Is there any better way to relax than being reminded of your species' dominance on this planet while watching a bunch of bugs trapped in a clear plastic enclosure? Not likely. But ant farms are so yesterday, what you need is your own personal termite farm, and that's exactly what the Termitat delivers—complete with a slice of Douglas Fir to keep them fed for up to two years.
Audiophiles have a laundry list of reasons why you should be buying your music on vinyl, but with DJ Qbert's new album Extraterrestria, aspiring turntablists now have a reason to skip the MP3s too. Using printed MIDI technology from a company called Novalia, the artwork in the vinyl's sleeve doubles as a DJ controller for Algoriddim's djay iOS app.
only because indiana jones and the holy grail was such a good game omg
Forget that chubby guy from the North Pole, the real Santa Claus this holiday season is the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library that now hosts 2,386 DOS games that can be played by anyone at no cost.
A digital cache of that size brings wi...
Monster just sued Beats Electronics, manufacturer of ubiquitous Beats by Dre headphones, because Monster says it invented Beats, and that Beats stole its property and ran away. It's been clear for years that Monster designed the headphones , but does the company really have a legal claim to any of Dr. Dre's Monster money? We're about to find out.
Microsoft's Xbox division has formed a new development team which the company says is working on "top-secret" projects that will "push the envelope of today's and tomorrow's technology as we explore new ideas from the ground floor."
A job listing posted on the Microsoft site calls for a senior software engineer to join the team, a position which the company claims "comes with risks." The project is clearly based on some future iteration of Kinect, though little further information is offered.
"If you're passionate about the potential for Kinect to continue to revolutionize entertainment and are a seasoned software engineer with the skills to prototype and build the future of premium Kinect-powered experiences, we have a growing team of...
The days of walking into Tower Records and buying a CD have been gone for nearly a decade. But a new year-end report from Nielsen suggests that even paying money to download music is nearing extinction, too.
As everybody knows, thanks to Taylor Swift, streaming services like Spotify are swooping in to pick up those sales. But few people realize that there's something else on the horizon: vinyl subscription services.
Among music lovers, these services are all the rage. Like a Netflix for physical records, a new cohort of companies is supplying on-demand deliveries to subscribers and a host of immersive physical experiences. And in 2015, they're going to revolutionize the way we buy music.
Selection of VNYL music picksSource: VNYL InstagramLast year, we streamed 164 billion ephemeral songs. But we also bought 9.2 million vinyl records, the most since 1991, when Nielsen started tracking sales. Read More
California is about to get the nation's first bullet train.
KPCC reports that Tuesday marked the official start of work on a high-speed rail line that will zip passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco at a stomach-churning 200 mph. For an estimated cost of $68 billion, the new train is expected to cut travel time between the two cities to less than three hours from the six or more it takes now.
According to KPCC, the first phase of the project includes a 28-mile stretch of track from Fresno to Madera Additional phases planned would complete the 520-mile stretch between San Francisco and the Los Angeles Basin by 2029.
Source: California High-Speed Rail Authority via WikipediaIt's a big deal: In an age of wavering public support for large-scale public spending projects, California's new bullet train is an astonishing win for infrastructural investment. Read More
Researchers working with animals have shown that altering their gut bacteria can affect their stress levels and make them less anxious. In humans, the link between gut microbes and mental health is just starting to become clear. A new study published in Psychopharmacology suggests that fostering the growth of helpful bacteria helps modulate how we process information and could perhaps help ease anxiety and depression.
Well you’re getting nothing done for the rest of the day—nothing aside from naming a bunch of people ridiculous things, stubbornly fording rivers, and watching everyone die of dysentery. Or playing Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, or any of your other childhood favorites in your browser window thanks to the Internet Archive.
It’s unlikely that you still own a computer these DOS games would be played on—not to mention the giant, actually floppy floppy disks on which many of them existed—so having this is probably the only way to get your nostalgia fix. You can check out the full collection here or on the Internet Archive’s “Version 2″ beta interface, which worked much better for me despite having to reload the original page for each new search to work properly. You may also have to refresh your browser window once or twice to get certain games working properly, but it’s worth the trouble.
The Internet Archive’s Jason Scott announced the new browser emulator yesterday in a blog post, writing,
I really worked hard to have only fully-functioning programs up, or at least, programs that gave viable, useful feedback. Some of them will still fall over and die, and many of them might be weird to play in a browser window, and of course you can’t really save things off for later, and that will limit things too. But on the whole, you will experience some analogue of the MS-DOS program, in your browser, instantly.
As for the software library itself… many titles will stick around—some will go, or change, or be replaced. This is still brand new territory, and with the addition of the MS-DOS programs so far, this no-plugin in-browser experience is one of a kind in the world. I’m working just as hard as the V2 devs are to make everything work, and it wouldn’t be worth my time if I didn’t have people trying it out, commenting on it, and making use of it.
So please, let’s start 2015 right—in CGA and with a brand new way to use the Internet Archive.
In addition to the great and/or gross and inappropriate games I listed above, there are about 2,400 more including Prince of Persia and the DOS version of The Lion King, which was a surprisingly good movie tie-in game on the Sega Genesis. What old favorites are you going to play for the rest of the day instead of working when you get home like a responsible adult?
So usually we save these cute posts for Mondays, but we just couldn’t resist sharing this adorable video of a very small girl teaching a very large dog how to hula hoop. This warms the recesses of my cynical, black heart. (via Neatorama) Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
Do you miss Wishbone as much as I do? Then you will certainly appreciate Zack King and Jadon Gauthier’s new Indiana Jones remake, starring a Boxer puppy instead of Harrison Ford (truly they are very close in lovability). He swings from vines. He fights cat baddies. He blows up a very tiny bi-plane. Everything is wonderful.
I’m a bit partial to a dead head moth and I love the work of Alessia Iannetti so this piece is one of my faves! Detail of “Siamese Trees” graphite, watercolor, Ink on wood, 2012
How often do you get to see a life-size pegasus? This majestic Friesian horse received an awesome clip job giving him a stunning pair of black wings which he wears so well that we keep waiting for him to take flight. This magnificent pegasus’ horse’s name is Wout and his owner is Swedish equestrian Malin Hellstedt. The extraordinary pair were photographed last year in Gothenburg, Sweden participating in EuroHorse, Scandinavia’s biggest equestrian fair.
Snapchat has raised $486 million from several investors in recent months, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Committee.
The company is now valued at $10 billion — and maybe even more — according to media reports.
There were 23 investors who contributed to the $486 million investment, and TechCrunch reports that Snapchat raised the funds on a rolling basis.
Snapchat lets users send pictures that disappear after a few seconds
Snapchat is one of several mobile messaging apps that have flourished in recent years. Snapchat's distinctive feature is that messages disappear a few seconds after they're opened. This ephemeral quality encourages people to send pictures on a whim. It's also made the app a popular way to send sexually explicit messages.
Last year, Snapchat faced federal scrutiny over charges that its messages were not as fleeting as the company had claimed. And the company has been plagued with other privacy problems as well. A year ago, hackers obtained the usernames and phone numbers of 4.6 million Snapchat users.
The new funding vindicates Snapchat's decision to reject a $3 billion offer from Facebook
The new round of fundraising vindicates Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel's decision, in late 2013, to reject a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. It was considered a risky move by Spiegel, whose company was just two years old at the time and had no revenue.
The $10 billion valuation also suggests that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg got a tremendous bargain when he purchased Instagram for $1 billion almost three years ago. Instagram has continued to grow and would likely be worth a lot more than $1 billion today. Last year, Zuckerberg paid $19 billion for the messaging app Whatsapp.
Haunted Euth and T.S. Claire’s psychedelically gorgeous collaboration for the 4th Annual Supersonic Invitational Group Show which opens Saturday, January 10th at Spoke Art Gallery in San Francisco, California. Haunted Euth and T.S. Claire will be joining over 60 internationally acclaimed artists from around the world in the group show that seeks to showcase the best and most creative artists from the New Contemporary art movement.
Anyone dealing with severe allergies always carries an EpiPen. In an emergency it provides an injectable dose of epinephrine to narrow blood vessels and open airways to help minimize the dangerous symptoms of an allergy attack, and when used with the new Veta case that's designed to safely store the EpiPen, it can automatically let your family or friends know when you're having an allergy attack.
Today, 23andMe announced what Forbes reports is only the first of ten deals with big biotech companies: Genentech will pay up to $60 million for access to 23andMe's data to study Parkinson's. You think 23andMe was about selling fun DNA spit tests for $99 a pop? Nope, it's been about selling your data all along.
Today the LA Police Department announced that it had purchased 3,130 new Tasers that activate a body camera when they're being used. The camera is activated after the officer turns off the safety on the Taser. The "non-lethal" weapon communicates with the officer's body camera via bluetooth.
There is a very clear tension between the requirements of medicine and those of entertainment. Yet medicine and entertainment are often conflated: stale and inaccurate health advice is broadcast as if it were news, and patients' hardship can be exploited on medical reality shows for entertainment value.
The investigative news website ProPublica documented a startling illustration of this problem: when a patient's death was broadcast on television without permission from the family.
Health reporter Charles Ornstein tells the story of Anita Chanko, whose husband's death was filmed and broadcast on the medical reality show "NY Med" — featuring Dr. Mehmet Oz — without the family's consent.
The way Chanko found out about the alleged transgression is nightmarish. One early morning, more than a year after her husband died, she found herself unable to sleep, and turned on the TV to settle on the popular show:
On the TV screen, she saw the chief surgery resident Sebastian Schubl, responding to an emergency in which a man is hit by a vehicle.
"And then I see, even with the blurred picture, you could tell it was him," she said. "You could hear his speech pattern. I hear my husband say, 'Does my wife know I'm here?'."
There was no doubt in her mind: The blurred-out man moaning in pain was her husband of almost 46 years, the Korean War veteran she met in a support group for parents without partners.
"I hear them saying his blood pressure is falling. I hear them getting out the paddles and then I hear them saying, 'OK, are you ready to pronounce him?'."
She clenched her fists so tightly that "the palms of my hands almost looked like stigmata" and her mouth got so dry that her tongue stuck to the roof "as if I had just eaten a whole jar of peanut butter."
"I saw my husband die before my eyes."
As Ornstein points out, these scenarios raise tricky ethical issues about that tension between medicine and entertainment.
"Medical ethicists and groups like the American Medical Association worry that these shows exploit patients' pain for public consumption, but their makers argue that they educate viewers and inspire people to choose careers in medicine," he writes.
Forget that chubby guy from the North Pole, the real Santa Claus this holiday season is the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library that now hosts 2,386 DOS games that can be played by anyone at no cost.
A digital cache of that size brings wi...
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A new Pasadena arcade has a different business model--charging guests an hourly fee for unlimited play on their retro arcade machines. [ more › ]
