Abdulaziz Alhamidi

So that mech we mentioned last night—you know, the one that's made by the same studio that built armor for Pacific Rim and Iron Man—it's now officially going around Comic-Con. Here's some footage of the mech trying its best to befriend a little girl, brought to us by by Stan Winston School.

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Deus Ex: The Fall is now playable, in full, on any iOS device, regardless of its jailbroken status. When The Fall launched earlier this month, it included a surprise feature that blocked all guns from firing on jailbroken devices. Square Enix never announced this feature beforehand, so some players were miffed (and out $7).

Jailbreaking opens a phone up for customization not intended by the provider and it voids a device's warranty, but it's not illegal.

Today's patch removes this feature and allows guns to fire on all devices, including jailbroken ones, as Square Enix promised. The patch also tweaks other parts of the game for everyone: It improves enemy AI, increases XP rewards and the amount of credits earned throughout the game, improves damage and accuracy of the Combat Rifle, increases Shotgun damage, and reduces some weapon costs, including the high-end Plasma Rifles and Rocket Launchers.

Deus Ex: The Fall runs on iPad 3 or better, iPad Mini, iPhone 4S and above, and iPod Touch 5 and above. It's available in the App Store - before buying, give our review a look. We found The Fall to be enjoyable, yet hollow.

Deus Ex: The Fall patch restores missing gunplay originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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"You can't hate Legend of Zelda!" You make a compelling argument, SammyClassicSonicFan, but HaleyTheHedgehog isn't buying it. Maybe it's time to bust out the "pitch-perfect gameplay."

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On Youtube, a video of this robot with excellent gymnastics ability has been creating a lot of buzz in Japan.

Don’t miss his perfect dismount after 0.35 seconds. Could he help Japan win a gold medal?

According to two reports on an Israeli website, Apple, Sony, and Samsung are among the suitors for 3D gesture-sensing company PrimeSense, which provided the technology for the first version of Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect as well the Xtion by Asus and several other products.

For a number of years, PrimeSense looked like the prime challenger for ushering in a new user interface based on physical gestures, and its hardware and software is currently in tens of millions of home gaming systems. The technology is interesting for PCs and mobile devices, important for gaming, but potentially critical to the whole new array of living room smart systems that are hitting the market — like the new Xbox One.

An Apple delegation reportedly visited PrimeSense’s Tel Aviv headquarters recently as top engineers checked out the company’s facilities and technology. Apple already has three research and development centers in Israel.

The only challenge?

Microsoft’s new Kinect, which is much more sensitive than the first model, doesn’t use the Israeli company’s technology, causing the loss of tens of millions of dollars in royalty payments on a go-forward basis. Leap Motion has developed much more sensitive sensing capability — racking movements of both hands and all 10 fingers at 290 frames per second and detecting movements as small as one-hundredth of a millimeter – and has a signed deal with Asus.

PrimeSense is also working on embedding motion sensing in laptops, but Leap Motion seems to be a step ahead there, too, and has already signed a deal with HP to bring embedded gesture control to PCs and eventually smartphones.

And with no other really hit products in the market right now, the company’s prospects look fairly sub-prime, and it was forced to lay off a quarter of its staff — about 50 employees — over the last year.

Hence the look toward acquisitions. And the company does have a patent portfolio, reportedly, that could be very valuable.

The question is whether Apple, or any other suitor, wants to be seen as picking up Microsoft’s leavings. There’s a reason why Xbox uses different technology, and only part of it is that Microsoft developed it in-house. PrimeSense reportedly does have a new product that is much more precise than its existing products, but the challenge is that the price is more expensive than competing solutions.

One other problem with the report is that a PrimeSense representative “laughed off” the $300 million acquisition rumor, telling TechCrunch “we’re worth 10 times that.” That, of course, could be posturing — it’s hard to see how a 140-employee company that just laid off 50 people is worth $3 billion — but it’s at least an unofficial signal that in this case smoke may not be revealing fire.

Here is an example of PrimeSense’s technology in action:

Filed under: Business, Deals, Gadgets, Games

vernacular-manslaughter:

octospider:

Gwendoline Christie is the actress for Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones. She stands at 6 feet 3 inches tall and took swordfighting, horseriding, and stagefighting lessons for her part, as well as gaining 14 pounds of muscle, to accurately portray Brienne. (x)

She was also terrified of cutting her hair because she’d spent her life believing it was one of the only things that would make people see her as feminine despite her height. In an interview with TV Guide she said:

I struggled for a long time with [cutting] my hair, but then I’m grateful for the opportunity to realize that femininity doesn’t have to come from hair or any of those traditional female archetypes of appearance, So, that’s been exciting actually. I can’t speak with any kind of authority whatsoever because I’m just an actor and I only have my opinions, but I do think it’s really refreshing to have a woman depicted on a mainstream TV show that doesn’t obey typical aesthetics of females and the way they have been portrayed in the past. And I’m really excited to be portraying one of those women. And I hope that her popularity signals a greater expansion of people’s views about men and women and that gender types can be more flexible.

There’s getting served, and then there’s this:

People competed in nine different fighting games in last weekend's EVO 2013 tournament in Las Vegas. To see everything, you had to continuously switch between two streams back and forth from Friday to Sunday evening, so even hardcore fighting game fans might have missed one or two.

Nine different games mean nine grand finals and we've collected all of them below. (Up top, it's the Super Street Fighter IV Arcade grand finals between DM MCZ Xian and MCZ Tokido). Check them and be amazed how insanely good these players can be.

---

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Street Fighter X Tekken

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Mortal Kombat 9 (starts around 1:30:00)

Persona 4 Arena

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (starts around 1:50:00)

King of Fighters XIII

Now with 100% more sticks destroyed.

To contact the author of this post, write to: gergovas@kotaku.com

Soul Saga on Kickstarter

So. The Thiago Alcantara saga has ended, with the player going to Bayern Munich for a total fee of 25m+ a friendly. Part of the fee came from the player doing a salary giveback, a la Cesc Fabregas, which is particularly interesting.

The roots of the transfer are well-known, and now we have the reality. Prima facie, it isn’t the best piece of business, but it isn’t the most horrible one, either. Alcantara was on track to be The Man in the Barça midfield. For his own reasons, he didn’t want to wait, and so now he gets to ply his trade in the Bundesliga. And that’s that.

What does the deal mean? That the club has sold a promising La Masia talent for an very good, but not great, price. Malaga got more for Isco, and La Real got more for Illarramendi, even if the circumstances were different in that the parallel “Is” were starters. Thiago wasn’t, mostly because of the best midfield on a football club in a generation. It happens, even as I don’t think that any cule in their right minds wanted the player to leave.

People are, as well you all can imagine, losing their minds. They are blaming Vilanova, Rosell, aliens, sunspots and anything else they can think of. The player is absolved of responsibility for his own future and decisions regarding it, or forced into it by those nefarious others who didn’t give him his due. I get how that has to be the case, even as I struggle with it, for this simple reason:

Tito Vilanova would have to be a fool to not play a player of that immense a value, who was able to help his club in a significant way.

And I just don’t believe that Tito Vilanova is a fool. I think that he was, and is feeling an immense amount of pressure. I think that like Guardiola, he had players that he preferred to use for certain matches. But if a player had leapt to the forefront of his vision, demanding with his performance that he couldn’t be denied a spot in our lineup, that player would have played. Lots. More than Thiago did, and more than enough to meet that 60% mark specified in his absurd contract clause. Again, that is just my opinion. Others will have a different one.

Journalistic entities such as Marca claim that the departure was engineered, because the club’s technical staff doesn’t believe that Thiago has the right amount of tactical discipline, and that Sergi Roberto has more, making him preferable and causing the club to let Thiago go. Take that for what it is, and consider the source.

Whatever your views on the matter, the club has lost an exceptional talent. How exceptional, we still don’t know. If, as many suspect, Thiago turns out to be one of the best mids in the world, the club that sold him for 25m will look rather foolish, taken on the surface.

Of course, complicating matters is Xavi, Iniesta and Fabregas, the same impediments Thiago will be facing in his quest for a place on the World Cup 2014 squad. But that is a story for the future. For now, we have a transfer that might, or might not be a surprise, depending upon who you are, your position in the club hierarchy and your views on the player.

A comment that deserves to live on

During a discussion in the previous thread I asked a commenter and longtime soci, CuleToon, if the “rotten in Denmark” scent was around Sandro Rosell among local cules and socis, or was it a malodorous aroma that was much more evident to foreign nostrils. He gave it a fair bit of thought, and replied. I was going to leave it in the comments, but it deserves its own space. So here you go:

Kxevin asked me yesterday if «was it just foreign socis who could see what Rosell was going to bring to the table from a mile away, or did local socis also smell something rotten in Denmark?». I hope you don’t mind if I give the answer here, because I’ve devoted a lot of time to it, and don’t wish that it gets lost amidst the comments above. So, I apologize in advance for this.

I’ll give a short answer to Kxevin’s question for those that just wish to know and move on, and a rather long one for anyone interested.

First, the short one: Yes, a lot of us — mainly Cruyffistes — smelled it, and surely much sooner than most of you here.

****************************

Now, the long one. I’ll try to be as concise as possible. And I’ll write mostly from memory, although I’ve done a little research. I simply can’t devote that much time to do a more thorough investigation, but I’m sure it will suffice.

June 2003. Laporta and Rosell are elected.

June 2005. Rosell and his mates, who are apparently fed up with being in minority in the board, Leave. There is some noise on the press with polls, etc. Some people in the press (on hidsight, some of Rosell’s current media minions) begin to take sides, but nothing seems unusual at this time.

July 2005. The Laporta episode at BCN airport (when he lowered his trousers in front of the official who asked him to remove almost everything before boarding a plane to MAD; let’s not forget that that happened at the BCN airport, so it is impossible that the official didn’t know him, but whatever). That incident is stretched for several days on both MAD and BCN press, and always was mentioned afterwards when attacking Laporta. For its part, MAD press begins its relentless attack on Laporta because of his Catalanist-independentist ideas.

First half of 2006-A. That’s when all the bad-smell alarms went off for us. First, a common and unknown soci called Joan March Torné (old and retired, I think), brought a lawsuit against Laporta saying that the last 15 last days of June 2003 (the first 15 days of Laporta’s term) had to count as a whole year, and demanded Laporta and the board to call for election a year before than usual. After some appeals and the intervention of a Catalan political body (Consell d’Esports), Joan March won the case and Laporta’s first term lasted only 3 years instead of the usual 4. Joan March had no means, and it was clear that Rosell was behind it. For its part, most of the media attacked Laporta making a fuss of all this.

First Half of 2006-B. Since his departure, Rosell didn’t speak publicly until April, when he presents his book “Welcome to the Real World,” where he attacks Laporta thoroughly, and denies — of course — that he’s behind any manoeuvre.

First Half of 2006-C. Once established in court that those 15 days of 2003 counted as the whole 2002-2003 season, Viçens Pla, another unknown, old and retired soci with no means (and with with a big, red, veiny nose that I think reveals his tastes: just Google him), brought a lawsuit against Laporta and his board asking for a monetary guarantee for the losses incurred in 2002-2003 by the previous boards (those of Gaspart and a couple of other presidents who lasted some weeks). That is still going on today, seven years after, and the quantity asked of Laporta and several members of his board to guarantee amounts to some 23 mill euro. Strangely enough, even if Rosell and some of his mates were at Laporta’s board at that time, they are not mentioned in the lawsuit. The fuss the press makes about this dwarfs any it made before. And Rosell, as always, says he’s got nothing to do with it.

The campaign against Laporta continues as usual, until…

May 2008. Out of the blue comes Oriol Giralt —a fellow soci no one knew about— calling for a vote of no confidence against Laporta. With all the media at his disposal, he gets about 9.500 signatures in no time. (Let me remind you that all those lawsuits cost a lot of money, specially the hiring of the lawyers; and, in Oriol Giralt’s case, the infrastructure needed to get such an amount of signatures in a couple of weeks isn’t cheap either). This time, Rosell’s speaks publicly for the first time since he presented his book, to support the vote of confidence. And now all the media attacks Laporta by land, air and sea, without even trying to conceal their purpose.

And the rest will be known to all of you that have read until this point. Laporta wins the vote of confidence by a narrow margin. Then, though, he appoints Pep to the first team. Laporta continues to be attacked, but the success of the team hinders the effort by the media until the campaign for the election in 2010, when the media stretches its influence to the limit, and Rosell wins. The deeds of Rosell as Barça president until today are there for all to see.

****************************

A short addendum:

My generation lived the Núñez 1978 election. Just one week before that election, all the polls gave a great majority of the votes to Víctor Sagi, a respected Catalan-elite member and a pioneer in the Catalan and Spanish advertising industry. And then, just one week before the election, he quit. Just like that. And Núñez, the second in the polls, won. Núñez was the most important building contractor in Catalonia at the time, an industry which some people described then as “mafia-like.” And according to a rumour that I have heard several times since then, Víctor Sagi received a dossier on a close member of his family, together with an invitation to quit. But rumors are just rumors, and, of course, they should never be taken as true.

Oh, I forgot: on July 28 2011, just two years ago, Núñez was sentenced to six years in prison and some fines for bribery and document falsification. Of course, as happens with powerful people here, he hasn’t put a foot on the floor of a cell.

****************************

I wanted to comment also on the alleged reputation of Messi as a “fellow-players destroyer,” a myth born in Madrid this last year. According to most Madrid papers, Messi has “sacked” four fellow players to this day. But according to one report I’ve seen today, he’s sacked no less than twelve (12)! Go figure!

And a last thing for those of you that know about Crackòvia, the satirical program on TV3. They call Rosell “peix bullit,” which means “boiled fish,” aka, the epitome in Catalan for all things bland, tasteless, boring, dull, flat or drab.

And that’s all.

Amar Bose, the man who pioneered high-end audio and became a billionaire as the founder of Bose Corp., died at the age of 83 on Friday.

In the 1960s, Bose pioneered research into the way that sound bounced off walls in acoustic concert halls, He used that to create a new type of stereo speaker based on psychoacoustics, or the way that we perceive sound. He create multiple small speakers aimed at surrounding walls rather than at the listener in an attempt to recreate sound more exactly.

The New York Times said the death was confirmed by his son, Vanu Bose. The elder Bose was the founder and chairman of the privately held company. He focused on relentless engineering innovation in audio technology, coming up with technologies such as noise-canceling headphones and a suspension system for cars. He introduced the first speaker, the Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker system, in 1968. The systems took off when car makers like Mercedes and Porsche began installing them in their vehicles.

In a 2004 interview in Popular Science magazine, he said: “I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBA’s. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.”

Bose taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 45 years. In 2011, he donated a majority of his company’s shares to MIT.

He was born in 1929 in Philadelphia, the sound of Noni Gopal Bose, a Bengali freedom fighter who fled to the U.S.

 

Filed under: Entrepreneur, Gadgets

[Video Link] Seth used his iPhone to shoot one second of video every day for a year. (Kevin Kelly did this when he went to Asia last year, but he used the ambient sound, which is better than replacing it with music as Seth did.)

If you created a full backup for your Google Reader account while it was still possible, you probably need a way browse the data. Fortunately, Mihai Parparita created Zombie Reader, a tool that resurects the Google Reader interface and transforms into a viewer for your data.

"Reader is a canonical single page application: once the initial HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc. payload is delivered, all other data is loaded via relatively straightforward HTTP calls that return JSON (this made adding basic offline support relatively easy back in 2007). Therefore if I served the archived data in the same JSON format, then I should be able to browse it using Reader's own JavaScript and CSS," says Mihai.

Go to readerisdead.com, download the updated archive and use the instructions from the page. You still need Python 2.7 and some basic command-line skills. For Windows, you could use the instructions from my previous post and replace:

c:\python27\python reader_archive\reader_archive.py --output=download

with

c:\python27\python zombie_reader\zombie_reader.py download


Zombie Reader uses the Google Reader interface and your local data. It's like a Google Reader snapshot that preserved all your subscriptions, all the items you've read or marked as read, all your starred items, your tags and much more. Obviously, many features don't work (search, trends, subscribe), the application doesn't save your state and it doesn't show the latest posts from your subscriptions.

It does show your first read item, first starred item and the first shared item, as well as the people you followed before Reader's social features were removed. The "sort by oldest" feature is no longer limited to the last 30 days, it now sorts all your feed items.

"A side effect is that I now have a self-contained Reader installation that I'll be able to refer to years from now, when my son asks me how I spent my mid-20s," says Mihai. "It also satisfies my own nostalgia kicks, like knowing what my first read item was. In theory I could also use this approach to build a proxy that exposes Reader's API backed by (say) NewsBlur's, and thus keep using the Reader UI to read current feeds. Beyond the technical issues (e.g. impedance mismatches, since NewsBlur doesn't store read or starred state as tags, or has per item tags in general) that seems like an overly backwards-facing option." I'm sure that someone will build the proxy.

Over the last few months, we launched a ton of new integrations for you to use Buffer with other tools, such as Feedly, Followerwonk and lots of others.

One of the most important ways to use Buffer was still something that was very hard to do: Directly schedule Tweets and retweets via Buffer inside a Twitter client. 

So we are super excited to announce that with today, we have partnered with Echofon, one of the most established Twitter clients for Android and iPhone to help you Buffer your tweets from anywhere on the go.

You can now super easily Buffer all your updates through Echofon, get analytics, better timing and more. Here is how this all works:

How to add schedule Tweets with Buffer in Echofon

After you’ve downloaded either Echofon for iPhone or Android adding updates to your Buffer is super easy. All you have to do is head to the composer and press the schedule icon. It’ll immediately get you connected to Buffer and then let you schedule out the post to your Twitter followers. Buffer will automatically publish the Tweet at a better time and also give you analytics about how many clicks, retweets and more you’ve received.

Here is how you can get started:

You can of course do the same magic on your Android device with Echofon for Android. Simply hit the clock icon and your next upcoming Tweet will be scheduled and queued up for you inside Echofon:

Once your Tweets are Buffered, you can of course always reschedule them from your queue, or delete them before they go out. Let’s jump into that in the next section.

Where do my Buffered Tweets go and what can I do next?

Once scheduled via Echofon, your Buffered Tweets are all queued up and set to go out at a pre-set time. You can of course always go ahead and change the timing of your Tweets by heading to the “schedule” tab on the web app or the iPhone or Android app.

Here is how it looks like after Buffering a few updates from Echofon, both normal Tweets and retweets:

 

Every update that you share through Buffer from Echofon and anywhere else will automatically be tracked for you. Buffer’s analytics tab will tell you how many clicks, retweets, favorites and more you’ve received on your posts. Here is a quick snapshot of my recent postings:

If you want to keep Buffering Tweets, Facebook posts and more, there are also lots of other apps that connect to Buffer, besides Echofon. Some of the most used are Feedly, Reeder and Pocket. But have a look yourself, there are over 40 others.

Of course, the most powerful way to add to your Buffer from the web remains the browser extension, that you can use in Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Opera.

Schedule your retweets with Buffer inside Echofon

A big pain point that a lot of people have told us about and that I personally also often run into often is that there’re too many good Tweets. I have tons of great people I follow on Twitter and I want to reshare their Tweets. Doing so once is great, but 3-4 times in a row quickly overwhelms my timeline.

So instead, with Echofon, you can now just hit the “retweet with Buffer” icon and it’ll be scheduled for you well spaced out over the day. Whenever you like a Tweet you want to retweet, here is how you can do this from inside Echofon:

And here is the Android view of scheduling retweets with Buffer. Inside Echofon’s Android app, you can of course also just long press on a Tweet and then retweet with Buffer right from there:

Once it’s scheduled in your Buffer as a retweet, it’ll show up in your queue and you can always go back to edit it as you wish. Here is a quick snapshot on how this looks:

That’s it already! You’re now set to make full use of the new combined power between Echofon and Buffer. Grab the Echofon Android and iPhone apps below and let us know what you think about the new integration.

Of course be sure to also check out the Buffer iPhone app and Android app, so you can easily manage all your Buffered updates, check on analytics and more.

The stage is yours, let us know what you think about the new Buffer and Echofon combo below.

The post Echofon and Buffer partner to give you the smartest Twitter client for Android and iPhone appeared first on The Buffer blog: productivity, life hacks, writing, user experience, customer happiness and business..

المصدر: الصين – يو بي أي

Exoskeleton suits and schoolgirls sounds like something that you would expect to see in a sci-fi mecha anime series. But all these could be realised in the future soon.

Japanese robotics company Sagawa Electronics has created a very interesting promotional video for their company’s exoskeleton suit “Power Jacket MK3″. The video features a schoolgirl wearing the exoskeleton suit and a rather creepy scarfaced scientist explaining what the suit could do.

While it seems like an April Fool’s Day prank, Sagawa Electronics claims that it will be manufacturing 5 of these suits, as long as you are able to afford the US$124,000 price tag.

Source: Gizmodo

Those looking to buy gaming accessories from third-party manufacturer Razer have three platforms they can shop for: PC, Mac and Xbox 360. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan recently took to Twitter to explain why the company doesn't make accessories for PS3, saying that "one of the big reasons why we don't make Playstation accessories is because I don't really spend time with mine."

When asked if the company would consider producing accessories for PlayStation 4, Tan said Razer will "definitely be looking at PS4 but no promises there," and that the company has "high hopes" for the system, given what it saw at E3.

Razer doesn't make PS3 peripherals because its CEO doesn't play it originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 07 Jul 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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استجاب سمو الشيخ عبدالله بن زايد آل نهيان وزير الخارجية لطلب مواطن، نقل مواطنة مسنة من مستشفى في سلطنة عمان الشقيقة إلى الدولة جواً، عن طريق طائرة مجهزة بطاقم طبي.

وكان المواطن عبيد رحمة قد وجه طلبه إلى سمو وزير الخارجية عبر “تويتر”، واصفاً حالة المواطنة بالحرجة وأنها في العناية المركزة، مشيراً إلى مخاطبته وزارة الخارجية في هذا الشأن.

وعلى الفور، رد سمو الشيخ عبدالله بن زايد بالاستجابة، معرباً عن أمله للمواطنة المريضة بالصحة والسلامة.

من جهته، رد المواطن عبيد رحمة بالدعاء لسموه، داعياً المولى عز وجل أن يكثر من أمثاله، مضيفاً: “نحن كمواطنين، مالنا غير شيوخنا”. بعدها، أكد المواطن عبر حسابه في “تويتر” تواصل وزارة الخارجية معه لاتخاذ اللازم، موجهاً شكره لسمو وزير الخارجية، سائلاً المولى تعالى أن يمنحه الصحة والعافية، ويطيل عمر صاحب السمو رئيس الدولة وإخوانه الحكام

المصدر: صحيفة الإتحاد

I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal... (at @flySFO) [pic] — https://t.co/E6Ur1XEfa4

— David Eun (@Eunner) July 6, 2013

An Asiana Airlines 777 from Seoul, Korea crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport last night. Two were killed, ten were critically injured, 181 others were taken to hospital.

David Eun, whose Twitter biography includes "frequent flier," was aboard the plane and tweeted a photo of the wreck as he was evacuated.

This Reddit thread contains a lot of great, breaking information, including audio from the SFO air traffic control during and after the crash, and eyewitness accounts from SFO and from diverted fliers who were landed elsewhere (SFO is closed until further notice).

It's not clear what caused the crash. Forbes has some early analysis of the debris field based on aerial photos. A prominent theory cited in several news reports is that the tail of the 777 caught the seawall and ripped free (this also suggests that the two fatalities were flight attendants in the rear jumpseats).

Oh happy day! Index Corporation, parent company of Atlus, has registered a domain for persona5.jp! What could it mean?!

I know I shouldn't get excited over this news, but I can't help it. Videogame publishers register domain names all the time as a matter of course, whether as a potential marketing exercise, to protect a domain candidate from web-squatters. It could mean nothing. Or it could mean everything!

Persona fan-gasm aside, this does seem like a good sign. Considering the trouble Index is in at the moment, them bothering to start carving out space on the web for new projects implies they've a measure of confidence in their ability to execute on them. Of course, development on Persona 5 has been in progress since before Catherine came out, so it's not exactly "new IP". Either way, we've been reminded of the game's existence, and hope for its coming out at some point in the future is renewed.

This makes me *ahem* beary relieved.

[Image courtesy nanaya]

cineraria:

Rhythmic gymnast Shin Soo-ji’s first pitch - YouTube

Klei Entertainment, makers of recent gems Don't Starve and Mark of the Ninja, have announced their new game. It's a procedurally generated, turn-based tactical espionage game called Incognita. What? Dude. Yes.

There are scant few details available on the game's site and only a single screenshot/bit of promo art:

Speaking with RPS, Klei's Jamie Cheng described the game as an evolving, procedurally generated tactical game that draws influence from both Don't Starve and Mark of the Ninja, as well as Firaxis' XCOM.

Here's Cheng, talking to RPS:

Well, we’re still keeping a lot under wraps right now, but I can say a little. Here’s the idea: if you play the new XCOM – which is a fucking amazing game – it’s 90 percent positioning. Ten percent information gathering and 90 percent positioning. It’s kind of like, “I sort of wonder where the enemy is, but if I position myself well, march forward, and re-position myself well, then I’ll mostly be fine.”

The idea behind Incognita is, we want information to be power. We want information to be a very key part of your experience.

Well that sure is a tantalizing bit of info, isn't it?

Cheng says that like Don't Starve, some community members will be able to play Incognita early and give feedback, and that the primary platform is PC.

Hopefully there'll be a chance to get some more solid info on Incognita soon. Though honestly, they had me at "Espionage XCOM." Sign me up.

الطفلة إليزابيث البالغة من العمر 18 شهرا، تدربت بشكل محترف على السباحة والإنقاذ الذاتي على يد مدربين معتمدين.

الفيديو حصد أكثر من مليون مشاهدة منذ نشرته والدة إليزابيث أواخر عام 2012 على اليوتيوب وتداولته اليوم عدة مواقع رسمية أجنبية.

في تعليقها على الفيديو، حذرت الأم جميع الأهالي من إلقاء أطفالهم في المسبح ضنا منهم أنهم سيتمكنون من تعلم السباحة بطريقة تلقائية لأن ذلك أمر خطير للغاية وسيروع أطفالهم مما يجعلهم يكرهون السباحة إلى الأبد.

المصدر: البيان

Tired of taking too long with answering your cellphone calls? Lucky for you, someone has invented an arm device that gives you access to your phone in an instant. However, you'll have to make sure that you grab your phone when it launches; otherwise, your phone will end up flying in a random direction. If anything, the device could also be used to launch small projectiles at people that have ruined your day. 

For some reason, the guy's random poses reminds me of the start of a Kamen Rider transformation sequence. Hell, if he had a Changing Belt on, the next step would be to insert the phone into the buckle -- I think I've been watching too much Kamen Rider 555. 

The device may not revolutionize the way how people answer calls, but it was still a fun video to watch. At the end of the day, a part of me is tempted to create the Arm Device one day. 

[via @GeorgeBray]

One of the worst aspects of fracturing a bone, other than the excruciating pain and subsequent hospital bill, is the itchy, smelly, plaster cast. Sure, all your friends get to write hilarious things on it, but you end up being the kid in the shallow end of the pool with their arm stuck inside a giant trash bag. Definitely not cool. What if a cast could be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing? Jake Evill, a graduate from the Architecture and Design school at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, has been exploring such a concept and he calls it Cortex.

Evill says that the “Cortex exoskeletal cast provides a highly technical and trauma zone localized support system that is fully ventilated, super light, shower friendly, hygienic, recyclable and stylish.” Patients would first receive an x-ray to pinpoint the nature of the break and would next have their arm scanned to determine the outer shape of their limb. Lastly the Cortex cast would be 3D-printed, with optimized levels of support around the break area to provide a snug fit.

It’s safe to say that with present technology the 3D-printed method would take considerably longer to fabricate than a typical plaster cast, but the idea is intriguing. It reminds me of the present movement to make prosthetic limbs more beatiful and personalized. Read more about Cortex here. (via dezeen)

Even Jimmy Wales can’t get his own Wikipedia page corrected.

Wales, who founded the online encyclopedia in 2001, might be the site’s “benevolent dictator for life.” But that doesn’t mean he has carte blanche to make updates to the site’s entries — far from it.

A New York Times profile of Wales contains this juicy anecdote: Wales once tried to get his Wikipedia entry corrected to show his correct birthdate (August 7, not August 8, 1966). But he was rebuffed, since according to Wikipedia’s guidelines, primary sources aren’t acceptable sources of evidence.

“This is unverifiable information, I’m sorry to say,” the Times says he wrote on his entry’s “talk” page. “Maybe I’ll have to upload a signed note from my mom as documentary evidence.” (The entry has since been corrected.)

Similarly, Wales — who has increasingly been hobnobbing with the rich and famous — tried to update the entry for Will.i.am, after the music star made a personal request to Wales himself: “Everyone thinks he’s William James Adams Jr., but it’s not James and it’s not junior,” Wales told the Times reporter, as he updated the Will.i.am page on Wikipedia.

Wales was rebuffed by his own corps of editors, who cited him for violating Wikipedia’s guidelines by not referencing a published source for the change.

The Times profile carries a lot more detail on Wales’ life. Wikipedia has not generated wealth for him, despite the site’s massive popularity (it’s the fifth largest site in the world, the Times says; the #7 most-trafficked site, according to Alexa; and appears in most top 10 lists based on traffic). And while Wales has recently been collecting juicy speaking fees and hanging out with gorgeous Hollywood actresses and powerful global leaders, that has engendered some resentment. The Times writer, for instance, harps on his “too-tight black turtleneck” and affected Britishisms.

Sorry, Jimbo. It seems you can’t launch a website devoted to the democratization of all knowledge and then try to profit from it in any way — not without incurring at least some carping from the democratic mob.

Filed under: Business

With the Confederations Cup final between Brazil and Spain on Sunday, Neymarmania has reached new heights as the mere sight of the 21-year-old is making fans pass out from overexcitement outside Brazil's hotel. Neymar has surpassed the impossibly high expectations for him at this tournament — scoring in all three of Brazil's group-stage matches and setting up both goals in their semifinal win against Uruguay to earn a place on the Golden Ball shortlist. And with that success, the squeals of fans young and old have only gotten louder. At least, from those who can maintain consciousness upon seeing him in person.

When Brazil arrived back at their hotel after training Friday night, a now customary pack of young girls were waiting for them outside. Globoesporte picks up the story from there:

The biggest problem was when Neymar got off the bus. Upon hearing his name, the ace turned, waved to the teenager and entered the hotel. The girl could not stand the excitement and fainted.

As you can see in the video above, this wasn't just a bit of acting like what Neymar himself did against Uruguay. This girl was hyperventilating and down for the count and had to be carried away.

Neymar is getting used to these types of reactions, though. Just last month, a group of young fans attempted to power their way into the hotel lobby to chase him down and commit untold atrocities upon his slight frame...

If Neymar can help Brazil defeat locally vilified Spain in the final, his existence will probably make fans spontaneously combust. And remember, this is just the warm-up for next year's World Cup. He might want to invest in a splatter guard.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Andrea Pirlo comes to terms with another loss to Spain
• Photos: Power couple Piqué and Shakira
• Neymar, Brazil take aim at Spain
• Independiente fans throw chairs, table at club president

"Reader is dead," says Mihai Parparita, one of the former Google Reader engineers. You still have 2-3 days to use Google Reader, but the best thing you can do is to export your data.

Google Takeout lets you export some of your Reader data, but not everything: your subscriptions, your notes, starred items, shared items, liked items, the list of followers and the people you were following, the items shared by the people you were following. Mihai Parparita wrote some Python scripts that download everything from your Google Reader accounts, including the entire content of the posts from your subscriptions. You need Python 2.7, some basic command-line skills and a lot of free storage: my backup has more than 5 GB for about 250 feeds (vs 125 MB for the uncompressed Takeout backup).


Here are some tips for running the script in Windows 7/8:

- install Python from here (Python 2.7.5 Windows Installer)
- download Mihai's zip file and extract the files
- open the folder in Windows Explorer and you should see a list of subfolders like "base", "bin", "feed_archive".


- Shift + right-click below the folders and select "open command-line window here".
- copy this code, paste it in the command-line window and press Enter (I assumed that Python's folder is c:\python27):

set PYTHONPATH=%cd%
c:\python27\python reader_archive\reader_archive.py --output=download

- a web page will open in your favorite browser and you'll need to click "Accept", copy the authorization code and paste it in the command-line window.
- wait until the script downloads all the files.

Mihai also started to write a script that lets you browse your archive. It's a work in progress, probably because the script for downloading your data is more important right now.

There's also a script for downloading a feed's archive. "Google Reader has (for the most part) a copy of all blog posts and other feed items published since its launch in late 2005 (assuming that at least one Reader user subscribed to the feed). This makes it an invaluable resource for sites that disappear, can serve as a backup mechanism and enables tools to be created." My post from 2007 provides another way to download the history of a feed. You can also upload your OPML file to this site, which preserves hitorical feed data.

"I don't fault Google for providing only partial data via Takeout. Exporting all 612,599 read items in my account (and a few hundred thousand more from subscriptions, recommendations, etc.) results in almost 4 GB of data. Even if I'm in the 99th percentile for Reader users (I've got the badge to prove it), providing hundreds of megabytes of data per user would not be feasible. I'm actually happy that Takeout support happened at all, since my understanding is that it was all during 20% time," says Mihai Parparita, who spent 5 years working on Google Reader.

If you're curious to know which Reader alternative gets a thumb up from Mihai, his answer is "a toss-up between NewsBlur and Digg Reader."

“Dr. Easy” is a science-fiction short by Warp Films, Film4 and Shynola about a medical robot who is dispatched by police to try and negotiate with an armed, dangerous and broken man named Michael. The dark short film is an adaptation of the novel “The Red Men” by author Matthew De Abaitua.

via Vimeo Staff Picks