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GoPro head honcho Nick Woodman joined Engadget on stage at CES, and took the chance to tease more info about the much talked about quadcopter, Karma. Not much is known about how it will look, but Woodman explained that "We make everything backwards c...

Fallout 4 expects you to commit murder. While you can occasionally avoid killing others, the wasteland is ruthless and demands violence. That’s how Bethesda intended the game to be played, anyway—but clever players are finding ways around it.

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Can any NFL game being played today or tomorrow equal the excitement of the Thursday night Packers-Lions contest, with that astonishing Hail Mary as time ran out? Almost certainly not. Nonetheless, here are my picks:

I’ll probably regret sticking with the Bills and Dolphins again. I hope I’m wrong about the Falcons, Raiders, Patriots and Racist Epithets of DC.

What say you?

The post NFL Open Thread appeared first on Balloon Juice.

As I've been reading up on Carson, there seems to be no limit on the number of rackets and wingnut fleecing schemes he's involved in. This appears to be just one on the list. As I wrote earlier, the campaign itself seems to have originated as a money-making scheme that evolved into a front-running campaign.

Call of Duty campaigns are a guilty pleasure of mine, so I was excited last week to fire up Black Ops 3 on PC . Ten minutes later, I’d shut it down, and a sad sense of déjà vu was washing over me.

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Ever since he punched Hitler in the face 75 years ago, Captain America has been a political character. Many times he’s walked away from the government, and reminded people that he works for America as a whole, not just its government. So when he does exactly that, it’s kind of amazing that people still get so outraged by it.

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Geoff Marcy, the prominent astronomer found guilty of sexually harassing several female students between 2001 and 2010, has resigned from his tenured position on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. The action comes in the wake of a growing outcry over the university’s lack of sanctions against him for his misconduct, including an online petition expressing support for the victims.

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If you've been itchin' to use Spotify alongside Google's streaming dongle, you'll soon get that chance. The music streaming service will finally be available for use on Chromecast. As you might expect, Spotify will play nice with the new version of...

Wearables playing a big role at major trade shows isn't a surprise, and neither is the fact that most of the ones we've seen at IFA 2015 are smartwatches. Samsung, Motorola and TomTom all introduced new timepieces this week, while Huawei finally re...

Fifty years ago today, “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones was the nation’s number-one single. Below, a notorious December 1981 performance of the song in Hampton, Virginia.

The Washington Post's bureau chief in Tehran, Jason Rezaian, has been imprisoned in Iran for nearly ten months. The Iranian government has been taciturn when it comes to explaining why they have decided to charge the Iranian-American reporter — who has dual citizenship — with "espionage, collaboration with hostile governments, gathering classified information and disseminating propaganda." The two main pieces of evidence against him are an American visa application for his Iranian journalist wife and a letter from soon-to-be President Obama's transition team in 2008. 

Rezaian's trial began on Tuesday, and is closed to the public. An editor at the Post — as well as Rezaian's mother and wife — unsuccessfully attempted to attend. Abolghassem Salavati, the judge dealing with the high-profile case who is often called the "judge of death," was admonished internationally for human rights abuses, and has been known to sentence anti-government protesters to death. 

"There is no justice in this system, not an ounce of it," the Post's executive editor said in a statement yesterday, "and yet the fate of a good, innocent man hangs in the balance. Iran is making a statement about its values in its disgraceful treatment of our colleague, and it can only horrify the world community."

Rezaian's situation has been a point of contention in the already-fractious nuclear negotiations with Iran. The White House and State Department have mentioned the case in public remarks and during the talks. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has become one of the crucial voices in the nuclear negotiations, said in April, "It is unfortunate that some over-zealous, low-level operative tried to take advantage of him. And I don’t go into further detail because it’s a pending case before the court. And I hope that he will be cleared of that charge.”

Today's proceedings have ended, and it is not clear when the trial will resume.

Read more posts by Jaime Fuller

Filed Under: journalism ,jason rezaian

A new open-access database of biosignatures has been designed to help astronomers map which alien planets may be capable of supporting life. It catalogues colors that reflect from 137 microbe species, a brilliant range "from the egg-yolk yellow of Halorubrum chaoviator" to "the deep blue-green of Dermocarpa violacea." [Image via]

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Barack Obama called HBO series The Wire "one of the greatest pieces of art in the last couple of decades" in an interview with the show's creator that was released today at the Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice Reform. The Wire chronicled the effects of the drug war as it was waged on the streets of Baltimore in the early 2000s, detailing how both drug use and the clumsy, heavy-handed law enforcement response to it devastated many urban communities.

As Simon summed it up, "what drugs don't destroy, the war against them is ripping apart."

Interestingly, Obama spoke of the incarceration problem as much from an economic perspective as from a social justice one. "The challenge," he said, "is folks go into prison at great expense to the state, [and] many times [are] trained to become more hardened criminals while in prison, come out and are basically unemployable and end up looping back in" to the prison system.

"When you break down why people aren't getting back into the labor force, even as jobs are being created, a big chunk of that is the young male population with felony histories," Obama said. "So now where we have the opportunity to give them a pathway toward a responsible life, they're foreclosed. And that's counterproductive."

Fiscally speaking, mass incarceration is "breaking the bank," Obama said. "It means everyone's taxes are going up, and services are being squeezed." Many elements in the Republican party have become receptive to these message in recent years. But in the Senate especially there remains a hardline of lawmakers who cut their political teeth during the tough-on-crime era and who remain enthusiastic proponents of harsh sentences for drug offenders, despite reams of evidence showing they don't work.

The Justice Department under Obama deserves a great deal of credit for taking administrative steps to reduce the burden of incarceration, including modest sentencing changes and an explicit hands-off approach to the states that have legalized marijuana. But as Obama notes in the interview, the real work of reform will have to be done through Congress.

Inspiration lies in the strangest of places—and for researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology & Research in Singapore, that includes the eye of moth. A new antireflective coating inspired by the creature's ocular faculties could help bump up the efficiency of solar cells.

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One of the reasons it's difficult for liberals to easily and effectively win arguments about economics with conservatives is that conservatives have a very simple mantra: let the natural forces of the market do their work. Government is seen as an interloper and distorter of Darwinian forces that would otherwise ultimately let all goods and services achieve their perfect prices with maximum efficiency.

There are a number of gigantic problems with that worldview, of course. The free market refuses to pay for a wide variety of crucial infrastructure items and investments in public health and safety; consumers are at an information and power disadvantage against unscrupulous companies; and human life and dignity are unacceptably cheap on the open market.

But there's another key lie in the conservative "natural economy" story, which is that modern corporate capitalism is anything but natural. It's an artificial system encoded arbitrarily into law and interpreted in a specific way that tends to give maximum advantage to executive and shareholders at the expense of society. Kent Greenfield examined right here at Washington Monthly one way in which that is true: the Dodge v. Ford case that explicitly denied corporations the right to engage in more socialistic practices and demanded that they only serve the bottom line for their shareholders. The corporate veil itself another artificial legal construct, as is the notion of corporate personhood.

Our society is built on rules and regulations, all of them socially and legally built out of artifice. That is just as equally true of business as it is of government.

So, in keeping with tradition , Nintendo has announced a new iteration of their evergreen handheld. Unlike previous updates, however, the new 3DS packs some important updates. Confused? You're not the only one. Let's break down what we know so far.

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Remember this greatest wingnut hit from the 2012 campaign?

In the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, David Siegel, billionaire chief of Florida timeshare company Westgate Resorts, sent an email to all employees. “Of course, as your employer, I can’t tell you whom to vote for,” Siegel wrote, but offered “a few facts that might help you decide what is in your best interest.” These included that re-electing Obama would “threaten your job” and result in “less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.”

Obama carved a backwards letter B on my economic growth picture and if you minimum wage slaves vote for him well it would be a shame if something were to happen to your job and HOLY CRAP IS THAT OBAMA’S ENTRANCE MUSIC I HEAR JIM?

Just over two years after penning that company-wide email, Siegel informed Westgate employees that instead of layoffs, he would boost their minimum wage to $10 per hour beginning in 2015.

In fact, according to Siegel, 2014 was a banner year. “We’re experiencing the best year in our history and I wanted to do something to show my gratitude for the employees who make that possible,” Siegel said in announcing the wage hike. He also recently told the Orlando Business Journal that “things have never been better.”

Westgate currently employees about 12,000 people. Though the minimum wage increase won’t impact all workers, including those who receive tips, commissions, or work under a collective bargaining agreement, a company spokesman told Vegas Inc. that thousands of employees will receive a raise because of the move.

Oh.  Well then.  Must be President Eric Cantor’s doing.

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Underneath every picture of a dog in a beekeeping suit and ice-bucket challenge video you see on the internet, there's a complex framework of code. Soon, that framework will get a tiny tune-up that will make surfing the web on your phone faster than it's ever been.

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Look, Amazon didn't exactly hide the fact that today's mystery product announcement would be its long-rumored 3D phone. But with the exception of the occasional picture, the company did a decent job of keeping its new handheld device out of the...

iOS: Castro is one of the better podcast managers on the iPhone and it's great those looking for something easy to use. Today, it gets a little more functionality with a sleep timer, a continuous play option, and a fantastic new playback speed mode.

One of the big features Castro lacked when it first launched was the sleep timer. Now, that's included in the app alongside a continuous play option so you can just let podcasts play out over time. Those are great, but the real hidden improvement here is the new pitch shift algorithm. Now, when you play a podcast at faster (or slower) speeds, the app runs an algorithm that makes it sound less robotic than other podcast apps. You can get a demo of it here, but if you prefer to listen to podcasts at increased speeds, this is one of the best sounding implementations I've heard. Castro still isn't a full featured podcast client like Downcast, but for casual podcast listeners, it's the easiest to use.

Castro ($3.99) | iTunes App Store

Talking Points Memo is highlighting one of the Arkansas legislaturers who wants to defund Obamacare in Arkansas by turning down free money that allows Medicaid expansion eligible people to buy policies on the Exchanges.

More than a decade ago, Arkansas Rep. Josh Miller (R) was in a catastrophic car accident that broke his neck and left him paralyzed. Medicare and Medicaid paid the $1 million bill for his hospitalization and rehabilitation.

Okay, the safety net caught him.  It worked as intended and evidently, Mr. Miller has been able to do something with his life.  This sounds like a win.

The accident that paralyzed Miller occurred about 11 years ago, the Times reported. He was driving with a friend, alcohol was involved, but Miller said he couldn’t remember who was driving. When he arrived at the hospital with his life-changing injuries, he was uninsured.

Under Obamacare in he would be required to have insurance so the safety net would not be needed to catch him when he and his buddy were young, healthy and invincible until they weren’t.  In a pre-PPACA world, Mr. Miller is uninsurable on the private market.  If he was too poor to buy a plan on the Exchange, he would qualify for Medicaid in roughly half the country.  The other half are governed by sadists.

But this week, as the Arkansas legislature has debated continuing its privatized Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, Miller has remained steadfast in his opposition…

The difference, he said, is that some of the 100,000 people who have gained coverage through Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion don’t work hard enough or just want access to the program so they can purchase and abuse prescription drugs.

“My problem is two things,” Miller said. “One, we are giving it to able-bodied folks who can work … and two, how do we pay for it?”

Okay, this makes perfect sense — Mr. Miller was the deserving poor.  Everyone else who is uninsured and either drunk driving or getting into a car with a drunk driver is a lazy shiftless moocher who probably wants to get into prescription drug fraud.

This is a great reason!

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D’oh:

In an email, [Virginia Republican Party Treasurer Bob] FitzSimmonds said he thought the word he used had the same meaning as “twaddle,” which is defined as foolish speech. ”The minute I found out my error, I deleted the post and apologized,” he told Pilot on Politics. “I don’t use that kind of language.” ”Also to be clear,” he added, “my post was not about Barbara Comstock. It was relating to the sexist stereotypes being used by the woman posting.”

Update from a reader:

I am not inclined to come to the defense of the GOP, but even Robert Browning made the exact same mistake in one of his major poems, Pippa Passes.

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Gas is already expensive, but it's made even worse by the fact that prices tend to fluctuate depending on the day of week. So, gas price tracking site GasBuddy crunched the numbers to see which day of the week prices tend to be lowest, and it depends on which state you're in.

Somewhat surprisingly, prices tended to be lowest on weekends (which includes late Friday in this case) in most states. Some states, like Delaware, South Dakota, Kentucky, or Iowa broke this trend by offering up the lowest cost during the week, but as a general rule for most of us, filling up over the weekend is likely the cheapest choice. Head over to GasBuddy for the full state-by-state list.

GasBuddy Study Finds Best Day for Motorists to Fill Up | GasBuddy via Consumerist

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 trailer pretty much overwhelmed us with spectacle. And supervillains. Did you catch all of the amazing villain reveals, and weird clues? We've got you covered, with our complete roundup of screencaps!

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Astronaut Karen Nyberg just tweeted this breathtaking photo of a sunrise, taken from humanity's most awesome scenic overlook — the International Space Station.

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Comic-Con 2013 starts in just one week. And if you're still overwhelmed with the wealth of panels, activities and off-site adventures, then we're here to help. We've compiled a complete list of the best of the best events that you cannot miss this year. Here's the ultimate Comic-Con 2013 To-Do List.

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