Abdulaziz Alhamidi

Jay Leno being a guest on the The Tonight Show when David Letterman was guest hosting for Johnny Carson on July 4th, 1979.

"My cat frequently acts like she’s a spy whose cover has just been blown." [lexisayok]

One night in March, 2013, Rami Ismail and his business partner Jan Willem released a game for mobile phones called Ridiculous Fishing. Ismail, who was twenty-four at the time and who lives in the Netherlands, woke the following morning to find that the game had made him tens of thousands of dollars overnight. His first reaction was not elation but guilt. His mother, who has a job in local government, had already left for work. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve watched my mom wake up at six in the morning, work all day, come home, make my brother and me dinner—maybe shout at me for too much ‘computering,’ ” he said. “My first thought that day was that while I was asleep I’d made more money than she had all year. And I’d done it with a mobile-phone game about shooting fish with a machine gun.”

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Kids do amazing things sometimes. They stun you with their simple creativity and boggle you with questions you never had thought of. Their sensitivity is also to be remarked upon. One little boy though, has shown Japan his amazing sensitivity and thoughtfulness and has given his mother the surprise of a lifetime.

In 2012, RocketNews24 shared an article about a husband giving his wife the proposal he wished he had given her. Family, friends and everyone who shared in the couple’s memories came together to show support for the sweet couple through the support of Nissan Presents Happy Surprise Campaign. This time, 8-year-old Hinata took up the Happy Surprise challenge. He wanted to show his mother how much he loves and appreciates everything she does for him.

Hinata’s mother is led to believe she is participating in a PR stint for the Dayz Roox. With the addition of two extras in the backseat and Hinata and his mother in the front, you really can imagine the direction a commercial like this would lead. Hinata’s glowing face, full of excitement is the only indication that perhaps there is more to this simple drive.

But the directions are clear. Drive to Point B only a short distance away.

“I want to listen to music,” Hinata curiously remarks.

“I don’t think there is any music in here, but I see you’re already messing with the controls,” replies his mother. Immediately music starts playing and two extras in the back spring to their roles. A talented singer and violinist, they liven up the atmosphere and stun the mother with their live performance. In fact, the mother doesn’t even realize that the young boy was actually playing the violin in the backseat.

But the surprises don’t end there. The father, who “in no possible way would be out there,” holds a sign telling them to turn left. The older daughter holds up another signs indicating where to park. Hinata springs out of the car and says, “wait here.”

The mother, described as someone always doing her best, who is always there for her children but is also extremely busy, is treated to an unforgettable performance by her son. Hinata looks adorable in his pajamas and cap and sings loud and clear for his mother.

“Thank you for always smiling. I’m sorry for the mischief I’ve caused. I love mom’s smile the best and even when I’m all grown up, please keep smiling.”

Tears and smiles finish the show. Hinata is the last to jump off the stage but races towards his mother and jumps into her open arms.

“How was it mom?” he asks with a smile.

She wipes her tears. “Thank you.”

With the complete success of another Nissan Presents Happy Surprise, we can only hope that another two years doesn’t elapse before we are treated to another heart-warming moment.

Source: Huffington Post Japan, YouTube
Images: YouTube

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• Chinese Juliet is not impressed with her suitor’s attempt at serenading her【Video】
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Origin: Mom gets BIG surprise with help from Nissan 【Video】
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

Last week, the FBI arrested Robert James Talbot Jr., 38, of Katy, Texas. Talbot was the self-styled head of the American Insurgent Movement, which openly plotted to massacre Moslems at mosques and kill them with automatic weapons, sought to rob armored cars, and recruited followers to sow more mayhem. Talbot is a violent Christian fundamentalist who advertised his intention to murder people wholesale.

Kudos to the FBI for arresting this fellow, but as Death and Taxes point out, where the hell was the national panic that attends every arrest of a jihadi terrorist, no matter how cracked and improbable his plan happened to be? Nowhere to be seen.

Now, if this was a recognition by the press that lone kooks are not an existential threat to the world -- even if they are capable of committing horrible, isolated crimes -- I'd be standing up and cheering. But if Talbot had been a brown-skinned conservative Muslim who'd been arrested after planning to attack Christian churches in America with bombs and machine-guns, I suspect there would have been screaming front-page headlines and round-the-clock intensive CNN coverage for days, not to mention grim, determined reporting on Fox News.

Amazon's just-announced set top box FireTV will also double as a games console, and it appears that the company is aggressively courting developers to build games for it. According to a report from Kotaku, Amazon has hired both Portal designer Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, who previously worked on both the Splinter Cell and Far Cry franchises. Swift confirmed the news on Twitter, saying that "it's been killing me to say nothing." Hocking did the same. There are currently no details on the projects either will be working on, though presumably they'll be building experiences for the FireTV and other Amazon devices from within Amazon Game Studios. According to her LinkedIn profile, Swift will serve as a "senior designer" for the company.

...

Continue reading…

by Waster

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

At the 2014 Game Developers Conference, Sony proclaimed that virtual reality was the future of gaming — and introduced the Project Morpheus virtual reality headset to back up that claim. Perhaps you were following along with our live blog, but if not, you can watch the reveal on YouTube today. Sony has uploaded the full hour-long presentation, which includes insight into the company's entire VR strategy alongside the reveal, as well as answers to burning questions from reporters like yours truly. If you're eager to know how Sony might position itself vis-a-vis Facebook in the VR space, look no further.

For even more perspective on VR, watch this presentation by Valve virtual reality expert Michael Abrash after you're done, and...

Continue reading…

Imagine all the things you can do in virtual reality: riding a rollercoaster, riding a dinosaur, going to the movies, sitting on a virtual couch watching TV, going on virtual walks through virtual parks, shopping, brushing your teeth, taking a shower. All without ever having to leave your bed!

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Facebook plans to purchase Oculus VR, maker of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, for $2 billion. The deal is comprised of $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock. Facebook announced its surprise purchase via a blog post. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also revealed Facebook's reasons for the deal. "Oculus's mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences," Zuckerberg says. "Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won't be changing and we hope to accelerate."

Zuckerberg says that Facebook will "focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games." But he makes clear that after Oculus sees through its gaming ambitions, Facebook will expand the product into new territory. "We're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home." Zuckerberg equates Oculus to "a new communication platform" and clearly has a vision that extends far beyond the gaming focus that helped Oculus become a smash Kickstarter success.

"Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures."

The acquisition of Oculus seemingly comes out of nowhere: the company just demoed its most recent version of the Oculus Rift development kit at GDC 2014 to much fanfare. Oculus has been steadily moving towards a consumer product, and Facebook's resources can only help to push that mission along. "Facebook understands the potential for VR," the Oculus team wrote in its own blog post announcing the deal. "Mark and his team share our vision for virtual reality’s potential to transform the way we learn, share, play, and communicate. Facebook is a company that believes that anything is possible with the right group of people, and we couldn’t agree more."

But the most interesting question, as Zuckerberg lays out, is where the technology will go in the future. "By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures." Zuckerberg says that future is coming sooner than anyone thinks, and he "can't wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us."

griffstream:

- hellooooo Monday…

Ever wonder what it'd be like if Japanese video game music composers worked together with western composers? Wonder no longer.

Brave Wave Productions latest album, IN FLUX, features a host of big and lesser known names in the composer world, collaborating on some fascinating original tracks. Among the folks who contributed to the album are Manami Matsumae (Mega Man, Mighty No. 9), Keiji Yamagishi (Ninja Gaiden), as well as Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill), Saori Kobayashi (Panzer Dragoon Saga), Eirik Suhrke (Spelunky), and many others. It's a killer list of amazingly talented composers and musicians, and if you have any interest at all in video game music you owe it to yourself to check out IN FLUX.

The album launched on March 4, and digital copies are available on Bandcamp for $10 and iTunes for $12. The whole thing runs 12 tracks long and is totally worth the price of admission.

Preview the album here, and be sure to keep your ears open for these guys and gals. I'm betting they have some cool stuff waiting in the pipeline.

[Edit: According to the Official Durarara!! Twitter, Studio Shuka was formed by a producer on the previous Durarara!! series, which explains why so many familiar faces are present.]

A brand new Durarara!! TV anime was announced at the Dengeki Game Festival 2014 event held in Akihabara on Sunday. Details on what material this new project will cover are still scarce, but we do have a list of staff who will be working on the anime.

Director Takahiro Omori (Baccano!, Durarara!!) will be returning for the second season. Likewise, Noboru Takagi (Baccano!, Durarara!!) is back on scripting duties, and Makoto Yoshimori (Baccano!, Durarara!!) will be in charge of music composition. Takaharu Kishida (Baccano!, Durarara!!) will be adapting the character designs from Suzuhito Yasuda's original illustrations. Studio Shuka will be handling the production.

Based on the novel series by Ryohgo Narita, Durarara!! ran back in 2010 and gained quite a bit of popularity here in Japan. Crazy monsters, an ensemble cast, and an intriguing story in modern day Tokyo were the name of the game. While I prefer the previous series, Baccano!, I have a great deal of love for Durarara!! and its special brand of craziness. With the novel series now finished (and a sequel set to start shortly), this is the perfect time to return to the source material and give it another adaptation. Some of the best material in the series takes place after the original anime ended, so fans are in for one helluva good time.

The big question mark here is Studio Shuka. Nobody seems to know anything about it, making it somewhat puzzling that they'd acquire a relatively high profile project like this. Oddly enough, the entire core staff of both Baccano! and Durarara!! are on board for this, including director Omori. The latter has always had close ties to Brains Base, so I can't help but wonder why they're not the ones handling the project.

In any case, this is spectacular news for Narita fans, and I personally couldn't be more thrilled. Sound off below if you're as excited as I am!

[Via Dengeki Online]

After 16 days, the hive consciousness of Twitch Plays Pokemon has successfully beaten Pokemon Red. Early this morning, thousands of chat participants navigated through the final fight with Blue, a major milestone in a "social experiment" that has effectively turned Twitch.tv into a huge crowdsourced gaming platform. Twitch Plays Pokemon, which launched on February 12th, translates chat text into button presses on a Game Boy emulator. The result was chaotic but surprisingly effective, and the number of players had risen to 35,000 within four days. Yesterday, players reached the endgame against the Elite Four— something the creator was initially dubious would happen. During the battle with Blue, viewership topped 100,000, though it didn't reach the overall peak of 120,000 from February 18th.

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Watch live video from TwitchPlaysPokemon on TwitchTV

Without some changes, the game may never have been won. In mid-February, the creator modified its controls to make it more "beatable," preventing trolls from spamming the start button and creating a "democracy" mode, which accepted only the most popular button presses rather than all of them. Twitch itself had to fix its chat system after it buckled under the strain of heavy Twitch Plays Pokemon usage. Company executives, however, have been more than happy with the success of the project, calling it "one of the most interesting things we've seen on Twitch since we launched."

Players, meanwhile, have evolved an arcane series of memes and religious factions. A central element is the Helix Fossil, which players went to great lengths to revive over the course of the game. Others have copied the massively multiplayer model with other games like The Legend of Zelda, and it's unlikely that members of the Twitch Plays Pokemon community will be content to stop with beating Pokemon Red. For now, a comprehensive timeline of the experiment is being updated here.

my only oscar prediction

For many 22 February was Cat Day in Japan, but for video game fans it meant something much greater. This was finally the day Japanese gamers could get their hands on Sony’s next-gen console, the PlayStation 4.

Prior to this, at the Sony Building in Ginza a celebration was to be held where 100 people who purchased their consoles in advance would get a chance to be the first person to own a Japanese-sold PS4.

The tickets were handed out at 11:00 in the morning of 21 February for the event which took place that evening. Our own first Docomo iPhone5 buyer in Japan, Mr. Sato was hoping to make lightning strike twice and got in line for tickets two days in advance.

■ The line-up

Knowing that this was a highly limited event Mr. Sato gathered up his battery packs and long underwear for another cold night in line in front of the Sony Building. He arrived there at about 1pm on the day before tickets were to be issued. It seemed he wasn’t early enough though as he ended up ninth in line. This was okay, though. The first PS4 would be given out by lottery among the ticket holders so Mr. Sato still had a chance.

By morning the tickets were distributed to the first 30 people while the rest went home dejected. It all finished shortly after 11am on the 21st which meant Mr. Sato had lots of time to find stuff to eat until the doors opened at 10:30pm that night.

■ Media frenzy

The event took place on the 8th floor of the Sony Building. Everything was colored in a PS4-blue motif. There must have been about 100 members of the press packed up against the wall and eager to cover this new console war as it broke out in Japan.

The celebration began with a greeting by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan President Hiroshi Kawano and Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida. After, a cavalcade of celebrity video messages were played featuring the likes of Takanori Nishikawa, as well as bands Scandal and Fujifabric.

There were also a couple celebrity exhibition matches of FIFA14 and Killzone. Finally, game producers like Hideo Kojima and Shinji Hashimoto spoke words of congratulations for the new release. It was about an hour and a half of talks but Mr. Sato thought everything went by quickly.

Before he knew it a large countdown timer started for the last minutes until midnight of 22 February and the official release of the PS4 in Japan.

■ And the PS4 goes to…

President Kawano reached into a box to pull out the number for the lucky owner of the first Japanese PS4. Mr. Sato’s heart was racing but quickly sunk when his number was not called.

The winner was a college student who went by the handle Nekomi and was dressed up in camouflage and carrying a couple of guns. Mr. Sato also recognized him as the guy at the front of the line the day before. Actually, he had been waiting there since 19 February so it seemed fair that he get it. The first console was handed over by SCE CEO Andrew House.

The lucky bastard even got it signed by Hideo Kojima.

■ Move stole the show

Although slightly bummed Mr. Sato walked away from the chaos of everyone claiming their PS4 machines and notice a man dressed up as the PlayStation’s Move motion controller. The outfit was rather intricate with realistic looking buttons and pink ball on top.

Mr. Sato recognized him as Pyokotan, a cartoonist who once made news by going to the Sony general shareholders meeting dressed as Mario. He was much more appropriately dressed this time though, and got compliments by many people on the Sony staff that night.  Even when walking in, Pyokotan Move was blinded by the dozens of flashes from the media gallery.

Mr. Sato and Pyokotan exchange pleasantries and sympathized with each other for not getting the first Japanese PS4. Then they went to pick up theirs and head home to try and find another piece of electronics they could be the first to buy in the nation.

Original article by Mr. Sato
Photos: RocketNews24

▼ Blue glow-in-the-dark wristbands were distributed to participants.

▼ Bottles of water were also given out with the release date “PS4 2.22” printed on them. Inside was Volvic, a brand of water in Japan.

▼ There was a number for the draw to choose the first PS4 owner as well as a sheet to predict the winner of the exhibition matches.

▼ Waiting at the entrance of the event venue.

▼ The decor was a uniform blue color like the image of the PS4.

▼ Participants also received a special towel.

▼ The event started at 10:30pm on 21 February.

▼ Greetings from the president of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida and president of SCEJ Hiroshi Hebei.

▼ Celebration video messages from Shota Shimizu, Takanori Nishikawa, Amemiya, and Akina Minami.

▼ Yuna Shirakawa & Travis (SCE) VS Baikingu & Daisuke Ishidate (SCE) in a Killzone Shadow Fall match. The winning team was Shirakawa and Travis.

▼ Next matchup was Mayuko Kawakita and jengaman VS Shoji Jo and Maiki in FIFA14 World Class Soccer.

▼ Jo and Maiki won, but Maiki never really made plays so it seemed like Jo won that alone.

▼ Celebratory bottles of sake from the producer and director of SEGA’s Ryugatoku (Yakuza), Masayoshi Yokoyama.

▼ Congratulations from Square Enix producers Naoki Yoshida and Shinji Hashimoto.

▼ And the last guest creator was Hideo Kojima known for his Konami masterpiece the Metal Gear Solid series.

▼ Finally it was time to draw for the first purchase.

▼ Nekomi (nickname) was chosen.

▼ It was handed to him personally by SCE CEO Andrew House.

▼ The place was packed with media.

▼ He even got Kojima to sign it. It’s hard not to be jealous.

▼ His winning pose. Nekomi might have become a little unhinged after waiting two days in line.

▼ Pyokotan was there dressed like a Move controller. Unfortunately he couldn’t get the first PS4. But he was able to get one just a little later.

▼ Everyone at the front of the line were able to get their PS4’s too.

▼ Scheduled to debut on 6 March, the upcoming gamer idol group “Game Girls” got theirs too.

▼ Where there was once a countdown timer in front of the Sony Building it now says “On Sale.”

Related Stories

• Countdown to PlayStation 4 in Japan – Mr. Sato heads to the Sony Building to join the fun
• We try swapping out the hard drive of a PS4, let the Xbox One hold the beer
• Our reporter Mr. Sato becomes first Japanese buyer of a Docomo iPhone5S!
• Mr. Sato Cosplays as Slime and Waits in Line 24 Hours to Purchase Dragon Quest X
• A chick, a fat guy and an Asian dude were standing in line for a PS4…

Origin: We try to get the first PS4 sold in Japan, and so does this guy dressed like a Move controller
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

We’d like to give a quick status on the new Premium plans and thank you all for the support.  It’s been a little over a week since we introduced the new paid accounts and the support from our community has been terrific.  That said, we still have a ways to go to meet our goals and are working diligently to address as much of your input as possible.

Here are answers to many of the frequent questions that we’ve been receiving over the past week.

Q: Why no Paypal?

A: We just released Paypal payments. You can now use either secure credit card payments through Stripe, or checkout using Paypal.

Q: Why didn’t you do ads?

A: As we mentioned in our previous posts, we’re heavily committed to the open web and feel that ads put our neutrality in jeopardy.  We haven’t completely ruled out future advertising for non-premium accounts, but we will do everything possible to avoid that decision.

Q: What happens when my grace period or trial expires and I’m over the free feed limit?

A: If you’re over the limit and your trial is expired, then your feeds will stop updating. We won’t ever lock you out of The Old Reader, and you’ll always be able to see what your friends are sharing, and you’ll always be able to export your subscriptions to OPML.

Q: Does “6 months of post storage” extend to shared items and comments?

A: We keep shared items and comments forever. Those are never removed. The only posts that will ever be removed are the read and unread posts that you haven’t shared, liked, or starred.

Q: If feed refreshes are shared, how do the tiered feed refresh speeds work?

A: We do our best to store and fetch only unique feeds, so we fetch new posts for a feed once, and deliver the new posts for each user who is subscribed to that feed.

So, if one of the users who is subscribed to that feed decides to become a premium user, all of the feeds that user is subscribed to will begin updating faster. Any free users subscribed to the same feeds will get the faster refresh time as well.

Q: What is the Instapaper and Readability integration?

A: Instapaper and Readability integration is setup, so that if you go into settings and authorize those services, any time you Star a post, it will be shared to to those services. You don’t need to click “Sent to” and be redirected off to the other site. Just click Star and it all happens in the background.

Q: Where’s the bookmarklet?

A: The bookmarklet is a high priority feature for us. We think it’s a very valuable feature to be able to take any article you come across and put it into The Old Reader for later reading. It’s a bit of a big change, since now we don’t have the concept of a post without a feed, but we’re on it and it will be available soon.

Thanks for using The Old Reader!

News broke earlier today that Facebook was buying popular messaging app WhatsApp for $16 billion, and while the social media giant ingesting yet another company is certainly news unto itself, the deal marks what could be one of the most successful venture capital investment deals of all time. Sequoia Capital reportedly invested a mere $8 million in WhatsApp back in 2011 — and while startups commonly raise subsequent rounds of funding amongst several investors, WhatsApp never announced any additional funding. Simply sticking with that initial investor would be striking, but it's even more arresting in light of the payoff.

The percentage of WhatsApp owned by Sequoia has been kept under wraps, but sources tell us it lands somewhere between 10 and 20 percent — meaning Sequoia could be reaping as much as $3.2 billion in cash and stock for that initial investment. It's a huge win for the firm, and makes other recent deals — Instagram reportedly closed a $50 million round of funding right before Facebook acquired it for $1 billion, for example — look puny in comparison.

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"In terms of value creation, this is the biggest on record."

"In terms of value creation, this is the biggest on record," says Anand Sanwal, CEO of venture capital tracking firm CB Insights. eBay, long considered one of the great venture capital exits, raised $6.7 million and was valued at $1.9 billion after its IPO. Today's announcement also makes the the news that Snapchat turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook seem a lot less shocking than it did at the time.

Ironically, just this past December WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum told the Wall Street Journal that the company had no intention of selling, going public, or raising new funding — a stance it was able to maintain because it wasn't spending money on extraneous expenses like marketing. "That will allow our company to stay independent," he said at the time. With $16 billion in the equation, however, it appears that became a very different story — and depending on where Facebook's stock goes in the months and years ahead, the number could soar even higher.

Update: Fortune reports that Sequoia may have ultimately invested as much as $60 million in WhatsApp, which might be a larger amount the company publicly reported but does nothing to change the epic scale of Sequoia's financial win.

Additional reporting by Ben Popper

Last night on the debut episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the host Jimmy Fallon decided to call in a $100 bet made with a friend of his that said he’d never be the host of The Tonight Show. As it turns out, Fallon had a similar bet with a number of different friends, including but not limited to Robert De Niro, Kim Kardashian, Joan Rivers, and even Lady Gaga, and they all paid a visit to the set to cough up the dough.

High school is a drag, especially in Japan. Along with all the typical tests and homework that come with being a student, there’s a seemingly never-ending list of rules (you must wear special indoor shoes, wear a mask if you’re sick, open all the windows in the dead of winter to ventilate the room) that are enough to make even the most diligent of students want to scream. That’s why these Japanese students are really nailing this high school thing. Not only have they found a way to have a little fun amongst the stress and pressure of school life, they’re pulling it off with style and creativity that not only brings a smile to their own faces, but the faces of procrastinating netizens all over the world. Nailed it!

▼ Nope, not a bunch of cabinets stacked together. Look closer.

▼ Now why didn’t we think of this…

▼ Hey, she was up all night studying. Give her a break…and some bonus points for her makeshift in-class bed.

▼ Find the Pikachu.

▼ What Japanese student photo compilation would be complete without a Hadoken pic?

▼ …and there was no chalk left for class.

▼ King of the classroom.

▼ Chair art. Does that mean he gets an A in art class?

▼ A real-life Prince of Tennis.

▼ Extreme planking at its best. 

▼ She most definitely failed the test…but look at that friendly robot cat face. Worth it?

▼ Quidditch, anyone?

▼ She’s not procrastinating, she created a hand to do her homework for her.

▼ The perfect way to sleep in class undetected. There are headless students, right?
▼ Half past four and still at school? Go ahead, duel in the classroom. You’ve earned it.

Source: CuRAZY

Related Stories

• Some Japanese school regulations don’t make any sense!
• Japanese men have spoken: they don’t like your nail art
• Flipping classrooms: Is Japan on the verge of embracing a new educational paradigm?
• 15-year-old girl tries to scam adult out of $40,000 – gets caught dressed like a businessman
• Streaking on the rise in China: nudity for social change?

Origin: 15 Japanese students who are really nailing this high school thing
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

A Message From Ken Levine When Jon Chey, Rob Fermier and I founded Irrational Games seventeen years ago, our mission was to make visually unique worlds and populate them with singular characters. We built Rapture and Columbia, the Von Braun and The Rickenbacker, the Freedom Fortress and some of the nastiest basements a SWAT team ever set foot into. We created Booker and Elizabeth, the Big Daddy and the Little Sister, MidWives and ManBot. In that time, Irrational has grown larger and more successful than we could have conceived when we began our three-person studio in a living room in Cambridge, MA. It’s been the defining project of my professional life. Now Irrational Games is about to roll out the last DLC for BioShock Infinite and people are understandably asking: What’s next? Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one. And working with the incredible team at Irrational Games is indeed the best job I’ve ever had. While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience. I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two. That is going to mean parting ways with all but about fifteen members of the Irrational team. There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition. Besides financial support, the staff will have access to the studio for a period of time to say their goodbyes and put together their portfolios. Other Take-Two studios will be on hand to discuss opportunities within the company, and we’ll be hosting a recruiting day where we’ll be giving 3rd party studios and publishers a chance to hold interviews with departing Irrational staff.* What’s next? In time we will announce a new endeavor with a new goal: To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. To foster the most direct relationship with our fans possible, we will focus exclusively on content delivered digitally. When I first contemplated what I wanted to do, it became very clear to me that we were going to need a long period of design. Initially, I thought the only way to build this venture was with a classical startup model, a risk I was prepared to take. But when I talked to Take-Two about the idea, they convinced me that there was no better place to pursue this new chapter than within their walls. After all, they’re the ones who believed in and supported BioShock in the first place. Thanks to Irrational and 2K’s passion in developing the games, and the fans who believe in it, BioShock has generated retail revenues of over a half billion dollars and secured an iconic place in gaming. I’m handing the reins of our creation, the BioShock universe, to 2K so our new venture can focus entirely on replayable narrative. If we’re lucky, we’ll build something half as memorable as BioShock. - Ken Levine irrationalgames.com

Prankster Jack Vale recently freaked strangers out at the beach by walking up to them and talking about personal information he gathered from their social media updates. Jack has tried this social media experiment out in the past, but this time he goes for more of a stalker vibe.

I stalked people at the beach by researching their social media profiles. How did I find them? They all posted public pictures of themselves on Instagram and Twitter! And so the quest began!

When boats are launched for the first time, it's customary to smash a bottle of champagne across the bow. But for industrial-robot maker Kuka, its new factory in southwestern Shanghai is being celebrated with a battle between man and machine. On March 11th, the company's squaring off one of its Agilus robots against German table tennis player Timo Boll. While Boll has storied career of victories against human players, he's playing against a model Kuka says is the fastest in the world. Typically those machines are used for product assembly, loading and unloading, and even painting, but in this case it will be trading volleys over a standard ping pong table.

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Man vs. machine, to celebrate a robot factory

This isn't the first time the very same robot has been used for something unusual. Late last year Kuka showed off the KR Agilus model replicating 3D artwork made by Israeli industrial designer Yaron Elyasi. The robot's orange color was also the inspiration for a line of stainless steel luxury watches made by Sevenfriday. Though neither one of those things involved ping pong, or replacing humans in sports.

No word yet on if and when a video of the match will be shown off, but you can see a preview of what to expect in the teaser trailer:

via http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XdP6Lp2ceqY/Syo48uLSImI/AAAAAAAAFN0/LX2Qr_69G7g/s1600-h/tf2axer.jpg