The EU had been expected to fine Google a little over €1B for its anti-competitive practice of promoting its own shopping service over competitors' in search results: today's €2.42B comes as a surprise, as does the ongoing fine if it fails to change its behavior within 90 days -- up to €10.6m a day, or 5% of parent company Alphabet's total daily earnings. (more…)
Get educated in the fine art of eerily-calm landscape painting over at School of FAIL!
Submitted by: Unknown
Jennifer Raff -- a bioanthropologist and geneticist who researches and teaches at U Kansas and U Texas -- provides some excellent advice and context on how to read a scientific paper, from figuring out which papers and journals are worthy of your attention to understanding the paper in its wider context in the relevant field. (more…)
People have made all kinds of comics, short films and cartoons about the mighty Link and his quest to save Hyrule, and they're all great fun to check out- but they're also all missing a little something.
So which magical element of the Legend Of Zelda games do the artists paying homage to the games nearly always forget to include? The activity I spend hours doing every time I play a Zelda game- smashing pots for rupees.
Animator Callegos Yavolitak created this fan film for the pot smasher in all of us, which focuses on the greatest pastime in Hyrule and shows us we're not alone in our obsession to destroy and collect gems.
-Via Dorkly
Anish Kapoor is an artist and a colossal, controlling asshole: there was that time he said that the presence of his $270M sculpture in a Chicago park gave him the right to decide who could take pictures in a public space. (more…)
A new report from the US Copyright Office on Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- a controversial law that bans breaking DRM, even for legitimate purposes -- calls for sweeping, welcome changes to the DMCA. (more…)
After serving as the soloist for Wonder Woman’s now iconic theme music in Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, cellist Tina Guo uploaded her own even more badass take on Hans Zimmer’s score to her YouTube channel. Guo also served as a soloist on the new Wonder Woman movie as well.
The trailer for the upcoming Blade Runner sequel, Blade Runner 2049, looks pretty cool. But it’s even cooler now that ScreenCrush has done some clever editing to make it look like it was made in the ’80s. For comparison, you can check out the trailer for the original 1982 film right here:
https://youtu.be/eogpIG53Cis
Eclectic Method turned the 1997 movie The Fifth Element into a song! The French production, filmed in England with American and British actors, was a visual treat, and this remix highlight those spectacular visuals for three minutes of rhythmic weirdness.
I still haven't seen The Fifth Element, but thanks to this, I now know where many of the gifs I've seen around the 'net are from. -via Digg
How this photo came to be, I'm not entirely sure. But yes, that is famed musician Yo-Yo Ma, in a bathroom, with a baby wombat.
Aaaaaaand we're done for the day.
Submitted by: Unknown
What would 'Seinfeld' look like if the entire cast were fluffy and had tiny little claws?
Submitted by: (via Mashable Watercooler)
Mary Poppins is about as far from death metal as you can get, and her chipper disposition and cheery colored clothing are all the proof Mary needs that she's not a fan of the heavy metal sound.
And yet there's something so right about this mashup created by Andy Rehfeldt, which features totally brutal vocals by Sera Hatchett of Mercy Brown, because it's so absurd you won't want it to end!
-Via Geeks Are Sexy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdFqheeMFiU
Timothy from Creative Commons writes, "A few weeks ago Diego Gómez, the former Colombian student who's been prosecuted for sharing a research paper online, was acquitted of criminal charges.
Binky is an app equivalent of a baby pacifier. It presents an endless scroll of image posts that you can "like" or "re-bink" (which does nothing). It's easy to comment on a post, too. You just press random letters on your keypad to automagically generate words that write out coherent sentences.
You know that movies telegraph their intent by mood music. Editing and the proper music can turn any movie into something completely different. Folks on the internet have made a cottage industry of changing an existing movie's genre with a little editing and a very different soundtrack. You can see five comedies, even family films, turned into horror movies with recuts at TVOM. Admit it, Willie Wonke and the Chocolate Factory would be a great horror film. But you haven't seen anything until you've seen the horror of Dumb and Dumber.
It's considered cheesy for a character to name drop the title of the film by today's standards, but back in the day the “title drop” was something viewers anticipated, cheered at and talked about after watching a movie.
Some movies like Good Morning Vietnam, White Men Can't Jump, Dude, Where's My Car?, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and What About Bob? Use the title drop during a memorable scene.
Others like The Godfather, The Big Lebowski, Hobo With A Shotgun, The Wolf Of Wall Street and Fantastic Mr. Fox are named after the main character so the name drop feels natural but doesn't make for a quotable moment.
All of these movies also have one other thing in common- they're all included in this compilation video by Roman Holiday entitled “Title Drops” along with around a hundred and forty more.
Title Drops from Roman Holiday on Vimeo.
-Via Laughing Squid
David Firth, of Salad Fingers fame, produced a 12-minute short film about a cure-all cream that solves disease, aging and all forms of want. "All your problems can be creamed away." But what if people want to have problems? And want you to have problems?
And if you don't know, now you know. (The Hood Internet)
Featuring:2 Pac, 50 Cent, A Tribe Called Quest, Afrika Bambaataa, Audio Two, AZ, Beastie Boys, BG, Big Pun, Biz Markie, Black Rob, Black Sheep, Blackstreet, Bobby Shmurda, Boogie Down Productions, Busta Rhymes, Cali Swag District, Cam'ron, Chamillionaire, Chance The Rapper, Clipse, Common, Craig Mack, Cypress Hill, David Banner, De La Soul, Dead Prez, Digable Planets, Digital Underground, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, DJ Kool, DJ Quik & Kurrupt, DMX, Doug E Fresh, Dr. Dre, Drake, Eazy-E, Eminem, Eric B. & Rakim, Funky 4+1, Gang Starr, Geto Boys, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, GZA, House of Pain, Ice Cube, J-Kwon, Jadakiss, Jay Electronica, Jay-Z, JJ Fad, Juvenile, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Kid Cudi, KRS-One, Lauryn Hill, Lil Jon & The Eastside Boys, Lil Kim, Lil Troy, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, Ludacris, Madvillain, MC Shan, Meek Mill, MF DOOM, Missy Elliott, Mobb Deep, Montell Jordan, MOP, Nas, Naughty By Nature, Nelly, Nicki Minaj, Notorious BIG, NWA, Ol Dirty Bastard, Outakst, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Petey Pablo, Pharaohe Monch, Public Enemy, Puff Daddy, Quad City DJs, Rich Boy, Rick Ross, Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock, Run-DMC, Salt N Pepa, Scarface, Schoolly D, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Skee-Lo, Slick Rick, Snoop Dogg, Soulja Boy, Sugarhill Gang, T La Rock, T-Wayne, T.I., Terror Squad, The Fat Boys, The Fatback Band, The Fugees, The Game, The Pack, The Pharcyde, The Roots, Three 6 Mafia, Tone Loc, Tyga, UGK, Usher, UTFO, Warren G, Whodini, Wreckx-N-Effect, Wu-Tang Clan, Ying Yang Twins, Young Gunz
Would you rather fight 10,000 chickens or 20 T-rexes? What if they were to fight each other? YouTube user Lazy Game Reviews harnessed the power of Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator (previously at Neatorama) to create a battle simulation between the dinosaurs and the small birds they eventually evolved into.
Oh, the carnage! I can't really understand what the chickens are doing to defeat a T-rex, but it's fun to watch. Since it's fictional and animated, you know. -via Sploid
Eclectic Method teamed up with ill.Gates to create a catchy remix saluting the 1995 anime classic, Ghost In The Shell.
Brett Gaylor writes, "As part of the Mozilla Privacy Arcade project in this year’s Global Sprint, Mozilla is inviting activists, artists, designers, educators, gamers, storytellers, and technologists of all backgrounds to invent new privacy-themed adventures for the role playing game Cryptomancer." (more…)
When MEP Julia Reda conducted a wide-ranging and open consultation on updating EU copyright, she came up with some great, sensible reforms: making it legal to take pictures of buildings, making it legal to link to newspapers, creating a Europe-wide set of fair dealing exceptions to copyright, capping copyright terms at life-plus-50 years, and making sure that the rights you get to analog media (like the right to give your books and music to your kids when you die) carries over to digital media. (more…)
Lexmark has spent nearly 20 years fighting the war on carbon, trying to stop you from refilling your laser printer cartridges. In 2003, they attempted to use the DMCA and DRM to argue that it was an act of piracy (the courts didn't buy it) and then in 2015, they went all the way to the Supreme Court with the idea that you were violating their patent license terms if you treated the cartridges you purchased as though you owned them. (more…)
The heroes who star in video games have access to some pretty sweet equipment, and they don't mind telling us they deserve this stuff because they're the "chosen one" and wield "ultimate power".
But why do so many RPGs bother telling us the history, provenance and rarity of this loot when they know we're just going to turn around and sell it when we find something more level appropriate?
Because badasses need epic gear, even if they're gonna sell it for less than the price of a healing potion later. The Witcher, on the other hand, just sells artifacts and priceless heirlooms because he's kind of a jerk. (Comic by Teamwreckloose)
-Via Geeks Are Sexy
The idea seems kind of silly, but once you start watching, it's really kind of neat. Your favorite movies have numbers in them, and ThorC1138 edited them to count down from 100 to zero. You'll recognize most of them, and if you are wondering about any of the others, there's a list at the YouTube page.
Then you start thinking about how much work it had to be to find and isolate all those numbers, and you have to respect the madness that went into this project. -via Tastefully Offensive
The good people at Fight for the Future established OPERATION COMCASTROTURF to help you figure out if your stolen identity was used to file fake anti-net-neutrality comments with the FCC, but Comcast wants them shut down, and it's prepared to commit barratry to get its way. (more…)
Steve Urkel was designed to be a peripheral character to the Winslow family on the sitcom Family Matters, just to provide some comic relief. But as portrayed by Jaleel White, the over-the-top craziness of Urkel upstaged the rest ofhte cast and became an icon. He was bad to the bone -at least in his own mind.
Melodysheep (previously at Neatorama) went through about ten years of clips from Family Matters, edited them down, and added some autotune to made this tribute to one of the strangest "crazy neighbor" characters in all of television. -via Tastefully Offensive
How do you make the horror film Alien into a comedy? Well, first you get rid of that darned xenomorph altogether, and you make it about the cat Jones.
In this parody trailer, which is honestly pretty short, Mashable proves that you don't need jokes to make a comedy trailer. You don't even need laughs, although there is a giggle or two here. All you need is the music. -via Tastefully Offensive
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