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This is the first look at two Scooby Doo LEGO sets due for release this August. Just like my prison pen-pal Snakebird! All the characters will be available as minifigs, and the sets include the Mystery Machine, Dracula's Castle, Mummy Museum Mystery and the Haunted Lighthouse. But let's go back to my prison pen-pal. I'm kind of worried about his release because I think he's in love with me. And not just because I told him I'm a 6-foot blonde named Victoria, but I did do that. What? I feel like the exercise helps me write Geekologie better. I did this for you basically. So if he kills me, my blood is on your hands. Keep going for a shot of Dracula's Castle.

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There’s nothing Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs won’t try to hack, including their own biology.

Founders like Dave Asprey, a 41-year-old Californian, chug fistfuls of pills every morning in the hopes that these supplements will give them a competitive edge in an already competitive market, reports CNN.

The drug cocktail Asprey takes is a mix of “smart drugs” meant to increase brain function and performance. These natural supplements are also known as nootropics or by their individual names: Piracetam, Aniracetam, CILTEP, Methyl, and Cobalamin.

“Each one has a different benefit,” Asprey told CNN. “One may help bolster memory, another will help you focus. One of his pills helps improve vision, and another promises more energy. They all have the same goal -- to help you maximize your potential.”  

Like others in his cohort, Asprey occasionally supplements these supplements with prescription pills like Modafinil, an anti-narcoleptic medication that healthy people have begun using to pull all-nighters.

Modafinil is for people “who don’t just need a pick-me-up to get through a deadline; they need to be on, without a break, for months, even years at a time,” Robert Kolker at New York Magazine writes.

The idea is that, with the right supplement cocktail, you can conquer your body’s mortal limits. You can pull that all nighter while finishing up a sales pitch or write code for 19 hours a day multiple days in a row.

"It used to take a lifetime to radically rewire the human body and mind this way. Technology has changed the rules," Asprey writes on LinkedIn. "This is real. It's what happens when you hack the human body the same way you'd hack a website. It's why I can do what I do."

But smart drugs don’t come cheap. Asprey estimates that he’s spent around $300,000 over the past 15 years to "hack his own biology” and he has expanded into marketing and selling some of the supplements he takes as his habit has grown.

But to Asprey and others like him, it’s worth it. He believes that, despite potential side effects, the drugs allow him to lead a higher quality life.  

"Just like an Olympic athlete who's willing to do almost anything, even if it shortens your life by five years…In many people's minds, the difference between completely failing... and making a billion dollars, is right here," Tim Ferriss, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor told CNN as he pointed to his head.

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Apple released a watch 20 years ago, and it's nothing like the smartwatch that's expected to come out in March.

The original Apple Watch, which Jonathan Morrison recently reviewed on YouTube, wasn't sold as a standalone product.

Apple offered the watch as an incentive to upgrade to System 7.5, which we'd probably call Mac OS 7.5 today.

People could chose between the Apple Watch and Conflict Catcher 3, a Mac utility app.

The first Apple Watch wasn't a smart watch in any sense of the word — it certainly didn't have health monitoring or work with Apple Pay. But it did feature scratch-resistant glass and an eye-catching blue bezel.

It also said "Mac OS" on the black plastic band, which was particularly cool because Apple would drop the "System" moniker and start calling its software "Mac OS" about two years later.

These days you can buy one on eBay for around $400.

Here's the full original Apple Watch review:

SEE ALSO: Tim Cook's Total Pay For 2014 Was Over $100 Million

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If you have a spare tablet, you can turn it into an interactive calendar just by mounting it and keeping your calendar app of choice on the screen at all times. But if all you have is a spare monitor, check out Instructables member Alex Pine’s guide. He used a Raspberry Pi and an old monitor to show his Google Calendar on his wall.

Alex loaded Raspbian on his Raspberry Pi then installed the Iceweasel browser so he could go to Google Calendar’s online page. He also tweaked Iceweasel to start automatically and at full screen. Finally Alex turned off Raspbian’s mouse cursor and sleep timer. Schedule a visit to Alex’s Instructables page for the full walkthrough.

(H/T: IJReview)

Following my earlier post, here’s some more IRS fun for us. It’s a news story that could be straight out of Kafka. Siegfried Meinstein is a 94 year old man who is alive and well and living at an assisted living facility near Columbus, Ohio, and according to the IRS, he’s dead. According to an article from Fox News:

The newspaper reports that the old-timer’s troubles began in April when he filed his tax return online through his accountant.  The IRS rejected the return and the reason given was because the filer was dead according to the Social Security Administration.

A few days later, Meinstein and his son went to the Social Security office in Columbus and were told that their records did not list the elder Meinstein as deceased. The office gave the Meinsteins a letter to send to the IRS. They did only to have the IRS kick it back to Social Security.

There was some back-and-forth and then Meinstein and his son visited the local IRS office where they were informed that the problem would be resolved.

Instead, the senior citizen received a letter from the IRS that said, “We are unable to process your tax return. Our records indicate that the person identified as the primary taxpayer…was deceased prior the tax year show on the tax form.”

It’s tempting to suggest that he should accept his premature (legal) demise and stop paying his taxes. In addition to that being illegal, it should also be noted that the IRS makes the worst private collection agencies look kindhearted and polite by comparison. At the same time, does it really surprise anyone that a living and healthy (as a 94 year old can be) man is having this much trouble convincing a government bureaucracy he still has a pulse? Josef K. and the land surveyor K. could probably sympathize with him.

The Columbus Dispatch, Meinstein’s local paper and the media outlet that first wrote on his story, has this to add about the relatively peculiar struggles the WWII veteran is facing:

Social Security does make mistakes. On average, it kills off about 1,000 living people every month, according to the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General. The walking dead usually get their records corrected quickly, though, and the process is relatively simple.

Not so in Meinstein’s case. Social Security doesn’t think he’s dead and apparently never has, Ron said. The problem seems to be isolated to the IRS, which is holding firm on its position.

The IRS, to its credit, appears to be working on the case, but the glacial pace at which the organization, or any government bureaucracy, works means this could be an unresolved issue for months to come. At the risk of being morbid, it’s entirely possible Meinstein might actually be dead by the time the IRS figures out he’s alive.* Still, he doesn’t seem to be troubled by being supposedly dead in his daily life. From the Dispatch‘s article:

“It isn’t really a problem in my daily life,” he said, sitting at a table in his Upper Arlington assisted-living facility. “Everybody accepts my money.”

So, why am I bringing this story to your attention? As I noted at the beginning, it’s useful to remind people this is the same agency that is administering Obamacare. Of course, this is in addition to being an excellent example of what a faceless, results-averse bureaucracy can do, whether you think it’s well-regulated or not. If you need an sign of where things could be heading, just remember that the same firm that botched the Obamacare rollout is going to help the IRS supposedly get its implementation of the Affordable Care Act right.

For your sakes, I hope all of you have health insurance and your tax situation in order, heh.

*=I personally wish him many more happy and healthy years, for the record.

The post Death and Taxes: IRS Informs Very Alive 94 Year Old Man He is Dead appeared first on RedState.

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Amazon Studios likely has another hit with "The Man In The High Castle," one of many pilots being screened to Prime members. The show is smart, fun, and polished, and it currently sports a five-star user rating.

Produced by Ridley Scott, the show is based on a 1962 Philip K. Dick novel about a world in which the Nazis and Japanese won World War II. Of all of Dick's classics, it was the only one to win science fiction's preeminent Hugo Award. Scott, who directed another Dick adaptation in "Blade Runner," started developing in 2010 what would surprisingly be the book's first screen adaptation.

It takes place in 1962 in a conquered America that has been divided into the Greater Nazi Reich from the Atlantic to the Rockies, and the Japanese Pacific States on the Pacific Coast.

The opening scene shows a propaganda film about life in America, which chillingly demonstrates how the Americans might come to accept Nazi overlords.

"It's a new day," the narrator proclaims. "The sun rises in the east. Across our land men and women go to work in factories and farms providing for their families. Everyone has a job. Everyone knows the part they play keeping our country strong and safe. So today we give thanks to our brave leaders, knowing we are stronger and prouder and better."

Only the end of the film explicitly references the Nazi takeover:

"Yes, it's a new day in our proud land, but our greatest days may lie ahead. Sieg heil!"

 Here's a look at Nazi Times Square: 

Here's Japanese San Francisco:

As the propaganda film suggests, aspects of life in Nazi/Japanese America are not bad, even as the overlords are brutally repress all resistance. The winners of the war — particularly the Germans, who developed the first atomic bomb — are living in a technological and economic boom as great as anything America saw in the real postwar era.

Given this rosy portrayal, it's all the more shocking when there's a reminder of how inhuman the Axis powers could be. In one scene, a volunteer for the resistance is driving through the middle of the country for the first time. He is talking with a Nazi police officer, who helped him change a flat tire, when ashes began falling like snow.

"Oh it's the hospital," the cop explains. "Tuesdays, they burn cripples, the terminally ill — drag on the state."

Amazon Studios is putting out some of the best new TV. There's "Transparent," starring Jeffrey Tambor as a father who comes out as transgender, which won the Golden Globe for best TV series, musical or comedy. I haven't watched that one yet, but I can personally recommend the underrated "Alpha House," a political comedy by Garry Trudeau, and the fantastic new "Mozart In The Jungle," a comedy based on a book about "sex, drugs, and classical music" in New York City.

NOW WATCH: This 20,000-Calorie Burger Is The Craziest Thing We've Ever Eaten

 

SEE ALSO: Netflix is also kicking ass when it comes to original content

DON'T MISS: Here's the weather prediction that won WWII

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Are you like a lot of people in this country — You want to change your broadband provider but you can’t because the only high-speed option in your town is your cable company? Maybe you’ve been holding out hope that Verizon will bring FiOS to your town so that you’ll at least have something that resembles a choice. We’ve got bad news for you, the company says it’s getting to the end of its current plans to build out the FiOS network.

This is according to Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran “Whammo” Shammo (who recently declared that the company will not get into that rollover data trend that’s all popular with kids today). Speaking to investors last week, the Great Shammo made clear the company’s plans to invest its money in its wireless business.

“I have been pretty consistent with this in the fact that we will spend more CapEx [capital expenditures] in the Wireless side and we will continue to curtail CapEx on the Wireline side,” he explained. “Some of that is because we are getting to the end of our committed build around FiOS, penetration is getting higher.”

This doesn’t mean that Verizon is abandoning FiOS; just that you probably won’t be getting access to it in your town if you don’t already have it.

FiOS brought in $3.3 billion to Verizon last year, an increase of 11.6%, and now accounts for 77% of the company’s wireline revenue. And it will likely continue to bring in more money and, more importantly, make more of a profit because Verizon won’t be spending money to build out its network.

“We are reconnecting homes that we’ve already connected, so it’s not additional capital that we have to outlay,” said Shammo. “That is a very good return for us because we already spent the capital to connect that home.”

Shammo’s comments did not go over well with the people of New Jersey who maintain that Verizon has bailed on a 22-year-old agreement with the state to build out broadband digital service to 100% of the Garden State.

Even though FiOS is sometimes viewed as a national competitor to the likes of Comcast, Charter, Time Warner Cable, who have near-monopoly control on high-speed broadband in most of the areas in which they operate, it currently only has 6.6 million broadband customers and 5.6 million pay-TV subscribers, significantly fewer than those other major ISPs.

The FiOS network itself only reaches a total of 19.8 million premises, which means there is a lot of room for the company to acquire new customers, but also means that even if it signed up every possible person to FiOS, it would still be smaller than Comcast.

UPDATE: A rep for Verizon tells Consumerist that the original plan for FiOS was to build out the network beyond 18 million premises, which as we noted above they have by 1.8 million.

The rep claims that it was this goal that Mr. Shammo was referencing in his recent comments.

“That number by the way continues to creep upward as we build out metropolitan areas like New York city, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Philadelphia plus a few other smaller cities,” adds the rep.

[via Ars Technica]

Smart people think that movies—not games—will be the first killer app for virtual reality. Maybe that's why Oculus is poaching Pixar veterans for its very own virtual reality film studio, and showing off its very first film at Sundance this week.

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