Roumen.ganeff

Somehow all of us keep getting left off this list every damn year. That Bill guy keeps stealing my spot. Bill Gates is once again the richest person on the planet, a title he's held for 16 out of the last 21 years. He recaptured the top spot in March 2014 after a four-year run by Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu as No. 1. Early on, the stellar performance of Microsoft, which he cofounded in 1975, boosted his net worth but he's been steadily selling his shares in the software company for at least 15 years. Comments

Open Road Films has released the first official photo today of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the title role of director Oliver Stone's Snowden.

The Dark Knight Rises and Looper actor portrays the whistle-blower Edward Snowden in what the studio is calling an "international thriller."  Snowden leaked thousands of classified NSA documents to the media in 2013. He's currently facing a 30-year prison sentence in the U.S., although he's been granted temporary asylum in Russia.

The studio says, "In this first look, before he was a whistle-blower, Edward was an ordinary man who unquestioningly served his country."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden.

Continue reading…

From Heroes creator Tim Kring and Gideon Raff (creator of the Israeli series Prisoners of War and its US remake, Showtime’s Homeland), the new 10-episode USA series Dig — debuting Thursday night — stars Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, Awake) and Anne Heche (Volcano, Six Days Seven Nights).

The ambitious mystery-thriller begins in Jerusalem, and involves a murder that soon leads to the discovery on an ancient, international conspiracy.

Jason Isaacs in Dig.

Continue reading…

Last year, Epic Games Chief Technology Officer Kim Libreri and Unreal Engine 4 General Manager Ray Davis visited some friends at Lord of the Rings effects studio Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand. They only wanted a tour of the studio, but alon...

The studio that created SimCity and The Sims is no more. Today, EA confirmed that it will shut down Maxis Emeryville, displacing the folks primarily responsible for the aforementioned titles. In a statement, EA said that it'll relocate Maxis' develop...

Lasers have staggering range, can attack land or air-based targets and are dirt-cheap to fire, making them ideal for a military with one eye on the budget. Now, Lockheed Martin has worked out that the technology could also be used for stopping a car ...

"Can it play Crysis?" is the question people are still asking after all these years, despite the vast majority of game hardware now being more than capable of running Crytek's gorgeous first-person shooter. It's how NVIDIA introduced Crysis 3 this we...

If you think you've got a bright future in spaceship design, the Kerbal Space Program simulator will quickly humble you -- beneath the playful surface is an accurate, unforgiving physics system. The lucky few that manage to get their virtual craft in...

If you’ve ever dreamed about making a video game, or even learning more about how they’re made, then there's no better time than now to get on board. Not only are their several “indie” options out there (like RPGMaker), but today one of the biggest names in game engines has made a declaring announcement. Unreal Engine 4 is now free and open to the public.

That’s right, you heard me correctly. There are more details, such as if you manage to make more than $3,000 per quarter, then you have to pay out 5% for licensing. But in the grand scheme of things that’s not a half-bad deal, espcially when you're using one the most powerful game engines around. “It’s a simple arrangement in which we succeed only when you succeed.” Says Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games.

Check out the video announcement below, and be sure to head over to the Official Blog to check out the full details of the engine’s new price.

With the development of Apple Pay and yesterday's announcement of Samsung Pay, it seems the industry is really pushing towards mobile payment systems. After all is does make a lot of sense to be able to pay with the device you are most likely to have on you - your phone, instead of a rather outdated plastic card. Google is definitely not one to shy away from progress and is also considering a mobile payment solution and a big one indeed. The news comes from an interview with Sundar Pichai, Google's SVP of Product today, at MWC. He disclosed the company's intention to bring new, secure payment options to the Android OS. Needless to say this is a huge step forward, as a potential payment system, integrated straight into AOSP could and probably will spread like wild fire. What Goggle intends to do is go down a slightly different road that Apple and after yesterday's Galaxy S6 announcement, Samsung as well. Rather than developing a dedicated cardless payment service, the tech giant will develop what is essentially the base software for such a system and offer it as another API inside Android. This could empower countless third-party developers to implement their own payment systems, using Google's basis and guidelines. Right off the bat, there are a lot of security concerns with this plan and Sundar did manage to mitigate some of them in the interview. Open-source and Android API spell trouble in a lot of people's minds, but what Google intends to do is employ modern techniques, such as one-time security tokens to authorize payments. What this means is that if a transaction gets compromised by a third person, the offender will only get access to a one-time token that can't be used to carry out a further payments. This is a pretty standard approach, but does not answer all of the security concerns, mainly what happens if you lose your phone, or even worse, what could a potentially malicious piece of software do with your bank information without your knowledge. The fact of the matter is that the first concern is pretty much valid with today's payment cards as well so you can rest assured that existing security measure for your card will be carried over and perhaps even improved, if your phone were to ever replace your debit card. The second problem is a little bit trickier and there are a lot of issues that Google needs to address in order to secure the system properly from all sorts of attacks. Perhaps even more importantly, the tech giant needs to make Android Pay convincing enough for users to entrust their bank date with it. Sundar explained that that sensitive info will be stored locally only, but implementing support for additional protection, such as a fingerprint sensors is also on the roadmap for the payment API. This new Android endeavor will not affect Google Wallet, which has been around for quite some time and is enjoying formidable popularity and is also the main payment gate for most of Google's paid services, including the Play Store. That system is absolutely different in what it does and might even be complimented by the new Android Pay API. No information on availability was disclosed during the interview, but Android users and developers can look forward to the new functionality and we are sure to find out more at Google I/O in...

submitted by miraistreak [link] [comment]

submitted by youre_not_real [link] [10 comments]

submitted by roadrunner-mc [link] [2 comments]

cracked:

Like everything great, Star Wars came within an ass-hair’s width of being total shit. You gotta remember that in the ’70s anyone with a doofy beard and a plaid shirt could shoot a movie just by telling people what to do and not giving them the chance to disagree. It was a magical time.

But through George Lucas’ devotion to an acid flashback he was apparently having for three straight weeks, when production wrapped, he found himself with a masterpiece of celluloid, right?

Nope! Turns out that the first cut of Star Wars was an incomprehensible mess, and it was up to George’s wife and editor, Marcia Lucas, to swoop in and save the day … again.

Actually, Marcia was Lucas’ “muse” through the entire production, if by “muse” you mean “person who had all the good ideas.” It was her idea to kill Obi-Wan (apparently George’s first draft had him just disappearing at one point) and demanded that Lucas keep the “For Luck” kiss scene that would snarl the series up in a knotty mess of incest once the third movie was released. But, most importantly, she’s totally responsible for the Battle of Yavin, also known as The Death Star Trench Run scene, also known as The Part at the End of the Movie Where the Good Guys Win.

5 Women Who Invented Modern Pop Culture (And Got No Credit)

Xiaomi has unleashed a 399 CNY ($64) action cam onto unsuspecting cats in China, but will it join the Mi band in the US? The Yi Camera actually trumps the specs of GoPro's entry-level camera with 1080P, 60fps video and 64GB of memory at about half th...

Job Simulator is a new immersive virtual reality experience set in an arguably utopian future from developer Owlchemy Labs and one of the first games revealed for Valve’s SteamVR project.

Set in a future where automated society has made human occupations obsolete, the simulation challenges players with following instructions from the sentient “keeper of human history,” Job Bot, to learn how "to job."

“Robots cook, clean, service, and rule organize the world with precision and speed. Human occupations are now memories of the past; long gone are the blue collar jobs that ran the old world,” the game’s description reads. “Humans raised in our perfect automated society must not forget their useless ancient ancestors and history. This is why Job Bot was born. Job Bot created Job Simulator to teach humans what it is 'to job'. All praise to Job Bot, for he is the keeper of human history.”

Continue reading…

SanDisk announced its first Dual USB Drive with a Type C connector, as well as a new 128 GB iXpand Flash Drive today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

With the Internet of things (IoT) on the rise and an alarming number of devices in your household already connected to the web out daily tech drivers are becoming increasingly more interconnected. Naturally at some point this gets a little bit confusing and MediaTek, among others have realized this fact. Mobile devices are quickly becoming the main hub for information and multimedia for most people, due to sheer convenience in not anything else. And while there are plenty of ways to push content around smart tech, borrowing hardware is a whole different concept. The Chinese chip manufacturer has set its sights to bridge this gap. Their proposed solution is called CrossMount - an open-source standard, part of the well-known and universally established Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). What it actually does is quite ingenious. It lets supported devices seamlessly borrow hardware component from one another, just like sharing files. This could, for example, allow you to use you phone's camera for video calls on a smart TV or a PC. Why not attach you phone's or smart band's hear-rate sensor to a smart piece of fitness equipment. The possibilities are endless. Now this all sound very enticing, but like most tech innovations it all comes down to third=party involvement and support, MediaTek might be pushing the standard, but they can only do so much in enforcing what is essentially an open-source code. A few major manufacturers, like Changhong, Hisense, Lenovo and TCL have reportedly welcomed the CrossMount standard and should be on board in its future development. Sadly major players like Samsung, LG and HTC might opt for proprietary in-house solutions, as is usually the case when market shares are at stake. The good news is that we, the users, do have a certain say in the matter. If open cross-platform hardware sharing standards is what the market truly wants, then manufacturers will have to deliver sooner or later. So here's to hoping the whole thing picks up. Source |...

Huawei didn't just unveil one wrist-worn wearable today; it announced two. Huawei has just announced its first ever Android Wear device and, appropriately enough, it's called the Huawei Watch. As was teased and leaked over the past few days, the Watc...

Surprise! After months of speculation and leaks, HTC is finally ready to show the world its latest flagship, the One M9. Sorry to disappoint, but those leaks were, for the most part, spot on. As they suggested, there's no major change in terms of ind...

Of all the things we expected HTC to talk about at its MWC press conference, a design-focused virtual reality headset built in partnership with Valve definitely wasn't on the short list. It's called the HTC Vive and the two companies working on makin...

The last time Samsung put on a show in Barcelona, it came bearing the Galaxy S5 and that love-it-or-hate-it bandage back. Not exactly a high point in the company's design history, you might say. Over the past year, though, that Korean juggernaut has ...

If a 128GB microSD card just isn't big enough to put your media collection on your phone, don't worry -- SanDisk is coming to your rescue. It just unveiled a whopping 200GB card (the Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card Premium Edition, to be exact) that makes...

If you're a fan of superzoom cameras, you may have to look no further than Nikon's Coolpix P900 to find the category's new king. This compact, yet powerful point-and-shoot features a remarkable 83x optical zoom, the equivalent of 24-2000mm, which is ...

Can someone please explain to me how you can leave a fiber optic cable exposed so that vandals can just walk right up to it and cut it with a hacksaw? "There was a vandalism that took place on a fiber optic cable that basically runs from Phoenix to Northern Arizona," said Alex Juarez, a spokesman for CenturyLink in Arizona. The line, which is composed of extremely thick cable, appeared to have been cut with a hacksaw, according to Juarez. Phoenix police are currently investigating the incident and say they have yet to determine a motivation for the crime. Comments

It’s been a few months, but 8-Bit Cuisine is back yet again, and this time, Chef Jen is treating us to a sweet treat that would even make the toughest Orc to say “Yummy!”

In this episode of 8-Bit Cuisine, Jen makes some Dalaran Brownies, which are inspired from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack for World of Warcraft.

MEASUREMENTS & SERVINGS:

1 ½ Cups Flour

1 cup Cocoa Powder

1 Tsp Salt

1 Cup Butter

1 ½ Cups Brown Sugar

1 ½ Cups White Sugar

1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract

4 Eggs

1 Cup of Chocolate Chips

YIELD: An entire party or one very hungry Orc

An Uber database containing the names and driver's license numbers of 50,000 current and former drivers was accessed by an outside party in 2014, the company announced today. Uber discovered the breach on September 17, 2014, and an investigation reve...

After lots of perseverance from smartphone makers, wireless charging is finally starting to make an impact. Many big name phones now support the technology and companies like Starbucks are helping to bring it a wider audience. Now, it's set to receiv...

Where were you the day the internet was freed from ISP tyranny? Apparently, you were either watching two llamas on the lam or tweeting that a clearly black and blue dress was actually gold and white. When two escaped camelids sent a Phoenix sheriff's...