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MetroGnome made an fantastic electronic remix of the Breaking Bad theme song. It’s available as a free download.

via The Awesomer

The first full-length trailer of Noah shows nearly the whole scope of the biblical tale: Noah's dream that a flood is coming, building an ark, animals flocking inside the finished vessel and the ship thrashing about in a storm threatening to end mankind.

Noah, whose title character is played by Russell Crowe, will have an undercurrent of violence. The video depicts an army of men who try to board the ark through brute strength, only to be assaulted by forces unseen. Apparently, God isn't on their side.

But Noah also speaks of "new life" in the trailer. His adopted daughter, played by Emma Watson, asks, "Is this the end of everything?" Noah responds, "The beginning." The movie also stars Jennifer Connelly and Saoirse Ronan Read more...

The Moog name has been synonymous with quality, analogue synthesizers since the late 1960s. These items have always been prohibitively expensive for many, so now you can get Animoog for iPad ($31.99) instead. I get it – $30 for an app seems eye-wateringly expensive these days, but when you consider the thousands of dollars asked by the company for their musical hardware, it starts to look a little more tempting. Moog synthesizers have been used extensively over the years, from musicians like The Beatles to Stanley Kubrick film soundtracks. Using some convincing emulation and Moog’s new Anisotropic Synth Engine (ASE),...

Read the full article: Animoog: The $30 Moog Synthesizer You’ve Always Wanted

Mmm, toast! (Via Digg.)

If you're getting the PS4 console Friday, the PlayStation Camera — Sony's answer to Microsoft's Kinect — will not be coming with it.

The camera will cost an extra $59.99 in addition to the console which starts at $399. Among its features, the camera has face recognition, allows voice commands, and can track a person's position in a room.

Originally, Sony considered including the camera with the PlayStation 4 at launch November 15, but removed it because they couldn't afford the loss. 

We'll break down whether it's worth shelling out an extra $60 for the PlayStation camera soon, until then, let's take a look at the camera we received along with our review unit.

Here it is! The camera comes in a surprisingly small box.

Let's take it out.

It's incredibly light and small.

Here's the stand.

Hello PlayStation logo.You're able to stand it up, too. Cool.

Let's put the two together!One from above.

Here's how it looks standing up.

 Again, we'll review the pros and cons to purchasing a PlayStation camera in the next few days.

Until then, check out some of our other PS4 coverage with much more to come.

SEE ALSO: After spending a day with the PS4, here are our initial thoughts

Join the conversation about this story »

[Steven] has been working for the past year on a very cool pedal powered hydrofoil, which he calls the Wingbike.

We’ve seen plenty of trampofoils before, which are hydrofoils that can convert a human bouncing up and down… to horizontal movement. There have even been some pedal powered versions before, but its a rather tricky mechanism to get just right.

[Steven] has built his Wingbike almost entirely out of carbon fiber, and it only weighs 10kg.The biggest problem is balance, as you’re about 1.5M above the foils. If you lean too much, you fall. If you slow down too much, you sink. The current model he is working on has fairly large foils, which does help a bit with the balance, but that also increases the amount of energy required to propel it. He plans on creating new designs with much smaller and faster foils in the future.

Unfortunately, the water is getting quite cold in the Netherlands, so he’s going to spend the rest of the winter months optimizing the bike from a design perspective. Stick around after the break to see his latest successful test video!

In an excellent editorial, Michael Masnick explains what's so nefarious about the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- the secretive trade treaty whose IP chapter leaked yesterday. As Masnick explains, the worst aspect of this treaty is that it locks in all of our present, overreaching copyright rules, effectively making it impossible for Congress and the Copyright Office to continue their present work on modernizing copyright for the digital age, and ensuring that they can never do so in future:

It's a lie in two different ways. First, there are multiple provisions in here that will absolutely require changes to US law. We'll discuss a few in other posts, but what's much more nefarious and downright obnoxious, is that this would lock in a variety of really bad copyright policies, making it nearly impossible for Congress to go back and change them. And that's a real issue, because, as we've been discussing, Congress is actually discussing copyright reform again. The head of the US Copyright Office, Maria Pallante, has proposed a bunch of changes to copyright law (some good, some bad), and astoundingly, just as Congress is at least trying to have the discussion about whether or not those and other ideas make sense, the USTR is looking to effectively tie everyone's hands by saying "these things cannot be changed," including many of the reforms that Pallante has directly proposed.

That's really quite incredible if you think about it. On the one hand, you have the very head of the Copyright Office suggesting some reforms, and you have Congress beginning the process to explore that. On the other, you have the USTR totally ignoring the sole power of Congress to make copyright and patent law, and effectively saying "you cannot make any of the suggested reforms." And then the USTR has the gall to ask Congress to give up its power to challenge specific provisions in the agreement? While we're concerned about the Congressional copyright reform process, at least it's being done in the open. The USTR has been hashing out the plan in TPP in total secrecy for years.

Who the hell does the USTR think they are that they can flat out override the Constitution and the Congressional process, and effectively block them in and stop any meaningful attempt at copyright reform? All done via a process driven entirely by a few special interests? It's anti-democracy. It's pure corporate cronyism by the worst cronies around.

The Most Nefarious Part Of The TPP Proposal: Making Copyright Reform Impossible

What would happen if history was written by critters instead of people? Well, things would be pretty much the same, but our old portraits would be a lot more interesting (and adorable). 

At least that's what the works of artist Christina Hess teaches us with these adorable historical portraits featuring cats, dogs, ferrets and more. Best of all, she covers all time periods of history, stretching from ancient Egyptian Pharaohs  to Elvis. You can buy a calendar of her historical art from her Etsy shop for only $6.

Via Incredible Things

I didn't mean to watch this entire thing, but dammit if I didn't sit through all ten minutes (alright, technically 11 minutes and 20 seconds) of this fantastically witty, animated history of the English language.

Read more...

Colorado's newly legalized marijuana industry has had an unforeseen dark side: pungent dankness running wild on the noses of innocent citizens. Only a mechanical hero could save them. Call in the Nasal Ranger.

Read more...

The post Real-life Autocorrect: Yikes… appeared first on Damn You Auto Correct!.

This week's episode of South Park pokes a lot of fun at Black Friday holiday sales, Game of Thrones, the frenzied behavior of deal-seeking mobs, and the foolishness of console wars. In the episode Cartman, Stan, and the gang set out to create a plan to get the Xbox One on Black Friday for cheap, but in the midst of preparing for the battle at the South Park Mall, a contingent of the kids balk at getting an Xbox One, instead opting to split off and fight against Cartman's faction because they think PS4 is better.

read more

Black metal band Immortal meets Benny Hill! (Cherrybombed, thanks Patrick Kelly!)

In 1870, Ma, Pa, Mary, and Laura Ingalls left their home in southeast Kansas, where they had lived for about a year, and headed back to Wisconsin. Their Kansas home was later the basis for Laura's book The Little House on the Prairie. That same year, a group of new families moved into the area. They were Spiritualists, a religion that was totally foreign to the homesteaders already in the new state. Two of the families moved away within a year. The others kept to themselves, with the exception of the Benders.

John Bender, Sr., and his family settled in Kansas in 1870, near the Great Osage Trail (later known as the Santa Fe Trail) over which innumerable travelers passed on their way to settle the West. The older Bender, called "Pa," made a claim for 160 acres in which is now Labette County. His son John (sometimes called Thomas) claimed a smaller parcel that adjoined Pa's land, but never lived on or worked it. The Benders also included "Ma" and a daughter named Kate. Ma and Pa spoke mostly German, and their English was so heavily accented that no one understood them. The younger Benders spoke fluent English.

The family built a one-room house near the Osage Trail, with a curtain that divided the home into two areas. The front area was a public inn and store, and the family quarters were in the back. Travelers on the trail were welcome to refresh themselves with a meal and resupply their wagons with liquor, tobacco, horse feed, black powder, and food from the Bender home. And they often spent the night.

Kate was the most outgoing of the Benders, and advertised herself as a fortune teller and healer. It was rumored that she and her mother practiced witchcraft. Kate was attractive, and her psychic abilities drew extra customers to the inn, when she wasn't traveling to give lectures on Spiritualism and holding healing services.

Later investigations revealed that none of the Benders was actually named Bender, and the only ones that were related were Ma and her daughter Kate. Pa was born John Flickinger around 1810 in either Germany or the Netherlands. Ma Bender was born Almira Meik, and her first husband was named Griffith, with whom she bore 12 children. Ma was married several times before marrying Pa, but each husband died of head wounds. Her daughter Kate was born Eliza Griffith. John Bender, Jr.'s real name was John Gebhart, and many who knew them in Kansas said he was Kate's husband instead of her brother.

Hundreds of men passed through Kansas on their way to seek their fortune in the West, and some were never heard from again. It took time for such disappearances to draw attention, as there were many reasons for travelers, adventurers, and settlers to be out of touch or even dead. But over the course of a couple of years, more and more missing persons appeared to have dropped off the face of the earth about the time they passed through Labette County. Several bodies were even found in the area, murdered, but no one knew who did it.

In 1872, George Loncher and his infant daughter left Independence, Kansas, to settle in Iowa after the death of his wife. They never arrived. Dr. William York went looking for them, following the Osage Trail. He questioned people all the way to Fort Scott, but then Dr. York himself disappeared on his way back to Independence. And that was the turning point in the story. Dr. York had two powerful brothers who were determined to find out what happened: Colonel Ed York and Kansas Senator Alexander York.

Colonel York led an investigation into Labette County. They questioned the Benders about a woman who claimed Ma had threatened her with a knife. The township held a meeting at the Harmony Grove schoolhouse in which it was decided to search every homestead for evidence of the murders. Colonel York attended the meeting, as well as both male Benders. But the weather turned bad, and it was several days before such a search could begin.

Meanwhile, a neighbor noticed the inn was empty. The Benders were gone. A couple of days later, several hundred volunteers arrived for a search, including Colonel York. The Benders' wagon was gone, but they took little from the home besides food and clothing. What the townspeople did find was chilling.

A trap door in the floor behind the separating curtain led to a foul-smelling cellar, which was drenched with blood. The cabin was moved away from the spot, and the ground was dug up, but no bodies were found. Then the investigation turned to the garden, which was freshly plowed. Neighbors recalled that the garden always seemed freshly plowed. Working through the night, the volunteers first unearthed the body of Dr. York. Seven more bodies were found that night, and another the next day. The throats had been cut, and the skulls were bashed in. The exception was Mr. Loucher's infant daughter, who was buried under her father. One of the bodies was that of a girl estimated to be about eight years old, whose body was badly mutilated. Ten bodies were ultimately found at the Bender farm, but 21 murders are attributed to the family.

Investigators pieced together what happened. Guests at the inn were urged to sit in the place of honor, which was against the separating curtain. While dining, the guest of honor would be hit in the head with a hammer from behind the curtain, his throat would be slit, and then his body dropped into the trap door to the cellar. One man, Mr. Wetzell, heard the story and remembered when he was at the inn and declined to sit in the designated spot. His decision caused Ma Bender to become angry and abusive toward him, and when he saw the male Benders emerge from behind the curtain, he and his companion decided to leave. William Pickering told an almost identical story.

For all the murders, the Benders only received about $4600 and some livestock from their victims. The crimes created a sensation in the newspapers, and drew journalists and curiosity-seekers from all over.

The Benders' wagon was eventually found some miles away from the homestead. Twelve men were arrested as accessories to the murders, mostly for receiving stolen goods. Senator York offered a $1,000 reward for the Benders, and the governor chipped in another $2,000, but the reward was never claimed. In the years following the sensational crimes, several women were arrested as Ma or Kate, but none were positively identified by evidence. Several vigilante groups claimed to have found the Benders and murdered them, but none brought back proof. The official investigation notes that testimony from railroad employees placed the Benders boarding a train for Humboldt, and traced the younger Benders to trains going to Texas or New Mexico. The older Benders were allegedly seen on their way to St. Louis by way of Kansas City. No one knows what ultimately became of them. The house in which the murders took place was disassembled and carried away piece by piece by souvenir seekers. Today, nothing remains to even indicate the exact location where the Bender house stood, although the property is said to be haunted by the victims.

Those are the facts as known. Rumors that surrounded the case were legion. Some said that John Gebhart was a "half-wit," while others said his behavior was a ruse. Others say that Kate was a prostitute as well as a psychic and murderer. Ma supposedly killed three of her older children because they were witnesses to the murders of her husbands (Kate was her fifth child). And another rumor says that Ma murdered Pa over stolen property soon after they fled. It was also reported that Pa committed suicide in Lake Michigan in 1884. But after 140 years, we will probably never know what really happened to the Bloody Benders.