John Drury

Bud Light continues to creep people out with the implied lechery of its “up for whatever” marketing campaign. The latest apparent gaffe from the country’s most popular watery beer is a tagline reminding drinkers that Bud Light is a go-to beverage for turning a “no” into a “yes.”

As posted on reddit, the tagline on this Bud Light bottle reads:

“The perfect beer for removing “no” from your vocabulary for the night,” followed by the requisite “#UpForWhatever” hashtag, because being “up for whatever” obviously means “spreading Bud Light’s marketing message in a way that can be tracked and quantified by our social media team.”

Given the role that alcohol plays in many things that would have been a “no” without a night a drinking — driving under the influence, sexual assault, vandalism, public urination, random “woot-woot”-ing as you ping-pong down the sidewalk — it’s probably not the best idea for a multinational multibillion-dollar business like Bud Light’s parent company AB InBev to publicly acknowledge that its product can lead users down a path to stupid consequences.

This reddit comment sums it up perfectly: “remember “No” always means “No”….especially if the question is: do you want a bud light?”

Bud Light came under fire during the St. Patrick’s holiday in March when its Twitter account suggested that being “up for whatever” meant randomly assaulting people on the street who dared to not wear green (and those who did wear green, because #UpForWhatever, right?). The company apologized to those who “misunderstood” its intentions, much like some people who turn a “no” into a “yes” will probably be doing a lot of apologizing (possibly from behind bars) the next morning.

We’ve written to Bud Light for comment on this tagline and will update if we hear anything back.

In the latest video for Tomorrowland, we get a glimpse of some of the enemies George Clooney and friends will be up against in this theme park attraction turned movie from Disney.

The video adds a lot more action to what has so far been a series of mostly technical marvel trailers.

To find out more about the movie, check out our coverage here.

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In March, Google confirmed its plan to launch some sort of wireless service for consumers in the U.S., and a new report claims that the Internet biggie could pull back the curtain on this new product as early as today.

This is according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that a major difference between existing wireless providers and what Google intends to provide is that customers would only pay for the data they use each month.

So rather than wasting money on unused data each month, your bill would reflect your actual usage. Whether that ultimately saves you money will depend on how much Google charges.

As mentioned in earlier reports, it’s expected that Google’s service will run on existing Sprint and T-Mobile networks. It may also use WiFi hotspots to carry phone and data signals, reducing the burden on the wireless system.

The biggest drawback, according to the Journal report, is that the Google service will only work — at first — for users with Google Nexus 6 devices. So consumers with the most popular smartphones — like Apple’s iPhones and Samsung’s Galaxy devices — would have to switch or wait until Google supports their phones.

Austin Wintory's soundtrack for PlayStation game Journey is coming to a turntable near you in the form of a double LP picture disc set later this year. The vinyl release of the game's original score is set to be released this August, thanks to iam8bit, who also released the Hotline Miami 2 soundtrack on vinyl earlier this year.

The vinyl release of Journey's soundtrack comes stuffed inside a sleeve featuring original artwork from graphic designer Mark Englert, with picture disc art on each side of the double LP. Englert's artwork for the album is also available as a screen print that measure 12 inches by 36 inches.

The Journey soundtrack and Englert's print will be available for pre-order on April 23 at 10 a.m. PT. The double LP will...

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The Elcor are a Mass Effect race of lumbering quadrupeds with droning voices. To better communicate meaning, they preface each sentence with verbal tags as to their emotional context.

So ... "Genuine Query: Is there something I can do for you?" Or ... "Remorseful Response: You don't really believe that?"

This new plushy from Sanshee was first sold at PAX East last month, but is now available to buy online. It comes with a variety of cute voice recordings though not, alas, Hamlet's soliloquy, as performed in Mass Effect 2.

The Elcor plushy costs $30.

Here's our first look at Charles Dance, perhaps best known for his work on Game of Thrones as Tywin Lannister, taking on the role of Emperor Emhyr var Emreis in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Not only does the video give us a bit of Dance in action, but we also get to hear what it was like for him to do voice work for his first game ever. It sounds like he liked it.

Emhyr rules over Nilfgaard — the empire that invaded the Northern Kingdoms in the previous title, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is expected to launch May 19 for PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.

The trailer at the top of this post is a good example of how to get people interested in a game. There's no tease here, and certainly not a pre-rendered video that only shows the tone of the game and not any visuals. This is an extended, five minute look at what you can do in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and how it will look when you play.

Well, how it will look if you have a really nice computer, but still. It shows off the actual visuals of the game.

Witcher 3 is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on May 19.

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One of the best parts of Nintendo's Animal Crossing series is Kazumi Totaka's serene, beautiful background music, which changes based on the time of day you play. Animal Crossing Music, a fan-made extension for Google Chrome, duplicates that functionality right in your web browser.

Once installed, the extension adds a small icon of K.K. Slider to the upper-right corner of Chrome. Clicking that button will begin playing on loop the corresponding song for time of day according to your computer's system clock.

Best of all, the extension includes the soundtrack for every Animal Crossing title released so far, so you can pick the one you're most nostalgic for. By default, it'll even play random songs by K.K. Slider on Saturday nights,...

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While it can be very useful to have say, a weather app on your smartphone that knows where you are when you want to find out current conditions for your location, does that mean that those apps should be able to know where you are even when you aren’t using the app? That’s a question raised by a new forthcoming study that found about dozen apps for Android smartphones are not only tracking where you are right now, but three minutes from now. And three minutes after that. And so on.

Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University found that dozens of popular Android apps collected device location (including GPS coordinates accurate to within 50 meters) an average of 6,200 times, or about every three minutes during a two-week study period, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Researchers recruited 23 users of Android’s version 4.3, with participants able to use their own choice of apps after installing software that logged app requests for a variety of personal information including contacts, call logs, calendar entries and camera output, along with location.

Even when an app provides a useful-location based service, some of those requested the data more often than would be needed to provide that service, researchers said.

For example: Groupon Inc’s app requested one participant’s coordinates 1,062 times in two weeks. Does Groupon need to know where you are? Sure, when you’re acvitely trying to find a deal. But the rest of the time…?

“Does Groupon really need to know where you are every 20 minutes?” asked Norman M. Sadeh, a Carnegie Mellon professor who co-wrote the study. “The person would have to be accessing Groupon in their sleep.”

In another part of the study, The Weather Channel’s app requested device location an average 2,000 times, or every 10 minutes during the study period. Which, unless you are really nervous about a storm ruining your outdoor party or an oncoming tornado, seems a bit excessive.

If you’re wondering, the research didn’t include comparable results from iOS users, because unlike Android which groups all its permissions for apps en masse — you can’t download an app if you don’t agree to all its permissions — iOS devices allow for users to adjust what data is collected by an app on an individual basis (click here for more on how to do so).

So I can have the Weather Channel app on my iPhone and turn the location data off (which isn’t that useful to me, but hey, I can do it).

It’s no secret why app developers want to cull as much location data as they can get, with marketers paying good money for online ads that can be targeted to individual users based on location information. That might mean an ad or a coupon for a retailer could pop up on the company’s app if it detects a user is nearby or even inside a store.

In previous research, Sadeh and his fellow researchers found that when an app is asking for your location, 73% of the time it shares that information with an advertising network. That’s something many people are likely not aware of when they give an app permission to access their location.

During the study, researchers found that when users were given a “privacy nudge” to tell them how many times apps collected their personal data each day, 95% of participants reported reassessing their app permissions and 58% chose to restrict apps from collecting data.

But should we have to be nudged?

“The defaults for location data are entirely backward. That data should only be revealed at a particular moment for a particular purpose. Instead, devices routinely reveal location, leaving the user subject to constant tracking,” Marc Rotenberg, president of the privacy advocacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the WSJ.

Apps Track Users—Once Every 3 Minutes [Wall Street Journal]

This weekend on local Tucson morning show Rock102 Mornings with Shmonty & Carolina, director Kevin Smith let the audience know exactly what's going on with the long awaited sequel.

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The number one goat simulator on Steam could come to the number one game on Steam, Valve's Dota 2, if the community wants it badly enough. Coffee Stain Studios, makers of Goat Simulator, have created a new custom courier — the unit that carries items to and from your base — for Dota 2 in the hopes that players will want a rocket-powered goat to schlep their stuff around.

Watch the above trailer to see how the goat from Goat Simulator is a perfect fit for Dota 2. Notice how the stickiness of its tongue is analogous to the grabbiness of Pudge's meat hook? Makes sense when you think about it.

The Goat Simulator courier is currently up for voting in Dota 2's workshop on Steam.

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(via TumbleOn)

Anyone who's played Kerbal Space Program can tell you that just getting to orbit is an achievement. Building a cool (and also functioning) star vehicle in the physics-based spaceflight simulator is another giant leap. Now players who wish to memorialize their success can do so with 3D printed models of their creations.

The printing company is Eucl3D, which set up this portal where Kerbal players can upload .craft files and make their order. There are a lot of parameters, caveats and whatnot — particularly for small parts such as struts, launch clamps, or long beams that support heavy parts on a launch vehicle.

Further, a small ship model is $99. While Eucl3D takes care of the scaling, they're going to end up at roughly the same size...

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Sleater-Kinney's No Cities to Love is easily one of the best albums of the year, but the band's Bob's Burgers-inspired video for "A New Wave" makes everything even better.

This is one of those "chocolate and peanut butter" type of situations where two amazing things only make each other better. I've watched this a dozen times today, and it's put a smile on my face every time. I hope it does the same for you.

While we're talking about how amazing Bob's Burgers continues to be, let's sit back and remember the near-perfect video for The National covering Linda's Thanksgiving song, "Sailors in Your Mouth."

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Sonic the Hedgehog's latest game, Sonic Boom, sold just 490,000 copies during the holiday quarter, Sega's parent company announced in its quarterly earnings report (PDF), making it one of the lowest-selling games in the console series.

A decrease in sales in Sega's arcade and home game business, Sammy's amusement business and an organizational restructure at Sega Sammy (PDF) will result in lower net sales and a 13 billion yen ($109 million) loss for the game maker, according to updated guidance from the company.

Sega said it sold 1.76 million units of Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation during the holiday quarter, which spans October to December. The company also sold 640,000 copies of Football Manager 2015 during the same period....

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Bethesda Softworks will hold its first ever E3 news conference this year, the publisher announced today, which likely means it has big news to reveal from the industry's biggest expo.

Bethesda gave no other details, of course, in setting the date (June 14). What might Bethesda be talking about at this event?

• id Software is working on the long-awaited Doom (originally called Doom 4) and a beta for the game will be coming soon.

• BattleCry, a free-to-play online game coming from the newly formed Battlecry Studios of Austin, Texas, also is in the works and should have news at this event.

• Arkane Studios is the home of Dishonored and has two offices. Though a Dishonored sequel is unconfirmed, it's widely believed to be in the works....

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If you have yet to buy a PlayStation 4 ... congrats. The deals are only getting better.

Amazon has a $400 bundle that includes the system, a digital copy of The Last of Us Remastered, and a physical copy of the rather excellent Shadow of Mordor. That's a steal, as both games are great showcases for the system, and Shadow just picked up a ton of awards at DICE this year.

If you have yet to check out our long read about Tolkien in video games, this is a great excuse. Let us know if you grab one of these bundles!

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They started with Good Morning, Miss Bliss in grade school and moved on to Saved by the Bell in high school. To continue their education, they left home for The College Years.

But last night, on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Zack, Kelly and the gang came back to Bayside High.

The skit was the culmination of a desire that goes back to 2009, when Fallon dreamed of a reunion and fans started signing petitions. It came back in bits and pieces, like when Mark-Paul Gosselaar reprised his role as Zack Morris for a skit a few years ago. But the cast never got back together on the show, until now. And it is every bit as hokey and self-referential as the original Saved by the Bell.

If you're a child of the '90s, press play above to squee....

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Do you want to good Frontier news first or bad Frontier news? They themselves opened with the good news, so let’s follow suit: Frontier are making a new rollercoaster sim! The RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 devs plan to kick off a new manage ‘em up series in 2016 with Coaster Park Tycoon, though they don’t have much to say or anything to show at this point. Then, the bad news. They’ve laid off 15 folks and dragged development roles back from their studio in Canada’s sunny Halifax, which they opened in 2012. But rollercoasters!

… [visit site to read more]

Torchlight 2 for Mac hits Steam on Monday, February 2, just over 28 months to the day Runic said a Mac version would take a "couple of months at least." Why has it taken so dang long? Last we heard, the answer was "unexpected complexities." - that w...

Lego released the first details on the massive, and expensive, Helicarrier from the Avengers films. The set will cost $350 and will be released in March of this year.

Announcing the LEGO @Marvel Super Heroes-The SHIELD Helicarrier! Coming March 2015 pic.twitter.com/ZPUFlirwGo

— LEGO (@LEGO_Group) January 29, 2015

The set will include five minifigures, including Maria Hill, who is new for 2015. You'll also get a variety of support vehicles to recreate your favorite scenes from the film, not to mention scale-figures that make the Helicarrier look much larger when placed on the deck.

Buying it will be the easy part; the tricky part will be making sure your kids don't play with it too hard. It's time to clear off some desk...

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Blizzard is making it easier than ever to capture your Night Elf's duckface, thanks to a new selfie camera coming to World of Warcraft. Patch 6.1, which recently rolled out to WoW's public test realms, adds the S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera, a new toy designed to make picture-taking a bit more self-centered.

World of Warcraft players can snag the S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera after completing a new, level 100 mission called Field Photography. The new toy lets players turn the camera on themselves and snap a selfie, which is saved to their screenshots folder. Player's characters will even emote while the camera is trained on them to capture photos of smiles, alluring kissy faces and more.

Players can then upgrade the camera to the S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera Mk....

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The latest game to join Origin's "On the House" program, in which Electronic Arts hands out free games, is classic simulation-strategy game Theme Hospital. Bullfrog Productions' PC game, normally $4.99 through Origin, is currently free to download.

Theme Hospital is the successor to Bullfrog's previous business sim, Theme Park. The game tasks players with designing and managing a hospital, and treating patients with odd diseases. Physical and psychological maladies include Spare Ribs (extra rib growth), King Complex (the uncontrollable desire to impersonate Elvis Presley) and Bloaty Head (oversized craniums). Theme Hospital was released in 1997.

To download the game, you'll need an Origin account. Previous "On the House" giveaways...

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Late last year Tim Schafer announced that Grim Fandango would be coming to PlayStation 4, Vita, PC, Mac and Linux on Jan. 27, the price was under wraps until today's announcement by GoG.com.

The DRM-free download will be $14.99.

The video features Schafer himself, thanking fans for keeping the old LucasArts classic alive in their hearts, and discussing the details of the release.

Manny Calavera will be receiving a full high-definition upgrade with remastered graphics top to bottom. Additionally, Schafer said that the musical score has been completely re-orchestrated. Even better, the classic game will feature hours of developer commentary.

The system requirements include a dual-core CPU and 4 gigs of RAM. GoG.com says players will...

HBO today announced that the new season of Game of Thrones, season five, will kick off on Sunday, April 12.

While Game of Thrones always tends to launch around April, the exact date wasn't known until tonight.

The launch for season five coincides with the launch of the second season of Silicon Valley and fourth season of Veep, according to HBO's tweet.

News of season five's timing comes shortly after HBO announced it would be screening the show on IMAX starting Jan. 23. The IMAX showing will feature the final two episodes of season four along with the premiere of the season five sneak peek trailer. The IMAX screening will hit 150 theaters through Jan. 29.

BREAKING: #GoTSeason5 premieres Sunday, April 12 on @HBO. Send a raven...

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yungstank:

"I told you I was gonna find ya ass, where my money at, my nigga, come catch this fade"

(via TumbleOn)

Minecraft: Story Mode - A Telltale Game Series is an episodic, narrative-driven game series based in Minecraft's blocky world, coming in 2015 to PC, Mac, mobile devices and what Mojang calls "Xbox consoles" and "PlayStation consoles." We've reached o...