Paul Brownlee

The truth behind many of YouTube's most famous embarrassing pratfalls. [via Kotaku]

Joshua Katz, at NC State University's Department of Statistics, compiled a series of simple, striking maps that visualize the words Americans use—and where they use them. The data was compiled from a survey conducted by Bert Vaux at the University of Cambridge. Below are just a few to whet your appetite for the full set of 122.

Dark Souls II won’t be released until March 2014, but PlayStation 3 owners will be able to try the game out in a closed beta-test this fall.

Read Dark Souls II Beta Test Begins This Fall On PlayStation 3 on Siliconera!

This is a grammar comic about the proper usage of who versus whom.

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PS Vita for $200 at Amazon ⊟

Just in time for Divekick, Spelunky, and the continuing delight of Dragon’s Crown, you can get a wifi PS Vita for $200, $50 off its regular price. I didn’t look up the price of the 3G model, because don’t buy that one. I’m seeing this price at a couple of other retailers, so maybe it’s a price drop, or perhaps an announcement is imminent?

Other Vita sales mentioned earlier but still worth noting: the above-pictured Japanese Game Sale, which offers crazy prices on everything from Muramasa Rebirth to Metal Gear Solid HD (which is a version of some Japanese games made right here in Austin), the Summer Select Sale (Spelunky, Divekick, Kickbeat, Divebeat, Dragon Fantasy Book 2) and the Made in Canada Sale (Guacamelee, Mutant Blobs Attack, some very worthwhile PS3 games by Capy).

It’s actually way too easy to get cheap awesome games on this thing…

An anonymous reader writes "With Netflix continuing to rely upon Microsoft Silverlight, the video streaming service hasn't been supported for Linux users as the Mono-based 'Moonlight' implementation goes without Silverlight 5 DRM support. However, there is now Netflix support for Linux-based web-browsers via the open source Pipelight project. Pipelight supports Netflix and other Silverlight-based web applications by having a Netscape plug-in that in turn communicates with a Windows program running under Wine. The Windows program then simulates a browser to load the Silverlight libraries. Netflix then works as the Pipelight developers implemented support for the Netflix DRM scheme within Wine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I know the video is in Portuguese, but it’s pretty easy to understand the jokes. You could always turn the YouTube captions on, but I’m not sure how that would help.

This… This is awesome!

I’m willing to bet that most of you know what Pikmin is, but a lot of you might not know about Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin). That’s a shame. Attack on Titan is both a manga and an anime series currently running in Japan. Here’s the premise of the series via Crunchyroll:

Many years ago, the last remnants of humanity were forced to retreat behind the towering walls of a fortified city to escape the massive, man-eating Titans that roamed the land outside their fortress. Only the heroic members of the Scouting Legion dared to stray beyond the safety of the walls – but even those brave warriors seldom returned alive. Those within the city clung to the illusion of a peaceful existence until the day that dream was shattered, and their slim chance at survival was reduced to one horrifying choice: kill – or be devoured!

I also included the first opening to the series below. You get to see a lot more of the 3-D Maneuver Gear that they use in this opening than the current one.

Once again, this is awesome!

I actually mentioned something about this on Twitter last Thursday:

Animal Crossing should allow you to, under the cover of darkness, commit acts of arson against villagers who build their homes in bad spots.

Starting today, Atlus’ games on the Nintendo eShop are going on sale once more in North America.

Read Code of Princess, Etrian Odyssey IV And Soul Hackers Are All On Discount Sale on Siliconera!

cold fjord writes "Is 40% anything to worry about? Sky News reports, 'Worldwide internet traffic plunged by around 40% as Google services suffered a complete black-out, according to web analytics experts. The tech company said all of its services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive went down for between one and five minutes last night. The reason for the outage is not yet known, and Google refused to provide any further information when contacted by Sky News Online. According to web analytics firm GoSquared, global internet traffic fell by around 40% during the black-out, reflecting Google's massive grip on the web. "That's huge," said GoSquared developer Simon Tabor. "As internet users, our reliance on Google.com being up is huge."'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

About this Japan Times article he wrote, Matt Alt in Tokyo tells Boing Boing, "I interviewed several anime industry legends and combined it with some of my own research. The upshot: it's all about the toys. Sort of. The illustration is by my pal Hideo Okamoto, whose designs grace everything from the Gundam series to Pokemon. Unfortunately the digital version has none of the glory of the paper!" But you can click here to see a scan of the print version.

From the New York Public Library's Tumblr, a great remake of the video for the Beastie Boys' classic "Sabotage," featuring librarians on high-speed chases through the shelves.

Sometimes we just feel compelled to share something awesome. A video combining the Beastie Boys and Librarians = Awesome. (Thanks, Tim!)

smaxp writes "It's no surprise that few people love their pay TV providers. In May, Variety reported that the American Consumer Satisfaction Index ranked cable television providers last in all consumer categories. Pent up frustration with cable and satellite TV providers fuels a steady buzz that Amazon, Apple, Google and Netflix will disrupt TV. These new entrants promise to offer variability in pricing and greater choice fueling notions that Americans have officially cut their proverbial cords. But true disruption is wishful thinking. Data from the PricewaterhouseCooper’s (PwC) global entertainment and media outlook for 2013-2017 doesn’t support a disruptive market scenario. Incumbent cable and satellite pay TV providers and over-the-top (OTT) challengers such as Amazon and Netflix are both forecasted to grow. OTT TV has only reinvented a single part of the TV business, streaming archival movie and television content over the internet replacing physical DVDs and time-shifted DVR replay of TV programs. To displace incumbents, OTT TV has to continue to change TV business models in ways that appeal to consumers and attract content owners. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Makes perfect sense to me.