firehose

cylonlover writes with news that another police department has received authorization to start using drones for tasks like "...photographing crime scenes and searching for missing people." From the article: "The police department in Arlington can now use new tools in support of public safety over the Texas urban community — two small helicopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The FAA has granted permission for the Arlington police to fly these unmanned aircraft under certain circumstances: they must fly under 400 feet, only in the daytime, be in sight of the operator and a safety observer, and be in contact with the control tower at the nearby Dallas-Fort Worth airport — one of the busiest in the country." They're using a Leptron Avenger, which "has been designed with military grade features" but don't worry, "police are quick to emphasize that the 4- to 5-foot-long aircraft aren’t the same as military drones."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alphadogg writes with news on what Open-Xchange has been doing with the OpenOffice.org developers they hired. From the article: "Collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange plans to launch an open-source, browser-based productivity suite called OX Documents. The first application for the suite is OX Text, an in-browser word processing tool with editing capabilities for Microsoft Word .docx files and OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice .odt files, the Nuremberg, Germany, company announced this week. OX Text doesn't mess up the formatting of documents loaded into the application, said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. XML-based documents can be read, edited and saved back to their original format at a level of quality and fidelity previously unavailable with browser-based text editors, according to the company." The other claim to fame is that it supports collaborative editing similar to Google Docs. Unfortunately for anyone hoping to have a Free/Open replacement for Google Docs, it's not actually fully open source: the backend is (Apache/GPL dual licensed), but the front-end code is Creative Commons BY-SA-NC, which is unequivocally non-free and notoriously difficult to define. "Open Xchange CEO, told The H that his interpretation of Non-Commercial in the licensing was such that companies could use the software in-house, but not sell it as a service to others. Companies that want support will have to purchase the software from Open Xchange."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gone Home uses an atmospheric, introspective exploration game to tackle one of the most mysterious, emotional and twisted phenomena of human existence - being a teenage girl in the 90s. Trust us, it's terrible.

Regardless of gender or decade, one thing that alleviates the confusion of adolescence for millions of teenagers worldwide is music. For Gone Home's narrative, a teenage girl discovering herself in the 90s Pacific Northwest, this means Riot Grrrl. Riot Grrrl is a feminist punk movement that hit Washington and Oregon beginning in 1991, which spawned an influx of new bands and written publications focused on female empowerment.

Developer The Fullbright Company - formed by three ex-BioShock developers - snagged two original Riot Grrrl bands, Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy, for Gone Home. It's an important get for Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor.

"It's really goddamn amazing to have the opportunity for this music to be in Gone Home," he says. "Authenticity is our No. 1 priority, and the inclusion of tracks by Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile really drives home the era and the place and the feelings surrounding the story of Gone Home. We're psyched."

Gallery: Gone Home

Continue reading Gone Home sets the stage with two original Riot Grrrl bands

Gone Home sets the stage with two original Riot Grrrl bands originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who knows?

An anonymous reader writes "A new study released today (abstract) indicates that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first man-made object to exit our solar system. Instrumentation data sent back to NASA indicate the historic event likely occurred on August 25, 2012, evidenced by drastic changes in radiation levels as the craft ventured past the heliopause. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Voyager 1 has actually made it to true interstellar space, or whether it has entered a separate, undefined region beyond our solar system. Either way, the achievement is truly monumental. 'It's outside the normal heliosphere, I would say that. We're in a new region,' said Bill Webber, professor emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. 'And everything we're measuring is different and exciting.'" Update: 03/20 20:44 GMT by S : Reader skade88 points out that the JPL Voyager team is not so sure: "It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space. In December 2012, the Voyager science team reported that Voyager 1 is within a new region called 'the magnetic highway' where energetic particles changed dramatically. A change in the direction of the magnetic field is the last critical indicator of reaching interstellar space and that change of direction has not yet been observed." So we'll probably be hearing about this again in a couple years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Salvador and Gala Dali

Pictured above is a remarkable piece of experimental technology from the 1950′s that never ended up going anywhere. The Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee is a single-rider vehicle that was supposed to provide a tactical advantage to US forces. The Office of Naval research spent a couple of years developing the aircraft, wich uses two rotors mounted inside the base of the platform. They spin opposite each other — which removes the need for a tail rotor like you’d find on a helicopter –to lift the platform a short distance off the ground. Although six of them were made only two survive. But the good news is you can go and see them at museums on the East or West coast of the US.

Now that the serious business is behind us, let’s talk about the video clip after the break. The narrative style is a gem of the newsreel era. We can’t tell what is going on with the accent, but we’re totally convinced that at least one general meeting per year at your local hackerspace should require all presenters to use their best impression of this talented gentleman’s voice.

[via Hacked Gadgets and Laughing Squid]

Filed under: news

A space history project led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has exciting news out today. Apollo mission F-1 enginges have been recovered from deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic ocean.

Moleskine, the beloved Milan-based maker of cardboard-bound notebooks meant to evoke an earlier era of the Parisian arts scene, is going forward with its IPO. Here's what you should know.

Dinobike

It’s time for another round of HBO’s Veep, and with it, another round of Armando Iannucci’s master class in how to insult people. There’s plenty of that here, as the second season finds some all-new ways to humiliate Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer by having her hand out free gum, turning her into an Internet meme, sending her to fraternize with pig-fuckers, etc. It’s also gone kinda crazy with the puns: “Daughter-board,” “Kanye West Wing,” “Shit-uation Room,” and “Jolly Green Jizz-Face” all fly by at lightning speed in this NSFW trailer. And hey look, it’s Gary Cole! And the guy who played Clay Davis! They’re also here to insult and get insulted. That’s how the government works. 

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All but confirming the end of America as a superpower, Paramount has begun developing a sequel to Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters, despite the dark fairy-tale reimagining performing rather modestly at the U.S. box office and receiving mostly dismal reviews from snooty critics who expected more from the film than a reliably mechanical process. But because it crossed $200 million at the global box office, and because America can no longer be considered the predominant force in the world’s marketplace, there will be more witches getting shot in the face by good-looking people in leather. Whether those people will still be Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner remains to be seen: Renner, for one, seemed as embarrassed by promoting the film as America should be about the power of the dollar to dictate its movie franchises.  

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Never one to miss a chance to be ironic, David Hasselhoff is protesting plans to tear down the Berlin Wall, determined that the last symbolic remnants of communist oppression in Germany not be destroyed, and willing to come and be David Hasselhoff until his demands are met. Hasselhoff made that determination clear during a visit to Berlin yesterday, where he attended a press conference regarding real estate developers’ plans to knock down the largest-surviving piece of the Wall that once divided East and West Germany—and, perhaps more importantly, served as the stage for David Hasselhoff's historic 1989 performance of his hit single, “Looking For Freedom.”

There, at a “makeshift reggae club,” Hasselhoff compared tearing down the Wall and its mural-laden East Side Gallery to “tearing down an Indian burial ground,” noting that the site is “sacred” as a memorial to those whose lives were lost and were never ...

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As he prepares both a film about Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger and an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Prohibition-era Boston tale Live By Night, Ben Affleck has begun looking for films that will allow him to branch out into newer, heretofore-unexplored areas of Boston. He may have found it in Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution, Nathaniel Philbrick’s forthcoming book about the 1775 battle between British and colonial troops in Boston, a conflict that spurred the American Revolution that eventually freed Boston to become the greatest city in the world—much to the consternation of King George who really, really wanted Boston for England, knowing what a rich resource for movies it would be. Affleck will likely reunite with Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio on what could be his next project, depending on whether he discovers another, more interesting story in Boston first. (This is, of course ...

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The casting world is full of what-ifs. What if Nick Offerman had played Michael Scott, a role he mentioned auditioning for in an interview with us? Offerman isn’t the only big name and prominent comedy personality who could've ended up on The Office. A photograph of a sign-in sheet for The Office auditions Rainn Wilson posted on his Facebook page provides a fascinating glimpse into an alternate-universe version of The Office populated by the likes of Mary Lynn Rajskub (as Pam), Adam Scott (as Jim), Matt Besser (as Dwight) and the late, great Chicago improvisation legend Jim Zulevic as Michael. Read it, and think, “Huh, maybe Adam Scott would have made for a better Jim after all.”

            

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We already knew that the upcoming sequel The Muppets…Again! would, at long last, bring the madcap Muppets sensibility to the Russian prison system via Tina Fey, whose role as a gulag guard will be the second-most oppressive thing she’s been involved with since her last “career gal trying to have it all” movie. Now we have photographic evidence of that zany encounter between everyone’s favorite felt-covered fuzzballs and forced labor. This set image seems to show Kermit’s jewel thief doppelganger Constantine causing Fey’s stern prison official to do a Russian version of Fey's famed eye-roll, perhaps with his suggestion that such outdated modes of punishment are inhumane, probably while also making a joke about how that even goes for frogs. (“I am reminded of the writings of Fyodor Dos-toad-evsky…,” he’s maybe saying, in a joke that will make our own Erik Adams very ...

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Submitted by rockstarcode

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

infinitenap:

(and sweatpants)

I have always been a big proponent of following your heart and doing exactly what you want to do. It sounds so simple, right? But there are people who spend years—decades, even—trying to find a true sense of purpose for themselves. My advice? Just find the thing you enjoy doing more than anything else, your one true passion, and do it for the rest of your life on nights and weekends when you’re exhausted and cranky and just want to go to bed.

Overdosing on caffeine to keep your eyes from hitting the floor during your 16-hour office shift has a distinct possibility of putting you in an early grave. However, an American company has decided to embrace this by bringing out a blend of coffee named Death Wish, which it has dubbed ‘The World’s Strongest Coffee’.

Here’s the current state of things. If you search for “NCAA bracket”, Google pops up a March Madness bracket with the full schedule. It’s not even using a sidebar at this point and is only showing the bracket.

“Hello. This is Jackie Russ, Eddy from the city of Somerville with no emergency information for Tuesday March 19th. As of 6 o'clock P. M this evening. The city is listing it’s emergency declaration, cars currently parked in city and school lots must be moved by 8 O'clock P. M on tuesday, and all other parking regulations will go into effect. At that time. Please remember that property owners must shovel sidewalks up to 42 inches in Way. In accordance with city ordinance is and we are also asking for assistance in shoveling out hybrids in your neighborhood if possible. We appreciate your patience and cooperation during the storm. Thank you.”