Google hasn't been shy about decrying the consequences of the EU's proposed Copyright Directive. Now, however, it's using stark visuals to illustrate its point. The company recently told Search Engine Land that it was experimenting with a version of...
In probably the most shocking twist for Amazon’s Hitchcockian thriller Homecoming, star Julia Roberts won’t be returning to star in the second season of the show.
A source confirms to EW that the actress will not be reprising her role as caseworker Heidi on the Sam Esmail-directed series but will stay on as an executive producer.
Without spoiling too much, the series did reach a fairly satisfying ending in the love story between Heidi and PTSD affected soldier Walter Cruz (Stephan James). But Homecoming, created by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg and based on their podcast, was initially greenlit for two seasons.
Roberts was cagey when EW asked her what season two would look like for her cover story last fall. “I don’t know if I’m at liberty to share that,” said Roberts.
Horowitz and Bloomberg were equally vague when asked in November if the second season would continue to focus on Roberts’ Heidi. Said Horowitz, “We can say it’s not anthology show. The story continues.”
The series along with Roberts and James were all nominated for Golden Globes for the first season.
Amid rumors of the beloved NBC comedy returning in some form, Steve Carell is reuniting with The Office boss Greg Daniels for a new Netflix series titled Space Force. Yes, inspired by President Donald Trump’s much mocked idea for a sixth branch of the armed forces.
Created by Carell and Daniels, their latest workplace comedy will follow the men and women tasked with developing this new initiative.
.@SteveCarell will star in a new workplace comedy series he co-created with #TheOffice’s Greg Daniels about the people tasked with creating a sixth branch of the armed services: the Space Force! pic.twitter.com/6GEFNgP18w
After focusing on his film career following his legendary run as Michael Scott on The Office, Carell is now firmly jumping back into TV. In addition to Space Force, Carell is set to star alongside Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston in an upcoming morning show drama for Apple.
In Spider-Man: Far From Home, we'll finally get the MCU's version of Quentin Beck, a.k.a. Mysterio, the long-time Spidey villain. And, yes, Jake Gyllenhaal is playing him. At long last, the master of illusion will get his due on the big screen... though is he friend or foe in Far From Home? Hmmm... (As for the other new MCU characters in Far From Home, check out our explanation on who the Elementals and Hydro-Man are!)
The rumors were true: Michelle Yeoh is getting her own Star Trek spinoff show. CBS All Access has confirmed that Yeoh will star in a new streaming series that elaborates on her character Captain Georgiou's role in Starfleet's mysterious Section 31,...
It’s been an interesting time for Blizzard of late. 2018 was particularly turbulent, with a lot of changes within the company, from the departure of long-running president and co-founder Mike Morhaime, through to shake-ups on other teams, such as major turnover on Hearthstone’s Team 5. Even BlizzCon, usually a celebration of all things Blizzard, turned toxic after the ill-advised BlizzCon reveal of Diablo Immortal. And then, to close out the year, there was the announcement that development on Heroes of the Storm would be scaled back and its esports program axed.
Of course, the year held plenty of highlights for the company too. There was the inaugural season of the Overwatch League, which drew a wide range of viewers and fan support from across the globe, while World of Warcraft received a brand-new expansion in the form of Battle for Azeroth, among many other updates to the studio’s stable of titles.
There are more than 1,700 American companies at CES, 1,200 official exhibitors from China, and several hundred from France and South Korea. Many of them are veterans of the trade show circuit, one-upping each other's booths with elaborate curved OLED...
Today, @InventorsHOF announced their 2019 inductees, including Dennis Ritchie & Ken Thompson for their invention of the #UNIX operating system while at Bell Labs. Today, 50 years later, UNIX systems continue to run machinery from computers to smartphones. https://t.co/sacBaD1Pzkpic.twitter.com/MeLzzc3Aa5
Yes, as they discuss on the very informative Bell Labs web page, Unix was invented 50 years ago, in 1969. And because the Bell Labs were bought by Nokia – decades after the research center had earned six physics Nobel prizes and years after I wrote "Rip Bell Labs" – and I bought a couple of Nokia stocks a year ago (they are up 30%, which is rare), there's no reason not to overlook this history.
As also described on the History of Unix (Wikipedia), Unix was a privatized spinoff of an operating system called Multics – which is much less famous today. "Multi" means "many" while "uni" means "only one", so "Unix" was Brian Kernighan's pun on "Multics". At the beginning, it was spelled "Unics" and no one knows who invented the final spelling, "Unix".
The Multics system was supposed to be a much grander project – an unnecessarily huge project – and this was arguably one big reason why it had never succeeded. Unix collected all the things that really mattered and allowed a viable starting point, it has added some – and it succeeded a big deal. It brought a hierarchical file system, volumes that may be mounted and demounted, asynchronous processes with process memory, languages that may be picked separately by many users from 100 subsystems and dozens of languages.
The picture at the top shows Kenneth "ken" Lane Thompson (sitting) and Dennis Ritchie (standing), the two main inventors of Unix. They also invented other important things. For example, "ken" has invented a programming language B while Ritchie said it was almost right but not quite and invented C instead. That's why we have a C. Programming in C still looks like a rather modern activity – perhaps Millennials' activity – so it may be cute to realize that the inventor of C was born in 1941.
OK, the fathers of Unix have clearly privatized many ideas from the Multics project but began to work on a more realistic, smaller project. And they had a better motivation because privatization usually works to amplify the incentives. In 1971, there were internal releases of the system that was already completed. In 1973, the world was offered the new system and some institutions began to buy it.
In the 1980s, variations Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX were created – Solaris became the main survivor out of the three. In 1991, the work on Linux started and since the early 21st century, Linux almost completely eliminated all the other flavors of Unix. That success may be explained by the movement of the teenage nerds, I think. But it's very unfair that Linux became more famous than Unix itself – because Linux is clearly nothing else than plagiarism. Unix was a partial intellectual theft of Multics but they had to develop lots of new things to make Unix work – moreover, the fathers of Unix were mostly members of the Multics collaboration, anyway, so they were mostly robbing themselves which is less morally problematic.
Much of Linus Torvalds' excessive fame is due to the Linux movement's pride that he was capable of robbing the Unix and giving it to the movement. It reminds me of the Leninist fans' pride about the Rolls-Royce cars that they were capable of stealing for their top comrade Lenin. It seemed they hadn't fully realized that the great cars were showing that they and their system were inferior – the communist propaganda needed some extra decades to get this sensitive point.
Today, Unix still runs inside big servers but also inside smaller devices, the smartphones. Android is based on a modified Linux kernel while iOS, a spinoff of MacOS, is a "Unix-like" system, too (see a complex evolutionary tree). The importance of the invention for the modern world is staggering. Nevertheless, when Dennis Ritchie died in 2011, he had only had the money from the (generous) salary at AT&T, the owner of the Bell Labs before Nokia – which was still safely below one billion dollars.
The wealth is correlated with the contributions to the society but one must also appreciate how weak the correlation may be. Even most of the 150 people who are worth over $10 billion have done much less for the mankind than Dennis Ritchie has. Kenneth Thompson isn't a billionaire, either, but at least Kenneth Thomson without "p" was the richest Canadian at $20 billion.
Since its third series debuted on Netflix, Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones have seemingly become more and more interested in tying their episodes together, dropping references from one story into another - sometimes multiple others.
Interactive episode Bandersnatch is no different, with dozens of Easter Eggs littered across its many branches. I got the chance to chat to Brooker and Jones this week, and posed a question I’ve heard more and more recently: is there a Black Mirror Universe?
Instead, Brooker broadens that idea out a bit further: “We have a shared Black Mirror multiverse, is now what I'm saying, in which we can do whatever the bloody hell we feel like. It's kind of like the Spider-Man movie that came out recently, the Spider-Verse.”
It's been rumored that Amazon has been working on an ad-supported video streaming service, similar to what's offered from Vudu and Roku, and now the service has officially launched. Variety reports that IMDb Freedive, as the streaming service is call...
Netflix's choose-your-own-adventure style film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is the subject of a new lawsuit, brought against the streaming giant by Chooseco LLC. The company is known for publishing the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series popular in...
HP has announced that its latest Spectre x360 will be the first 15-inch laptop with an AMOLED display. It's actually been hard to find OLED of any kind on a PC, other than on a handful of models like HP's 13-inch Spectre x360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad...
In announcing the third in its range of battery-free smartwatches, Matrix Industries is going where few others have gone before. Whereas the first two PowerWatches relied upon thermocouples to generate power, the new model has two different ways to g...
Netflix has released a trailer for its next sci-fi film, IO, which takes place in a future where Earth has become uninhabitable to humans. While most of humanity has abandoned Earth for Jupiter's moon Io, scientist Sam Walden, played by Margaret Qual...
After lagging behind with Vega desktop GPUs for a few years, AMD announced a major upgrade today: the Radeon VII, the first 7nm GPU for gamers. It's a powerful card capable of serious 4K performance. Its new architecture means it won't use up too muc...
This year it seems that Intel is finally ready to talk about 10nm. After next-to-nothing on the subject at CES 2018, Intel is now talking about three new processor families: Ice Lake, Lakefield, and Snow Ridge. Despite the naming, it looks like Intel might be coming in out of the cold, to finally let it go, and roadmaps on upcoming products are being discussed.
Last year at CES, Sennheiser revealed a soundbar prototype with its impressive Ambeo 3D audio technology inside that offered an immersive 5.1.4 experience. At this year's show, the company is showing off the final version of the living room speaker a...
Early last year NVIDIA and its partners announced the Big Format Gaming Display (BFGD) initiative, with the goal to bring to market TV-sized 4K gaming monitors with a high variable refresh rate, high-end HDR, and SHIELD TV functionality. This year BFGDs will be released at last. Just days before CES kicks off, HP introduced its OMEN X Emperium 65, one of the world’s first big format gaming displays, and one that also comes equipped with a 120 W soundbar. The product will be available next month, but its price will be akin to its size: large.
The HP OMEN X Emperium 65 display uses a 64.5-inch 8-bit AMVA panel featuring a 3840×2160 resolution, 750 – 1000 nits brightness (typical/HDR), a 3200:1 – 4000:1 contrast ratio (minimum/typical), 178° viewing angles, a 120 - 144 Hz refresh rate (normal/overclocked), and a 4 ms GtG response time with overdrive enabled. Just like other G-Sync HDR monitors released to date, this one is equipped with a 384-zone full direct-array backlight to offer a finer-grained HDR experience, and enhanced with quantum dots to guarantee precise reproduction of 95% of the DCI-P3 color space.
Besides its dimensions and G-Sync HDR display tech, one of the key selling points of the OMEN X Emperium 65 is bundled OMEN X Emperium Soundbar designed with gaming in mind. The soundbar is rated for 120 W of output power, and it sports three stereo amps and Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) technology to avoid the need for a subwoofer. The soundbar can work in two modes: one tuned for gaming and another tuned for general entertainment.
Speaking of entertainment, it is necessary to note that the OMEN X Emperium 65 also comes with built-in SHIELD TV console (Tegra X1, etc.) along with 802.11ac Wi-Fi as well as GbE connectivity. The integrated SHIELD TV allows the TV to directly to play some SHIELD TV/Android games, though in practice it's more likely to be used for various media streaming services (Amazon Video, Netflix, etc.). The monitor is VESA DisplayHDR 1000-certified, so it meets the highest standards for a PC HDR monitor. However HP hasn't clarified what HDR transport formats the display supports; while HDR10 is going to be a given, we're curious whether the high-end display will also support Dolby Vision. Meanwhile, since we are talking about a TV-sized gaming display, it obviously has a rather low pixel density of around 68 PPI, which will make it a rather poor choice for work and its main (if not sole) purposes will be games and entertainment.
Moving on to connectivity. The OMEN X Emperium 65 has a DisplayPort 1.4 input and three HDMI 2.0b inputs that support HDMI ARC, which is enough to connect a PC, a couple of game consoles, and a Blu-ray player. When it comes to audio, it has a line out and an S/PDIF out. In addition, the monitor has a dual-port USB 3.0 hub. One interesting feature that the display has is a special sensors that detects user's hand and lights up the ports. Another cool feature is an adjustable RGB lighting on the back.
Output power: 120W
Impedence: 4 Ohms
Frequency range: 40 - 20k Hz
Sensitivity: 91 dB @ 1K Hz at 1m full scale volume
Magnet Materials: Ferrite
Diaphragm: Aluminum
Line out: 1
S-PDIF out: 1
HDMI ARC: 1
Power
Idle
0.5 W
Typical
?
Peak
?
Launch Price
$4,999
The monstrous OMEN X Emperium 65 is set to hit retail in late February, assuming everything goes well and the performance of the device satisfies HP and NVIDIA. However it won't be cheap: with a list price of $4,999, this is a rather unprecedented MSRP for a consumer monitor, and for that matter higher than a lot of high-end TVs.
This week, heavy rains and flooding in Australia flushed a small army of cane toads out of their burrows. In an attempt to escape rising waters, 10 of those toads…
The Meerkat – if any species of animal had a right to be a little irritated by the name we have gifted them, this is one. Of course, they are blithely unaware of any names we might choose to call them, but this small mammal from the heart of Africa is anything but a mere cat.
There are many interesting facts about meerkats but first of all it has to be pointed out that the meerkat is not any form of cat, even though you could be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of distant relative. In fact the word comes from Afrikaans (via Dutch) and the animal was given the name because of a misidentification. 'Kat' is indeed Dutch for cat and the word ‘meer’ means lake. Misidentification is perhaps an understatement here. As we have already established the meerkat is no cat – and furthermore it is not attracted to lakes in any way, shape or form. That doesn’t mean to say, of course, that the odd mud spa is not welcome.
So far and, well, not so good. There is a further possibility for where the meerkat got its name. It has been suggested that when meerkats were first encountered by the Dutch East India Company there may well have been an Indian sailor on board the ship. So, perhaps the Sanskrit word for monkey – markata – is where the meerkat got its name. Just to complicate matters, there is an alternative name for the species – the Suricate. This is from the Dutch ‘stockstaartje’ which means ‘little stick tail’. Altogether a more appropriate name but one which is largely confined to Afrikaans speakers.
Europeans – certainly in terms of Africa – are very recent visitors and a popular belief in the Zimbabwe and Zambian regions is that the meerkat is a sun angel. These angels are sent to villages by the gods to protect them from the moon devil – or even werewolves. When cattle stray or tribes people are separated from the rest of the community then it is said the meerkat will protect them. It must be hard work – this little guy is tuckered out.
The meerkat is in fact a mongoose. The mongoose family consists of around thirty species spread over the mainland of Africa and southern Eurasia. And – sigh – no, there is no connection whatsoever to geese! The word mongoose comes from an Indian language called Marathi and their word ‘mangus’ is pronounced in the same way we spell it. The meerkat is a diurnal species – and what that means is that it is active in the day time and sleeps at night – the opposite would of course be nocturnal. It isn’t a very heavy animal. The males are heavier at about 730 grams and the females generally weigh around ten grams less.
It is, however, a long and slender beast which means that the body length can be up to fourteen inches in length. When you add the ‘little stick tail’, which isn’t so little, that can be up to ten inches more. The tail, though, is pretty stick like. All the other mongoose species have bushy tails but the mongoose has a long thin one which tapers down to a tip, often of a reddish color. Perhaps the lack of bushiness is due to the dry and dusty areas it inhabits but, whatever the cause, it uses the tail to help balance itself when standing up. This is when the meerkat begins to look rather more human than it really is. Even when seated and at rest we are likely to endow the animal with more human characteristics than it really has.
It is the face which often attracts the onlooker. Meerkats always have black patches around the eyes, which to the us makes the meerkat seem more human. The patches are, in fact, to help deflect the strong glare of the African sun. Likewise its ears are black and are crescent shaped. When the meerkat digs – as is its wont – then the meerkat is able to close its ears to keep out the sand. The meerkat – like the moggy in one respect at least – has binocular vision. This means that it uses both eyes together. Even together.
Yet before we get carried away with this cute fest, let’s remember where the meerkat comes from. There are plenty of predators more than willing to make a snack out of a meerkat and so they do come equipped with a fine set of teeth. When protecting their clan or their home the meerkat will not be launching in to a rendition of hakuna matata any time soon. Dig?
Talking of digging, how does the meerkat go about that rather arduous task? The secret to its amazing tunnelling abilities is a strong retractable claw that it has at the end of each finger. These can be two centimetres in length and as well as helping the meerkat to dig they can be useful when shimmying up and down the odd tree. Even if the animal were to be domesticated (impossible) these claws would be a major drawback to being kept in and around homes as pets. A change may be as good as a rest – but you would get none of that with a meerkat.
The fawn coat of the meerkat is marked with grey, brown and tan – and sometimes can appear silvery. What makes them all the more attractive to us are the parallel stripes, short but dashed across their backs which extend from the tail all the way up to the shoulders. These stripes are unique to each meerkat and helps in identifying each other at a distance. The belly of the beast (as it were) is altogether different. There is a patch on the belly which has very little hair and the black skin underneath is visible. All things have a purpose, however, and this area helps to absorb heat when it is standing up. This is one reason the meerkats stand up in the morning – to warm up after the cold night of the desert in which they often live.
So, what do meerkats eat? Their diet is mostly one of insects but they will also eat plenty of other animals too. The meerkat menu includes lizards, snakes (an enemy that can sometimes kill meerkats so makes a tidy if vengeful lunch), scorpions, eggs, and small mammals. In the Kalahari Desert they are immune to the scorpion venom there – unlike us. They do need to eat regularly as well. One look at a meerkat and it is evident that they are very slim and slender. In fact they have no excess fat stores and so have to forage for food every single day. Even when they look fat, like this chap below, it is just the way he is sitting – honestly.
They do this in a group – safety after all can be found in numbers. While the rest of the group forage about there is always one sentry on guard, looking out for other animals with the same thing on their minds – food! This duty is usually for only around an hour so the sentry does not get left out of the hunt for insects. The sentry lets the others know that all is well by making a peep peep sound. If danger approaches then it barks as loud as it can or whistles the others to be careful or retreat. The babies will start foraging when they are around four weeks old – and they learn how to do it by watching an older experienced meerkat.
Meerkats are able to reproduce at around twelve months of age. The amount of pups varies between one and five though mostly this averages out at three. In the wild they can have up to four litters per year. As such they are an iteroparous species – this means that they can reproduce at any time of the year. When the pups are ready to leave the burrow the whole clan stands around to capture the moment. This miffs the slightly older but not yet adult meerkats some of which then proceed to show off as much as they possibly can in order to regain the focus of attention. There is no denying the cute factor, though.
Not all meerkats in a clan are allowed to mate. There is in meerkat society an alpha pair. These are the dominant male and female and they absolutely retain the right to mate and produce young. Any females found to be pregnant may be evicted. Even if this does not happen then once the pups are born the alpha female will usually kill them as soon as possible, even if the pups are related to her in some way. This may seem cruel but often the expelled females will meet up with a roving lone male and a new clan can be established this way – keeping the gene pool varied for future generations.
The meerkats live in large networks of underground burrows that they only leave during daylight hours. One set up like this is called a colony and on average there are between twenty and thirty animals in a colony. This can go to more than fifty but can be unsustainable for a long period due to its sheer size and animals competing to be the alpha. Most of the meerkats in a group will be related to the alpha pair in some way shape or form but occasionally adoptions of stray pups have been known to occur.
Their extremely social behaviour – as well as appearances on TV adverts (albeit in puppet form) and nature documentaries – have endeared the species to us. Their behaviour, which often incorporates games such as wrestling and racing, only serves to make a human audience fonder of them. However, human they are not and much of their natural behaviour can seem shocking to us. The meerkat remains, however, one of the more endearing African mammals.
Around a third of the food we produce around the world goes to waste, which is absolutely criminal considering the poverty blighting the planet. However, one tech-minded foodie is hoping to redeem humanity from its profligacy by creating eye-catching 3D printed concoctions from residual food.
Dutch designer Elzelinde van Doleweerd’s Upprinting Food project aims to trim back on food waste by taking unsold or commonly overabundant food like fruit, vegetables, bread and rice and using the latest tech to put a new spin on things.
By creating printable pastes from the foods, she’s able to form attractive shapes that are then baked, dehydrated and arranged to form attractive meals with a longer shelf life. Ripe bananas and knobbly carrots that aren’t pretty enough to be sold are prime candidates for the 3D Food Company’s advanced printer.
“I boil the vegetables and fruit peels, dry the bread or use the boiled rice,” she explained to Dezeen.com during a recent showcase in Beijing. “The ingredients are mashed, mixed together, ground and sieved. A smooth paste can be printed and baked afterwards.”
The dehydration technique is used “so no bacterial activity can take place,” she says. “This way the food is safe to eat and we can save it for a very long period.”
The result is a crispy food that resembles a cookie or a cracker. We’re not sure how it tastes, but it looks absolutely gorgeous.
She added: “Looking at the growing population, more food is needed in the future, but on the other hand, one third of the food produced is wasted nowadays. With the use of new technologies, I want to explore societal food challenges.”
Would you invest in a 3D printer if it could help you cut down on food waste? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
It turns out Netflix's new interactive Black Mirror movie, Bandersnatch, has some endings so hidden that even the people who made it can't find them.
According to the The Hollywood Reporter, Bandersnatch director David Slade has revealed that some endings are so secret and difficult to get that they may never be viewed by audiences.
"There are scenes that some people just will never see and we had to make sure that we were OK with that," explained Slade, adding "We actually shot a scene that we can’t access.”
Season 6 of Vikings will be the show's last on The History Channel, but the property might not be finished just yet.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, while the final season of Vikings will air on The History Channel during 2019 and 2020, having already wrapped production, MGM Television and History are discussing the future of the Vikings world with series creator, Michael Hirst.
If the discussions are fruitful, fans of the series might be in store for a spin-off show co-created by Hirst and Jeb Stuart, who wrote the screenplays for both Die Hard and The Fugitive. The new series would continue telling the story told in Vikings' six-season run.
If walking to a regular vending machine seems too inconvenient, what if the vending machine came to you? PepsiCo is doing just that at the University of Pacific campus in Stockton, California with robots called "snackbots." Using a smartphone app, st...
Huawei fined two employees for a New Year tweet from the company account, sent from an iPhone.
The original tweet
Bloomberg reported that Huawei blamed the mistake on their overseas social media agency, but for some reason decided to punish two employees from the marketing department. The punishment included a CNY5,000 (about $700) fine, a single-level demotion and blocking any eventual promotions for the next 12 months.
According to the internal memo, seen by Bloomberg News, one of the two employees was the head of the digital marketing team. There was also some scolding to...
Back in October the ZTE nubia X arrived with two screens, later followed by vivo NEX Dual Display Edition. We were in Shanghai, China, for the unveiling of the new NEX, and we are finally back home to get on with the usual detailed review of the phone. But before heading into the labs, here's what made an impression right out of the box.
When you think of a dual-display smartphone, the first thing you ask yourself is "why", but the NEX Dual Display Edition easily answers the question when you power it. Just like the NEX S with the periscope selfie camera, there is a massive Super...
Maynard James Keenan says that he has completed recording his vocals for TOOL's long-awaited new album. The singer took to his Twitter account earlier today to write: "Update- Final vocals tracked MONTHS ago. Then U.S.-UK-Euro run w #APC. If Tool all inst are tracked, long process of Mixing now. Meanwhile write/film/track w @puscifer for #puscifer2020 & troll the band FBs with wine posts. #funnyshit #whileyouwerewhiningiwasworking"
Last year, Maynard publicly called out his bandmates during TOOL's show at the Northern Invasion festival, asking them to finish recording their parts for the band's new disc so that he could record his parts and finally complete the LP. Keenan said from the stage: "Eventually you wonderful people are going to run out of fucking patience. So I beg you, Danny [Carey, drums], Adam and Justin [Chancellor, bass], please finish your parts so I can finish mine."
The new TOOL album, its first since 2006's "10,000 Days", will likely arrive at the end of this year. Recording commenced in March 2018, with Carey laying down his drum tracks first and Chancellor recording his parts next.
Maynard attempted to explain the long gap between TOOL albums in a 2017 interview with "The Joe Rogan Experience". Speaking about his bandmates, the singer said: "Their writing process is so drawn out. And I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why the delay has been long. Their process is very analytical, and I think, at some point, maybe because so much time has gone by from the last album, there has to be a little bit of fear in here. [You think to yourself] 'Is this record gonna be as good as the last one?' The anticipation now is… Now the pressure is huge, so I'm sure there's some of that [that] goes into play."
Keenan spent part of 2018 touring with A PERFECT CIRCLE, whose first album in 14 years, "Eat The Elephant", came out last April.
The official video for "Rock The Rock", the first new song from GUNS N' ROSES singer Axl Rose in 10 years, can be seen below. The track is featured in the TV show "New Looney Tunes", which airs on the Boomerang streaming service.
The episode, which premiered on December 24, features Axl as a character. In the clip called "Armageddon Outta Here, Part Two", Rose asks Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and company how to get to the Civic Center, where he is scheduled to perform that night with his band STEEL UNDERPANTS. After the "Looney Tunes" characters tell Axl there is a giant asteroid heading towards earth, he informs them his new speakers can "shake mountains to the ground." Bugs then proposes that Rose play loud enough to destroy the asteroid before it can land, with the "Looney Tunes" gang serving as his backing band. The group then proceeds to play a song called "Rock The Rock", ultimately blowing up the asteroid and saving the world.
"Rock The Rock" is the first new recording from Rose since GUNS N' ROSES' latest studio album, "Chinese Democracy", which came out in 2008 and featured only Axl from the classic lineup. However, it appears that Axl did not contribute to the songwriting of "Rock The Rock". The song is registered on BMI as having been written by Joshua Funk and Rob Janas. Funk is an Emmy-nominated composer who has written music for Comedy Central's "Key & Peele", "Wabbit", "The New Looney Tunes", "Scooby Doo: Shaggy's Showdown", "Teachers" and NBC's "Red Nose Day".
Rose is known to be a fan of "Looney Tunes" — GUNS N' ROSES has used the original show's iconic theme song as intro music during its "Not In This Lifetime" reunion tour.
Joining Rose and guitarist Slash on the mammoth trek, which launched in 2016, are bassist Duff McKagan, drummer Frank Ferrer, keyboardist Dizzy Reed, guitarist Richard Fortus and second keyboardist Melissa Reese.
The last album on which Rose, McKagan and Slash appeared together was 1993's covers set "The Spaghetti Incident?"
Photo credit: Katarina Benzova
Google hasn't been shy about decrying the consequences of the EU's proposed Copyright Directive. Now, however, it's using stark visuals to illustrate its point. The company recently told Search Engine Land that it was experimenting with a version of...
The rumors were true: Michelle Yeoh is getting her own Star Trek spinoff show. CBS All Access has confirmed that Yeoh will star in a new streaming series that elaborates on her character Captain Georgiou's role in Starfleet's mysterious Section 31,...
This sleek train set is advanced enough for adults to enjoy, but simple enough to teach children as young as three basic programming concepts.
There are more than 1,700 American companies at CES, 1,200 official exhibitors from China, and several hundred from France and South Korea. Many of them are veterans of the trade show circuit, one-upping each other's booths with elaborate curved OLED...
It's been rumored that Amazon has been working on an ad-supported video streaming service, similar to what's offered from Vudu and Roku, and now the service has officially launched. Variety reports that IMDb Freedive, as the streaming service is call...
Netflix's choose-your-own-adventure style film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is the subject of a new lawsuit, brought against the streaming giant by Chooseco LLC. The company is known for publishing the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series popular in...
HP has announced that its latest Spectre x360 will be the first 15-inch laptop with an AMOLED display. It's actually been hard to find OLED of any kind on a PC, other than on a handful of models like HP's 13-inch Spectre x360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad...
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The Meerkat – if any species of animal had a right to be a little irritated by the name we have gifted them, this is one. Of course, they are blithely unaware of any names we might choose to call them, but this small mammal from the heart of Africa is anything but a mere cat.
There are many interesting facts about meerkats but first of all it has to be pointed out that the meerkat is not any form of cat, even though you could be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of distant relative. In fact the word comes from Afrikaans (via Dutch) and the animal was given the name because of a misidentification. 'Kat' is indeed Dutch for cat and the word ‘meer’ means lake. Misidentification is perhaps an understatement here. As we have already established the meerkat is no cat – and furthermore it is not attracted to lakes in any way, shape or form. That doesn’t mean to say, of course, that the odd mud spa is not welcome.
So far and, well, not so good. There is a further possibility for where the meerkat got its name. It has been suggested that when meerkats were first encountered by the Dutch East India Company there may well have been an Indian sailor on board the ship. So, perhaps the Sanskrit word for monkey – markata – is where the meerkat got its name. Just to complicate matters, there is an alternative name for the species – the Suricate. This is from the Dutch ‘stockstaartje’ which means ‘little stick tail’. Altogether a more appropriate name but one which is largely confined to Afrikaans speakers.
Europeans – certainly in terms of Africa – are very recent visitors and a popular belief in the Zimbabwe and Zambian regions is that the meerkat is a sun angel. These angels are sent to villages by the gods to protect them from the moon devil – or even werewolves. When cattle stray or tribes people are separated from the rest of the community then it is said the meerkat will protect them. It must be hard work – this little guy is tuckered out.
The meerkat is in fact a mongoose. The mongoose family consists of around thirty species spread over the mainland of Africa and southern Eurasia. And – sigh – no, there is no connection whatsoever to geese! The word mongoose comes from an Indian language called Marathi and their word ‘mangus’ is pronounced in the same way we spell it. The meerkat is a diurnal species – and what that means is that it is active in the day time and sleeps at night – the opposite would of course be nocturnal. It isn’t a very heavy animal. The males are heavier at about 730 grams and the females generally weigh around ten grams less.
It is, however, a long and slender beast which means that the body length can be up to fourteen inches in length. When you add the ‘little stick tail’, which isn’t so little, that can be up to ten inches more. The tail, though, is pretty stick like. All the other mongoose species have bushy tails but the mongoose has a long thin one which tapers down to a tip, often of a reddish color. Perhaps the lack of bushiness is due to the dry and dusty areas it inhabits but, whatever the cause, it uses the tail to help balance itself when standing up. This is when the meerkat begins to look rather more human than it really is. Even when seated and at rest we are likely to endow the animal with more human characteristics than it really has.
It is the face which often attracts the onlooker. Meerkats always have black patches around the eyes, which to the us makes the meerkat seem more human. The patches are, in fact, to help deflect the strong glare of the African sun. Likewise its ears are black and are crescent shaped. When the meerkat digs – as is its wont – then the meerkat is able to close its ears to keep out the sand. The meerkat – like the moggy in one respect at least – has binocular vision. This means that it uses both eyes together. Even together.
Yet before we get carried away with this cute fest, let’s remember where the meerkat comes from. There are plenty of predators more than willing to make a snack out of a meerkat and so they do come equipped with a fine set of teeth. When protecting their clan or their home the meerkat will not be launching in to a rendition of hakuna matata any time soon. Dig?
Talking of digging, how does the meerkat go about that rather arduous task? The secret to its amazing tunnelling abilities is a strong retractable claw that it has at the end of each finger. These can be two centimetres in length and as well as helping the meerkat to dig they can be useful when shimmying up and down the odd tree. Even if the animal were to be domesticated (impossible) these claws would be a major drawback to being kept in and around homes as pets. A change may be as good as a rest – but you would get none of that with a meerkat.
The fawn coat of the meerkat is marked with grey, brown and tan – and sometimes can appear silvery. What makes them all the more attractive to us are the parallel stripes, short but dashed across their backs which extend from the tail all the way up to the shoulders. These stripes are unique to each meerkat and helps in identifying each other at a distance. The belly of the beast (as it were) is altogether different. There is a patch on the belly which has very little hair and the black skin underneath is visible. All things have a purpose, however, and this area helps to absorb heat when it is standing up. This is one reason the meerkats stand up in the morning – to warm up after the cold night of the desert in which they often live.
So, what do meerkats eat? Their diet is mostly one of insects but they will also eat plenty of other animals too. The meerkat menu includes lizards, snakes (an enemy that can sometimes kill meerkats so makes a tidy if vengeful lunch), scorpions, eggs, and small mammals. In the Kalahari Desert they are immune to the scorpion venom there – unlike us. They do need to eat regularly as well. One look at a meerkat and it is evident that they are very slim and slender. In fact they have no excess fat stores and so have to forage for food every single day. Even when they look fat, like this chap below, it is just the way he is sitting – honestly.
They do this in a group – safety after all can be found in numbers. While the rest of the group forage about there is always one sentry on guard, looking out for other animals with the same thing on their minds – food! This duty is usually for only around an hour so the sentry does not get left out of the hunt for insects. The sentry lets the others know that all is well by making a peep peep sound. If danger approaches then it barks as loud as it can or whistles the others to be careful or retreat. The babies will start foraging when they are around four weeks old – and they learn how to do it by watching an older experienced meerkat.
Meerkats are able to reproduce at around twelve months of age. The amount of pups varies between one and five though mostly this averages out at three. In the wild they can have up to four litters per year. As such they are an iteroparous species – this means that they can reproduce at any time of the year. When the pups are ready to leave the burrow the whole clan stands around to capture the moment. This miffs the slightly older but not yet adult meerkats some of which then proceed to show off as much as they possibly can in order to regain the focus of attention. There is no denying the cute factor, though.
Not all meerkats in a clan are allowed to mate. There is in meerkat society an alpha pair. These are the dominant male and female and they absolutely retain the right to mate and produce young. Any females found to be pregnant may be evicted. Even if this does not happen then once the pups are born the alpha female will usually kill them as soon as possible, even if the pups are related to her in some way. This may seem cruel but often the expelled females will meet up with a roving lone male and a new clan can be established this way – keeping the gene pool varied for future generations.
The meerkats live in large networks of underground burrows that they only leave during daylight hours. One set up like this is called a colony and on average there are between twenty and thirty animals in a colony. This can go to more than fifty but can be unsustainable for a long period due to its sheer size and animals competing to be the alpha. Most of the meerkats in a group will be related to the alpha pair in some way shape or form but occasionally adoptions of stray pups have been known to occur.
Their extremely social behaviour – as well as appearances on TV adverts (albeit in puppet form) and nature documentaries – have endeared the species to us. Their behaviour, which often incorporates games such as wrestling and racing, only serves to make a human audience fonder of them. However, human they are not and much of their natural behaviour can seem shocking to us. The meerkat remains, however, one of the more endearing African mammals.
Image Credit RichardJames1990
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