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Blizzard Nixes Plans For BlizzCon 2012
Perhaps giving credence to the theory that the world will end this year, developer Blizzard will not hold its annual BlizzCon convention in 2012, it said Wednesday. The StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft publisher will instead host an event in Asia called the 2012 Battle.net World Championship that will host tournaments for competitive StarCraft II and [...]
01.25.12 -
‘HTML5 Please’ Helps You Decided Which Parts of HTML5 and CSS 3 to Use
A new website helps web developers decipher the often confusing world of HTML5 and CSS 3. Which elements are ready to use? Which are still not widely supported? And where can you find polyfills and fallbacks for older browsers? HTML5 Please has your answers.
01.25.12 -
Northrop Grumman’s Futuristic Flying Wing Cribs From its Past
The company dusts off an idea from the 1940s as it looks to the future of commercial air travel.
01.25.12 -
Legality of Mobile Phone Tracking Still Unclear Despite Supreme Court GPS Decision
The Supreme Court's blockbuster GPS decision Monday afforded American's new constitutional privacy protections. But the justices stopped short of clearly spelling out what those rights might be in the case closely followed case testing whether the police may secretly attach a GPS device to a vehicle and track its every move without a probable-cause warrant. What's more, looming in the Supreme Court's background are even more pressing GPS surveillance questions that affect most Americans: Does the government need a warrant to obtain the GPS locational coordinates of somebody's mobile phone movements?
01.25.12 -
Real-Life DinoCrocs Crushed the Competition
Giant "DinoCrocs" of the Cretaceous didn't just hang out in the background while predatory dinosaurs stole the spotlight. Laelaps blogger Brian Switek explains how new fossils show they competed as a top predator.
01.25.12 -
Bail Denied for Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom
A New Zealand judge denies bail to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, citing his many passports and bank accounts as indications he might flee before his extradition hearing.
01.25.12 -
Watch a Baby Condor Hatch and Grow on Live Webcam
Watch in real time as an endangered California condor hatches, grows and learns to fly on the San Diego Zoo's new condor cam.
01.25.12 -
Alexis Ohanian: Jan 18, 2012 ??? The Net Decides We Won’t Live With Infamy
Dear internet, Thank you. Last week we collectively discovered a power we???ve long been looking forward to, but had never fully exercised. An organic, leaderless movement arose online to combat two bills, SOPA and PIPA, which would???ve led to the wholesale destruction of the internet. You triumphed. And we???ve only begun.
01.25.12 -
X-Ray Laser Turns Up the Heat to 3.6 Million Degrees
An x-ray laser fired at a sample of aluminum has generated temperatures of 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit -- hotter than the sun's corona.
01.25.12 -
Gatorade Quenches Its Thirst to Build Better Athletes
The sports drink giant is working with an athletic boarding school in Florida to help you perform better and recover faster.
01.25.12
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Google Works on Internet Standards with TCP Proposals, SPDY Standardization
In an effort to speed up the web, Google is proposing a number of changes to the standards at the core of the internet -- the Transmission Control Protocol, better known as TCP.
01.25.12 -
New Family Games This Week: Pro Evolution Soccer 3DS and LEGO Star Wars III Special Edition
In the first of new series of posts looking ahead to the coming week’s family game releases I find myself with an interesting clutch of titles that range from Teen friendly Pro Evolution Soccer to the Mature only Neverdead. While there is plenty to enjoy in all these game, here are the titles I think [...]
01.25.12 -
Black Hawk Up: Spec Ops Rescue Hostages in Somalia
Call it Black Hawk Up. On Tuesday night, U.S. special operations forces secretly entered Somalia and freed two humanitarian aid workers. Not a single member of the U.S. raiding team was harmed; neither were the hostages. All nine Somali captors were killed.
01.25.12 -
Women Write About Comics: Women in Refrigerators, 13 Years Later
As you may have noticed if you read GeekMom and GeekDad regularly, I’m a passionate reader of superhero comics and have been since I can remember. But, being a woman (duh), it’s impossible to miss the issues with the portrayal of female characters over the years. Nowhere was outrage more consolidated than in a site [...]
01.25.12 -
Dystopian YA Novels: It’s the End of the World as We Know It…
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. But everyone seems to agree that after the end of the world we’ll end up living in some sort of totalitarian regime that controls our thoughts, whether by subtle or overt means. At least everyone who writes young adult dystopian romance novels, apparently. [...]
01.25.12 -
Massive U.K. Carrier Mistake Breaches Mobile Customer Privacy
UPDATED 9:38 A.M. PST by Mike Isaac with most recent information In an network maintenance snafu of epic proportions, customers of a European cellular network have had their private data exposed to web sites visited from their smartphones. The security breach lasted for more than two weeks before it was fixed today. A flurry of [...]
01.25.12 -
The Humor Code: Professional Laughers, Straight Out of Central Casting
Professor Peter McGraw and writer Joel Warner have teamed up to explore the science of humor on a global expedition. The Humor Code chronicles their adventures, scientific experiments and unintentional comedy along the way.
01.25.12 -
iPad Rock Prodigy, Like Guitar Hero With Real Guitars
Wouldn’t it be great if learning a musical instrument was as fun and addictive as playing a video game or dickering around with your phone? Now it is, thanks to Rock Prodigy, an app that teaches you to play guitar. It’s like Guitar Hero, but with real guitars. Rock Prodigy guides you through lessons and [...]
01.25.12 -
Is Skylanders: Giants a Realistic Possibility?
With the success of the first Skylanders game, not to mention the toys and the related hunt-them-down-in-stores sub game, it is inevitable that there will be a followup game. The question is: How soon, and what form will it take? Although it is still early days since the game launched in October 2011, and we [...]
01.25.12 -
iPhone Outsells All Verizon Android Phones Combined
That iPhone 4S really sucks, huh? Not only did Apple sell 37 million iPhones in the last three months, the “disappointing” iPhone also outsold Android at Verizon. To be clear, Verizon sold more iPhone 4S units that all Android handsets combined. The figures, revealed at Verizon’s own earnings report yesterday, show that the carrier shifted [...]
01.25.12
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GeekDad HipTrax #81
In this edition of the podcast we catch up with a trio of GeekDad HipTrax favorites. We uncover new music, reflect on some older material and, of course, look toward the majesty of the near musical future. With the help of: “Apple Core II” by 8 Bit Weapon 8 Bit Weapon and Computeher are back [...]
01.25.12 -
Call to Support Graphic Novel by Paralyzed Doctor Who, Hellblazer Artist
GeekDad has supported a number of worthwhile Kickstarter projects??that benefit artists but the information on this particular creator and his project one comes directly from DC Comics creator Gail Simone. It’s not quite a Kickstarter project but is rather a global crowdfunding platform called indiegogo.com. The project will fund a graphic novel called The Alchemist’s [...]
01.25.12 -
New Vimeo Brings Bigger Player, Better Sharing
Vimeo, the thinking person’s YouTube, is getting a big update. Gone is the tiny on-screen video window, replaced by a huge, browser-filling default player. And gone is much of the clutter, with relevant sections popping into view as you need them (the “related videos” section drops down from the top of the screen, for instance). [...]
01.25.12 -
Cairo Contagion: Military Tracks Uprising’s ‘Infectious’ Ideas
The revolt that started a year ago today in Egypt was spread by Twitter and YouTube, or so the popular conception goes. But a group of Navy-backed researchers has a more controversial thesis: Egyptians were infected by the idea of overthrowing their dictator. And now, these researchers claim, they're getting close to developing tools that'd track the spread of infections like these.
01.25.12 -
Video Gallery: Kinetic Art That Will Blow Your Mind
From giant, lumbering wind creatures to strangely buzzing geometric shapes that will transport you into the same headspace as 2001: A Space Odyssey, these magnificent pieces of art come alive in videos that show off their kinetic capabilities.
01.25.12 -
ScanSnap 1100 Fits the Bill for Personal Scanning
I have one of those all-in-one printers in my house, and part of the “all” is that it has a flatbed scanner on its top. The problem is that it’s a pain to use. I don’t keep it on my desk because it’s too big, so I hooked it up to the kids’ PC to [...]
01.25.12 -
Who Sent That Sex-Toy E-mail? Your Friendly Chinese Spamufacturer
Dr. Hai Hong is one of a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs: manufacturers who are trying to bust out of the local markets -- where profit margins are razor-thin -- and capture more lucrative U.S. and European customers. Hong sells sex toys, but you can get just about anything from these guys. Need a few thousand iPad cases? They've got your back. GPS trackers for your fleet of trucks? No problem. How about a few tons of ferromanganese? They've got that too. They say that they're legitimate businesses. They just happen to be spammers too.
01.25.12 -
Jan. 25, 1945: Fluoridation ??? Better Teeth, or Commie Plot?
Grand Rapids, Michigan, fluoridates its water, beginning a controversy that remains unsettled to this day.
01.25.12 -
Newt Threatens China and Russia With Cyberwar
Newt Gingrich isn't the only politician who's freaked out by China and Russia's online spying. But the new Republican presidential frontrunner may be the highest-profile political figure all-but-openly calling for cyberwar with Moscow and Beijing.
01.25.12 -
Australia’s Brickvention: Sold Out and Solid
Brickvention 2012 offered up another diverse bunch of arrangements of bricks from Australians who love Lego. Brickvention is always about the committed fans. It is a public event that has grown out of an annual AFOL gathering and has now outgrown its current location. And, despite some rapid growth over recent years the organizers have [...]
01.25.12
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Spectrum Disorderlies Play War Games in Douglas Rushkoff’s A.D.D.
Gamer pop icons transform into insurgent reality hackers in Douglas Rushkoff's new graphic novel, A.D.D.. But the book's genesis has more to do with Korean gamer culture than The Matrix.
01.25.12 -
Get Some Grubs With Gears of War: The Board Game
You’ve beaten Gears of War 3 on Insane, you’ve killed thousands in Modern Warfare 3, and you’ve almost done half of what there is to do in Skyrim. But now that we’ve entered the??doldrums??of video game releases – what should you do with your free time? Easy – play the Gears of War: The Board [...]
01.25.12 -
A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 25
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
01.25.12 -
Time-Travel Comedy Safety Not Guaranteed Turns Internet Meme Into Romance
Safety Not Guaranteed might just be the sweetest, quirkiest romantic comedy ever to be based on a random internet meme.
01.24.12 -
Printed Sensors Could Help Save You From Spoiled Food
Whenever I pick up a package of frozen raw meat from the grocery store, I wonder, "How many times did it thaw and re-freeze?" There's currently no easy way to tell, but the ambiguity could be addressed with new temperature sensors from Thinfilm..
01.24.12 -
Millions Upon Millions Sold: Apple’s Blowout Quarter Puts Android Partners to Shame
There's no slowing the Apple sales train. The company released its first-quarter earnings results to shareholders on Tuesday, blowing away analyst expectations and beating sales records across multiple categories.
01.24.12 -
Inside the Animatronic War Horse Used in Grisly Trench Scenes
Most of the scenes in Steven Spielberg’s World War I epic War Horse use real horses, but a couple of particularly animal-unfriendly scenes required the use of animatronics. Wired.co.uk discovers how special effects company Neil Corbould SFX, which has created mind-blowing effects for movies such as Gladiator, The Day After Tomorrow, The Fifth Element and [...]
01.24.12 -
Why Rakuten’s Kobo Is Amazon’s Only Global Competition
It's quite possible that soon Kobo will be the only company standing between Amazon, Apple and world domination of e-publishing. So if you haven't been paying attention, this is just the time to tune in.
01.24.12 -
Google Streamlines Privacy Policy to Integrate its Products
On Tuesday, Google announced that it would be streamlining the bulk of its products' privacy policies into a single document, effective March 1. Under the banner "One policy, one Google experience," the company's new Policies site says that it is "getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that???s a lot shorter and easier to read."
01.24.12 -
‘State of the Union’ Secret Weapon: Osama Killer
You probably don’t know what Adm. Bill McRaven looks like. That’s because the man who designed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden spent most of his life in the special-operations world, far below the radar. Even now that he’s the top officer in charge of the U.S.’ elite forces, he usually only shows up [...]
01.24.12
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Hands-On: Evi App Brings Siri-Like Smarts to iOS and Android
If you're looking for a straightforward, legal way enjoy Siri-like functionality on Android hardware -- or any Apple gear other than the fanciest of iPhones -- you'll have to enlist a Siri copycat app. The latest of the bunch, released Monday, is called Evi, which we've been testing for the last 24 hours.
01.24.12 -
Sen. Ron Wyden: PIPA/SOPA Is a Congressional Wake-Up Call
Senator Ron Wyden led the opposition to Hollywood-centric legislation that riled the net last week, and in this op-ed, he urges D.C to use the protest as an opportunity to learn and adapt.
01.24.12 -
DIY Space Capsule Uprighting Bags Emerging
I have made several blog posts about the uprighting system needed for space capsule Tycho Deep Space. They can all be found further down on this page in the “previously”-section. So, if you are not familiar with the previous works and thoughts please take a closer look for more details here. But, in short the space [...]
01.24.12 -
One Big Database Could Save the Music Business with Billions of Tiny Rivulets
In 13-plus years of writing about digital music all day, one of my favorite pieces remains ???4 Reasons Music Needs One Big Database,??? which argues that all of these MP3 blogs, music subscriptions, tweets, videos, streaming radio services, and so on are talking about the same set of music: the one that exists on planet [...]
01.24.12 -
Lego Minecraft is Coming
It has just been announced. Minecraft Lego is coming. The whole episode began several months ago through the worldwide beta program of Lego Cuuso. Several inventive Minecraft and Lego fans uploaded builds and concepts of what Lego Minecraft would look like. The result was a flurry of internet activity within the Lego and Minecraft communities [...]
01.24.12 -
Video: How Gore Verbinski Wrangles Squidmen, Animators and The Lone Ranger
?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ???? ?? ?? ?? Filmmaking great Gore Verbinski is unassuming and soft-spoken, not what you’d expect from an A-list Hollywood director whose films can cost $300 million to make. His most recent creation, Rango, was nominated for an Oscar this year for best animated feature film, and he also directed [...]
01.24.12 -
Microsoft Crossbreeds Programming Kit With Fantasy Game
In college, Matthijs Krempel played EverQuest eight hours a day. Those days are over. But they may be coming back, in an unexpected way. Krempel is now a software developer, and he's been testing a new extension Visual Studio -- Microsoft's software development kit -- that seeks to turn programming into a game.
01.24.12 -
Pentagon Denies Downing Russian Mars Probe
The Russians think they know why their Mars probe crashed down to Earth last week: dastardly American radars. Alas, radar doesn't work that way -- even a super-powerful U.S. military radar system named after Ronald Reagan. Welcome to another edition of Tinfoil Tuesday, our exploration of the world's least likely conspiracy theories.
01.24.12 -
“Beloved, not Beliked’: Why TV’s Live and Streaming Audiences Are Diverging
With live television, we flip; with video on demand, we binge. This means that shows have to catch and hold our attention in very different ways ??? not just over the commercial, but from episode to episode, season to season, and from television to videogames, Facebook, or whatever else might capture our attention on a web-connected device.
01.24.12 -
I Am Not a Hipster Shows Even Cool Kids Have Soul
It might be easy to write off Destin Daniel Cretton's film I Am Not a Hipster as exactly the kind of too-cool-for-school creation that its title tries to distance the movie from. But in actuality, the honorific is designed to do the opposite -- to raise curiosity just enough that you want to see the film. When you do, you won't be disappointed.
01.24.12
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Ubehebe Crater: Possibly Younger but No Imminent Danger of an Eruption
Death Valley's Ubehebe crater erupted hundreds of years ago rather than thousands, according to a new study, but that doesn't mean it's likely to blow again anytime soon. Eruptions blogger and volcanologist Erik Klemetti explains why.
01.24.12 -
Legends of Alcatraz Takes Fox’s New Series to The Rock
Fox has teamed up with Ford to produce Legends of Alcatraz, an alternate reality game promoting the network’s newest show about the infamous prison. The experience is set to kick off this Friday, January 27th at Alcatraz Island. By Mildred I. Lewis, originally posted at ARGNet On Monday, January 16, Alcatraz premiered on Fox. The time travelling [...]
01.24.12 -
Hackers Breached Railway Network, Disrupted Service
Hackers attacked computers at an an unidentified railway company last December, disrupting railway signals for two days, according to a leaked government memo.
01.24.12 -
Mitt and Newt Play Admiral, Get Lost at Sea
If Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich proved anything at Monday night's GOP debate, it's that they're deckchair admirals at best. Rushing to bash President Obama's ideas of seapower, they misunderstood basic facts about the Navy, overlooked inconvenient evidence or endorsed things Obama is already doing.
01.24.12 -
Dork Tower Tuesday
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.
01.24.12 -
Felix Salmon: How Sharing Disrupts Media
I???m at??DLD??in Munich, where David Karp of Tumblr and Samir Arora of Glam Media helped me understand the way that media and publishing are evolving these days, and the way in which creating, editing, and publishing are increasingly separate things which interact with each other in fertile and unpredictable ways. There are lots of ways [...]
01.24.12 -
Steam Power Conference Anything But Boilerplate
More than 88 years after the last Stanley rolled off the assembly line, steam power devotees and developers gathered for the first annual Steam Automobile Club of America (SACA) conference last week. Although the event focused on the future, there was ample time devoted to preserving the past. The event was jointly hosted by SACA [...]
01.24.12 -
What Price for Getting PS Vita First?
It took me a little while to realize that the First Edition Bundle of the PS Vita was available a week sooner (15th Feb) than the general PS Vita release (22nd Feb). I know, the clue’s in the name, I must just be a little slow. However, now I’ve caught up with everyone else pre-ordering [...]
01.24.12 -
Interview: Daniele Bolelli, Author of 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Religion
I recently received a copy of the book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Religion??as a gift from a friend. It looked like a neat little book – actual size is about a 5″x5″ square – so I thought I would browse through it and put it on the table with the magazines. I [...]
01.24.12 -
So What Happened to Lincoln Logs?
My Dad was an engineer so I had lots of toys for which building was a part of the playing. We had an infinite number of Legos and Tinker Toys and an Erector Set that sort of scared me in its complexity. In fact, I don’t remember doing much with that one, although I remember [...]
01.24.12
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Thingamagoop, a DIY Electronic Instrument
The Thingamagoop is a fun music maker, a self-contained synthesizer that creates beeps, squawks and howls and other electronic noises when you play with the buttons, switches, and knobs. One of the most unique aspects of the Thingamagoop is its LEDicle, an antenna-like wire with a LED on the end, which not only looks cool, [...]
01.24.12 -
In-Depth Review – Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters
Today I’m reviewing Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, a book produced by the authors of the GnomeStew RPG blog. Dan Danahoo first mentioned Eureka here on GeekDad back in August of 2010, but I’ve decided it deserves an in-depth review. I am reviewing the PDF version of the book which comes in [...]
01.24.12 -
DIY Lego Lunchbox
Tom Heck published a detailed how-to for turning an old Lego storage container into a lunchbox for his son. Tom’s son took it to school for the first time on Monday and his friends (all of them Lego fanatics) loved it. This project makes me wonder what other geeky containers could be turned into lunchboxes [...]
01.24.12 -
Strange Forgotten Space Station Concepts That Never Flew
Astronauts living and working in space rely on the International Space Station as their port of call. The iconic ISS is a modern engineering triumph, zipping around the Earth every 90 minutes at a height of 200 miles above the surface.
01.24.12 -
When Will a Motion-Capture Actor Win an Oscar?
Andy Serkis remembers clearly his introduction to motion-capture technology. The actor arrived in New Zealand to take on the role of J.R.R. Tolkien’s gnarly Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and faced an extreme proposition. “My very first scene was 5,000 feet on top of a real volcano,” he recalls. “I was standing [...]
01.24.12 -
Profit vs. Principle: The Neurobiology of Integrity
Are the values we hold most dear truly sacred? Or are they merely cost-benefit analyses masquerading as noble intent? Let your better self rest assured: Sacred values truly are special, concludes a new study on the neurobiology of moral decision-making.
01.24.12 -
Intel Sees Exabucks in Supercomputing’s Future
On Monday, Intel shelled out $125 million to buy Infiniband from Qlogic, a little-known maker of data center networking switches and cards. It seems like an odd move. Infiniband is a networking fabric technology, similar to Ethernet, but not nearly as widely used. So why is Intel paying millions for technology that lost out in the business world? Because supercomputing systems are now turning into big business.
01.24.12 -
Meet the Air Skylanders: Sonic Boom and Whirlwind
Today in our “Meet the Skylanders” series we look at the two Air element characters that are available: Sonic Boom and Whirlwind, two winged dragons that look quite similar but behave very differently in the game. With the other two Air element Skylanders not yet released (Zeus-styled Lightning Rod and turtle-powered Warnado) this is one [...]
01.24.12 -
Jan. 24, 1848: Gold!
Fortune seekers transform California but, as with the dot-com "gold rush" a century and a half later, most get nothing.
01.24.12 -
Pentagon Looks to Sabotage Pakistan’s Bomb Supply
The Pentagon's bomb squad has a new idea to thwart Afghan insurgents' weapon of choice: by adding chemicals that'd render its main ingredient non-explosive or even make it lethal to the bomb builders themselves.
01.24.12
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Tweaking Its Identity Stance, Google+ Now Allows Nicknames
In the initial Google+ sign-up process, questionable profile names were flagged by Google's algorithmic recognition system, and users were prompted to try again. The same system will still recognize alternate names, but will begin to allow specific exceptions like nicknames, maiden names and names with alternative spelling.
01.24.12 -
10K Reasons to Worry About Critical Infrastructure
A security researcher was able to locate and map more than 10,000 industrial control systems hooked up to the public internet, including water and sewage plants, and found that many could be open to easy hack attacks, due to lax security practices.
01.24.12 -
Sputnik Launch Tower Be Gone
Today the launch tower of launch platform Sputnik was removed. It was done because Sputnik needs to service missions where we need a free flat deck for the LES test of Tycho Deep Space and a new and smaller launch tower for rockets SMARAGD and SAPPHIRE. The new tower for the “minor” rockets will be removable [...]
01.24.12 -
Creepy Animatronic Baby Is Creepy
This video popped up on my robotics feed over the weekend. I realize it is a prop for a TV show, but I can’t help but be creeped out by it. I assume it will look better with some clothes and skin, but I wouldn’t put any money on it.
01.24.12 -
The Disneyfication of Tech
Users are caught between tech and media and neither is looking out for our interest.
01.24.12 -
Digitize Film Movies With Your iPhone Using the LomoKino Adapter
Man, this gadget has to be the niche-est of niche gear we’ve seen in a while, but it’s certainly neat enough to get a mention. It’s the LomoKino Adapter, and it helps you digitize film movies with your iPhone. That actually sounds pretty handy, until you realize that it requires you to have both an [...]
01.24.12 -
New Sony Sensors for Cellphones Offer Low-Light Shooting and HDR Video
Sony has come up with a new CMOS sensor design for use in cellphone cameras, and it should improve both low-light stills photos and give you better movies. It won’t be long now before anyone but super-serious photographers can ditch their regular cameras entirely. The sensors bring two new features: RGBW Coding and built-in HDR [...]
01.24.12 -
Gallery: Avengers Assemble (in Your Art Textbooks)!
Marvel Comics splices its blockbuster supergroup The Avengers into art history's storied annals in its latest series of variant covers.
01.23.12 -
How Do We Identify Good Ideas?
How can we sort our genius from our rubbish and become better at self-criticism? Frontal Cortex blogger Jonah Lehrer reports on a new study suggesting the surprising power of sleeping on it.
01.23.12 -
With New Ad Roll-Outs to Come, Twitter Acquires Anti-Malware Start-up
Losing no steam in its recent acquisition spree, Twitter announced Monday that it had bought anti-malware start-up Dasient, an acquisition aimed at boosting confidence in the safety and security of its burgeoning advertising network. Dasient is a leader in the prevention of “malvertising,” the practice of incorporating malicious code and links to harmful sites into [...]
01.23.12
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Shut Up and Play the Hits Documents LCD Soundsystem’s Final Days
Shut Up and Play the Hits -- which premiered Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival here, with Murphy and the filmmakers in attendance -- gives us a fly-on-the-wall look at the final hours of a band completely self-conscious of its destiny, yet still on the brink of the unknown.
01.23.12 -
Judge Orders Defendant to Decrypt Laptop
A judge on Monday ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop computer so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case. The defendant, accused of bank fraud, had unsuccessfully argued that being forced to do so violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against compelled self-incrimination. “I conclude that the Fifth Amendment is [...]
01.23.12 -
In Me @the Zoo, Web Celeb Chris Crocker Offers Window on Internet Generation
In new the documentary Me @the Zoo, directors Chris Moukarbel and Valerie Veatch examine the lives of young people through the eyes of Chris Crocker, whose "Leave Britney Alone!" YouTube defense of pop star Britney Spears in 2007 made him the kind of internet famous that's only been possible in the last seven years.
01.23.12 -
Mind-Bending Science Fuels Red Lights
How did you do that? That's the question always asked of magicians and Hollywood visual effects gurus, and it easily could be put to director Rodrigo Cort??s about his latest film, Red Lights.
01.23.12 -
Homeland Security Wants to Spy on 4 Square Miles at Once
The Department of Homeland Security wants to take a cue from the military's experience with wartime surveillance. It's looking for a camera that can spy on four square miles -- entire neighborhoods -- at once, just like the military has. Only the people the military snoops on aren't protected by the Constitution.
01.23.12 -
2012: The Year of Hybrid Cloud?
In early 2009, when I first started working with enterprises thinking about building private clouds and with communication service providers (CSPs) thinking about building public clouds, a lot of the clients??? technical focus was on what I would consider basic capabilities. It was typical to see self-service provisioning of instances based on a single virtual [...]
01.23.12 -
Wild Whiskers Make Competitive Beard Growing a Follicle Folly
Is beard-growing weird? Most definitely. Is it a sport? Well, I guess that depends upon your perspective. Do beardos think beard-growing is a sport? Yes. Yes they do.
01.23.12 -
Who Buys All Those Google Ads? An Infographic Breakdown
Google cleared $37.9 billion in 2011 revenue, which equates to more than $3 billion a month, mostly from those little text ads next to your search results that neither you or anybody you know will admit to ever clicking on. Insurance and finance buys for Google Adsense words accounted for $4.2 billion of that total [...]
01.23.12 -
Glow, Little Spewing Shrimp, Glow
A little-known "fire-breathing shrimp" shoots out blue-glowing liquid when threatened. Laelaps Brian Switek reports on the crustacean's curious behavior.
01.23.12 -
Iran Tensions Remain, Even as U.S. Aircraft Carrier Passes By
Despite weeks of threats, Iran didn’t stop a U.S. aircraft carrier from sailing through a vital waterway just off its shores. But that doesn’t mean the Pentagon thinks the recent tension with Tehran has calmed. “I don’t know that you can take this one transit and establish a trend here,” said Navy Capt. John Kirby, [...]
01.23.12
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Warp, Alan Wake Dated For February
The puzzle-stealth-action platformer Warp will kick off Microsoft’s Xbox Live House Party, an annual lineup of weekly downloadable games, the Xbox 360 maker said Monday. Warp will launch for Xbox Live on February 15 at 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Publisher Electronic Arts said it will be downloadable on the PlayStation 3 and PC on March [...]
01.23.12 -
Google’s Chrome Browser Sprouts Programming Kit of the Future
Among Silicon Valley developers, The Next Big Thing is Node. Node is short for Node.js, a new-age programming platform based on an engine at the heart of Google's Chrome browser. It's suited to building network applications that juggle scads of information streaming to and from other sources. In other words, it's suited to the modern internet.
01.23.12 -
Algorithmic Education (including the Mathematics of Cramming)
The timing of some studying methods is more effective than others, but results vary from person to person. Mathematician and Social Dimension blogger Samuel Arbesman reports on a new study that boils the options down to a handful of "model student" algorithms.
01.23.12 -
I Spy Your Company’s Boardroom
Security researchers discover they can remotely infiltrate conference rooms in some of the top venture capital and law firms across the country by simply calling in to unsecured videoconferencing systems they found by doing a scan of the internet.
01.23.12 -
Hack Swaps Google???s Search Plus Your World Results for the Wider Social Web
Developers at Twitter, Facebook and MySpace have put together a demonstration of just how much relevancy Google sacrifices in order to push Google+. There's even a bookmarklet available that will swap the Google+-only results for a wider range of social network results.
01.23.12 -
Toyota 2000GT EV Conversion Is Solar-Powered Sacrilege
We love electric vehicles, but even we think making a solar EV out of a mint-condition Toyota 2000GT is going too far.
01.23.12 -
Minecraft Mod Recreates Entire Zelda World
You might think that after two years of non-stop Minecraft maps, mods and artful re-creations of everything from Mario statues to genitalia, nothing that modders do could be that impressive anymore. Well, you be the judge: YouTuber Benny Girard has re-created the entire overworld of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. As you can [...]
01.23.12 -
Review: Celeste and Jesse Forever Makes Audience Laughcry at Sundance
Andy Samberg and Rashida Jones play a longtime couple whose storybook marriage is slowly dissolving in this anti-romantic comedy, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
01.23.12 -
Expertsourcing (Or, How to Test a Product Without Losing It in a Bar)
The race is all about finding and fixing bugs faster, cheaper and everywhere, in every condition, before an end-user even gets a chance to see them. If that means rounding up an ad hoc flash mob of experts to swarm countries from Turkey to Indonesia with smartphones in hand, so be it.
01.23.12 -
Indie Game: The Movie Levels Up From Kickstarter to HBO Deal
The success of Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary optioned by HBO for development into a TV series after its Sundance premiere Saturday, strangely mirrors the film's glimpse into the topsy-turvy world of videogame makers.
01.23.12
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