Noses
A toothy leech found in the noses of Peruvian swimmers has called attention to an unrecognized and gruesome branch on the tree of life. Dubbed Tyrannobdella rex, “tyrant leech king,” the pinkie-finger-sized bloodsucker has a single jaw, with teeth five times longer than those found in any other leech. Described in a paper published April 14 in [...]
04.14.10 -
EV Maker Aptera Motors ‘On the Road to Financial Stability’
Aptera Motors unveiled the production version of its funky three-wheeled electric car today and said it has “navigated some financial challenges” but is “on the road to financial stability” and the car should be on the road next year. The Aptera 2e electric car already is several months behind schedule, as production was to start six [...]
04.14.10 -
Twitter Switches on @Anywhere
SAN FRANCISCO, California — Twitter’s @anywhere features are now live for developers to start using, the company has announced. Developers can begin using the system to integrate different kinds of Twitter engagement directly into their sites or apps. You can find details about it at the new Twitter developer site (which also launched Wednesday) at dev.twitter.com. @Anywhere [...]
04.14.10 -
Yahoo, Feds Battle Over E-Mail Privacy
Yahoo and federal prosecutors in Colorado are embroiled in a privacy battle that’s testing whether the Constitution’s warrant requirements apply to Americans’ e-mail. The legal dust-up, unsealed late Tuesday, concerns a 1986 law that already allows the government to obtain a suspect’s e-mail from an ISP or webmail provider without a probable-cause warrant, once it’s been [...]
04.14.10 -
Prosecutors Seek 6-Year Sentence for TJX Hacker’s ‘Trusted’ Accomplice
If TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez had gone to trial instead of pleading out, one man would have been the primary witness against him — accomplice Damon Patrick Toey. Toey, identified often in court documents simply as “PT,” provided information that investigators say likely helped persuade Gonzalez to plead guilty last year to multiple crimes, which prosecutors [...]
04.14.10 -
The Missileers Who Stare at Goats
F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the home of the Air Force’s 90th Missile Wing, has a problem. No, it’s not missile alert crews caught napping or mishandling of nuclear warheads. It’s something more insidious: Silent killers that are infiltrating the base. In other words, weeds. According to a solicitation issued yesterday, the 90th Missile [...]
04.14.10 -
The 15 Greatest British Cars. Sort Of.
Cor’blimey! Wots this then? Our friends across the pond have opened themselves up for a mighty flaming with a list of “15 Of The Greatest British Cars Ever Built.” Apparently they learned nothing from the beating we took over our snowicane cars post. In any event, the blokes at Breakdown Cover have attempted to summarize Britain’s [...]
04.14.10 -
Apple’s New Developer Agreement Unlevels the iAd Playing Field
Apple told us last week that it would not prevent third-party ad networks from embedding ads in applications for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, even though those networks would compete with its own iAd platform. “Yes, we still allow developers or other advertising companies to serve ads within their apps,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told [...]
04.14.10
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Videos: Behold the Ferrari 599 GTO In All Its Glory
So far all we’ve seen of the Ferrari 599 GTO are some very slick studio shots. Now there’s video of the car, which looks so very very hot, in the factory and on the track. In the first video, Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa offers a look at the car in what has to be the cleanest [...]
04.14.10 -
Cassini Captures First Video of Extraterrestrial Lightning
The Cassini spacecraft has captured lightning flashing in a cloud on Saturn’s dark side in a first-of-its-kind video. Scientists have picked up radio signals for years that indicated that lightning storms happened on the planet, but this is the first time that they were able to see and “hear” the electrical storms at the same time. “This [...]
04.14.10 -
Sin City Editions Get New Frank Miller Art
Upcoming editions of Sin City will feature new cover artwork by series creator Frank Miller. More than a million copies of the successful comic book anthologies, which are packed with gritty, intertwining crime stories and bold black-and-white artwork, have been printed so far. The cover for the third edition of Sin City Volume 1: The Hard [...]
04.14.10 -
Alert: Last Day to Get Some Halo 2 In
Microsoft will shut down the servers for original Xbox games on April 15. That makes tonight your last chance to play Halo 2 on Xbox Live. According to Bungie’s live tracking system, there are a little over a thousand gamers enjoying a final deathmatch as of this writing. When the game was first released in [...]
04.14.10 -
Library of Congress Archives Twitter History, While Google Searches It
While the short form musings of a generation chronicled by Twitter might seem ephemeral, the Library of Congress wants to save them for posterity — and Google wants to let you search them like an archive, the organizations announced Wednesday. The unrelated announcements make it clear that at least some people think billions of short messages [...]
04.14.10 -
3-Parent Embryos Could Prevent Disease, But Raise Ethical Issues
Researchers have produced human embryos containing DNA from three people, a biotechnological proof-of-principle with profound medical and ethical implications. To accomplish this, chromosomes were taken from one zygote — the single cell formed when sperm and egg fuse — and put into a zygote stripped of its original chromosomes, but left with its original mitochondria, which [...]
04.14.10 -
Twitter Launches ‘Points of Interest’ Pages for Locations
SAN FRANCISCO, California — Twitter is adding location-based place pages to its website, the company has announced. The new feature is called Points of Interest. Starting soon, users will be able to click on a place name (or a location tag, if one exists) in a tweet and see that place on a map. Next to [...]
04.14.10 -
Time for God of War to Call It Quits
God of War III seems to be the end of Kratos’ story. That’s probably for the best. Now, now, put down the pitchforks. I am a fan and proponent of the God of War series. I thought the original game was nothing short of a revelation, a clarion call to fans of action-adventure games that we [...]
04.14.10 -
X-COM Returns As First-Person Shooter
2K Games said Wednesday that it plans to revive the X-COM franchise for the PC and Xbox 360. 2K Marin, the team behind Bioshock 2, are tasked with updating the series. Like the original games, the new XCOM (no dash) will be about defending the Earth from some kind of alien takeover. The new game will [...]
04.14.10 -
Pentagon’s Flying Car Program Takes Off
The Pentagon’s far-out research agency has unveiled more details of their plan to create a shape-shifting, multipurpose car. Flying cars have been tried before, dozens of times. And a few of the efforts have even succeeded. But the Pentagon concept is several steps ahead of existing vehicles, like the Terrafugia Transition, which is more like a [...]
04.14.10
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Fly ‘n Drive Rally Ends With a Race Down the Runway
After more than 800 miles of driving and more than 500 miles of flying, we arrived at the Sun ‘n Fun airshow in grand style — with a race between the Smart ForTwo and the Remos GX down the main runway in Lakeland, Florida, to open the airshow. Motorweek’s Steve Chupnick released the Smart’s brakes and [...]
04.14.10 -
List Of Possible Palm Suitors Grows, Led By Asians
SHANGHAI/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Palm may be scooped up by an Asian company with enough cash and manufacturing muscle to turn around the struggling smartphone maker, but analysts warn a deal could prove too rich for any buyer at current prices. Huawei Technologies became on Tuesday the latest name to surface as [...]
04.14.10 -
South Park Preps Ultimate Celeb Showdown for Episode 200
South Park has mocked plenty of celebrities during its 15 obnoxious seasons, and they all come out looking for revenge in Wednesday’s milestone episode. “While on a school field trip, Stan accidentally insults Tom Cruise and sets off a chain reaction,” according to a Comedy Central press release about the episode, South Park’s 200th. “200 previously [...]
04.14.10 -
Breast-Less Cameron Takes Avatar Battle to the Amazon
James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster Avatar pitted greed and violence against indigenous life and ritual on a distant moon called Pandora. A similar scenario is playing out just as tragically here on Earth, the director said. Cameron recently joined Brazilian protesters in opposition to the $11 billion Belo Monte Dam, a hydroelectric project that environmentalists and [...]
04.14.10 -
Comics Goof Peter Bagge Spoofs Net Geeks’ Other Lives
Comics vet Peter Bagge takes a satirical swipe at Second Lifers and other internet geeks in his latest comic, Other Lives, previewed in these exclusive panels. But Bagge says he’s still in love with tech, from e-mail to Photoshop. And no, he doesn’t think the iPad will kill paper comics. “Digital vs. paper? That’s a totally [...]
04.13.10 -
Cyberwar Doomsayer Lands $34 Million in Government Cyberwar Contracts
Last month, the former Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell boldly took to the Senate floor and the Washington Post’s editorial page to declare “The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing.” Thankfully for the American people, his company — the giant defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton — has now landed the [...]
04.13.10 -
Report: Joss Whedon to Direct The Avengers Movie
Joss Whedon is “in final negotiations” to direct Marvel Studios’ superhero flick The Avengers, according to a report on Deadline New York. “Whedon has been rumored for this job for awhile, and is high on the fanboy wish-list,” Deadline New York wrote. “He’s an interesting choice: Despite his writing/producing TV series resume, his lone feature directing [...]
04.13.10 -
Cash Rules Everything Around Manas Transit Center
It ain’t easy being the son of a Central Asian autocrat. One day, you’re on top of the world: You’ve got a lucrative contract to supply fuel to the U.S. base. The next, your papa is out of power, and you’re stuck in Latvia. Such appears to be the story of Maxim Bakiyev, the son of [...]
04.13.10 -
Study: Game Industry Salaries Dropped in 2009
The average salary in the American videogame industry dropped by more than 4% to $75,573 in 2009, Game Developer Research said Tuesday. Average paychecks for the people who make games reached a record high of $79,000 in 2008. Last year is the first year on record to see a major downturn in game developer pay. Code-monkeys and [...]
04.13.10 -
Gears of War 3 Trailer Debuts on Jimmy Fallon
As expected, the first trailer for Gears of War 3 made its debut early Tuesday morning on the NBC talk show Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Game designer Cliff Bleszinski appeared on the show, taking a spot on the couch alongside actor Alan Cumming. The trailer, entitled “Ashes to Ashes,” hewed close to the tried-and-true Gears [...]
04.13.10
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Gallery: 8 Tablets That Aren’t Made by Apple
04.16.10 -
The Dogs of War: Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft
04.17.10 -
Photos Surface of the Day Einstein Died
04.16.10 -
Yahoo Beats Feds in E-Mail Privacy Battle
04.16.10 -
Spam Suspect Uses Google Docs; FBI Happy
04.16.10 -
Hit Girl’s Revenge: The Kick-Ass Kids Are All Right
04.16.10 -
Why It’s So Hard to Tell Which Tooth Has the Ache
04.16.10 -
Zune Hackers Create Toolkit to Make Apps, Games
04.16.10 -
School District Allegedly Snapped Thousands of Student Webcam Spy Pics
04.16.10 -
Bush’s Illegal Wiretapping Tab: $612,000
04.16.10 -
Why Intel Wants to Get into Energy
04.18.10 -
Diplo Talks Sample of the Millennium, the Return of Fun and Other Musical Secrets
04.16.10 -
Bad PR Forces Apple to Reconsider Banning Prize-Winning Satirist
04.16.10 -
Ning Fails at Free Social Networking
04.16.10 -
6 Questions and Answers About the Icelandic Volcanic Ash Cloud
04.17.10 -
TV-Hat, the Dork-Tastic Head-Mounted Theater
04.16.10 -
Army Researchers: Why the Kandahar Offensive Could Backfire
04.16.10 -
Doctor Who - a Most Excellent Adventure Begins Anew
04.17.10 -
Joint Chiefs Chair: No, No, No. Don’t Attack Iran.
04.18.10 -
Morphing Stations Turn Avatar Fans Into Na’vi
04.16.10
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