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You know those cookies web services use to track your history and serve up personalized ads? It appears that the government is using them too. The National Security Agency is apparently leveraging a Google-specific cookie to tap into the computers of ...

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Redditor _PM_ME_SOMETHING says: "A seemingly nice old lady gave me this to photocopy today..."

John Atkinson of Wrong Hands created an alphabet of the things that we use lesser every day.


Wrong Hands | via

Google's Play Books now lets you upload any e-book you, ahem, happen to have on any of your Android devices to your central repository. Neat.

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One of the biggest limitations of email is sending files. Almost every email provider imposes limits on the size of files that can be sent through their service, which is fine for sending documents and spreadsheets, but when you need to send something really large, that’s when issues arise. Enter Filemail, an awesome service that allows you to send massive files up to 30 gigabytes on a free account (with no size restriction on a premium account) to anyone. Getting Started You can use Filemail in a number of ways. First, you can just jump on the site, enter the...

Read the full article: Share Files Up To A Whopping 30GB With Anyone Through Filemail

If you've ever wondered how animals view the world, this video should satisfy your curiosity. It shows how five different animals—cats, dogs, rats, hawks and bees—see the world.

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For those of you who somehow don't have a full set of four Wii Remote Plus controllers, Nintendo is selling a refurbished bundle pack of remotes and Nunchuks for $20. As a reminder, said controllers will work on both the Wii and Wii U. You can choose from white, black, and blue.

Keep in mind that pretty much every Wii U game has an alternate control scheme using Wiimotes, so a few wouldn't be a bad investment if you're just rocking a Gamepad.

Authentic Nintendo Refurbished Products [Nintendo via Joystiq]

Microsoft announced this morning the Xbox One surpassed the 2 million mark for global sales, 18 days after the console launched in 13 markets on November 22. The figure is stipulated as "sell-through," so it represents sales to customers rather than shipments.

"We continue to be humbled and overwhelmed by the positive response from our fans," Xbox Corporate VP of Strategy and Marketing Yusuf Mehdi said in a statement. "We are thrilled to see sales of Xbox One on a record-setting pace, with over 2 million Xbox One consoles in homes around the world. Demand is exceeding supply in our 13 launch markets and Xbox One is sold out at most retailers. We're also particularly excited to see consumers engaging in a wide range of games and entertainment experiences on the platform, with more than 1 million paid transactions on Xbox Live to date."

For all the numbers Microsoft is trotting out, including 39 million achievements and 595 million GamerScore points notched to date, more significant is that the Xbox One is close to the coattails of the PS4. Sony's console hit the 2 million milestone - 2.1 million to be specific - last week, but is out in significantly more European markets than the Xbox One.

Continue reading Xbox One sales hit 2 million mark

Xbox One sales hit 2 million mark originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 11 Dec 2013 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why have I never heard of this?

Read all about it

 

For almost a decade and a half, mobile customers – and Americans in particular – have enjoyed a certain economic perk: phone subsidies from the major carriers. This meant you could, on sign-up, get a very expensive phone for at most a few hundred dollars and, as an incentive to hang around, upgrade that phone every few years. These subsidies seemed as God-given as freedom of speech and apple pie, but they may be on their way out.

I don’t want to stir up fake outrage at this move (and it’s not even a move, just an comment by the AT&T CEO at some conference but in the Kremlinology of online babbling that’s as good as a contract) but it smacks of perfidy. Said Randall Stephenson:

[blockquote]“When you’re growing the business initially, you have to do aggressive device subsidies to get people on the network. But as you approach 90 percent penetration, you move into maintenance mode. That means more device upgrades. And the model has to change. You can’t afford to subsidize devices like that.”[/blockquote]

Instead of allowing you to upgrade your $500 phone for $200, AT&T is already offering cheaper plans to users who don’t upgrade, thereby lengthening the upgrade cycle of phones from the traditional 18 to 24 months. This means you will miss two iPhone versions before AT&T even considers giving you a discount, if that happens at all and it means more BYO handsets.

To be clear, we need to remember that phone subsidies are actually imaginary. Europe’s refusal to subsidize phones has led to a number of service improvements including pre-paid SIM cards, cheaper, simpler handsets, and a number of roaming benefits. There’s no reason to lock a phone to a carrier if that phone is crossing borders every few days. However, the U.S. market is monolithic. We rarely roam and we rarely look for pre-paid deals.

If there are two things I agree with here it’s that we upgrade our phones far too often and that hardware manufacturers think we are stupid. I think, then, Stephenson isn’t directly addressing us, the consumer, but the handset manufacturers. They depend on regular updates to keep making money. Samsung and Apple have to release new phones for a number of reasons, primarily to maintain the perception of forward momentum and to please shareholders. Look at this panoply of Galaxy phones, for example, each destined to be AT&T’s next “free” phone. Just as a shark dies if it stops swimming, phone manufacturers die if they stop selling phones. Therefore phone subsidies are great for manufacturers and, if you think about the incremental differences between iPhone versions, not so great for us. There is plenty of supply and, thanks to subsidies, artificial demand.

This move by AT&T stops that endless circle. But it isn’t fair. Why should the consumer suffer with a bum phone for three years or pay hundreds of dollars on top of an already expensive rate plan? Carriers pay lip service to low prices but if you want their “best” plan you’d best be ready to pay. To add BYO handsets and slow upgrade cycles to this is insult to injury. Essentially Stephenson is saying that back when AT&T was still trying to get customers, subsidies worked. Now that it has all the customers it could want, subsidies are unfair. What’s really happening? Carriers got into bed with the manufacturers and now they want out. We pay the price.

Listen to Bill Nye's letter to the President of the United States asking for $1.5 billion to support planetary exploration. He gives three excellent reasons.

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Video game addiction is a serious issue. As a gamer myself, I’m aware that the media likes to exaggerate, and I agree that the subject of video game addiction has been blown out of proportion in the past, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. I’m also aware that video game addiction may not be as serious as, say, a drug addiction, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t serious. I know this because I am an ex-video game addict. I think it’s important to identify video game addiction where it exists, and to help addicts on their road to recovery....

Read the full article: Video Game Addiction In Teens – What Is Too Much and How to Curb the Problem

Mars One wants to put a human colony on the Red Planet as part of a TV show, but first it will send a robotic lander to scope things out

Thanks Jarrod

 

Thanks Mike (from Spain)

 

Martin Scorsese‘s had a prolific career, giving us nearly two dozen narrative features in the past fifty years — and that’s not even counting the various documentaries, shorts, TV episodes, and commercials he’s also put out in that time. But now the iconic filmmaker’s career may be nearing an end.

Speaking at the Marrakech Film Festival, Scorsese said that he only has a “couple more” movies left in him and that in fact, it’s only thanks to his frequent star Leonardo DiCaprio that he’s even kept going this long. Read his comments after the jump.

Scorsese revealed his plans during a Q&A session. “I have the desire to make many films, but as of now, I’m 71 and there’s only a couple more left if I get to make them,” he said. “I miss the time when I had the desire to experiment and try different kinds of films, I miss that time, but that’s done, it’s over.”

Indeed, he might have run out of steam sooner had it not been for his collaboration with DiCaprio, which started with 2002′s Gangs of New York and most recently yielded The Wolf of Wall Street.

[W]e found that he regenerated my enthusiasm for making films. Mainly because, as you get older, it gets physically difficult and also the business especially – the financial issues. You’re responsible for a lot of money, if you get it. It’s all pressure, but can you do it? His enthusiasm and excitement really kept me going, for another five pictures now.

Interestingly, Scorsese also revealed that some of his recent films were the product of his being “trapped” by circumstances, “whether they were financial, executive situations at studios or physical difficulties.” While he didn’t mention specific titles, he admitted, “That happened a couple of times in the last 10 years.”

Scorsese pointed to the long-gestating Silence as the film he hoped to make next, explaining that it shared themes with some of his earlier works including The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun. “I’m just obsessed with this search for a spiritual core in life. And I’m sorry to have to talk in that way about these films but that is what they are about,” he said.

Of course, it happens all the time that people make noises about retirement and then fail to follow through. But if Scorsese decides to really go ahead with it, no one can say he hasn’t earned it. If anyone deserves a comfy retirement, it’s the guy who’s already given us Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Departed, and so many more American classics.

[Source: The Playlist]

• Martin Scorsese’s Upcoming Movie Slate
• ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Examined in 25-Minute Talk With Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jonah Hill
• Party With New Posters For ‘The Wolf of Wall Street;’ Plus New 10 Images and a Clip
• ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Trailer: Becoming a Legend
• Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Unlikely to Make 2013 Release
• ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Trailer: Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kanye West

What's that saying—if life gives you lemons, make lemonade? Well, how about when decades of destroying the environment gives you a cancer-causing smog problem, make it part of your national defense strategy?

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The App Store is absolutely crammed full of apps that promise the world and don't deliver. One strange little app has appeared on the digital shelves claiming to be able to reduce the need for reading glasses, though it's not likely to be taken very seriously. However, GlassesOff has some pretty compelling scientific backing, and as The Wall Street Journal reports, a 12-week study published in Scientific Reports found the program to improve letter recognition by 1.6 times.

The app includes a baseline vision test, which produces a customized training regimen that the user must follow. Training sessions are up to 15 minutes in length, three times a week, and are designed to help a person's brain better interpret information coming from the eyes of a person suffering from presbyopia (an age-related condition where vision of close-up objects, like a book page, becomes fuzzy).

The app is free to download and comes with a three-week free trial. After the trial, the personalized training will (typically) set you back US$59 for a further four months, but the developers are currently holding a promotion that cuts that cost down to $10.

App claims to be able to improve your vision, and science says it works originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 10 Dec 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Images of dark streaks near the equator hint that liquid water is active on modern Mars, which may spell trouble for future missions

Going gluten-free is all the rage these days. It's the diet of choice for Hollywood starlets and health nuts alike; supermarket aisles are packed full of products touting their lack of the stretchy protein. But for a lot of people, the gluten-free lifestyle may do more harm than good.

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Happy 20th birthday, Doom! id Software's legendary shooter was released twenty years ago today. To celebrate, folks over at Game Art HQ put together an amazing art tribute, with gorgeous HD illustrations of the series' many memorable enemies. Above is Eric Ridgeway's version of the Mancubus; visit the site for more.

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