Maxim Bange

The rumors of a Monty Python reunion are true. After The Sun reported that surviving members of the British sketch comedy group would be coming together for a live stage show, the news was confirmed this morning during a live press conference. Monty Python will perform at London's O2 Arena on July 1st, 2014. Member Eric Idle has also taken to Reddit to share the good news. "I'm sure you've seen the exciting news, but here we are to confirm it, officially: Monty Python is reunited," he writes.

Not only is he confirming the reports, but he's brought his four cohorts — John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin — along for a Reddit AMA. The question and answer session will last approximately 90 minutes and start at...

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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates held back tears today as he discussed the significance of his company's search for its next CEO. Gates didn't have any major updates on Microsoft's efforts to replace Steve Ballmer, but he did acknowledge the company is interviewing external and internal candidates. "It’s a complex role to fill," said Gates, before noting that Ballmer's successor will need to be comfortable running a company like Microsoft.

While the search continues, Gates took a moment to thank Ballmer for his work at the company. "I want to say thanks for the leadership over the last 13 years," said Gates. "It’s a real privilege to lead the incredibly talented group of employees we have." In what is clearly an emotional time for...

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An opium poppy harvested in Afghanistan. Opium cultivation reached a record high in 2013, according to a new report from the UN. (United Nations / Flickr)

The US has spent billions of dollars trying to rein in Afghanistan's opium trade, seen as a central driver behind the Taliban insurgency, but a new report suggests that the drug is more pervasive than ever before. The UN's drug agency today announced that opium cultivation in Afghanistan reached a record high in 2013, raising concerns over the country's security and stability ahead of next year’s withdrawal of American troops.

According to the latest Afghanistan Opium Survey, released Wednesday by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 516,000 acres of Afghan land were used to...

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The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s Mars-bound spacecraft, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The "most waterproof material ever made" - inspired by nasturtium leaves - could be used for anoraks, wind turbines and aircraft engines, say researchers.

Microsoft has released the latest version of Internet Explorer web browser, IE11, to Windows 7 systems worldwide on early November 2013 in 95 languages. IE11 is already been released on [...]

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Dr. Hugh Herr, head of the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab, gave us a demonstration of bionic legs at Ignition 2013. A double amputee himself, he shows how incredibly true to form these electronic foot and ankle prosthetics, called  BIOMs, are to human physiology. Click for sound.

 

Produced by Kamelia Angelova, Alana Kakoyiannis, and Justin Gmoser.

SEE ALSO – Elon Musk: I'll Build A Hyperloop Prototype If No One Else Does [VIDEO]

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Even though some major companies like Microsoft have decided to eliminate their stack ranking systems, the controversial employee review process will never go away entirely.

Industries like defense and aerospace, for example, tend to value execution over creativity, so need a way to measure and compare employees. Ranking workers on a bell curve that features a set number of high, average, and poor performers meets that need. 

But increasingly companies are moving in the opposite direction, and using an entirely ratings-free system.

While it's still only a small fraction of businesses, around 6% according to Cliff Stevenson of The Institute For Corporate Productivity, big names like Adobe, Expedia, and FedEx are among the companies that no longer rank their employees. Instead, they focus on incremental or divisional goals rather than on individual ones. 

Advocates of stack ranking argue that such measures are required to spur internal competition and weed out poor performers. However, companies that have stopped grading employees altogether have seen positive results in employee engagement and no negative impact on any performance metric, Stevenson's research found. 

"The very concept of the performance review is very backwards-looking; it's 'What did you do over the past year?'" Stevenson said. "Instead, they started looking more at development and enabling employees for the coming year."

Feedback becomes continuous rather than being delivered a few times a year in an extremely high-stress meeting. 

"The concept is that you get your feedback not once a year or quarterly, but as things happen," Stevenson said. "As you finish a project, your manager has the discretion to come to you then and talk to you about success or areas for development as they see fit."

It's a completely different, and arguably superior, way to manage people than rating and ranking them. 

The rigid, quarterly, numbers-focused stack ranking system came about as an effort to manage large, distributed, and unwieldy workforces. But in an age when we have better data and a better idea of what makes people tick, it's not necessary.

Especially for small businesses, where individual employees have an outsized impact on a company's performance, touching base and rewarding employees as needed is a much better option. 

SEE ALSO: Why Stack Ranking Is A Terrible Way To Motivate Employees

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Not negotiating your salary early and often can cost you more than $1 million in lost earnings over the course of your career, according to a recent analysis by Salary.com.

And when it comes to salary negotiations, women can be their own worst enemies. Research shows that women are significantly less likely to negotiate for higher salaries then men, especially when it's unclear whether negotiating is expected.

According to one NBER working paper by Andreas Leibbrandt of Monash University and John A. List of the University of Chicago, researchers posted a variety of jobs in markets around the U.S. Some had an explicit option to negotiate, and others left it unsaid. When the ability to negotiate a higher salary is ambiguous, men are significantly more likely to negotiate for higher salaries then women.

Further, men actually applied to the job postings with ambiguous salaries at higher rates. It seems that men apply more to these jobs, negotiate more, and reap what the authors term a "disproportionate amount of the surplus, relative to women."  

Yet, interestingly, the researchers found that if negotiation is given as an option in a job posting, women are more likely to negotiate.

Here's their chart of the application effect:

And the effect on negotiation:  

 

To all readers, and women in particular: Negotiate. Negotiate a job offer, and negotiate every one to three years at your current company. You'll have more to spend and stock away in retirement. Your future self will thank you.

SEE ALSO: Not Negotiating Your Salary Could Cost You $1 Million Over Time

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There it is.

Per Clarkmoody.com, Bitcoin just hit $500.

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Er zijn afbeeldingen verschenen van een tablet van AMD. Het apparaat draait Windows 8 en kan gecombineerd worden met een accessoire die het apparaat geschikt voor gaming maakt. Tijdens de CES-beurs in januari moet de tablet als referentieplatform worden getoond, bevestigt AMD.

In modern finance, you can hedge against anything.

But the market for hedging against alien invasions is pretty thin.

Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen pointed us to an interesting proposal addressing the matter.

In an article for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Jacob Haqq-Misra of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science proposes a novel way to insure against the coming close encounter, while also helping fund the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. 

He proposes a bond which pays out when extraterrestrial life is proved to exist by researchers on earth. It would be a "lottery bond," which is a security usually issued to fund projects when the issuer foresees low demand for the bonds. In order to drum up demand, some randomly selected bonds within the issue are redeemed at a higher value than the face value of the bond once the project is completed; this enhances the value of the bond.

All of the bonds get a regular, but low coupon payment, and once the project is completed, the holders of the "lucky" bonds get a high payout, while everyone else gets less or nothing. 

According to Haqq-Misra's paper:

"I propose the establishment of a SETI Lottery Bond to provide a continued source of funding for  the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The SETI Lottery Bond is a fixed rate perpetual bond with a lottery at maturity, where maturity occurs only upon discovery and confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Investors in the SETI Lottery Bond purchase shares that yield a  fixed rate of interest that continues indefinitely until SETI succeeds—at which point a random  subset of shares will be awarded a prize from a lottery pool. SETI Lottery Bond shares also are  transferable, so that investors can benefact their shares to kin or trade them in secondary markets. The total capital raised this way will provide a fund to be managed by a financial institution, with  annual payments from this fund to support SETI  research, pay investor interest, and contribute to  the lottery fund. Such a plan could generate  several to tens of millions of dollars for SETI research  each year, which would help to revitalize and expand facilities such as the Allen Telescope Array."

What makes these bonds unusual is that they assert with certainty that we will find alien life in the future. The probability of this occuring is determined by the Drake equation, an equation that tries to determine the probability of finding alien life in a galaxy, depending on several factors including the number of planets it has and the average rate of star formation. According to this, the Milky Way probably has about 12,000 alien civilizations.

Given our current zero knowledge about alien life, these lottery bonds would probably be a hard sell, but they're a fun way to help underfunded space research. And if we do end up finding a hostile alien civillization- you' or your descendants will be able to cash out big time. 

SEE ALSO: 19 Signs We're In A Bubble

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Despite recent successes in the field, creating a quantum computer is really hard. For one thing quantum bits in a super positioned state (or qubits, the basic unit of data for quantum computing) have a hard time surviving at room temperature. Typically, these superposition states last for only a few seconds, but in a recent experiment at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby , researchers were able to keep a quantum system alive for a full 39 minutes.

“These lifetimes are at least ten times longer than those measured in previous experiments,” explained Stephanie Simmons from the University of Oxford’s Department of Materials. “Having such robust, as well as long-lived, qubits could prove very helpful for anyone trying to build a quantum computer.” Even so, they aren’t particularly active ones – all of the qubits in the experiment shared the same quantum state. To perform actual calculations (and thus build a functioning quantum computer), a system would need to put multiple qubtis in different quantum states. Sound complicated? It sure is, but it’s a significant step forward to building the ultrafast computing platforms of tomorrow. Eager to learn more? Check out the official press release at the source link below.

[Image Credit: Stephanie Simmons, University of Oxford]

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Source: University of Oxford

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Het woord participatiesamenleving is door de bezoekers van het Onze Taal-congres in Breda gekozen tot Woord van het Jaar. Een kwart van de 1300 aanwezigen koos voor het winnende woord.

De woorden Pietitie en socialbesitas eindigden op een gedeelde tweede plaats, met 18 procent van de stemmen. Daarna volgen sletvrees, selfie, Koningslied, afluisterschandaal, 3D-printer, phablet en shariawijk.

Participatiesamenleving dook dit jaar voor het eerst op in de Troonrede. Koning Willem-Alexander zei toen dat de klassieke verzorgingsstaat plaats moet maken voor een participatiesamenleving, waarin iedereen wordt gevraagd zijn eigen verantwoordelijkheid te nemen.

A new report from Wells Fargo's Jay Bryson and Mackenzie Miller takes a look at developing economies and their potential exposure to a financial crisis.

Bryson and Miller rank the 28 largest developing economies based on economic indicators that are associated with financial crises: "Foreign exchange (FX) reserves, the real exchange rate, growth in credit, GDP growth, and the current account. That is, countries that have low FX reserves, an appreciated exchange rate, rapid credit and GDP growth, and current account deficits tend to have the highest probabilities for financial crises."

Bryson and Miller stress that crises are not necessarily inevitable for these countries, but "developments in these economies bear watching in coming years."

"It appears that the potential economic growth rate in the developing world has downshifted from the very robust rate that was achieved prior to the global financial crisis," they write.

We took the 12 countries with the highest (most vulnerable) composite score.

12. South Africa

FX Reserves (% of nominal GDP): 23

Real Exchange Rate (% change from 2009): 14

Real GDP (% change from 2009): 4

Domestic Credit to Private Sector: 12

Current Account (% of GDP): 26

Total Score: 79

Comment: South Africa has a huge mining sector, and is the world's largest producer of platinum, gold, and chromium.

Source: Wells Fargo, CIA Factbook

11. Pakistan

FX Reserves (% of nominal GDP): 26

Real Exchange Rate (% change from 2009): 21

Real GDP (% change from 2009): 11

Domestic Credit to Private Sector: 8

Current Account (% of GDP): 15

Total Score: 81

Comment: With constant internal political disputes and tepid foreign investment, Pakistan has been stuck in a low-growth path, with growth averaging about 3% a year from 2008-2012.

Source: Wells Fargo, CIA Factbook

10. Egypt

FX Reserves (% of nominal GDP): 27

Real Exchange Rate (% change from 2009): 22

Real GDP (% change from 2009): 5

Domestic Credit to Private Sector: 9

Current Account (% of GDP): 18

Total Score: 81

Comment: Since the uprising in Egypt started in January 2011, its tourism, manufacturing, and construction sectors have been hit hard.

Source: Wells Fargo, CIA Factbook

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Adobe's been embarrassed over the past few weeks after it was revealed that some 150 million customer records were leaked online — and that Adobe had been using some questionable methods to protect that information in the first place. In a clever spin, some of that information has been turned into a playable crossword puzzle that helps remind people just how insecure common password choices can be.

Ben Falconer put together the project, called simply Adobe Crossword, after being inspired by the web comic XKCD. The collection of 10 crossword puzzles use the most common 1,000 passwords found in the leak as its answers, with up to 50 user-supplied clues serving as the questions. There's a heavy dose of the obvious — "adobereader,"...

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Helium is a finite resource, and one of the few elements that leaks from Earth into space. It could run out - so should we use it for fun alone?

Kenny Irwin, the artist behind Dovetastic Microwave Theater, has taken his performance to a next-gen level by microwaving Sony's newly released console, the PlayStation 4.

Predictably, the PS4 doesn't handle the heat very well; watch the video above to see the results. For anyone interested in what's left of the console, Irwin is auctioning its remains off on eBay for $11,151.30.

The PS4 is the latest to join Irwin's long line of microwaved consoles, including a Wii U, Xbox 360 and Nintendo 3DS. More videos are available on his YouTube channel.

Sony released the PlayStation 4 Friday, Nov. 15. Don't miss our review of the (non-microwaved) console and all the news from launch week.

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

Suddenly things just got real. A new study claims one in five sun-like stars could have a planet capable of supporting life. Hugging your loved ones while thousands of miles away is closer reality, and smog? Apparently we can vacuum that stuff up now. Yeah? This is Alt-week.

Telepresence is all good and well, but sometimes don’t you get the feeling it’s really just a tablet on wheels? For us, the true telepresence experience would be one where we can be somewhere far-flung, and not only see our relatives or colleagues, but physically interact with them. Enter inForm, a project from the Tangible Media Group at MIT. That name strongly hints at the team’s reason for being, and it couldn’t be any more beautifully illustrated than in the video above. inForm is a “dynamic shape display” that receives 3D information from a remote Kinect, and renders it using a grid of pins in table that rise and sink to create a low resolution copy of the remote image. Not unlike Pin Art that was a popular exec toy in the 90s. Mostly it’s just awesome to watch.

Smog, it’s a real issue for many large cities. Especially those in heavily industrial or developing nations with a high urban populations. It can cause real world problems, too, affecting transport, infrastructure and more. But, possibly the most understated issue is the human one. Imagine never seeing the sun, permanently living under a shroud of fug. A problem dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde hopes to tackle with an “electronic vacuum cleaner.” By using buried coils of copper to create an electrostatic field, Roosegaarde says you can create holes of clean air in the sky 50-60 meters in diameter. Roosegaarde has created a working prototype, and plans to demonstrate it in Beijing, a city that’s no stranger to the curse of being overcast.

Are we alone? Is Earth so rare in its habitability? Well, according to a study recently published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences the answer to the latter question at least is “not really.” In fact, it reports that around one in five sun-like stars has planets in the Goldilocks zone, according to data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. If this remains true for the further reaches of our galaxy, this could mean there’s potentially a planet in a habitable distance from its star just 12 lightyears from Earth. Still very far, but also extremely close in galactic terms. Whether these planets also support life is, of course, a whole other issue. But the conditions should theoretically be there. So if we set off now…

Seen any other far-out articles that you’d like considered for Alt-week? Working on a project or research that’s too cool to keep to yourself? Drop us a line at alt [at] engadget [dot] com.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Invented more than a decade ago by Bram Cohen, BitTorrent has become the protocol of choice for file-sharers. This includes those who download copyrighted material.

While BitTorrent is used by many pirates, the technology itself is neutral and does a lot of good for content creators as well. This is also the message BitTorrent Inc, the parent company of the popular uTorrent client, has tried to communicate over the past year.

On numerous occasions the company has distanced itself from those who download infringing content, including the majority of their 150+ million users.

“We do not endorse piracy. We do not encourage it. We don’t point to piracy sites. We don’t host any infringing content,” BitTorrent’s CEO said previously. In addition, the company launched a website to show the public that BitTorrent does not equal piracy.

BitTorrent is right to stress the legal use of its software, but whether that’s successful is another question. It only draws attention to a connection that they want people to believe is not there, which is the opposite of what they want to achieve.

For example, when we tried to setup uTorrent’s RSS downloader at TorrentFreak headquarters the other day we couldn’t help but notice a list of “pirate” terms that were included.

The RSS feature allows users to add RSS feeds for various torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, and filter downloads based on search phrases, episode numbers and video quality. This last option includes a dropdown box with several quality options, including DSRip, DVBRip, DVDScr, DVDRip, PDTV, Satrip and WebRip.

Most of these terms originate from piracy release groups and have little or no legal use.

DVDScr, for example, identifies a ripped copy of DVD screeners that are sent out to reviewers and are not intended for public viewing. Likewise, the terms DVBRip/PDTV are used exclusively by TV-piracy groups to identify the source of a recording.

Piracy references in uTorrent / BitTorrent

Given BitTorrent’s efforts to distance itself from all things piracy, it was quite a surprise for us to see these references in their most popular software. We can’t think of any RSS feeds with legal content where these filters would come in handy.

To find out why these terms were included TorrentFreak asked the company for clarification a couple of weeks ago, but we have yet to receive a response.

The listing of these “pirate” terms in uTorrent’s RSS downloader is of course not a crime by itself. However, should the company ever run into legal trouble it won’t be hard for outfits such as the MPAA and RIAA to argue that the feature is facilitating illegal downloading.

And that’s exactly what BitTorrent Inc has been trying to avoid with their recent marketing campaigns.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

New gameplay footage from the standalone version of zombie-filled open-world title, DayZ, gives players a look at the game's pre-alpha state.

The video, which you can watch above, features close-up combat with zombies and some of the game's exploration elements. It was posted by creator Dean Hall, who adds that the footage is unedited and "makes no effort to mask the variety of bugs."

"Our who focus is on getting the alpha out, which means focusing on multiplayer (server) performance," Hall wrote.

Earlier this month, Hall revealed on Reddit that DayZ remains a work in progress due to optimization issues and bug fixing. A release date has not yet been announced.

A Detroit man has gone to some very strange lengths to get back at his ex-wife.

Alan Markovitz, 59, a well-known strip club owner in Detroit and soon-to-be reality television star on Cinemax, is still rather upset his wife apparently had an affair with someone he knew two years ago.

So he decided to buy the house right next to the couple, and put up a giant middle finger statue aimed in their direction. Spotlights on the 12-foot-high bronze statue make sure it can be viewed at all hours, according to Deadline Detroit.

"I'm so over her," Markovitz told Deadline. "This is about him. This is about him not being a man."

The statue cost roughly $7,000 and is installed in the back garden, according to UK Metro.

Lenka Tuohy, believed to be the daughter of Markovitz's ex-wife, tweeted a photo of the statue from the window and wrote, "How psychotic do you have to be to buy the house directly next to your ex wife and then put a statue up like that?!?! Real classy alan."

Markovitz owns three strip clubs in the Detroit area. He claims the house was shown to him by coincidence by a realtor, but after he saw it, "karma" took over, Deadline reports.

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The check in is on the way out. But apps that use mobile location data are only becoming more popular. 

Providing a useful service that encourages data sharing is the key to a successful location-based strategy. It is also the formula for creating a valuable, ad-supported app, as marketers seek information to power hyper-personalized, targeted campaigns. 

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at how location-based services have changed, what services are doing the best job of enticing users to share their location data, and other data like preferences and habits, and how marketers can then take that information and put it to use for hyper-targeted campaigns.

Here are some of the report's key findings:

• Location-based services enjoy widespread acceptance, but adoption isn't growing. Seventy-four percent of U.S. smartphone owners say they use mobile location-based services. That percentage is flat compared to last year.
• Check-ins are becoming passé. The percentage of U.S. adults who reported using local-social networks to "check in," decreased from 18% in February of last year to 12% this year.
• Apps like Life360 and Waze prosper because consumers feel like they're getting great value out of sharing not just their location, but other information too.
• Research increasingly supports the notion that local apps and advertising leads to in-store purchases. Mobile-local campaigns allow marketers to nudge customers down the purchase funnel, and "close the loop," with in-store foot traffic and purchases.
• Geoaudience profiling, geoconquesting, and hyper-local in-store campaigns are three primary strategies used to segment audiences and target consumers based on location.

Access The Full Report And All Our Local-Mobile Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today>>

In full, the report:

• Examines how location-based services have changed now that the check in is on the way out.
• Considers those apps that have done the best job offering a service to consumers and getting them to voluntarily share their information.
• Puts location-based services in the context of mobile in-store shopping among consumers.
• Unpacks the three main campaigns associated with mobile-location marketing.
• Looks forward to emergent trends toward hyper-local targeting, in which retailers use Bluetooth technology and mobile payments in stores.
  

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In June, Rolls-Royce gathered 47 vintage Ghosts, joined by their 21st century descendant, to recreate the 1913 Alpine Trial, a week-long endurance rally around Central Europe.

This week, the Centenary Alpine Trial won the award for "Best Rally or Tour of the Year" at the International Historic Motoring Awards in London.

150 participants from 12 countries took off from Vienna on an 1,800 mile trip that would include Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Italy.

On the gorgeous mountain passes and ocean roads, the classic cars made for a beautiful sight.

Here's a map of the route the cars followed in 1913.

The 2013 route took the cars through Austria, Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia.

Before starting out on June 14, the cars lined up in Vienna's Stadtpark.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Leonid meteor shower will peak this weekend USA TODAY Skywatchers, rejoice! The Leonid meteor shower, an annual mid-November treat, will be coming to a sky near you this weekend. The peak of the shower will be visible both Saturday and Sunday nights, according to EarthSky magazine. Unfortunately, the full ... Leonid meteor shower: Where and when to watchChristian Science Monitor Look up! Annual Leonid meteor shower peaks this weekendLos Angeles Times Leonid meteor shower peaks this weekend: How to see itCBS News Malibu Times -WebProNews all 67 news articles »

Just ahead of the release of the box set of the complete series of "Breaking Bad," a clip rumored to be an alternate ending to the series has surfaced on Youtube.

It shows Walter White demanding he be addressed as "Heisenberg," then he suddenly wakes up from a nightmare — filled with weird stories of dealing meth, having a shaved head, and killing people.

"Oh, I knew this was going to happen," his wife chides him. "You grow a beard and all of a sudden you think you're Osama bin Laden."

The clip seems to be a joke ending to the show. The actress playing his wife, Jane Kaczmarek, is from Bryan Cranston's other series — "Malcolm in the Middle."

Before "Breaking Bad" ended, some thought it would be great if the ending showed White going into witness protection and later ending up on "Malcolm in the Middle."

As commenter yyZiggurat points out on Reddit, the ending appears to be pretty close to the season finale of Bob Newhart's sitcom "Newhart," which ended in 1990.

Andrew Sims, editor-in-chief at Hypable writes:

Hypable is confident this is the official Breaking Bad “alternate ending” coming on the complete box set for one reason: Malcom in the Middle’s Jane Kaczmarek was on the set of the meth drama this past January to shoot a scene for the DVD/Blu-ray box set. No further details had come to light until now.

Now watch the clip:

If you want to see what the actual ending was, you can check it out here.

DON'T MISS: The 30 Most Jaw-Droppingly Shocking Moments From Every Season Of 'Breaking Bad'

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Onder andere op het PlayStation-forum van Sony en bij de klantreviews op Amazon blijft het aantal klachten over defect geraakte PlayStation 4-consoles groeien. Er wordt gesproken over een tweetal problemen. Sony stelt dat het gaat om een gering aantal kapotte consoles.

We schakelen live over naar Amsterdam waar op dit moment HNLMS Pakjesboot (klik foto), met daarop Kolonel Sinterklaas en zijn tot de tanden bewapende Zwarte Pieten Brigade arriveert. Burgemeester Van der Laan heeft de bevolking tot kalmte gemaand en de...

Developers from Guerilla Games were among those invited to give feedback on the PlayStation 4's Dualshock 4 controller early in the prototyping process and, according to the studio's managing director Hermen Hulst, they pushed hard to ensure the controller would have the features they wanted.

"I think we got everything we wanted out of this controller," said Hulst, who had a team of developers within Guerilla providing feedback on the controller from day one. "Being [a studio making] a first-person shooter, having the outward-curved triggers is super important. Tiny things like the indentations on the thumbsticks is super important. The form factor of the controller, just how tight and responsive it is — it's exactly what we wanted."

...

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Between companies like Tesla and ZipCar and any number of other transportation-related startups, the way we get from A to B is changing.

But the bicycle is still around, and it only takes a quick walk around most major cities to see that it's thriving.

Of course it's come a long way since the iconic penny farthing – the old-timey bike with a huge front wheel – but a number of designers are at work to teach our pedal-powered friends some new tricks.

Newer, better bikes are being conceived all the time. Electric motors for expanded range, windshields for comfort, maybe even make it a foldable design for easy transport.

Let's take a look at the future of pedal-powered transportation.

If you want something built for speed, check out Ilya Vostrikov's design. It's a reimagining of a bike by Specialized called TT, and the dropped handlebars keep your body in a position optimized for speed.

This heavy-duty trike looks ready for some off-road rides – three wheels instead of two make for a more stable ride. It even folds down small for carrying it around.

How about a bike that doesn't have a rear hub? Designs like this will be adapted to carry luggage where the hub used to be. By storing things below the bike's center of gravity like this, it makes for a much safer and steadier ride.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider