photo gallery
From Robot Squadmate to Warplane Whisperer: 10 Jobs That Barely Existed on 9/10/01
11 hours ago
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Samsung Vitality Brings Android, Music to Cricket
Listen up, music-loving tightwads: Samsung is offering the Vitality, an Android 2.3 smartphone, to budget-carrier Cricket. It features Muve Music, Cricket’s exclusive — and unlimited — music service. Muve currently has more than 200,000 subscribers, and deals with EMI, Sony, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music, among others, so its reservoir of available music could be [...]
09.08.11 -
Gallery: Art, Cars, and Blazes at Burning Man
Story and photos by Frank Rodriguez BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev. ??? A quarter-century after the first Man was burned, a record-breaking crowd gathered here for the annual art, music, and social experiment festival that is Burning Man. This year more than 50,000 people descended on the Black Rock Desert, selling out the festival for the first [...]
09.08.11 -
Geek Show! Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer Hit the Road
Newlyweds Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are taking their love on the road. The author and Dresden Dolls singer will be touring the West Coast starting in October.
09.08.11 -
The Neuroscience of Groupon
The title of this post is a joke. There is no neuroscience of Groupon, no clever new fMRI experiment documenting what happens in the brains of undergrads when they get their daily emails citing steep discounts at the local pizza parlor. Instead, I want to riff on a recent Steven Levy column in Wired, which [...]
09.08.11 -
Rumor: Windows 8 Tablet Appears Next Week
Samsung and Microsoft are set to introduce a brand spankin' new Windows 8 tablet next week at Microsoft???s BUILD conference, the Korea Economic Daily reports. The device is expected to house a quad-core ARM processor.
09.08.11 -
Attacks of the Brain-Controlling Parasites
Once upon a time, parasites were thought to live relatively simple lives: They hitched a ride on a host, sapping nutrients and energy but otherwise leaving it alone. But that was only part of the story. Many parasites actually take control, causing their hosts to act in self-destructive ways that further their invaders' interests. Here are some of the most gruesome kinds of attacks.
09.08.11 -
Google Buys Zagat to Reinvent Mobile Search Engine
Google has acquired Zagat, the survey company and multimedia publisher known best for its highly regarded print guides to local restaurants. The acquisition strengthens Google's position in local search, helping it compete with web-native companies like Yelp, particularly for high-volume searches for restaurants and hotels. It also means that much like Yahoo or Microsoft, Google increasingly owns some of the media content it serves up for searches outright, rather than simply indexing and influencing it.
09.08.11 -
Time-Travel Gameplay Could Save Final Fantasy XIII-2
Are you hoping that Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be less linear than its predecessor? How about this for nonlinearity: You can travel through time.
09.08.11 -
California Sheriff Adds Light Sport Airplane To Fleet
Light sport aircraft are marketed to pilots (and prospective pilots) as a safe, economical and a relatively simple way to fly. Now it turns out the same pitch is working for law enforcement. The Tulare County Sheriff’s Department is the first agency in the country to put a light sport aircraft to work as an [...]
09.08.11 -
The Death Star: A Pentagon Purchasing Nightmare
A Pentagon acquisitions journal isn't the place you'd typically go for Star Wars fan fic. But an Air Force lieutenant colonel has an urgent message for the Pentagon: Stop buying overbudget, useless Death Stars. It's the droids of the defense world that you're really looking for.
09.08.11
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‘Raw Meet’ Redux: Fred Ritchin Responds to Wired.com Q&A;
Fred Ritchin responds to last week's Wired.com interview with him.
09.08.11 -
Rare Kingfishers Hatch at the Smithsonian
Two critically endangered Micronesian kingfishers, among the rarest animals in the world, hatched recently at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
09.08.11 -
Swirly Moon Markings Remain Mysterious
Peppered around lava flats and mountaintops all over the moon are strange sinuous shapes known as lunar swirls. Their winding dusty curves are brighter than the surrounding area and, so far, their formation remains a mystery to scientists who recently gathered at a conference dedicated to understanding the odd features.
09.08.11 -
Digitized Deep-Ocean Expedition Discovers Surprising Oasis of Life
Marine biologists have discovered a never-before-seen duo of organisms colonizing a deep-sea hydrothermal vent in the Atlantic Ocean.
09.08.11 -
Writer Illustrates Father’s Sleuthing in Green River Killer
In his new graphic novel Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen tackles the role his father played in the investigation of Gary Leon Ridgway, aka the Green River Killer.
09.08.11 -
Newspaper Chain Drops Righthaven — ‘It Was a Dumb Idea’
The new chief executive of MediaNews Group, publisher of the Denver Post and 50 other newspapers, said it was “a dumb idea” for the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain to sign up with copyright troll Righthaven. The Denver-based publisher’s year-long copyright infringement litigation deal with Righthaven is terminating at month’s end, said John Paton, who replaced Dean [...]
09.08.11 -
Multiplayer Max Payne 3 Set For March Release
The third installment in the popular Max Payne shooter series will arrive on Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 this March, publisher Rockstar said on Thursday. Unlike its predecessors, which were both based in a noir version of New York City, Max Payne 3 will take place in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The game will also feature [...]
09.08.11 -
Why Wait for Google? Use Encrypted Search Today
The beta version of Google Chrome is now selectively redirecting users to Google's encrypted search page for improved privacy and security. Here's how to make your favorite browser join the HTTPS revolution.
09.08.11 -
Going Marbles Over Marble iPad Apps
Sometimes you wonder what the point is of taking a perfectly good activity that you enjoy in the real world and taking it into the digital realm through a touchscreen device. But when something turns digital that you were never very good at and gives you a new experience and a new competence due to [...]
09.08.11 -
Handy Rubber-Band-Inspired iPhone Case
Belkin doesn’t make this Belkin-branded iPhone case, but it should do. It’s a concept design from Yoori Koo, and is the functional equivalent of wrapping a couple of rubber bands around your phone, only it doesn’t obscure the display. Koo’s Elasty case is much like any other bumper-with-a-back style case, encasing the iPhone’s squared-off body in [...]
09.08.11
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BMW Toying With Laser Headlamps
Wonderful. Technology has added yet another way for BMW drivers to show complete disregard for other road users — laser headlights. Projected use: Zapping cyclists. LEDs are obviously over already, and BMW plans to further enable its over-entitled, road-owning customers in their war on civility. The lights burn so much brighter than LEDs (170 lumens per [...]
09.08.11 -
Happy 45th Anniversary, Star Trek
Once upon a time, there lived a man. This man was a dreamer. This man had hopes and visions of a better future, a future built upon true equality and mutual respect. This man’s name was Gene Roddenberry. Gene had an idea. He wanted to share his dream and his ideals. The way he did this [...]
09.08.11 -
Dead Island Promised The World, and Falls (Predictably) Short
Dead Island may have turned out to be a middle-tier game, but I’ve enjoyed the hoopla and conversations that it’s inspired. In case you missed it, this is the game that came to fame through a CGI trailer depicting a little girl falling prey to a Zombie disease and then attacking her dad — rough watching [...]
09.08.11 -
Dolphins May ‘Talk’ Like Humans
A new look at recordings of dolphins made in the 1970s reveals the cetaceans talk to each other in a manner very similar to human speech, using tissue vibrations.
09.08.11 -
GeekDad Guitar Lesson: The Jimmy Neutron Theme Song
If you’re a geek, live with a five-year old and have Netflix Streaming, then you have probably watched a fair amount of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.??While watching the show one day with my son, I noticed that the theme song features a pretty killer guitar riff that the readers of GeekDad would probably be [...]
09.08.11 -
How Long Does This Skydiving Laptop Have to Boot?
I ran across this entertaining commercial promoting Lenovo’s rapid boot technology. The main idea is that the laptop can boot quick enough to deploy a parachute. Entertaining? Yes. A great demo of the fast boot time for the Lenovo? Maybe not. In the commercial (which I am fairly certain is real), the laptop takes [...]
09.08.11 -
After the Kinect, What’s Next for Gesture-Recognition Technology?
I think it’s safe to say that Microsoft’s Kinect for the Xbox 360 has been a success. Despite the limitations of the device, it seems to have caught on to a large (and growing) extent in the marketplace, and in so doing has brought gesture-recognition technology into the mainstream. In addition to the games that, [...]
09.08.11 -
Nintendo 3DS Gets More Mature Games Than Xbox 360
Age ratings are more complicated than they first appear, especially if you are a parent who is new to gaming. With more games crossing over from casual to hardcore it’s more important to understand how to read a videogame box to identify the games that are best for your family — something we will look [...]
09.08.11 -
Induction Charging Kit Costs More Than the iPad it Juices
Nickel and dime, nickel and dime. Ching, ching! If you could hear design and marketing strategies as sounds, then that’s the sound you’d hear coming from LaunchPort, makers of inductive iPad chargers and mounts. The product itself is appealing. You put your iPad into the PowerShuttle case, which adds the necessary charging circuitry, as well as [...]
09.08.11 -
Zooming in on Apollo: New Images of the Moon From LRO
The Apollo missions to the Moon. Few things stand out in modern human history that are as momentous. Now, thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO for short, we have new views of three of the Apollo landing sites in unprecedented detail. The LRO mission has been producing incredible data. We have reported on the [...]
09.08.11
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Seagate’s Huge Hard Drive Packs Four Whole Terabytes
When I read that Seagate’s new FreeAgent GoFlex is the biggest external hard drive in the world, I got excited. I imagined the coming winter months, with me having ditched my bed and instead just sleeping with my mattress atop the warm, humming box. Or maybe leaving my apartment and moving straight into the giant [...]
09.08.11 -
Two Classic Games Get Facelifts and a PlayStation 3 Release
Whenever you get gamers talking about PlayStation 2 games, sooner or later the games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus come up, and with good reason. These two games were the antithesis of the big titles of their times. Both dealt with very human issues in their plot lines and Ico and Shadow of the [...]
09.08.11 -
GeekDad Giveaway: Finish This Book by Keri Smith
Did you ever get a chance to check out the Wreck This App that we highlighted a few weeks back, here on GeekDad? Or maybe you have checked out one of Keri Smith’s?? many other books. The famous guerrilla artist has just released another of her wildly popular books. This one, entitled Finish This Book, [...]
09.08.11 -
Holy Moly! Adobe ‘Lightroom’ for iOS
Oh man. Apple’s PhotoStream can suck it. Adobe has just announced Carousel, an app which puts the Lightroom/Camera RAW rendering engine on the iPad and iPhone, and also lets you edit your photos and sync those edits between all your devices, automatically. Carousel doesn’t sync with your existing Lightroom library. Instead, you install the free Carousel app [...]
09.08.11 -
2012 Bicycling Bling Goes Big
We got a preview of several 2012 product highlights this summer at a bike-industry retreat in Utah, and the chance to try them out on roads and trails above Park City. Here are a few of our favorites.
09.08.11 -
6 Weird Places Star Trek Merch Has Boldly Gone
Gene Roddenberry's influential sci-fi series has zapped us with some high concepts over the years, but the Star Trek Marshmallow Dispenser wasn't one of them. See seven of the stranger items spawned by the show's rich mythology.
09.08.11 -
$265 Bomb, $300 Billion War: The Economics of the 9/11 Era’s Signature Weapon
Improvised bombs were already cheap. Now, they cost less than an iPhone.
09.08.11 -
Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship Enterprise
Star Trek makes its network television debut. Given the cultural impact and enormous franchise spawned by the original Star Trek series, it's hard to believe that the show lasted just three seasons and was canceled by NBC in 1969 because of low ratings.
09.08.11 -
10 Jobs That Barely Existed on 9/10/01, From Robot Squadmate to Warplane Whisperer
From Las Vegas drone warrior to human-terrain analyst, 10 military jobs that went from obscure to in-demand after bin Laden struck.
09.08.11 -
Nikon D3100, Now In 1980s-Jacket Red
Want to buy an SLR for serious shooting purposes, but don’t want to leave behind the “quirky” personality that saw you covering your book-bag in Hello Kitty stickers (girls) or Scooby Doo patches (boys) back in high school? Well, good news! Now you can continue to assert your “individuality” by buying this red Nikon D3100 [...]
09.08.11
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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Thursday, September 8th
As we’ve reported before, our good friends over at Google are starting up a daily puzzle challenge. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. And much to our enjoyment, they’ve decided to share the puzzles with us at GeekDad (hmm… Google a Day? GD? GeekDad?), [...]
09.08.11 -
Classic Cursor Stylus Takes the Tablet Back in Time
For those who miss the decades-old aesthetics of that half-arrow, or link-clicking pointer finger, there’s the Big Big Arrow and Big Big Pointer styluses.??They, like most models, have a rubber tip designed to point with accuracy, but glide across the glass for drawing and scrolling.??Both are magnetic and can adhere to the screen’s rim, Apple [...]
09.07.11 -
How an Omniscient Internet ‘Sextortionist’ Ruined the Lives of Teen Girls
In the spring of 2009, a college student named Amy received an instant message from someone claiming to know her. Certainly, the person knew something about her???he was able to supply details about what her bedroom looked like and he had, improbably, nude photos of Amy. He sent the photos to her and asked her [...]
09.07.11 -
What’s Yahoo Really Worth?
Yahoo founder and ex-CEO Jerry Yang wants you and all Yahoo employees to know that Yahoo is not for sale. Not. For. Sale. However, Yang also wants you to know that the company is hiring advisory firms to “explore strategic options.” So, if you happen to be taking a look and see something you simply must have, [...]
09.07.11 -
4-Color Conspiracies: There’s a 9/11 Truther Comic
What's worse than getting shouted at by 9/11 conspiracy theorists? Getting shouted at by them in the form of a comic book. That's what comics legend Rick Veitch just produced today with his hysterical screed, The Big Lie.
09.07.11 -
Play Strategic Game of Thrones Game on PC This Month
A real-time strategy game based on the popular fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire will hit the PC on September 29, publisher Focus Home Interactive said Wednesday. French developer Cyanide (Blood Bowl) collaborated with series author George R.R. Martin for the single-player campaign of A Game of Thrones – Genesis, which will feature [...]
09.07.11 -
Exclusive Trailer: Professor Layton’s Most Mysterious Moments
Here's an exclusive look at a new trailer for Nintendo's Professor Layton series of portable puzzle games.
09.07.11 -
Help Astronomers Build a Movie of the 2017 Eclipse
Early planning is underway for a massive crowdsourced movie of the 2017 solar eclipse. And astronomers want your help. The project, currently titled “The Eclipse Megamovie,” will compile stills submitted by amateur astronomers, allowing solar researchers an unprecedented look at the wavings and warpings of the corona, as the eclipse traverses the width of the United [...]
09.07.11 -
Three Lessons From Two Months of Tech-Sector Madness
This summer, we've had a flood of corporate catastrophes, near-catastrophes and responses to catastrophe. It would be a shame, though, if we went through all of this for nothing. Here are a few of the lessons we can learn from what went right and what went very, very wrong this summer.
09.07.11 -
Futurama Gets ‘Reincarnated’ Three Ways in Season Finale
Thursday's season-ending episode renders the sci-fi cartoon in three different animation styles: black-and-white, anime and videogame.
09.07.11
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Blizzard Friends, Family Get Diablo III Beta
A closed beta for the highly anticipated hack-n-slash Diablo III has already begun, developer Blizzard said on Tuesday, but the beta is currently only available to friends and family of Blizzard employees. There is no non-disclosure agreement on the beta’s content, a Blizzard representative said on the game’s official forums, meaning you’ll be able to see [...]
09.07.11 -
Spotify Gets Pandora-Style Web Interface Called ‘Echofi’
Millions of prayers have just been answered. Spotify has been granted a Pandora-esque web radio interface called Echofi.
09.07.11 -
Copyright Troll Righthaven Goes on Life Support
The great experiment in copyright trolling that is Righthaven appears to be nearing an end. Righthaven, which was founded more than a year ago to monetize print news content through copyright infringement lawsuits, has suffered a myriad of courtroom setbacks in recent months. Among them, it was sanctioned $5,000 for misleading a federal judge, ordered to [...]
09.07.11 -
The Steve Jobs Song the World Really Needs Right Now
When Steve Jobs announced his retirement as CEO of Apple two weeks ago, one thing sunk faster than the company’s stock prices: our hearts. It wasn’t until this video surfaced that we realized the feeling was eerily similar to the one felt when Jay-Z announced his (first) retirement from hip-hop in 2003. At the time, [...]
09.07.11 -
Weird Quantum Effect Can Make Materials Transparent
A device created by physicists can turn normally opaque materials transparent -- under very special conditions. While the technology probably isn't good for invisibility cloaks, it may lead to practical quantum computers.
09.07.11 -
Transatlantic Terror Birds
A 10-foot-tall carnivorous bird roamed the Earth millions of years ago, but it wasn't trapped in isolation. A new study suggests its territory reached South America, North America and even Africa. Paleontology blogger Brian Switek reports.
09.07.11 -
As If Nathan Fillion Needed More Geek Cred…..
Nathan Fillion, who played the lead in Firefly, the voice of Green Lantern, and currently starring in ABC’s Castle, will once again become a comic book character. He was first preserved on paper as Mal from Firefly in the graphic novel Serenity: Those Left Behind. Now the series of ghost-written mysteries supposedly written by his character [...]
09.07.11 -
The Epic of @MayorEmanuel, Part One: The Adventure Begins
INTRODUCTION This week and next, Epicenter is running excerpts from Dan Sinker’s The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel, to be released September 13 by Scribner. The book collects and annotates the activity of @MayorEmanuel, a Twitter account Sinker created spoofing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, then the White House Chief of Staff turned mayoral candidate. The [...]
09.07.11 -
Points for Participation: A Bad Idea
What is a clicker? Basically, it is a class polling device. The instructor asks a question and the students choose their answer (probably a multiple-choice question). The answers then go straight to the instructor who will probably then display the results to the class. For me, the clicker (or student response system – [...]
09.07.11 -
Gaming in the 3rd Dimension With Origin PC
Sometimes lessons in economics and the harsh reality of toiling away as one of many cogs in the great machine is enough to create that rare spark of entrepreneurship (even more rare when successful). This is exactly what happened to Richard Cary, Hector Penton and Kevin Wasielewski, three co-workers and friends who were working for [...]
09.07.11
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Electric Vehicles: Breaking Track Records For 115 Years
On this date in 1896, an electric car won one of the first automobile races in the United States. Amidst jeers from the crowd to “get a horse!” the ur-EV built by the Riker Electric Motor Company slowly completed five laps around a horse racing track in Cranston, RI. It took 15 minutes for the [...]
09.07.11 -
GeekMom’s Education Week: Reading Readiness Has to Do With the Body
Today???s children sit more than ever. Babies spend hours confined in car seats and carriers rather than crawling, toddling or being carried. As they get older their days are often heavily scheduled between educational activities and organized events. Children have 25 percent less time for free play than they did a generation ago, and [...]
09.07.11 -
Dork Tower Wednesday
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.
09.07.11 -
The Spy Who Tweeted Me: Intelligence Community Wants to Monitor Social Media
U.S. spies were caught flatfooted by the political upheaval in the Middle East. So their far-out researchers have an idea: Monitor tweets, Facebook updates, Wikipedia edits and other socially networked data for early indicators of major social change. #whoa
09.07.11 -
The Top 10 Geek Axioms
Geeks love to argue, particularly with other geeks. We don’t just argue about whether Kirk or Picard is the better captain because we have deeply-held opinions on the subject — though some of us certainly do — but because, well, it’s fun. Even knowing intellectually that there isn’t any definitive way to compare “The City [...]
09.07.11 -
The Alternative 52s: Moving Beyond DC
While last week saw the debut of the first of DC Comics New 52, the publicity surrounding DC’s big revamp and its same-day digital publishing initiative led many comic readers to re-examine what they were buying and why. The webzine Sequential Tart put together a list of “Alternate 52,” comics coming out in September. While there are [...]
09.07.11 -
Yummy and Apparitiony! Learn How to Make Your Own Ecto-Cooler
If, like many of us GeekDads, you grew up in the 80s, you probably remember Ecto-Cooler, the Hi-C product tie-in to the Ghostbusters movie. This tangy??concoction??of green goodness was a wonderful mix of??orange??and tangerine and managed to stay on shelves, in one form or another, for more than a decade. Sadly, Ecto-Cooler (and its drinkable??descendants) [...]
09.07.11 -
Solved: MC Frontalot Is in the T-Shirt Business
During PAX Prime I headed into a panel on Nerdcore Rap. It was kind of a history lesson, in a sense, but nothing that I already didn’t know. It was moderated by young rapper and producer Klopfenpop. There was a who’s-who of nerdcore rappers and producers along with him including, smack dab in the middle, [...]
09.07.11 -
Exclusive: PAX PRIME 2011 On-Site Interview With Kyle Stallock, Community Manager at Eidos Montr??al
The following is an exclusive on-site interview at PAX Prime 2011 that I conducted with Kyle Stallock, Community Manager at Eidos Montr??al. Additional input to my last question was sent via email by Jean-Fran??ois Dugas, Game Director, Deus Ex: Human Revolution at Eidos Montr??al. Geek Dad: This is a game with a great pedigree, and we [...]
09.07.11 -
J.P. Morgan Uses Lego Minifigs to Explain European Debt Crisis
The CIO of financial giant J.P. Morgan's private bank sent out a research note this week explaining the European debt crisis, illustrated using LEGO minifigures. He credited his son with the idea.
09.07.11
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Square Enix Dishing Deus Ex DLC in October
New downloadable content will be available for Deus Ex: Human Revolution this October, publisher Square Enix said Tuesday. The DLC has been rumored for several weeks now, ever since fans began participating in an alternate reality game in late August, just a few days after Square Enix released Deus Ex: Human Revolution for Xbox 360, PlayStation [...]
09.07.11 -
Sept. 7, 1998: If the Check Says ‘Google Inc.,’ We’re ‘Google Inc.’
Two grad students agree to disagree about everything except what matters. They start one of the biggest companies ever.
09.07.11 -
Report: Nintendo Adding Right Analog Pad to 3DS
Remember back when the brick Game Boy didn’t have a backlight, so you had to carry around all sorts of unwieldy plastic contraptions attached to it? Looks like Nintendo’s going to bring out an attachment for the 3DS that adds a second analog stick. According to what looks very much like a page from the latest [...]
09.07.11 -
Yahoo Fires CEO Carol Bartz
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was fired Tuesday, ostensibly for failing to revive the stagnant revenues and stock price of the net’s biggest portal. Bartz promptly informed the company’s employees that she’d been canned over-the-phone: To all, I am very sad to tell you that I???ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo???s Chairman of the Board. It [...]
09.06.11 -
Video: ‘Nano Techno’ Is the Best Rap Song About Nanotech You’ll Hear All Day
This is probably the only rap song about nanotech you'll hear today, but that's beside the point. Coma Niddy finds a way to make nanotechnology something worth rapping about.
09.06.11 -
Giveaway: Win a DVD of Community, Season 2
Enter to win a copy of Community: The Complete Second Season.
09.06.11 -
Point–Counterpoint: Will Pay-to-Play Dragon Quest X Online Flop or Fly?
Has Dragon Quest finally jumped the shark, or will this end up being hailed as a shot in the arm that keeps the series from going downhill? Game|Life writers Chris Kohler and Jason Schreier have come to different conclusions.
09.06.11 -
Reddit Gains Independence (of Sorts) From Cond?? Nast
Reddit, the popular geeky social news site, has broken free of its ownership by the magazine conglomerate Cond?? Nast, which bought the site in 2006. Now, it's a standalone company -- but still wholly owned by Cond?? Nast's parent company.
09.06.11 -
Elite Splits Call of Duty Players Into Haves, Have-Nots
Last weekend, the hardest of the hardcore descended upon Los Angeles to take part in Call of Duty XP, a convention celebrating everything Call of Duty. Each attendee paid $150 for their ticket???but it’s hard to quibble over the cost of the ticket when 100 percent of the proceeds went to a charity that supports [...]
09.06.11 -
TechCrunch and Parent Company AOL Hold Each Other Hostage
I think the key to understanding the current standoff between TechCrunch and AOL might be in this scene from The Shawshank Redemption. In particular, it’s in two lines between the warden and Andy, the prisoner: ANDY: Everything stops! WARDEN: Nothing stops. This is my only problem. Between TechCrunch and AOL, I’m not sure which of the two is [...]
09.06.11
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Getting Lost in Xenoblade’s Vast, Forbidden World
Xenoblade Chronicles’ world is one that begs to be explored. If only Nintendo of America would let you. I imported the role-playing game, released for Wii on August 19 in Europe but not North America. Its world is built on the frozen bodies of two giant robots. One of them, Bionis, is home to humans while [...]
09.06.11 -
Lunar Landing Sites: Then and Now
Recently released high-resolution NASA images provide the best detail yet of the extent to which we've left our mark on the moon.
09.06.11 -
Female Orgasm Remains an Evolutionary Mystery
After baffling biologists for decades, the female orgasm has resisted yet another attempt to explain its elusive evolutionary origins.
09.06.11 -
Amazon’s Future Is So Much Bigger Than a Tablet
Amazon has swiftly become the most disruptive company in the media and technology industries. Its potential in this space is simply off the charts: bigger than Apple's, bigger than Google's or Microsoft's.
09.06.11 -
CIA, Mossad, Also Targeted in Massive DigiNotar Cert Breach
The list of fraudulent certificates obtained by hackers who breached a Dutch certificate authority has grown to more than 500 and includes certificates for domains owned by three intelligence agencies: the CIA, Israel's Mossad and the UK's MI6.
09.06.11 -
Tour de France Photog Ditches DSLR for iPhone
There’s no greater misconception in photography than that it’s the gear that makes the photographer (Just ask Damon Winter). In the hands of a skilled shooter, even the iPhone 4’s camera can make compelling images. During this year’s Tour De France, an event silly with photo pros trying to make a living, photojournalist and documentarian [...]
09.06.11 -
Jeb Corliss’s Flight Suit: Diaper Included?
Maybe it’s the mountaineering reading I’m doing this week: Peter Boardman’s magnificent Sacred Summits, which I’m aggrieved to see is scandalously out of print. More on that later, I hope. But I blame my taste for this thrill-seeking on the late Boardman, one of the finest and strongest climbers of the 1980s and one of [...]
09.06.11 -
‘Invisibility Cloak’ Makes Tanks Look Like Cows
British defense company BAE Systems has developed an "invisibility cloak" that can effectively hide vehicles from view in the infrared spectrum. "You can display anything you want on it -- including a cow -- while the rest of the vehicle blends into the background," says a company exec.
09.06.11 -
5 Essential Online Tools for Finding New Music (or Music That’s New to You)
Use these great new digital tools to find hot new bands and dig up classic tracks that you'll love. Courtney Smith, author of new book Record Collecting for Girls, shares tips and tricks for making the most of today's musical deluge.
09.06.11 -
Sprint Files Own Lawsuit Against AT&T;, T-Mobile Merger
Sprint is suing AT&T and T-Mobile, seeking to stop the two from merging and becoming the nation's largest wireless carrier. The marriage, Sprint argues, is bad for consumers and Sprint.
09.06.11
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New Composite Airbus Approaching Final Assembly
Several large composite pieces for the new Airbus passenger jet have been delivered over the past month as the airplane maker prepares for assembly of the first A350XWB. The new airplane is expected to make its first flight some time next year and is a competitor against Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. Both the A350XWB and 787 [...]
09.06.11 -
Expedition Helps Build Network of Ocean Sensors
A 274-foot research vessel has just completed an expedition to aid the installation of web-enabled sensors that will monitor the ocean in the Pacific Northwest.
09.06.11 -
Senators Love Their Stealth Jet; Never Mind a New Design Flaw
The Pentagon's trillion-dollar stealth jet program is flying again, after being grounded. But there's fresh trouble: a newly discovered problem in the wing structure.
09.06.11 -
Focusing On Focus
My latest WSJ Head Case column touches on the importance of teaching executive function and self-control. For more, see the recent blog post on the marshmallow task: For most of human history, the progress of knowledge was constrained by a shortage of information. Books were expensive and rare, libraries were reserved for elite scholars and communication [...]
09.06.11 -
The Willpower Circuit
The marshmallow test needs no introduction. Walter Mischel’s ingenious experiment – first conducted in 1968 – has entered the pop culture canon. The study has even spawned an adorable series of YouTube imitations, such as this clip featuring little kids wrestling with temptation: The experiment went like this: Mischel invited a four-year old student at the [...]
09.06.11 -
Tick-Borne Infections Infiltrate U.S. Blood Supply
The CDC reports that Rhode Island and New York's 159 cases of a tick-borne disease were caused by transfusions in the past 30 years -- and that risk may be on the rise. Superbug blogger Maryn McKenna reports.
09.06.11 -
The Scale at the Bottom of a Pool
Here is another one of those great questions that promotes epic “office discussions”. (this one sent in by Russ) “An Olympic-sized swimming pool is filled with 660,000 US gallons of water. An imaginary scale under the pool reads 5,511,556 pounds — the weight of the water. Now a 12,000 pound, 5 foot wide spherical wrecking ball [...]
09.06.11 -
A Trippy Citro??n Concept? Quelle Surprise!
Just as Am??lie traipsed around like a Parisian Polyanna, we can always count on Citro??n’s Gallic whimsy to liven up an auto show. The Tubik, a luxurious reinterpretation of the fabled??H Van, does not disappoint. Citro??n envisions the Tubik as the group transit component of its Multicity platform, a connected transit service that integrates all modes [...]
09.06.11 -
Sept. 6, 1891: Risky Heart Surgery Saves Stabbing Victim
Cutting into someone's chest to perform heart surgery is not yet an accepted medical practice. But without it James Cornish is doomed, so the surgeon goes in.
09.06.11 -
Airships Could Prove a Lifeline in the Arctic
Airships could soon be soaring to remote mining communities in the Great White North, carrying supplies to areas not easily served by airplanes or trucks.
09.06.11
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How an Omniscient Internet ‘Sextortionist’ Ruined the Lives of Teen Girls
09.07.11 -
Copyright Troll Righthaven Goes on Life Support
09.07.11 -
2012 Bicycling Bling Goes Big
09.08.11 -
10 Jobs That Barely Existed on 9/10/01, From Robot Squadmate to Warplane Whisperer
09.08.11 -
Is This the First Photo Taken With iPhone 5?
09.07.11 -
4-Color Conspiracies: There’s a 9/11 Truther Comic
09.07.11 -
6 Weird Places Star Trek Merch Has Boldly Gone
09.08.11 -
The Top 10 Geek Axioms
09.07.11 -
$265 Bomb, $300 Billion War: The Economics of the 9/11 Era’s Signature Weapon
09.08.11 -
The Willpower Circuit
09.06.11 -
Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship Enterprise
09.08.11 -
Futurama Gets ‘Reincarnated’ Three Ways in Season Finale
09.07.11 -
Weird Quantum Effect Can Make Materials Transparent
09.07.11 -
Dolphins May ‘Talk’ Like Humans
09.08.11 -
Help Astronomers Build a Movie of the 2017 Eclipse
09.07.11 -
Female Orgasm Remains an Evolutionary Mystery
09.06.11 -
J.P. Morgan Uses Lego Minifigs to Explain European Debt Crisis
09.07.11 -
Spotify Gets Pandora-Style Web Interface Called ‘Echofi’
09.07.11 -
What’s Yahoo Really Worth?
09.07.11 -
Exclusive Trailer: Professor Layton’s Most Mysterious Moments
09.07.11
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