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The Hasselblad H5D-50c will move the medium-format camera maker from CCD image sensor technology to CMOS technology.

(Credit: Hassselblad)

Instead of going for more pixels, medium-format digital camera maker Hasselblad is going for better ones.

Over the last decade, much of the camera world has switched image sensors from the older CCD (charge-coupled device) technology to CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor), the same manufacturing process used to build conventional microprocessors. Now the high-end digital camera maker is making the same shift -- something its primary rival, Phase One, has so far chosen not to do.

Hasselblad is planning a new flagship camera, its H5D-50c, that aside from the sensor looks like its existing 50-megapixel H5D-50. The company hasn't said when it'll ship or how much it'll cost, but promises to release further details in March. A debut at the Photokina show in September wouldn't be a big surprise.

A CMOS sensor will mean the camera can take more frames per second, since data can be slurped off the sensor faster; let photographers shoot longer exposures; and perhaps most important, will work better at high ISO sensitivity settings, the company said Tuesday. And image quality won't be sacrificed, it promised -- an essential assurance given that very high image quality is the main reason pros put up with medium format's bulk and expense.

... [Read more]

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(Credit: CNET)

A couple of downtown Las Vegas casinos are taking a gamble with Bitcoin payments. The D casino and the Golden Gate have announced that customers are free to use the virtual currency when paying to stay at their hotels, according to the Associated Press.

D's will also take Bitcoin at its restaurants and gift shop. While these Bitcoin payment options are a first for Las Vegas casinos, the establishments will not accept the virtual currency for gambling.

"For us, it's going to be somewhat exciting to see what kind of impact it'll have," co-owner of the two casinos Derek Stevens told the Associated Press.

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Mini-drones that can fit in your pocket are definitely a lot of fun, but the inability to mount an action cam makes it practically useless for traditional spy drone missions. And while regular-size drones are great for that, the size doesn't exactly make them convenient to carry around. The Pocket Drone changes that. Made by Airdroids, it can fold up into a pocketable bundle, allowing you to slip the whole thing into the back of your jeans when housed inside [...]

Rubber bands work well enough for holding rolled up piles of paper, bundling pens, and shooting straight out of rubber band machine guns. And when something works that well, few people find the need to change them. But there will still be those few people. One of those people, apparently, just designed these Cubic Rubber Bands. Created by Japanese design studio Nendo, it turns the normally two-dimensional rubber band into a three-dimensional object. Seriously. Not only does it have full [...]

The concept of a single processing unit to serve as muscle for all our devices is something people have toyed with for a long time. With more and more gadgets being powered by processing units, we imagine the desire to consolidate smartphones, tablets, desktops, game consoles, and even wearables is just going to increase. The ICE xPC is a new effort towards this end. Billed as a "modular pocket PC," it's a smartphone-sized CPU (4.87 x 2.31 x 0.35 inches) [...]

I've brought you information about the concrete 3D printer before, the one that can create homes out of building materials within the span of 24 hours. Now I can tell you that the first such house is being made.

Sadly, it's not actually going to use that particular printer. Instead, this is an older project, one that will make the house out of 3D printed parts.

The house project has been in preparations ever since March 2013, but only now is the construction kicking o... (read more)

Unless you’re the kind of fan who’s got an emergency cache of cash ready to unload at the moment your team gets to Super Bowl XLVIII, you’re probably not willing to fork over the kind of dough that’s currently being demanded for tickets this year. Even the cheapest (and worst) seats, all the way up in the back at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, pack a punch of a price at $2,700.

That was the very cheapest price right now on the NFL’s official second-hand marketplace, reports the Atlantic Wire, and those seats are basically the equivalent of being banished to the attic garret where you’ll slave away in the cold sewing for your rich employers. Or you know, up in the eaves in the upper corners of the end zones. We’re seeing prices around $2,800 however, and it’s only going to get pricier.

If you’re the kind who can throw money at any problem without blinking, the most expensive tickets out there will set you back more than $25,000 for seats in the bottom of the stadium at the 50-year-line.

Again, even if you’re shelling out thousands of dollars to have a seat at the showdown between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos, it won’t be that easy to get to the actual stadium. You can’t walk in, and you can’t get dropped off at the doors unless you’ve somehow managed to snag on of the few parking passes that will be issued. Oh and you won’t be warming up by the fire of a tailgating party, either, because that’s not allowed.

Better bundle up, y’all, and hope that the memory of the money you’ve spent to get to the Big Game somehow keeps you warm.

You Can’t Afford Super Bowl Tickets [Atlantic Wire]

The world was Depot’s oyster, and that world is the Home Depot. See, Depot is a cat and her home is Home Depot (try saying that three times fast). She’s lived in a South Carolina store for 13 years, but that life of trolling for pests, snuggling up with paint cans and greeting workers in the morning is about to end. She’s getting the boot after triggering the store’s security alarms one time too many.

Management says her adventures in the garden section will need to come to an end, reports WTOC, because she sets off the alarms at night. That means it’s time to find her a home, and some customers are upset that she’s getting evicted.

“Being an animal lover, I’d get rid of management before I’d get rid of the cat,” one customer told the news station.

Despite a petition on Change.org asking to let Depot stay, it’s not like she’ll be kicked out on her furry, adorable behind. Home Depot officials have said they won’t throw her out until someone steps up to adopt her.

If you live near Bluffton, S.C. and need a new furry friend, check out the contact info for the store in the source link below.

Cat kicked out of home, Home Depot [WTOC.com]

In 2012, voters in Los Angeles County narrowly approved Measure B [PDF], a law that requires porn performers to wear condoms. Some fans of adult film fans complain that the use of condoms is distracting, and a number of studios are either ignoring the law or shooting outside of L.A. County. But one porno producer is going the high-tech route, digitally removing the prophylactic devices from its performers’ phalluses.

BetaBeat reports that gay porn producers Falcon Studios are set to release their first film where the condoms were taken digitally erased.

Falcon is located in San Francisco, hundreds of miles away from where it would be impacted by Measure B, so why the post-production trickery? The film’s director says it was about evoking the more free-and-easy attitude of the ’70s.

“With this movie I really wanted to capture the essence of that time, when life seemed more carefree and spontaneous,” he explains. “In keeping with this concept, I felt that condoms need to be addressed. I wanted to give the impression of a pre-condom movie, but use condoms as we do in every scene we film.”

We’ve not seen the results, so we have no idea if the effect is believable. But if it could be done affordably and well, it might be an option for L.A.-based porn producers who wish to abide by the law while providing viewers what they want to see.

Given that multiple STD and HIV scares have intermittently shut down Southern California porn production in recent years, carnal consumers may need to learn to live with looking at condoms, at least until digital condom deletion becomes the standard.

[via TheVerge]

For those of us who don’t happen to be the heir to an oil fortune or a company executive with a paycheck showcasing a bunch of zeroes, becoming a billionaire is something that could only happen in our wildest, probably lottery-related dreams. Unless you’ve got crazy good March Madness skills, that is.

Super Very Rich Guy And CEO Warren Buffett’s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway is partnering up with Quicken Loans to dangle a $1 billion-bounty to anyone who can complete a totally perfect March Madness bracket, reports the Detroit Free Press.

That means calling the winner of all 63 games in the NCAA March Madness men’s college basketball tourna,ent correctly, something that appears to be pretty much impossible to do. The prize will be paid out in 40 annual installments of (gulp) $25 million. Or you can take $500 million in a lump sum payment if you’re really jonesing for that money.

Because the odds of someone actually winning the grand prize appear to be ridiculously small, the two companies will also split $2 million among the 20 most accurate predictions submitted, as well as a $1 million donation from Quicken to to educational charities in Detroit and Cleveland, the two cities that are the main focus of Quicken founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert’s activities.

“We’ve seen a lot of contests offering a million dollars for putting together a good bracket, which got us thinking, what is the perfect bracket worth? We decided a billion dollars seems right for such an impressive feat,” said Jay Farner, president and chief marketing officer of Quicken Loans.

And while Buffett seems like a firm believer in working hard to achieve a massive fortune, it sounds like he’s in the mood to throw a bone this time.

“Millions of people play brackets every March, so why not take a shot at becoming $1 billion richer for doing so,” Buffett explains (his company is insuring the prize). “While there is no simple path to success, it sure doesn’t get much easier than filling out a bracket online.”

Registration for the contest starts March 3 and runs through March 19. Participants will receive their brackets on March 16 if they’ve registered by then, and can start filling them out at that time. You’ll have to act quick, as you’ll need to be one of the first 10 million to register.

The odds of predicting all the winners in all the games with a flip of the coin is 1-in-100 million trillion, or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000. So good luck!

Quicken Loans offering $1 billion for perfect March Madness bracket [Detroit Free Press]

We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: When you’re buying an iPad at a deep discount from a complete stranger off the street, don’t be surprised when you end up with a box of useless junk. And even when that friendly back-alley retailer shows you what appears — through layers of bubble wrap — to be the real deal, be warned that it’s probably just a tarted-up floor tile.

The Ceres, CA, Police Dept. shared these photos with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Crime Scene Blog to show the lengths to which scammers will go to rip off bargain-seeking consumers.

Someone could look at the above photo and be convinced that it is indeed a real iPad covered in bubble wrap. But pull back that bubble wrap and things look a bit off… Why does the iPad have those odd ripples under its surface?

Oh, because it’s nothing but a floor tile with a print-out designed to look like the back of an iPad:

Police say scammers have been ginning up convincing fakes of iPads and other electronics — like pieces of wood doctored to look like TVs — and selling them off to unwitting consumers (who really should know better).

We’ve written about numerous instances in which people have been burned by scammy sellers offering discount iPads to people on the street (and mostly at gas stations, interestingly enough). Don’t be suckered in. Even if someone is offering you a legitimate iPad, it’s probably stolen or broken (possibly both), and you should just say no.

Of course, buying an iPad from a retail location is no guarantee that you won’t get a box full of notepads, a fake iPad, a useless store display, or a bunch of random junk in an iPad box.

A Clearwater man is accused of imprisoning five people in his house and abusing them. Jeffrey Keowin

Right, I'm going to kick off this post by saying that I am not a squeamish person. I love food, I love meat, and I particularly love pork. In an ideal world, we would all get our meat from the guy in our village whose family has lovingly cared for their animals over generations, given the animals the best possible life, fed them only the best food, read them a bed-time story every night and given them kilometers of space to roam free in before being humanely and ceremoniously slaughtered by the patriarch of the family.

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If Boeing was looking to 2014 as a fresh start for their constantly malfunctioning Dreamliner, that particular dream is almost certainly crushed by now. In addition to one of the plane's batteries malfunctioning (again) just a few days ago, a Norweigan's Airlines flight was cancelled yesterday after a passenger noticed that fuel was pouring from a valve on the plane's wing.

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The next company in a seemingly never-ending deluge of company working on some kind of online TV streaming service? It's Amazon, according to a WSJ report.

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Cyclists can adorn themselves from head to toe in flashing lights, but it's still possible that pedestrians and drivers won't see them until it's too late. It's a problem the Blaze Laserlight hopes to solve by projecting an early warning signal 16 to 20 feet ahead of a cyclist, so that others on the road will know they're coming in advance—and have time to react.

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What's your favorite thing to see explode? Never thought about it? How could you. I think it might have to be the watermelon The hard outer shell of the fruit makes for perfect fragmentation, the watermelon's shape holds an explosive pretty darn well and its red flesh makes for colorfully gory splashes (especially against the green shell). Plus, it's watery so the explosion range is fantastic. I don't think it's a competition. Just look at the SlowMoGuys blowing up a watermelon and try and think of something better to blow up. The watermelon looks like some super bomb from Mario Kart.

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Sochi, Russia, the host city of next month's Winter Olympics, is nothing close to cold right now. The temperature hovers at a very mild 55 degrees which means it's very far from freezing which means it's very far from snowing. But. Like. Um. You kind of need snow to host a Winter Olympics. So Sochi enlisted the help of snow machines to get man made snow spewed for the games.

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It's amazing the new tricks that people can just invent with their bikes. Once you think that everything has been done before, someone decides to murder the laws of physics. This new trick though might be more impressive because I'm getting the spins just looking at it. How does the rider manage to land such a violent combination of a front flip and forward bike flip in one leap? Amazing.

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I don't know about you guys, but there is precisely none chance of me sticking Mr. Wiggly anywhere near that thing.

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The latest in a line of UnCarrier tactics, T-Mobile has just announced that it's launching a Mobile Money service—a personal finance system that uses a smartphone app and pre-paid Visa card to help people handle their cash.

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Thomas Jefferson was radically anti-tax, pro-gun and anti-central bank.  He loved precious metals, he openly acknowledged a “Creator” and he wanted to add an amendment to the Constitution which would ban the federal government from going into debt.  If he … Continue reading →

The post If He Was Around Today, Thomas Jefferson Would Be Considered A Tea Party Extremist appeared first on .

LAPD officers assigned to the area where Paul Ciancia began his shooting spree targeting TSA agents at LAX Airport stood down minutes before the attack began, leaving for breaks without informing their dispatcher as required. Image: Paul Ciancia (YouTube). “Departmental … Continue reading →

The post LAPD Cops Stood Down Minutes Before TSA Shooting appeared first on .

R. Lee Ermey is a retired U.S. Marine Corps drill instructor and an actor. You may remember his breakout performance as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. Ermey has also been in commercials, including one for GEICO Insurance, which you can revisit … Continue reading →

The post Why GEICO auto insurance fired R. Lee Ermey appeared first on .

A little over a year ago, David Eckert was subjected to 8 anal exams after he was stopped by New Mexico police for rolling through a stop sign. One of the officers claimed Eckert’s posture was “erect and he kept his legs … Continue reading →

The post Man Subjected to 8 Anal Probes Awarded $1.6 Million Settlement appeared first on .

	If you are looking to cut your monthly hot water bills you might be interested in a new device that has been created called the Heatworks water heater, which has been designed to be the most energy & water efficient, reliable & versatile water heater available. The Heatworks Model 1 water heater has this month […] (Read more...)

The post Heatworks Water Heater Designed To Cut Your Bills Launches On Kickstarter (video) (C) Copyright 2013 Geeky Gadgets. Republishing of this feed is forbidden without our written permission.

	After ten years, LogMeIn’s free remote access product, LogMeIn Free is being closed by the company, requiring that users wishing to still use the LogMeIn service  upgrade to a subscription plan that start from $49 a year. LogMeIn’s free remote access users will be notified via email, together with in-product messages over the next few […] (Read more...)

The post LogMeIn Free Remote Access Service Being Discontinued (C) Copyright 2013 Geeky Gadgets. Republishing of this feed is forbidden without our written permission.

Redditor spidermanngp made this absolutely hilarious and perfectly accurate summary of Iron Man 1 and 2 for his girlfriend. Unfortunately, they broke up before he could finish it. Fortunately, he has released it so we can all enjoy it—which is great news because it's quite good.

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Some good news is ahead for craft brewers in Pinellas County. According to our partners at the Tampa