Dan Jones

He’s like:

If all the glaciers and snow and ice in the world melted, the sea level would rise 216 feet and, as this National Geographic map of the world shows, things would look a little different.

There are more than five million cubic miles of ice on Earth, and some scientists say it would take more than 5,000 years to melt it all. If we continue adding carbon to the atmosphere, we'll very likely create an ice-free planet, with an average temperature of perhaps 80 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the current 58.

See also Flood Maps.

Tags: global warming   maps

Last day to get the new poster!

We all know those suspicious ads: “Complete surveys and get paid! Earn eleventy billion dollars a week on surveys!” It’s almost always fake, and when it isn’t, the payout isn’t good. Always be suspicious of those kinds of sites. Unless it’s coming from Google; then things are a little different.

Google’s latest app is called Opinion Rewards, and you guessed it, it rewards you for your opinions. Specifically, it will offer surveys and reward you with Google Play credit. Inside the app, you’ll have to enter some information about yourself (gender, location, etc.) and fill out a sample survey to get started. You’ll also need a Google Wallet account to get credited.

There won’t be many surveys, around one a week, and not all of them will offer compensation. They’ll be around 10 questions each. You’ll get a notification when new surveys are available and it should be a fun little thing to do in your free time. Plus, it can help fund your app-buying addiction. If you’re interested, click the widget and install the app on your Android phone.

Ron Amadeo from Ars Technica noticed last week that Google's KitKat launcher is actually an extension of the Google Search app. "While developing KitKat, Google made a very interesting decision: rather than graft a few new search UI pieces onto the home screen, Google threw the existing home app in the trash and turned all home screen functionality over to the Google Search app."

It turns out that the launcher is powered by the Google Search app and it doesn't work if you disable the app. This is not unexpected: two of the standard features of the Nexus home screen are added by the Google Search app: the Google search bar and the swipe up gesture for Google Now. KitKat brings support for the "OK Google" hotword, so you can trigger Google Voice Search without pressing a button, and adds a new gesture for Google Now: swipe right.

I installed the updated Google Search app and the launcher on an old Galaxy S2 using the instructions from Phandroid.com. I must say that the experience is completely different from Jelly Bean: the app launcher no longer includes widgets and it looks more crowded, the entire launcher can be managed from the Google Search app.



The full-screen Now widget can only be removed if you disable Google Now in the settings or if you install a different launcher.


You can no longer disable and customize cards from the settings. Google opted for a simplified customization feature:



You can now add as many shortcuts and widgets as you want because the number of screens is unlimited. The screens are added and removed dynamically, just like in iOS. You add a new one by dropping a shortcut or a widget and you remove it by deleting all the shortcuts and widgets or dragging them to other screens.




The home screen includes a search box, a Voice Search button, hotword support for Voice Search and a Google Now screen. These are the main features of the Google Search app, so you'll use it without opening it. Removing friction and making the experience more seamless will encourage more people to use Google Now.

Real princesses don’t need glitter. That was artist David Trumble‘s reaction when Disney gave Merida a “princess” makeover. One of the best things about the spunky character from Brave is that she broke out of the mold. She made her own decisions and gave little girls someone to look up to. So, when Disney gave her doll some glitter and the same look as all the other princesses, it wasn’t cool. That’s where this series of real life role models such as Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, Rosa Parks, and many more as Disney princesses came from. It makes a statement.

Trumble told Women You Should Know:

“This was a response to the furor kicked up over the glossy ‘princessification’ of Pixar’s Merida character, both in image and doll form. I drew this picture because I wanted to analyze how unnecessary it is to collapse a heroine into one specific mold, to give them all the same sparkly fashion, the same tiny figures, and the same homogenized plastic smile.

So that was my intent, to demonstrate how ridiculous it is to paint an entire gender of heroes with one superficial brush. “My experience of female role models both in culture and in life has shown me that there is no mold for what makes someone a role model, and the whole point of Merida was that she was a step in the right direction, providing girls with an alternative kind of princess. Then they took two steps back, and painted her with the same glossy brush as the rest. So I decided to take 10 real-life female role models, from diverse experiences and backgrounds, and filter them through the Disney princess assembly line.”

Well played, sir, well played.

Check out some of the individual designs after the break.

(via LS)

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."

This set includes four ornaments inspired by our favorite video gaming systems. We don't need to tell you what they are because you'll know it by looking at them and we don't want to insult your geek cred. $19.99

Yep.

The Flash by NaBHaN

The latest and greatest version of Android has now been officially announced, and it’s named after a candy bar. Android 4.4 KitKat is the next version of Android, soon to grace Nexus smartphones all over the world, and eventually other brands whenever they get around to updating their phones.

KitKat sports an updated aesthetic, getting rid of the Tron blue accents for all white icons in the status bar. Also, the status bar and navigation bar are both transparent on the homescreen. The Roboto font has been tweaked, and the launcher has been redesigned. Icons look different as well. It isn’t a huge change, but it refreshes the look of the operating system and keeps things fresh and modern. And if you don’t like it, remember that it’s Android. Just theme it!

A few apps were redesigned as well. The dialer now has smart searching capabilities, allowing you to find people or businesses without leaving the dialer. Also, the Messaging app is simply gone, replaced by a new version of Hangouts with SMS support built in.

Google Now is no longer an app to be opened with a swipe up, but with a left-to-right swipe on the homescreen. And instead of sending you to websites, Google Now will send you to the proper app to find the information you need. This is definitely an improvement, as mobile sites are pretty terrible way too often.

Google also managed to do some heavy optimizing for all different types of hardware. Since Jelly Bean and Project Butter, Android has been very smooth on high end phones, but low end phones always lacked smoothness. Google’s goal is to provide a smooth and fast experience for everyone, so Android will now run better on older hardware. It even optimizes memory usage for devices with less RAM.This could even allow phones that have reached the end of their life cycle to be updated, if the manufacturer is willing and the chip maker provides the necessary drivers.

This optimization not only helps the OS run on older hardware, but alternative hardware. KitKat can run on some weak hardware pretty well, so having it run on a smartwatch or other wearable accessory is now much more plausible. Is this Google preparing for a wearable device release?

There are a bunch of smaller but still important features included. You can now say “OK Google” at the homescreen to turn on Google Now. There is a new immersive mode which hides the status and navigation bars for true full screen content. The lockscreen now shows full screen album art when listening to music. Receiving phone calls from unknown numbers will pull info from Google Maps to match it to a business. And you can now print from Android. There are a ton of new features to be excited about!

The KitKat 4.4 update should be rolling out to Nexus devices soon, and unfortunately, other devices will have to wait. We have no idea when Samsung, HTC, and LG plan to update their smartphones to the new version of Android, but it shouldn’t be too long considering how fast HTC and Samsung have been lately. Are you excited for KitKat, or is it too small of an update for you? Leave a comment!

Need an idea for a fun couples costume? Peter Pan and his shadow. One of you just needs to wear all black and follow Peter around all night. It’s pretty much the ideal costume if you want to lay around on the floor during parties or need a cover up in case you pass out. Just don’t make Peter try to reattach you with soap or worse, needle and thread.

See the rest of the series after the break (there are hilarious poses).

Send your cosplay pics to tips@fashionablygeek.com.

(via TMP)

Motorola has just announced what looks to be quite possibly their most ambitious undertaking since designing the first cellular phone. Project Ara will bring the concept of the modular phone to real life.

Some time ago now, a concept project called Phonebloks was making the rounds getting everyone all excited at what looked to be the best thing that would never happen to smartphones. Based on the idea that if you can customize the software on your phone, why not the hardware, Phonebloks’ wanted to put the power of building your own device in the palm of your hand. Phonebloks wanted to make modular smartphones, where every component of the phone was user changeable.

Everyone highly doubted Phonebloks would ever be able to put the idea into action, and now, they don’t need to. Motorola has just announced Project Ara, where they will be working with Phonebloks, to make the first completely customizable modular phone.

If it wasn’t published on Motorola’s official blog, we don’t know if we’d believe it. Motorola describes the project as, a “free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones.”

We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.MotorolaProject Ara announcement post

Project Ara will work like this: there will be a base endoskeleton that will function as a blank slate for connecting modules. Modules are essentially all the components of the phone, from the display, to the camera, and everything in between. It’s hard to imagine, but you would be able to easily remove the camera module from your phone, buy a new one, and presto — you just upgraded your phone for a fraction of the cost of a new one.

Want a keyboard? Buy a keyboard module. Want an extended battery? Buy an extended battery module. The possibilities are endless, because Motorola isn’t going to hog all the fun for themselves. Motorola plans to release a development kit to allow third-party manufacturers and developers to build their own modules. They plan on sending out alpha dev kits as soon as this winter. Yes, seriously.

For lots of us, Project Ara sounds like a dream come true. Only Motorola, backed by Google, would have not only the financial and mental resources to try something like this, but the gumption to make it work. We will definitely be following Project Ara very closely. For now, we want to know what you think. Pretty awesome, right?

Gallery

The NVIDIA SHIELD got off to a rocky start with a price drop prior to a launch delayed by a hardware issue. However when SHIELD finally did make it into reviewers and consumers hands, the response was largely positive. The final hardware is exceptionally well thought-out and constructed. SHIELD shipped with a nearly stock install of Android 4.2, which is hard to complain about as an Android fan.

This is hardly the sort of thing that an Android fan is going to complain about, but SHIELD is a unique device. Perhaps completely vanilla Android isn’t the perfect answer. Well with today’s update, NVIDIA has handled many of the concerns that SHIELD owners, including myself, have expressed.

SHIELD Gamepad Mapper

Perhaps the biggest addition for Android fans is SHIELD Gamepad Mapper. This allows users to map SHIELD’s physical controls onto the virtual controls and buttons of any game. Depending on the on-screen control scheme for the game, this can be incredibly quick and easy to set up. And once you’ve done it that game is permanently ready to go for you.

There are also default profiles from NVIDIA already available for a hundred popular games, which nearly doubles the number of Android titles that can be played on SHIELD. This number should continue to grow at a far more rapid rate than if it were dependent on developers adding SHIELD support. Users can share the profiles they have created with friends or help build out the main collection by submitting their custom profiles to mapper@nvidia.com. If they look good enough, they’ll be added in for others to download.  You might remember us getting pretty excited about this feature on the Archos Gamepad. Seeing it coupled with this far superior hardware makes it all the better.

Console Mode

The Mini-HDMI port allowed you to turn SHIELD into a big screen console by plugging into your TV, but you were of course then tethered to your TV by the HDMI cable. If you add a bluetooth controller, like the Nyko PlayPad Pro that NVIDIA recommends, into the equation you get to be untethered again. When in Console Mode, SHIELD outputs 1080p at 60 frames a second where supported by apps or games.

In my usage this worked very well with racing games, third person shooters and platformers. One category that seemed to suffer from the slight lag was first person shooters. It’s possible that you would adjust to it, but for me I just felt awkward in an FPS like Dead Trigger 2.

It did occur to me while using Console Mode to control Netflix that, if NVIDIA had an app to control SHIELD from my phone, this setup could take the place of my Roku pretty easily somewhere down the line. As it is, pairing and using a gamepad to do that would feel a bit awkward.

GameStream

This feature is meant to pull in the PC gaming Android fans. GameStream allows you to play many of the most popular PC games on your SHIELD by streaming them from your PC. This has been available in beta since launch, but NVIDIA was finally ready to yank the beta tag with this update.

Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to test this out myself; I don’t have a PC with a compatible NVIDIA GTX GPU. But from what I hear, it is a remarkably lag-free experience. While it is still limited in that you must remain on the same Wifi network, it does give you the freedom to roam around your house and do your PC gaming in more comfortable spots than wherever your computer is stationed.

There are currently 53 titles supported by GameStream, including most of the biggest titles from the last couple years. Unsupported games can still be streamed to the SHIELD using the Steam Big Picture interface, but your mileage will vary on how well those games are handled by SHIELD.

Android 4.3 and Apps to SD

Disturbingly this means that my SHIELD is running a more current version of Android than my Galaxy Note 2, but I’ll get over it. While SHIELD is perfectly capable of serving as a fully fledged Android device, I use it pretty exclusively for gaming and video streaming. With that use case the version of Android is less pivotal than with my smartphone. That said I’m happy to see NVIDIA keeping their promise that SHIELD will be updated to the current OS in a timely manner.

Considering the main purpose of SHIELD is to run the highest quality games that Android has to offer, it is of little surprise that storage space is a major concern. With this update Apps to SD functionality helps to alleviate this problem, so you can offload some of that game content to a 32GB microSD card rather than being limited to the 16GB of internal storage. This is, of course, dependent on the developer having enabled this option so it won’t be available in all cases.

Wrap-up

The Gamepad Mapper feature alone makes this update a substantial one for SHIELD. The advantage of SHIELD having access to the Play Store was severely limited by the need for developers to specifically support a controller. That is now pretty much a concern of the past, and I suspect we’ll see thousands of titles in the Gamepad Mapper database once users get their hands on this update and start building their own custom profiles.

The big question remains whether PC gamers can be swayed by SHIELD. NVIDIA is doing what they can to reach out to this audience with a limited time bundle deal that offers customers a $100 or $50 discount on a SHIELD with the purchase of a compatible NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics card. The bundle also includes copies of “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag,” Splinter Cell: Blacklist” and “Batman: Arkham Origins.” This could be enough to tip the scales and get some new blood taking a serious look at SHIELD.

NVIDIA is well aware that they have an uphill battle convincing buyers that a dedicated Android gaming device is worth $250, but SHIELD has been the best piece of Android gaming hardware from day one. This software update makes it a much more compelling product, as it opens up virtually the entire Android game library. It has changed the way I personally feel about quite a few Android games, first person shooters in particular. Games that I formerly felt were nearly unplayable now seem much more like console quality games. So, selfishly, I’m hoping that SHIELD succeeds; I want more of those high quality titles to while away the hours on.

Have any of you picked up SHIELD? If not, does any of the new functionality have you considering it? If the new features alone aren’t convincing then maybe this new, let’s call it quirky, ‘review’ of SHIELD will do the trick.

A friend of mine has a pretty clever tablet holding kickstarter.

POW!

This shirt only make sense if you’re a Vulcan not caught in the throws of Pon Farr, in which case a Vulcan in the sheets may actually be the more exciting of the two.

Product Page ($27)

buzzfeed:

These children’s shows made a lot of really adult jokes. 

the professor’s face though