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Futurists ponder planet, avoid despairing
Where We Are Winning ??? Where We Are Losing: Futurologists Publish Annual Report on Major World??Problems and Opportunities San Jose, CA, 15th July 2010 ?????Can civilization implement solutions fast enough to keep ahead of the looming challenges??? The Millennium??Project, a global independent think tank of futurologists, and thought leaders, today published its 14th report on??global perspectives in [...]
07.17.10 -
Everyone is a designer in the age of social media
*I’m in this book, though I’m pretty sure I didn’t declare that everyone is a designer. Press Release Everyone Is A Designer In The Age Of Social Media By Mieke Gerritzen and Geert Lovink Published by Bis Publishers ISBN: 978-90-6369-227-8 Everyone Is a Designer in the Age of ??Social Media presents the Choice Generation of 2010. Looking back at the first [...]
07.17.10 -
Visit beautiful methane-ethane Lake Ontario
*Enjoying the wry extraterrestrial humor here. Feature ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? July 15, 2010 See Beautiful Ontario Lacus: Cassini’s Guided Tour The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-237&cid=release_2010-237 Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere of Saturn’s moon Titan, turns out to be a perfect exotic vacation spot, provided you can handle the frosty, subzero temperatures [...]
07.17.10 -
Molecular Biology and the Arts
*You go, Dr. Ingeborg. When Life Becomes Art: Molecular Biology and the Arts Evening Lecture by Dr. Ingeborg Reichle (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities) Tues. 20 July 2010 19:00 hrs. at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), Aula, Filzengraben 2, 50676 K??ln By contrasting contemporary art with recent scientific developments, it is possible to demonstrate that art today [...]
07.17.10 -
Quote Box: Steve Jobs Defends The iPhone 4
CUPERTINO, California (Reuters) – Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs on Friday defended the iPhone 4’s design, saying reception issues were a problem shared by the entire smartphone industry, naming specifically rivals Research in Motion, Samsung Electronics and HTC Corp. At a rare, 90-minute press conference, the Apple chief maintained that there [...]
07.17.10 -
Is Inception the Sci-Fi Film of the Year?
It’s only just been released, but Christopher Nolan’s dream-noir knockout Inception is shaping up to be the sci-fi heavyweight of 2010. It’s been a middling year for sci-fi overall, and Nolan’s powerful probing of the cinematic unconscious is a muscular movie that’s bound to reward repeat viewings. See also: Review: Smart, Sinewy Inception Injects Action Into [...]
07.17.10 -
Review: Red Hood’s Revenge Puts More New Twists On Old Tales
???You’re telling me Little Red Riding Hood wants to kill me???? It takes less than a dozen words to set the hook for Red Hood’s Revenge, the newest book from fantasy author Jim C. Hines. Of course, if there’s one thing to be learned from the guy who’s taken Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and [...]
07.17.10 -
GeekDad Puzzle of The Week Solution: Revolting Interns
Thanks to those interns quitting I got to read some great submissions for this weeks puzzle. Unfortunatly there can only be one winner of the $50.00 ThinkGeek gift certificate and that lucky winner is Matthew Maranda who correctly deduced that: Beth from Cubicle 1 hid my Ninja Star Coat Hook in the ladies room — [...]
07.17.10 -
MoonBots Enters Its Final Phase By Narrowing Contestants To Twenty Teams
Recently, the MoonBots Challenge announced its final field of 20 teams, down from more than 200 who initially entered the competition. The teams entering the second phase of the challenge hail from 13 different states, South Africa and Belgium. All of the Phase 2 teams recently received Lego Mindstorms kits and have begun building robots to [...]
07.17.10 -
Anna Chapman: the political career
*I was speculating earlier that the Russians might choose this Lugovoi gambit. This is just a trial balloon, though. Talk is cheap. *Kindly globetrotter Angelina Jolie has also offered Anna a foot-up in show biz, if Anna wants to show up for the Russian premiere of Jolie’s new spy movie. Sometimes it’s handy [...]
07.17.10
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Inside Apple’s Antenna Design Lab
After a press conference Friday addressing the iPhone 4’s antenna, Apple gave journalists a private tour of its radio-frequency test facility to provide a glimpse into the process of designing wireless products such as iPhones and iPads. Led by Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert at Apple, the tour gave about 10 reporters and [...]
07.16.10 -
Sea-Level Rise Will Be Worse for Some, We Just Don’t Know Who
The Seychelles could see up to 10 percent more sea-level rise than the global average. Or the sea level around the islands could drop. It depends on who you ask. The fact that oceans will rise in a warming world is well established, but depending on how wind patterns change, climate change could mean quick inundation [...]
07.16.10 -
Wired Gadget Lab Podcast: 3-D Phones, iPhone Flaws and More
3-D cellphones, iPhone 4's "antennagate" woes, two new headsets, and the future of tablets: Brian X. Chen and Dylan F. Tweney talk about all this and more in the July 16 edition of the Gadget Lab podcast.
07.16.10 -
Times Case for Gov Regulation of Google Search Is Weak
The New York Times editorial board fretted a bit about the power of Google on Thursday, with an editorial hinting that Google needs to show a government commission how it determines it search results because the company is now too powerful. While the Times editorial is dreadfully misguided, it’s right to be skeptical about Google’s size [...]
07.16.10 -
Gawker Media Deals Its Way Out of iPhone Search Warrant
A California court has granted the request of local prosecutors to withdraw a controversial search warrant against an editor for the tech site Gizmodo over its scoop about the iPhone 4G. Prosecutors reached an agreement with Thomas Nolan, the attorney representing Gizmodo and reporter Jason Chen, to return a computer and other seized items in exchange [...]
07.16.10 -
Video: Pop Song Offers Simple Solution to iPhone Antennagate
Taking Apple’s side amidst the Antennagate hoopla, YouTube maestro Jonathan Mann came up with a tuneful defense of the embattled smartphone-maker. For “The iPhone 4 Antenna Song,” Mann cooked up a catchy call-and-response chorus: “If you don’t want an iPhone 4/Don’t buy it/If you bought one and you don’t like it/Bring it back.” “The media loves a [...]
07.16.10 -
Morally pulverized by Marina Abramovich
*Gotta like it that this is in JUXTAPOZ. An issue of Juxtapoz that was all about ex-Yugoslav performance art would be kinda awesome. http://www.juxtapoz.com/Features/viewer-portraits-during-marina-abramovics-the-artist-is-present
07.16.10 -
Gene Makes Some Drink More When Other Boozers Are Around
Here???s some not-so-sobering news for party people, barhoppers and clubgoers. Individuals who inherit a particular gene variant that tweaks the brain???s reward system are especially likely to drink a lot of alcohol in the company of heavy-boozing peers. That???s the preliminary indication of a new study directed by psychology graduate student Helle Larsen of Radboud University [...]
07.16.10 -
Design fiction: prototypes of future nature
*Interesting just how much design fiction there is in that, and how un-self-conscious it is about itself. http://johnnyholland.org/2010/07/16/prototypes-of-future-nature/
07.16.10 -
Most Dangerous Week Ever
We may have ended Friday with real-life superheroes. But all week, this site read like a comic book come to life. We kicked off Monday on a supervillian note, with Darpa’s plan for on demand robotic death-from-above. Then we quickly transitioned into Mike Tanji’s instruction manual on hacking the power grid (if you’re a big military) [...]
07.16.10
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Firefox Home Syncs Your Faves to Your iPhone
Mozilla’s new Firefox Home app for Apple mobiles is now available for download. You can get Firefox Home for the iPhone and iPod Touch in iTunes. It’s a free download. As we mentioned when we first told you about it, the Firefox Home app is not Firefox on your iPhone. It’s a companion to Firefox. It securely [...]
07.16.10 -
Analyst: Slim Model Xbox Accounted for Just 40% of Sales
The new model of Xbox 360 caused a good deal of console sales in the month of June, but discounted old hardware sold more. Microsoft’s redesigned box accounted for 40% of the 451,700 Xbox 360s it sold in June, said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter in a note to investors on Friday. But, he pointed [...]
07.16.10 -
Toyota, Tesla Resurrect the Electric RAV4
Toyota and Tesla Motors are going back to the future to update the RAV4 EV, essentially resurrecting an excellent electric vehicle the Japanese company killed seven years ago. The two companies announced today that they will develop the vehicle with a goal of producing it in 2012, bringing cheers from EV advocates thrilled by the return [...]
07.16.10 -
Vote on First Lady’s Games for Healthy Kids
The fruits of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative are beginning to ripen. Apps For Healthy Kids said on Thursday that the public is now free to vote on games and tools that could help inspire good diet and exercise choices in America’s youth. The Apps For Healthy Kids program is part of First Lady Obama’s “Let’s Move” [...]
07.16.10 -
Real Life Superheroes Gear Up With Ninja Throwing Stars, Ax Handles, ‘Stun Knuckles’
Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. asked a simple question in their 2008 comic book (and 2010 movie) Kick-Ass: Why don't fanboys actually suit up and try their hand at being superheroes? As it turns out, a bunch of fanboys are in fact suiting up. Hundreds of them. Face front, true believer.
07.16.10 -
Avatar: Special Edition Brings Extra Footage to Theaters
James Cameron wants to take you back to Pandora for an extended stay — but only in 3-D. Avatar: Special Edition, with eight minutes of extra footage promising a look at exotic new beasts roaming the movie’s alien world, will hit theaters Aug. 27 for a limited run in Digital 3D and Imax 3D. “Audiences repeatedly told [...]
07.16.10 -
Firefox Home Syncs Your Faves to Your iPhone
Mozilla’s new Firefox Home app for Apple mobiles is now available for download. You can get Firefox Home for the iPhone and iPod Touch in iTunes. It’s a free download. As we mentioned when we first told you about it, the Firefox Home app is not Firefox on your iPhone. It’s a companion to Firefox. It securely [...]
07.16.10 -
SpaceShipTwo Makes First Flight With Crew Aboard
SpaceShipTwo staged a dress rehearsal for its glide flight and flew with a crew for the first time. Anticipation mounted yesterday as word spread that SpaceShipTwo, attached to its mother ship Eve, departed the Mojave Air and Space Port. Many, including us, were anxious to hear whether the first glide flight of the spacecraft also known [...]
07.16.10 -
Nation’s Spies, Contractors Brace For Post Expose
That acrid scent in your nostrils? It’s the intelligence community’s hair on fire. No, not from an imminent terrorist attack, but from an imminent series on the community’s expansive use of contractors since 9/11, courtesy of the Washington Post and PBS’ Frontline. We haven’t read the series, set to drop starting Monday. But John Noonan of [...]
07.16.10 -
Apple’s Answer to Antennagate: Free iPhone 4 Cases
CUPERTINO, California — Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off a press conference Friday at his company???s headquarters with an unusual admission of fallibility. ???We???re not perfect. We know that. You know that. And [our] phones aren???t perfect either,??? Jobs told the assembled crowd of about 90 journalists and bloggers, addressing widely-reported problems with the iPhone 4???s [...]
07.16.10
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Jesse Schell Brings ‘Gamepocalypse’ Talk to San Francisco
The future could be one big videogame. That’s the message that Jesse Schell brings to the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts in San Francisco on July 27. His talk, titled “Visions of the Gamepocalypse,” will describe how videogames will integrate and insinuate themselves into many facets of our lives. Jesse Schell is a game designer and [...]
07.16.10 -
Cult Movies Inspire Artists’ Twisted Homages
Artists in the Crazy 4 Cult 4 show use fan faves like Tron and Blue Velvet as a starting point for their visual tributes.
07.16.10 -
AT&T; 3G Uploads Still Crawl Despite Promised Fix
If you think making a call on an iPhone 4 in the United States is hard using its faulty antenna and bad network, you should try uploading a photo. Upload speeds on AT&T’s 3G network in major cities around the United States plummeted over the long Fourth of July weekend, and in most cities, the [...]
07.16.10 -
Apple, Beware: The 5 Most Brutal Product Recalls
Ending nearly a month of speculation, the wizard of Cupertino, California, or one of his designees will emerge from behind the curtain this afternoon to say something about the Apple iPhone 4. Will it be free bumper cases for iPhone 4 owners? Perhaps a strip of iDuctTape? Another magical software update? Or could it be [...]
07.16.10 -
Super Mario Kart Board-Game. Or Is that ‘Bored-Game’?
Regular readers will not be surprised at my excited delight when I saw this Super Mario Kart board-game. Laid out in the shape of a race-track from the old classic SNES game, what could be more fun than shooting green turtle-shells at the stupid cheating Princess, only this time in the real world? Everything, it turns [...]
07.16.10 -
Firefox on the iPhone, Kinda
Mozilla’s Firefox Home iPhone and iPad app has been approved by Apple and is ready to grab from the App Store. Yes, you read right. Firefox is ready to use on iOS devices, but it’s not quite what you might think. Firefox Home is not a full browser — indeed, the Mozilla Foundation has no plans [...]
07.16.10 -
CIA Acts Like Clingy Ex After Iranian Nuke Scientist Splits
If there’s one thing that’s become uncomfortably clear since Shahram Amiri dramatically sought a return to his native Iran, it’s that that his CIA handlers/kidnappers/captors aren’t emotionally prepared to let the Iranian nuclear scientist (or mere scholar?) leave in peace. Read through this New York Times piece, the latest recitation of the agency’s account of its [...]
07.16.10 -
Fruit Ninja Goes HD for the iPad
My children now have a new favorite game on the iPad. And they don't mind the trailers that the folks at Half Brick have been producing for their Fruit Ninja game, either.
07.16.10 -
Video: Army Tests ‘HULC’ Super-Strength Gear, No Gamma Rays Allowed
The Army is moving one small step closer to giving its troops super-strength. Lockheed's Human Universal Load Carrier exoskeleton is headed to the Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center for biomechanical testing -- and maybe even field trials, eventually. The idea is to see whether GIs can really move freely wearing the "HULC" system, which uses robotic leg braces to augment troops' muscles, giving them the ability to carry loads of up to 200 pounds without tuckering out.
07.16.10 -
How-To: Gorillapod Doubles as Awesome iPad Stand
After publicly declaring a search for the perfect iPad stand yesterday, Gadget Lab’s benevolent dictator Dylan Tweney put this question out over Twitter: “@mistercharlie Think you could use a Gorillapod as an iPad stand?” I rushed to grab my trusty Joby Gorilla Mobile, pausing only to set down a bottle of cold German beer. Blinking [...]
07.16.10
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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.
07.16.10 -
Luckiest. GeekDad. Ever.
We can hardly remember what it was like an entire month ago when it wasn’t 105 degrees out and we didn’t have to wear stillsuits just to get across the parking lot. But we were reminded of those sweeter, gentler days when we got an email from Tim, our Ultimate GeekDad Giveaway winner who seems to [...]
07.16.10 -
Giant Four-Man ‘Bike’ Could Crush Cars
No matter how frustrated a cyclist gets at badly-behaving drivers, there’s nothing they can really do against two-tons of glass and steel piloted by an idiot. But if you and a few friends happen to be riding the BigDog, a four-wheel, four-man-powered behemoth of a “bicycle”, you could crush drivers and their vehicles like the [...]
07.16.10 -
Augmented Reality: your key to a shrivelled life of miserable anomie
*Man, we could only WISH that Augmented Reality was this good! You think YOUR modern generation felt the alarming emptiness of life? Why, by cracky, back in my day, we had to live in the alarming emptiness of a cardboard black-and-white TV carton. https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot-blog/augmented-reality.html (…) “Every modern generation has felt the alarming emptiness of life and [...]
07.16.10 -
CellCraft: Can a Creationist Game Teach Biology?
This week GeekTeen John sent me a link about a just-released computer game called CellCraft. He thought I might want to write about it on GeekDad, because it was fun to play and full of information about what makes up a living cell.?? I even tried it out for a few minutes, and found [...]
07.16.10 -
Vibration-Powered Batteries Charge Themselves
What’s the first application you think of when I say the phrase “vibration-powered self-generating battery”? Me too, but let’s keep this clean. The faux-batteries are from Brother Industries, and inside the AA and AAA-sized shells you’ll find a capacitor and an electromagnetic induction generator. Shaking them will charge the capacitor enough to juice low-power gadgets. The [...]
07.16.10 -
Magic: The Gathering Launch Parties to Benefit Child’s Play Charity
Wizards of the Coast recently announced a pledge to donate up to $22,000 to Penny Arcade???s Child???s Play organization in honor of the Magic 2011 launch. The Child???s Play organization, which provides game materials to children in hospitals, is made strong by the compassionate gaming community that surrounds it, so Wizards is challenging their [...]
07.16.10 -
Augmented Reality: Hoppala!
*I do hope! they! get rid of! that exclamation point! soon. “HOPPALA! Augmentation provides an easy way for non-technical creatives to start experimenting with augmented reality and Layar. Create your own augmented reality experiences with just some mouse clicks and publish your work at Layar, the world???s largest augmented reality platform. “HOPPALA! Augmentation comes with a full [...]
07.16.10 -
The things we learned in exile made us more creative musicians
*This is a touching tribute to the indomitable spirit of something of something-or-other, but whether it’s Brazil, London, or both, I dunno. *Worth it just to discover the missing link between Gilberto Gil and Hawkwind. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jul/15/gilberto-gil-caetano-veloso-london “It’s August 1970 and there are 600,000 people in a field in the Isle of Wight watching the biggest music [...]
07.16.10 -
Lo, the Nerf Stampede!
Out of embargo and ready to bust foam darts, this year’s hottest Nerf armament, the Stampede! Fully automatic, clip-fed, bipod, shield thing, 18-shot clips, available September 9th. Fear the reaper, cubicle farm denizens! (And, uh, kids too…) The first fully automatic NERF Clip System blaster to date, the N-STRIKE STAMPEDE ECS blaster features a new pop-out [...]
07.16.10
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Geek Artist Making $50 Caricatures Over FaceTime
Does your Twitter/Facebook/IM avatar suck? The answer is likely to be a resounding “probably”. You need a custom caricature, and being a proper geek, you should get it not from the dodgy street-artist with the portfolio of sample “work” downloaded from the internet, but over the actual internet. That’s just what Dave Lanham, artist extraordinaire and [...]
07.16.10 -
Alt Text: Enter the Brave New World of Internet Psychology
The internet is full of crazies, which is to say people crazier than you are, which is to say everyone. Swing a mouse and you’ll hit dozens of people exhibiting symptoms of severe mental illness, such as unwarranted hostility, being a complete jackass all the time, and liking stupid movies that only stupid people like. The [...]
07.15.10 -
Cerebral Sci-Fi Films That Wipe Our Minds
<< previous image | next image >> Christopher Nolan’s dream-noir Inception is that precious Hollywood rarity: A taut sci-fi thriller constructed largely within the architecture of the mind. The movie’s intellectual interrogation of the blurred line between waking life and lucid dreaming is hammered home with elegant visuals and thunderous music, delivering an impressively heady mix [...]
07.15.10 -
Daily Pentagon Jackpot: 556 Contractors Edition
Sometimes a contract doesn’t have to be awarded to win the Daily Pentagon Jackpot. It just has to take on sufficient scope and ambition to pique our interest. To wit: today the Navy and the Marine Corps announced that they’re allowing a whopping 556 contractors to bid on a whole mess of projects. Today???s Winner: Why [...]
07.15.10 -
June NPD Sales: Red Dead Redemption is Biggest Game of 2010
Rockstar Games’ wild West epic Red Dead Redemption is still flying off shelves, the NPD Group said Thursday. Reporting the U.S. videogame industry sales for June 2010, the research group said that the open-world action game moved nearly 1 million units last month. The game launched in May and sold 1.5 million copies that month. This, [...]
07.15.10 -
Review: Smart, Sinewy Inception Injects Action Into Dreams
Dense, intense, brainy and beautiful to look at, Inception proves you don’t need 3-D technology to transmit a totally immersive cinematic experience. Absent the volcanic force of a Joker-level star turn like Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan instead throws Leo DiCaprio into the vortex of a multilayered mind game blackened with [...]
07.15.10 -
Hurley’s Van Revs Up Lost Artifacts Auction
Want to snag the ultimate Dharma Initiative ride? Hugo’s van, pictured above, is among the Lost memorabilia that goes to the highest bidder next month when a two-day auction sells off more than 1,000 props, costumes and set pieces featured during six seasons of ABC’s Emmy-nominated series. Fans will remember the blue VW as the [...]
07.15.10 -
Droid X Debut Leaves Hardcore Android Fans Leery
Updated 07/16 to include Motorola’s statement. Many Android fans are lining up to get Motorola’s latest phone, the Droid X, which hit retail shelves Thursday morning. But the phone has raised the hackles of some Android geeks. Motorola has reportedly made it difficult for hackers to mod the Droid X by using a bootloader and chip combination [...]
07.15.10 -
More Cool HTML5/JavaScript Video Players
One of the most-cited advancements in HTML5 the new syntax for embedding videos on web pages without the use of plugins. Rather than load up a Silverlight or Flash player, you can just wrap a file URL in <video> tags and the video will play natively in the most recent crop of browsers — including Mobile [...]
07.15.10 -
100 Acts Spin DJ Hero 2 Set List
Song selection can make or break a music game, and Activision isn’t taking any chances with its newest beat-heavy franchise. The game publisher said on Thursday that its upcoming DJ Hero 2 will be packed with mixes featuring over 100 artists. Then, it named each and every one. DJ Hero 2 is the followup to last year’s [...]
07.15.10
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Primordial Sperm Gene Found
A gene involved in the production of sperm is shared by almost all living animals, including sea anemones, worms, insects, marine invertebrates, fish and humans. The finding suggests the ability to produce sperm arose just once, 600 million years ago, and has been conserved through all subsequent animal evolution. digg_url ="http://digg.com/general_sciences/Primordial_Sperm_Gene_Found"; “People have thought that there was a [...]
07.15.10 -
Tell-All Author Riffs on Music Industry in Crisis; Part 2
Second of two parts People like to throw virtual stones at record company executives — but who are they, and what makes them tick? In the second half of this discussion about the music industry and one of its key figures, the author of Fortune’s Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis, Fred [...]
07.15.10 -
Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Pledges Fortune to Philanthropy
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who has been treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said on Thursday he is committing most of his estimated $13.5 billion fortune to philanthropy after his death. Allen follows in the footsteps of former business partner Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who have both pledged [...]
07.15.10 -
Firefox 4 Beta 2, Due Next Week, Adds Tabs-on-Top for Macs
Mozilla hopes to deliver the second beta version of Firefox 4 to users before the end of next week, according to the minutes from its recent developer’s meeting. Tuesday’s meeting notes show the team has picked next Thursday, July 22 as the proposed ship date for Firefox 4 beta 2. There are several enhancements on the way [...]
07.15.10 -
Firefox 4 Beta 2, Due Next Week, Adds Tabs on Top for Macs
Mozilla hopes to deliver the second beta version of Firefox 4 to users before the end of next week, according to the minutes from its recent developer’s meeting. Tuesday’s meeting notes show the team has picked next Thursday, July 22 as the proposed ship date for Firefox 4 beta 2. There are several enhancements on the way [...]
07.15.10 -
Penny Arcade Hand-Picks 10 Indie Games For PAX
Once again, Penny Arcade Expo attendees will get some quality time with some homegrown gaming. Penny Arcade announced the 10 indie games that made the PAX 10 on Thursday. The PAX 10 is a booth that gives free exposure to a handful of new, innovative games at the Penny Arcade Expo. PAX attendees will have the [...]
07.15.10 -
Human Trials Next for Darpa’s Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm
Pentagon-backed scientists are getting ready to test thought-controlled prosthetic arms on human subjects, by rewiring their brains to fully integrate the artificial limbs. Already in recent years, we’ve seen very lifelike artificial arms, monkeys nibbling bananas with mind-controlled robotic limbs and even humans whose muscle fibers have been wired to prosthetic devices. But this is the [...]
07.15.10 -
Iran Nuke Scientist YouTube Vids Explained! (Sort Of!)
Before Shahram Amiri exchanged CIA custody/hospitality/captivity for his Teheran home, the central question we had about the missing Iranian nuclear scientist was: What was up with those YouTube videos of him? One showed him scraggly and complaining of being kidnapped; in the other, he was clean-shaven and discussing all the great educational opportunities here in [...]
07.15.10 -
SpaceShipTwo Makes First Glide Flight?
UPDATE 1:45 p.m. PDT: Witnesses at the Mojave Air and Space Port report that SpaceShipTwo was still mated to WhiteKnightTwo when it landed today, which means there was no glide flight today. No official word from Virgin Galactic or Scaled Composites on a first flight yet, but there’s been a lot of activity at Scaled Composites [...]
07.15.10 -
A Mud-Loving, Iron-Lunged, Jelly-Eating Ecosystem Savior
Meet the bearded goby, a six-inch-long fish that lives in toxic mud, eats jellyfish, lasts for hours without oxygen, and has saved a coastal African ecosystem from a nightmare fate. Over the last several decades, as other fish populations off the coast of the Namibia collapsed, jellyfish and bacteria populations exploded — a condition widely considered [...]
07.15.10
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Opera Mini 5.1 Lands on Android Phones
Lovers of Droid phones and tiny browsers with super-fast load times can rejoice. The Opera Mini 5.1 browser for Android phones is out of beta and is now available as a general release. You can download it in the Android Market, or directly from Opera. If you’ve been testing the previously-released beta on your Android phone, [...]
07.15.10 -
Opera Mini 5.1 Lands on Android Phones
Lovers of Droid phones and tiny browsers with superfast load times can rejoice. The Opera Mini 5.1 browser for Android phones is out of beta and is now available as a general release. You can download it in the Android Market, or directly from Opera. If you’ve been testing the previously released beta on your Android [...]
07.15.10 -
Guns N’ Roses Uploader Laughs Last
The convicted Guns N’ Roses uploader, Kevin Cogill, isn’t the anti-piracy pitchman the Recording Industry Association of America was hoping for. A year ago Wednesday, the 29-year-old Los Angeles man was sentenced to two months’ home confinement and a year of probation for uploading nine unreleased tracks of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy to his music [...]
07.15.10 -
Mercury Flyby Maps New Territory
The results from the Messenger spacecraft’s third and final flyby of Mercury are finally in and cover ground never before mapped. But they leave scientists wanting more. NASA’s orbiter swung around Mercury on Sept. 29, 2009 to get a gravitational boost before settling into orbit in March 2011. The snapshots it took as it flew past [...]
07.15.10 -
Radical Retro-Futurism From Romania
From designer Andrus Ciprian comes the Honda Pegasus, a curious combination of retro design and an anachronistic powerplant. Ciprian, from Romania, might be the only CGI-jockey we’ve seen whose portfolio includes a Hummer dune buggy, a pony car Dacia and a shapely Mazda. His eclectic taste would make us fans even if his designs weren’t at [...]
07.15.10 -
Lockheed Using Gravity to Spot ‘Subterranean Threats’
The military could soon be hunting for terror threats using detailed maps of the planet’s subterranean territory — thanks to aerial vehicles that tap into the “anomalous gravity signature[s]” of structures built beneath the earth’s surface. Lockheed Martin has received a $4.8 million, 12-month contract to create a prototype sensor that spots, categorizes and maps man-made [...]
07.15.10 -
How To: Get a New Air Force, Without Going Broke
Every time the Air Force sends a B-1B bomber on a mission over Afghanistan, it spends costs $720,000 in fuel, repair, and other costs. And when the plane comes back, it has to spend 48 hours being repaired for every hour it was in the air. All of which is double-crazy, because the bomber doesn’t [...]
07.15.10 -
New Brammo Electric Motorcycle Is Fast Enough for Trouble
Electric motorcycles appear to be on the steep part of the development curve these days. The latest model comes from Brammo, the small Oregon company that produced the Enertia a few years back. The company’s newest offering is called the Empulse and the electric motorcycle is a big step forward offering a top speed of [...]
07.15.10 -
Millions Would Pay for Cloud-Based iTunes Subscription: Study
Millions of U.S. music fans use iTunes to play and organize the music they’ve downloaded, ripped and purchased. According to a new study, a significant portion of them wouldn’t mind paying for an iTunes subscription that would let them hear anything in its library for a monthly fee — essentially the same nut Rhapsody and [...]
07.15.10 -
Catching Up on a Classic – Asimov’s First Novel Pebble in the Sky
I was very excited to have the opportunity to review Isaac Asimov’s book, Pebble in the Sky. I have read a decent amount of science fiction and fantasy, including most of what Robert Heinlein wrote, and many many other books by authors such as Alan Dean Foster, William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Orson Scott Card, Madeleine [...]
07.15.10
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First Look: Chevrolet Volt in Red
DETROIT, Michigan — General Motors says it will guarantee Chevrolet Volt batteries for 8 years and 100,000 miles, a move that could go a long way toward bolstering consumer confidence in the range-extended EV. Yeah, yeah, that’s all well and good. But we got to see the range-extended EVs in red. Looks pretty hot, doesn’t it? We [...]
07.15.10 -
Video: Top 5 Mistakes of Massive CSS
Huge CSS files can gunk up your page loads, creating annoying wait times for your readers and (if things get really bad) even driving people away before the page fully loads. The trick to avoiding breaking your user experience is to make your CSS as lean, clean and fast as possible. There are tried and true [...]
07.14.10 -
Happiness and Sadness Spread Just Like Disease
There may be a literal truth underlying the common-sense intuition that happiness and sadness are contagious. A new study on the spread of emotions through social networks shows that these feelings circulate in patterns analogous to what’s seen from epidemiological models of disease. Earlier studies raised the possibility, but had not mapped social networks against actual disease [...]
07.14.10 -
Sorcerer’s Apprentice Casts Its Spell With Flash of Science, Tale of Mouse
Director Jon Turteltaub went straight to the source when looking for inspiration for his new movie, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. On a trip to the Walt Disney Animation Research Library with actor Nicolas Cage and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Turteltaub and his colleagues pored over the original artwork for Fantasia, the 1940 Disney animated movie that cemented [...]
07.14.10 -
Report: Teens Using Digital Drugs to Get High
Kids around the country are getting high on the internet, thanks to MP3s that induce a state of ecstasy. And it could be a gateway drug leading teens to real-world narcotics. At least, that’s what Oklahoma News 9 is reporting about a phenomenon called “i-dosing,” which involves finding an online dealer who can hook you up [...]
07.14.10 -
French Trunk Maker Introduces Designer Arcade Cabinet
It may be all the rage among handy geeks to design and build one’s own MAME cabinet. But wouldn’t it be nice, just this once, to have enough money to go out and simply buy one? French trunk maker Pinel & Pinel unveiled the Arcade 80’s Trunk earlier this month. A chromium plated dashboard, rubber and [...]
07.14.10 -
NSA Executive Leaked After Official Reporting Process Failed Him
A former NSA executive who is fighting government charges of leaking classified information was part of a group that pursued several sanctioned paths to report concerns about an agency spy program, but was repeatedly frustrated by the government’s inaction, according to a report Wednesday. Thomas Drake, now reduced to working at a Washington, D.C.-area Apple store [...]
07.14.10 -
Kmart Gives Shelf Space to Amateur Game Critics
Attention, shoppers. There’s a blue light special on videogame criticism. Big box retailer Kmart will place excerpts of reviews written by Kmart community members on store shelves, it said Tuesday. Kmart suggests that reviews be constructive, well-written and understandable to non-gamers. That’s sound editorial advice. Wannabe writers must be registered MyKmart community members to have their critiques [...]
07.14.10 -
Poop Study: People Have Friendly Gut Viruses
It’s not just the bugs in our guts that are surprisingly friendly. It’s our viruses, too. After slowly coming to appreciate the importance of symbiotic bacteria for running our bodies, scientists have wondered whether viruses also help. Now a gene-hunting expedition in the gut has found it teeming with highly personalized viral communities. “Viral diversity and life [...]
07.14.10 -
Apes, Old World Monkeys May Have Split Later Than Thought
A slope-faced, big-toothed creature from the distant past has inspired scientists to recalibrate the ancient evolutionary split between apes and Old World monkeys. Discoverers of a partial apelike skull in western Saudi Arabia say that it now appears that a poorly understood parting of major primate groups occurred between 29 million and 24 million years ago. [...]
07.14.10
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Brainy Revolver Darts Between Alternate Realities
Smart storytellers love to mess with our minds, whether on screen in Christopher Nolan’s Inception or in comics like Matt Kindt’s roughly drawn reality-shifter, Revolver. History may be written by the winners, but alternate history is encoded by the thinkers. “Alternative reality is simply curiosity,” the award-winning Kindt told Wired.com in an e-mail interview ahead of [...]
07.14.10 -
Succinct Game Over Art Print Says It All
The most common phrase in videogames is now suitable for framing. A new print from New York-based artist Shelter Serra depicts a hand-rendered, hot pink version of the “Game Over” message seen in videogames since the dawn of the medium. In a video interview Serra says the Game Over piece is a commentary on the fleeting nature [...]
07.14.10 -
Our Eavesdropping-on-ET Strategy Not Likely to Work
Bad news for SETI: Even with the most sensitive radio telescopes yet designed, humans probably won’t find intelligent aliens by listening in on their phones and televisions, a new study finds. “Eavesdropping on ET is very hard, even with the latest radio telescopes,” said astronomer Duncan Forgan of the University of Edinburgh, a coauthor of the [...]
07.14.10 -
Smithsonian Celebrates Seatbelts and Safety
The three-point safety belt, a padded dashboard and a couple of real dummies are taking their rightful place alongside Fonzie’s jacket, the Apollo 11 command module and other Very Important Things at the Smithsonian Institute. The automotive safety systems are among the things automakers and regulators are donating to celebrate 75 years of automotive safety and [...]
07.14.10 -
Video: Stormtroopers Storm New York Subway
Stormtroopers track down a high-profile rebel on a New York City subway car, much to the amusement of onlookers, in the latest public stunt by prankster group Improv Everywhere. “The white walls and sliding doors on the train reminded us of the rebel ship from the movie, and we thought it would be fun to see [...]
07.14.10 -
Autopia WTF? Caption Contest, Bastille Day Edition
It’s July 14th, the French national holiday marking the anniversary of the day in 1789 when a crowd of Parisians stormed a fortress and prison known as the Bastille. It was an act that eventually brought down the feudal system. What better way to celebrate than to poke fun at a famous French car? We’ve chosen [...]
07.14.10 -
An International Formula for Racing Success
When the student-built cars of the Formula SAE racing series converge on the legendary Silverstone Circuit in England, one will be a truly international effort built by students on two continents. Global Formula Racing is a pioneering collaboration between students at Oregon State University and Duale Hochschule Baden-W??rttemberg-Ravensburg in Ravensburg, Germany. They have built a pair [...]
07.14.10 -
Giant Galactus Is Hasbro’s Biggest Comic-Con Exclusive
Get a sneak peek at Thor, Spider-Man, a World War II-era Captain America and other special-edition Marvel Comics action figures headed for the big San Diego convention. Plus: Star Wars, Transformers and G.I. Joe toys.
07.13.10 -
Wikileaks Cash Flows In, Drips Out
The secret-spilling website Wikileaks appears to be a frugal spender, tapping less than 10 percent of the funds received through two of its three donation methods, according to the third-party foundation that manages those contributions. Wikileaks has received 400,000 euros (U.S. $500,000) through PayPal or bank money transfers since late December, and spent only 30,000 euros [...]
07.13.10 -
Best Album Art of All Time, Readers’ Choice Edition
A visual journey through the most amazing LP covers of all time, according to Wired.com readers.
07.13.10
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Cerebral Sci-Fi Films That Wipe Our Minds
07.15.10 -
Sea-Level Rise Will Be Worse for Some, We Just Don’t Know Who
07.16.10 -
Inside Apple’s Antenna Design Lab
07.16.10 -
Gawker Media Deals Its Way Out of iPhone Search Warrant
07.16.10 -
Apple’s Answer to Antennagate: Free iPhone 4 Cases
07.16.10 -
SpaceShipTwo Makes First Flight With Crew Aboard
07.16.10 -
Gene Makes Some Drink More When Other Boozers Are Around
07.16.10 -
Real Life Superheroes Gear Up With Ninja Throwing Stars, Ax Handles, ‘Stun Knuckles’
07.16.10 -
Toyota, Tesla Resurrect the Electric RAV4
07.16.10 -
Review: Smart, Sinewy Inception Injects Action Into Dreams
07.15.10 -
Droid X Debut Leaves Hardcore Android Fans Leery
07.15.10 -
How-To: Gorillapod Doubles as Awesome iPad Stand
07.16.10 -
Cult Movies Inspire Artists’ Twisted Homages
07.16.10 -
Alt Text: Enter the Brave New World of Internet Psychology
07.15.10 -
Quote Box: Steve Jobs Defends The iPhone 4
07.17.10 -
Video: Army Tests ‘HULC’ Super-Strength Gear, No Gamma Rays Allowed
07.16.10 -
Apple, Beware: The 5 Most Brutal Product Recalls
07.16.10 -
A Mud-Loving, Iron-Lunged, Jelly-Eating Ecosystem Savior
07.15.10 -
Times Case for Gov Regulation of Google Search Is Weak
07.16.10 -
Guns N’ Roses Uploader Laughs Last
07.15.10
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