Rexfeng

Land Rover is showcasing a new concept that would give drivers a better view of the road through augmented reality. The Transparent Bonnet Concept utilizes cameras mounted in the car's grille to capture a view of the road that's usually obscured by the hood. This data is then fed to a heads-up display that shows the video in real-time at the bottom of the windscreen, overlaying where a driver sees their car's bonnet and effectively giving the impression that it — and the engine — are transparent.

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The Republican party has won approval for the .gop domain from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a move the party hopes will consolidate its online outreach efforts and make official websites easier to find. The domain will be available in 75 days.

Democrats have not countered with their own domain extension yet. “Republicans didn't lose in 2008 and 2012 because people had trouble finding their addresses,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Czin told FoxNews.com.

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Police officers in one Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) patrol division tampered with recording equipment intended to monitor them in the field by removing antennas attached to cameras in patrol cars, according to an internal investigation.

"On an issue like this, we need to be brought in right away," Steve Soboroff, president of the Police Comission that oversees the LAPD, told the LA Times. "This equipment is for the protection of the public and of the officers. To have people who don't like the rules to take it upon themselves to do something like this is very troubling."

LAPD officers wear voice recorders on their belts, which are switched on automatically when the car's lights and sirens activate. The antennas, which extend...

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61-year old Bran Ferren knows he's not going to live forever. That's why he's recording an interview series and building this exceedingly ambitious all-terrain vehicle for his daughter Kira. "I would like her to see the wonders of this world, " Ferren tells Wired. "But I'd like her to survive the experience." The KiraVan, which is costing Ferren millions to make, even comes with computerized chairs that use a variant of Bose's noise-reduction technology to ensure a smoother ride and drones capable of scouting road conditions. In many ways, the KiraVan represents the apex of Ferren's past experiences in developing projects like the MaxiMog and the Bill of Rights Secure Transit Vehicle, which was used to transport the document during its...

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This year's two Smash Bros. games will have separate release windows, Nintendo just announced. 3DS this summer; Wii U this winter. No specific release dates just yet.

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Good news, hardcore fans: now there are online modes specifically for you (but don't worry, there is something for more casual fans, too.) More specifically, there is a 'For Fun' mode, and a 'For Glory' mode.

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Samus will be back in the newest Smash games, both in armored and zero-suit forms. This time, Zero Suit Samus will be a separate character.

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I'm sure these inclusions aren't a surprise—what is a surprise is that these characters will be separate entries, not transformations of each other, unlike in previous games.

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Paul Thurrott:

As for how powerful these apps are, consider this. I loaded up my 575 page Windows 8.1 Field Guide Word document, and while it took a while to download originally (it’s stored in OneDrive for Business as part of my Office 365 Small Business Premium subscription), the performance reading and editing the document was impressive. In fact, it was… amazing. This is the real deal.

As important, the fidelity of the document was perfect: Everything was formatted correctly, including images. I could actually write a book on this thing if I wanted to. (Relax, I don’t.) Microsoft claims that documents look as good on the iPad as they do on the PC. And I gotta say. They really do.

Solid review from Ed Bott, too. Hard to find a bad review of these apps.

[The cafe, pre-soda fountain via Facebook]
Bubby's High Line is opening an old-fashioned soda fountain in the restaurant's coffee bar and takeout area next week. The menu includes all the classics, from housemade coffee sodas and cherry-lime rickeys to malts, shakes, brown cows, purple cows, and ice cream. There will also be many, many sundaes, ranging from the standard banana split to one with warm cherry pie, vanilla ice cream, and fudge. All of the cookies, breakfast pastries, and pies by the slice already sold at the counter will also still be available.

The soda fountain opens on April 15, and will be giving away free sodas, floats, and sundaes that day from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. In the meantime, check out the full menu, below.

Bubby s Menu

Smithsonian Magazine has announced the finalists in their annual photography contest. The shot above is a finalist in the Mobile category...it was taken with an iPhone 5. (via colossal)

Pokémon, in first person, played with an Oculus Rift plus a 'virtual reality treadmill' called the Virtuix Omni—which allows you to walk around naturally in a game. This is the future, folks.

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Thomas Keller will temporarily close the French Laundry this summer (for an undetermined period of time, but it looks like up to five months) so that he can renovate. But it won't be any easier to score a reservation: The restaurant will still only seat 62 diners, though it will have a bigger kitchen and garden. If you can't imagine a world without the French Laundry, no fear! Keller might open a pop-up restaurant at Silverado Resort and Spa. [Napa Valley Register via Eater]

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: planned service changes, california, the french laundry, thomas keller, yountville

As far as newspaper ads go, the classifieds are an especially boring section of tiny text and identically spaced columns. But it doesn't always have to be so! This ingenious little ad for Corona's kitchens by Colombia-based designer Felipe Salazar plays with the geometry of classified ads. An entire kitchen, complete with gas hood and stove, pops right out at you. You can't do that with Craigslist.

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From Serious Eats: New York

[Photograph: Laura Togut]

An ever-growing demand for upscale Asian food in New York does great things for our dumpling scene, but it also ensures long lines. The acclaimed RedFarm restaurants, on the Upper West Side and in the West Village, are no exception. Since the power duo of Chef Joe Ng and restaurateur, Ed Schoenfeld teamed up in 2011, RedFarm has been a go-to source for playfully re-imagined and refined soup dumplings, fried rices noodles, and other takes on American-Chinese food eats.

But with only 42 seats downtown and 80 on the Upper West, you may be looking at a mult-hour wait for dinner. Where should you go if you need food sooner? Nearby restaurants may not have Pac Man dumplings, but they'll do you right.

The West Village

The Closest Call

Scallops with crispy duck tongue, cucumber, and jellyfish at Wong. [Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

If you want creative, pan-Asian cuisine done right, go to Wong, a quick eight-minute walk from RedFarm's West Village location. With an emphasis on fresh ingredients, Wong's menu includes highlights like shrimp fritters and scallops with duck tongue.

More Good Eating Nearby

Foie gras inari sushi at Hakata Tonton. [Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

For a more casual option, Niu Noodle House has an extensive menu of noodles and rice dishes. Soup dumplings, shao mei, and sticky rice round out dim sum options worth exploring. Or you could go Japanese at Hakata Ton Ton, which is all about creamy pork-enriched noodle broths and meaty hunks of pork foot. There's more refined fare as well, such as a pouch of fried tofu skin stuffed with sushi rice and foie gras.

Bars While You Wait

The Marrow 75 Cocktail at The Marrow. [Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

So, you just can't get RedFarm's dumplings off your mind? Here's a drink (or two) while you wait. Cocktails at Harold Dieterle's The Marrow are worth a stop, such as the updated French 75 shown above, or head to Orient Express Orient Express less than five minutes away. RedFarm also has a bar all its own downstairs from the restaurant called Decoy.

Upper West Side

The Closest Call

Pickle and fish stew at Legend .[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

If RedFarm's Upper West Side location can't seat you and you need Chinese NOW, head to Upper West Sider Ed's nearest standby: Empire Szechuan. It's nothing stellar, but it'll get the job done. Willing to take a stroll or hop on the subway? Head north to Legend, the Upper West Side's best Chinese restaurant. It's not as fiery-delicious as the Chelsea original, but the subtler, less spicy dishes have a lot going for them.

More Good Food Nearby

Margherita pizza at Celeste. [Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

If you can get there on the early side, Celeste turns out some of the neighborhood's most reliable red sauce Italian with solid pizza and wine to match. Greek spot Kefi is also a favorite of ours for easygoing food in the neighborhood. The burger will do you right, too.

Drinks While You Wait

If you're waiting out your meal, head to one of Amsterdam Avenue's many bars, such as Cava for wine or the Dead Poet pub for a quiet pint. For something more upscale (with some food to snack on), try Barley & Grain for whiskey cocktails and small plates.

What Else?

Have any other low-key spots to recommend? Tell us in the comments.

About the author: Marissa Sertich Velie is an editorial intern at Serious Eats and a New York based pastry chef. She documents her adventures of baking and eating her way through the nutty underbelly of the American pie on her blog . She is currently earning her Master's degree in Food Studies at NYU.

Comcast has been named the worst company in America. The largest US cable provider "won" Consumerist's annual poll on the very same day it tried to convince the FCC that a proposed Time Warner Cable acquisition is in everyone's best interest. It's the second time Comcast has been awarded the unwanted label by Consumerist voters. Video game publisher Electronic Arts earned the "worst company" designation in 2012 and 2013 but lost out early this year when it was knocked out of the running by Time Warner Cable. Comcast was pitted against Monsanto, the oft-criticized chemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation, in the final round of voting. The company almost managed to escape the embarrassing title; SeaWorld — still unable to...

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"It feels like an unnecessary add-on... I'm sure they're going to release an Xbox One without Kinect. It would be unthinkable that they wouldn't." Game designer and programmer Peter Molyneux, in an Edge interview with multiple industry personalities about the Xbox One's future.

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Devolver Digital and Dennaton Games just released a new trailer for Hotline Miami 2, the highly anticipated sequel to 2012's acclaimed indie gorefest and one of Kotaku's best PlayStation Vita games. The video doesn't court as much controversy as, say, that notorious sexual assault scene from an early demo did. But fans don't need to worry about Hotline Miami losing its edge this time around. Just look at all the new ways you can splatter pixellated brains all over the wall. Chainsaws! Dual-wielded Uzis! Throbbing house music! 2014 is sure gonna be bloody.

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Jean-Georges Vongerichten's new vegetarian restaurant inside ABC Carpet & Home will be called ABC Vegetable. At last weekend's New York Culinary Experience, the chef/restaurateur explained: "The fish and meat lovers can go to ABC Kitchen and ABC Cocina...This is for a different crowd." It's slated to open in a few months. UPDATE: Nevermind. A rep for JGV sends word that the name "has yet to be determined for our new ABC restaurant." But it will not be called ABC Vegetable. [GS, Previously]

Life changes, Facebook-flavored and white-truffle-topped ice creams come and go, but year after year, Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day is there for you. Stop by any of the shops (if you're in New York, that means Macy's Herald Square, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center) for complimentary ice cream between noon and 8 p.m. — and maybe try one of the sexy new Core flavors, with a center of fudge, caramel, or raspberry jam. It's very important that you celebrate this sacred nationwide holiday.

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: we all scream, ben & jerry's, free cone day, free stuff, ice cream

Chick-fil-A has some big plans, including a larger rollout in New York City. According to USA Today, the chicken chain is all about growth in cities these days. It will open 108 locations this year, "most of them urban and a good chunk of them in New York City." But how will the chain's conservative, southern values play in ever-progressive New York? That's the question the chain is facing as it tries to re-position itself in advance of the expansion.

In fact, Chick-fil-A is tackling the issue head-on: The company says it's starting a very biblical-sounding "cleaning" cycle to overhaul its image. CEO Dan Cathy — whose anti-gay rhetoric created a massive image problem for the company — says he'll check politics at the door ("All of us become more wise as time goes by," he says). Whether his views have actually changed isn't addressed, but hey, the guy's got chicken sandwiches to sell.

Also: The chain is all about targeting millennials. To that end, it's introducing a healthier grilled-chicken sandwich as well as giving itself a Chipotle-like makeover, focusing on local sourcing, product quality, and workers' rights. According to Cathy, the millennial generation cares about more than convenience and flavor: "It's not just a product story anymore — but the whole story."

Chick-Fil-A Wings in a New Direction After Gay Flap [USA Today]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: the chain gang, chick-fil-a, dan cathy, expansion, new york city

Formula One steering wheels are known for being incredibly complicated pieces of tech that take a long time to master. This latest generation of wheels have even more systems to manage than ever. Here's Ferrari tester Marc Gene to break it all down.

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Jalopnik says that the top of the Porsche 911 Targa is completely bonkers . I think I agree. Instead of the entire hard top roof disappearing into the car like other hardtop convertibles, the 911 Targa gets to keep the slick curved glass back while in topless mode. Awesome.

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Hideo Kojima posted pictures of an iDroid iPhone case and said details are coming tomorrow. Larger photos below:

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Tobias Frere-Jones, resurfacing after the recent unpleasantness with a new blog:

I re-read Maurice Annenberg’s “Type Foundries of America and their Catalogs”, tracked down business directories of the period, and spent too much time in Google Earth. But I was able to plot out the locations for every foundry that had been active in New York between 1828 (the earliest records I could find with addresses) to 1909 (see below). All of the buildings have been demolished, and in some cases the entire street has since been erased. But a startling picture still emerged: New York once had a neighborhood for typography.

(I couldn’t help but take note of Frere-Jones’s own type choices for his site: Benton Modern and Interstate from The Font Bureau — both of which he designed prior to the Hoefler deal.)

Schiller’s “shocked” response to this guy James Vincent is spot-on. Seems bizarre too that Vincent composes serious emails completely in lowercase letters.

Cutting Board's katsu curry is great comfort food [Photographs: Jay Friedman]

Hambāgu. Omu-rice. Napolitan spaghetti. These are examples of yoshoku: dishes developed in Japan that integrate Western influences. Go to a Japanese Denny's and you might enjoy a bunless hamburger patty with a "demiglace" sauce, an omelet stuffed with ketchup-flavored fried rice (then topped with more ketchup), and pre-cooked spaghetti that's stir-fried with ketchup. In true Japanese fashion, yoshoku are dishes borrowed from the West, embellished, and made into something entirely unique.

I'm not a huge fan of the aforementioned dishes, but two I do love are katsu (a breaded, deep-fried meat patty) and karē-raisu (curry rice— the stewed meat sauce was introduced to Japan by the British, served with rice, and is now a popular national dish typically made from a conveniently boxed roux). Put the two together and you have the irresistible Japanese dish called katsu-karē (katsu curry), and a great place to get it is Cutting Board in Seattle. It's available with a variety of deep-fried breaded items, from vegetable croquette to ebi furai (fried shrimp) to menchi katsu (breaded minced beef, akin to deep-fried mini hamburger patties), but my top recommendation is Japanese-Style Beef Curry with Tonkatsu ($10.99).

Tonkatsu, not to be confused with tonkotsu ramen broth, is a breaded, deep-fried boneless pork cutlet. It's a great dish on its own—delicious with a dab of Japanese hot mustard and tonkatsu sauce, and almost always served with lots of shredded cabbage to cut the heaviness of the meat. But it's also a smart idea to put that crispy pork in a pool of rich curry sauce. It gets a little soggy, but still retains the crunchy exterior that's so captivating, and the pork is still incredibly juicy inside. The fun challenge is keeping the balance of pork, rice, and sauce just right. In lieu of cabbage, katsu curry comes with a small salad for refreshing side bites.

Chiba Roll (top) and Hiroshima Roll (bottom)

While Cutting Board has a homey feeling (it's so casual that you order at the counter, with the cook then bringing the food to your table), surprisingly, only a handful of its customers are Japanese. Most of the rest are Westerners. This might help explain the preponderance of crazy sushi rolls on the menu, many with ingredients you won't find in Japan, like mango (and other fruits), jalapeño, spicy tuna, and fried calamari. Curious about these rolls, to counter the "turf" order of katsu curry, I complemented my meal with a "surf" order of two: the Chiba ($6.00) and the Hiroshima ($6.50) rolls.

The Chiba Roll comes with unagi (eel), macadamia nuts, lettuce, cucumber, tempura crisps, and teriyaki sauce. My dining companion, who is from Tokyo, informed me that Chiba prefecture is the leading producer of peanuts in Japan. She then laughed, explaining that you'd never put nuts in sushi in Japan. Typical of sauced eel, this roll is sweet, with those macadamia nuts adding crunchy texture.

The Hiroshima Roll is a softer affair, featuring the flakiness of cooked salmon (a sushi oddity for a Japanese person) with the slippery softness of cream cheese. The rest of the roll is comprised of lemon zest, cucumber, tobiko (flying fish roe), and wasabi, providing some citrusy and briny flavors, along with nasal heat. Hiroshima is known for its noodle-filled okonomiyaki and oysters, but lacking any of those items, neither of us could figure out the connection of the name to the roll. Nonsensical nomenclature aside, Cutting Board is a fine place to satisfy your yoshoku fix.

About the author: Jay Friedman is a Seattle-based freelance food writer who happens to travel extensively as a sex educator. An avid fan of noodles (some call him "The Mein Man"), he sees sensuality in all foods, and blogs about it at his Gastrolust website. You can follow him on Twitter @jayfriedman.

If it exists, it'll get recreated in Minecraft—and Titanfall is no exception.

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Mat Honan, writing for Wired:

It’s also a good deal for Tonx, which was attempting to raise more money to purchase its own coffee roaster (it currently has a contract deal where it rents one on the weekends) and open a store front. While neither announced a price, Tonx did abandon a $4 million fundraising round it had been pursuing recently. Presumably, the deal would be on par with that. It’s a big win for the three year-old roaster that’s based in Los Angeles, but lives all over the Internet.

“Tony and I were still bagging and boxing the coffee ourselves last year, spending all day just listening to podcasts” recalled Bauman. “Tony would go in and sometimes would take eight hours or so of just stamping bags. We’d go and just stamp and listen to [John Gruber’s] The Talk Show or This American Life.”

That’s good company. Congratulations to my favorite coffee roaster.