Officials have blocked off a city in northern China and placed 151 people in quarantine after a man died of bubonic plague last week, Agence France Presse reports
The 38-year-old victim in the city of Yumen was infected after feeding his dog a dead marmot, a large squirrel-like creature, earlier this month. He developed a fever later that same day and died last Wednesday.
Officials are now barricading the city of 30,000, blocking motorists from entering or leaving. State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported "local residents and those in quarantine are all in stable conditon," and that the city has enough food and provisions for residents to survive for up to one month Read more...
Mario Kart 8's twisted tracks and gravity-defying racing make it the best game in the series to date, but it might end up being remembered for something different: Luigi's death stare. The viral sensation has become such a big deal that Nintendo has even started incorporating it into its own marketing. A new Japanese ad for the Wii U racer features a series of slow motion glimpses at racers like Donkey Kong and Rosalina, but the highlight is easily Luigi's icy glare. If only he was driving a Mercedes.
Still planning your next vacation? If so, before booking any flights or hotels, check out these twenty breathtaking places. To start things off, we have a beautiful suspension bridge - located near the town of Schladming - built on Austria's Dachstein Glacier Resort, an excellent getaway during the wintertime. With a mind-boggling 1300-foot drop visible beneath your feet, walking along the bridge's glass platform definitely isn't for the fainthearted. Continue reading for more.
Wacom's Bamboo Paper app has been a big hit on the iPad, and now it's out on Android tablets. This follows the release of the slimmed down Bamboo Paper Memo app for phones late last year. To drum up some support, Wacom is including all the premium features for a limited time.
Paper is an app that gives you virtual notebooks in which you can take notes or sketch – whatever strikes your fancy.
Anyone who heads straight from work to the gym knows the hassles that can come from having two different bags for each, or worse, having to stuff sweaty shorts down...
Getting back to nature doesn't have to mean giving up your modern life. Take the retreats in Hide & Seek: The Architecture of Cabins & Hideouts for example. This 250+...
As with any release in their Ultimate Collector Series, the Lego Batman Tumbler has been eagerly anticipated — fueled by rumors and plenty of speculation — but now the wait...
One of the cool things about owning a device with an AMOLED display is to see that deep true black. It is a thing of beauty, but also functionality. AMOLED displays, like those on Samsung phones, achieve the deep black by not lighting up the pixels that make up the color. This means you can actually save battery by using dark themes in apps, and of course, dark colored wallpaper.
This week we are dedicating all of our wallpaper to those of you with AMOLED displays. We have chosen six HD wallpapers that should look awesome on your Samsung Galaxy S5, or any other AMOLED device. The blacks will be super dark, and the colors will really pop. To get one of these on your phone, tablet, or even PC simply tap or click the download link underneath each image. Let us know which one is your favorite!
Push new Android Wallpaper to your Android device with this IFTTT recipe.
In the top of the fourth inning last night in Boston, Eric Hosmer hit one on the screws down the first base line and an overeager ball girl scooped up the obviously fair ball. Her reaction is so great.
In 1979, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng started planting trees along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in India's Assam region. Floods during that time washed a number of snakes onto the sandbar. When 16-year-old Payeng found them, they had all died. So he alerted the forest department and asked they grow trees there, but they insisted that nothing would grow there. More than 30-years-later, that once-barren sandbar is a sprawling 1,360 acre forest that several thousands of varieties of trees and wildlife, including birds, deer, apes, rhino, elephants and even tigers, call home. Continue reading for more pictures and a documentary.
GRABOVA, Ukraine —The roads to the crash site are awful, but through the five checkpoints to the site of the Malaysian airlines crash this morning, we encountered surprisingly little resistance from separatist soldiers. The crash site sits in the middle of golden fields of wheat, the peaceful, bucolic expanse scarred black. In one place, the wreckage still smolders.
The wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur a day after it crashed, near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine
Image: Christopher Allen
From what we have been told, there are two different debris fields. The primary site is approximately one square kilometer. Here we found the remains of the fuselage and the wing and, among the wreckage, carelessly tossed bodies and luggage of the civilians on board. Read more...
Google Maps users (that should be just about everyone) will find a nice update rolling out now in the Google Play Store. Version 8.2 brings a host of new features, the biggest being the ability to execute voice commands from inside the app. This can be done by clicking on the new microphone icon in the search bar, used to execute commands like “navigate to” or “show traffic.” What’s more is you’ll find another microphone while in navigation mode (towards the bottom left).
While that sounds extremely useful, the number of voice actions are pretty limited at the moment and require users to experiment with what works. Basic commands like asking Maps to show routes or give a route overview works fine. Even display traffic or show the time left until you reach your destination. The main problem we found is that, unlike Google Search hotword detection, you’ll need to physically touch the microphone icon to engage voice controls — they’re not done purely by voice.
There’s also elevation info for bicyclists to help avoid unnecessary uphill climbs when necessary. Routes will not only show elevations but the distance of the elevation changes as well. This makes it easy for cyclists to pick the easiest route based on their current elevation (see above image).
As usual, you can either wait for the new Maps to become available on your device in the coming days, or download our 3rd party link down below. Safe travels!
Most GPS mapping apps are designed to get you where you want to go quickly. But for those who seek the scenic route, experimental software being developed by Yahoo researchers promises paths that are not just efficient, but also beautiful, pleasant and emotionally stimulating.
Traditionally, pedestrians may have found beautiful paths by taking aimless strolls, but this new software doesn't leave much to serendipity. Here's how it would work: A user would enter a current or start location, along with a desired destination. An algorithm would then select and suggest the route that ranks highest on a "beauty score" attributed to each route by the software. The recommended routes would only be about 12% longer than the shorter but less attractive routes, and they would take into account theemotional feel of a place, the researchers said. Read more...
Japan is already a global leader in train technology, so it would only follow that they'd be lapping the rest of the world in train design, too. Already, the country has produced gorgeous fleets of luxury trains with chic, retro stylings.
Now, Japan's JR East railway company has commissioned a new luxury train, the Cruise Train, which will be a way for Japanese one-percenters to check out the country in style. The opulent transport, which will cost about $50 million to develop and seats...
Yes, the government has probably seen any sexts or nude photos you've sent along to a significant other. If you believe the word of Edward Snowden, NSA employees regularly pass around intimate nude shots that are intercepted, along with endless amounts of other data, as part of the US government’s vast surveillance efforts. Snowden made the claims during a marathon, seven-hour interview with The Guardian when asked about specific instances of power abuse he’d observed during his time as an NSA contractor. "You’ve got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old. They’ve suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records.
After dropping the bombshell on Tuesday, announcing that Thor will be a woman in upcoming comics, Marvel has now announced another big change: the next Captain America will be black
The news broke on the Colbert Report Wednesday: Steve Rogers will have to step down as Captain America this fall, passing on his shield to Sam Wilson, a.k.a the Falcon, an old ally of the Captain
The Falcon has been introduced in September 1969, and was the first African-American superhero in the Marvel universe. He is not the first black Captain America, however — that was Isaiah Bradley, who appeared in the 2003 limited series Truth: Red, White & Black. Read more...
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew crashed in Ukraine near the country's border with Russia, according to an Interfax report.
A Reuters correspondent at the scene in Eastern Ukraine reports seeing burning wreckage and bodies on ground.
A Ukrainian government adviser, Anton Gerashenko, confirmed on Facebook that a plane carrying 295 people was shot down over a town in the east of the country. A source in Ukraine's National Security Council confirmed to Mashable'sChris Miller that the plane was downed Read more...
Android users with Amazon Prime accounts haven’t had very many options when looking to stream videos through their Instant Video app. While it’s true an Android app has been awhile for quite sometime now, it’s been exclusive to Amazon’s line of Kindle Fire tablets. We’ve pretty much came to terms that it’s there the app would remain, but it seems the app is reportedly getting ready for its Google Play debut — and it’s about damn time.
PC Advisor is claiming the exclusive after they spoke with Amazon marketing director Russell Morris at a Christmas party (in July?). Morris apparently mentioned a Google Play release of Amazon Prime Instant Video is “imminent.” Other than that, details are scarce. No word on exact timing or whether the app will offer support for Google’s streaming Chromecast dongle, but we can only hope for the best.
With Amazon Prime Instant Video available on the iPad and Kindle Fire tablets, it only makes sense for Amazon to finally include their customers who own one of the many Android devices on the market.
At some point in the age of the dinosaurs, evolution diverged, and we were left with the infamous velociraptor and the not-so-intimidating microraptor, a close descendent of modern birds. The latest addition to that group is Changyuraptor yangi (C. yangi for short), a newly discovered four-winged animal that weighed about nine pounds and measured 51 inches from snout to tail.
Taking the perfect dog portrait is harder than you think.
For starters, getting your pooch to look at the camera long enough to get an Instagram-worthy shot can be nearly impossible, particularly if you have an extra rambunctious pup. But pet-centric startup Bark&Co has a new app to help dog lovers in their quest for the perfect canine portrait.
BarkCam is a photo-sharing app that is like a dog version of Instagram.
Begin by choosing from a variety of sounds meant to grab your dog's attention, including cat meows, squeak toys, doorbells and a bag of treats rustling. Tapping the shutter button triggers the sound, and hopefully, gets your dog to look at the camera before taking a photo. Read more...
The cush car camping equipment from Ticla was “nothing like we have ever experienced before.” Our contributor Chelsey Magness tests the company’s camping gear on a long road trip through the American West.
Since the beginning of Google+ itself, the service has required as part of its registration process that users fill out their real names in order to create a profile. Since the beginning of Google+ itself, people have found various ways to skirt this requirement, Google has added support for 'established' pseudonyms, and dropped the real name requirement for Google+ pages.
A lot of this, it seemed, was an effort to reign in the anonymous hate speech and trolling rampant on things like, I don't know, YouTube.
While Google had very clear intentions when building Android Wear — a light mobile OS meant to free users from getting lost in your smartphone — that’s not going to stop app developers from taking the OS to places it was never meant to go.
In a new blog post on their site, you can see Minuum running perfectly fine on the recently released LG G Watch. While there aren’t very many text fields for actual input in Android Wear (that’s because Google wants everyone to rely on the sometimes inaccurate voice typing), Minuum hopes this will soon change. When it does, they’ll be ready.
For those interested in trying out the app before it goes live on Google Play, you can sign up for their newsletter where they’re promising to provide a download for the test build. Minuum is confident you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how well their vision of a smartwatch keyboard works on a tiny display.
Hammocks are great — no one's arguing against that — but when you try to pile a bunch of people into one, you start to run into some limitations: weight...
There's an "s" missing in this phrase: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."
Marvel announced on Tuesday that in its new comic book run coming in October, Thor as we know him becomes unworthy of Mjolnir, so the hammer — and the title of "Thor" — will pass on from the son of Odin to ... a woman.
Exactly who that woman is isn't entirely clear just yet, but Marvel calls her a "brand new female hero," which pretty much squashes online speculation that it's Angela, a warrior-angel who re-emerged in the Avengers' Age of Ultron event and is prominently featured in the current run of Guardians of the Galaxy. Read more...
Wacom's Bamboo Paper app has been a big hit on the iPad, and now it's out on Android tablets. This follows the release of the slimmed down Bamboo Paper Memo app for phones late last year. To drum up some support, Wacom is including all the premium features for a limited time.
Anyone who heads straight from work to the gym knows the hassles that can come from having two different bags for each, or worse, having to stuff sweaty shorts down...
Getting back to nature doesn't have to mean giving up your modern life. Take the retreats in Hide & Seek: The Architecture of Cabins & Hideouts for example. This 250+...
As with any release in their Ultimate Collector Series, the Lego Batman Tumbler has been eagerly anticipated — fueled by rumors and plenty of speculation — but now the wait...
Hammocks are great — no one's arguing against that — but when you try to pile a bunch of people into one, you start to run into some limitations: weight...
