Update: Razer has now said it will honor Ouya's outstanding Free the Games payments. Read more.
Original Story
Indie developers say they're owed thousands of dollars as a result of Razer's acquisition of the Ouya microconsole storefront and technical team. Speaking anonymously to Vice, multiple developers claim that contracts they originally signed with Ouya, which promised to pay them thousands of dollars, are not being honoured. The value of those deals ranged from $5,000 (£3,000) all the way to $30,000 (£20,000), according to Vice.
An attack in early 2014 on Anthem, the No. 2 US health insurer, was by most measuring sticks a historic hack, leading to the biggest healthcare data breach ever. New evidence unearthed by researchers from security firm Symantec, however, shows it was business as usual for the hacking group, which over the past three years has carried out more than a dozen similar attacks.
Dubbed Black Vine, the group is well financed enough to have a reliable stream of weaponized exploits for zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Since 2012, the gang has brazenly infected websites frequented by executives in the aerospace, energy, military, and technology industries and then used the compromises to siphon blueprints, designs, and other intellectual property from the executives' organizations. The targeting of Anthem appears to reflect more of a secondary interest that was intended to further advance a primary interest in aerospace, energy, and other similar industries rather than to target healthcare information for its own sake.
"If someone just has Vikram's healthcare records, overall there's very little gain," Vikram Thakur, senior security researcher with Symantec, told Ars, as he described the motivations of the Black Vine group hacking Anthem. "But then you get healthcare information about a Vikram working for a government entity or a defense contractor, there is substantial value in that. This is the kind of data that's used in combination with something else to reach an entirely non-healthcare related goal."
teaBOT is a robot that mixes and brews custom blends of loose leaf tea. Users can order from a preset menu of blends, or design their own to control the flavor, caffeine content, and even water temperature of their finished tea. Two teaBOTs are set up at the Banting Institute at the University of Toronto and the Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto, California. Interested tea drinkers can suggest new locations through the Find a teaBOT site.
Finding someone else’s joke on Twitter, reposting it as your own without attribution, then collecting the retweets and faves that lead to your own development deal has quickly become our modern path to fame. But that infrastructure may be in peril now that Twitter is allowing users to file DMCA complaints against suspected joke thieves, then hiding their copycat tweets at the request of the “copyright holder.” For those who want to become famous Twitter comedians, it seems they will have to revert to the traditional method of paying a room full of desperate gag writers $5 a tweet.
As The Verge reports, tweet-shaming account @PlagiarismBad was the first to pick up on Twitter’s new initiative, noting that it had taken down several tweets ripping off a “juice cleanse” joke originally made by freelance writer Olga Lexall.
BREAKING NEWS: Twitter is hiding tweets reported stolen. And it’s ...
listen i know a legless lizard sent this ask alright but YEAH no problem ! legless lizard is actually nickname that can refer to a lot of different lizards from all sorts of families, and all of em have one thing in common
no legs ! wheres the legs ! pygopodidae, or the ones most Commonly known as legless lizards, are actually a species very closely related to GECKOS, and get all the gecko perks, like no eyelids and the ability to make a squeaking noise when theyre excited
at first glance theyre pretty similar to snakes - however their head shape, non forked tongue, and external ears give away their true colors, like this burtons legless lizard. a few of em even have little vestigial flaps where legs used to be, that Possibly aid in legless lizard courtship
outside of THIS group though theres a bunch of others that fall into the legless category! like
glass lizards, which DO posses eyelids, and are so named because when their lower half is grabbed by something, the tail just. shatters into a bunch of pieces. just breaks right off, in the hopes of whatever snagged it is too distracted by the wriggling remains to notice the part with the head getting the hell outta there
the tail regenerates eventually, but never as long as the original - tail dropping is a pretty common trait in lizards, so if you ever see one with a sort of dark, stubby tail,.youre looking at a lizard thats escaped death ( or at least a grabby child )
glass lizards are ALSO interesting in that a few of them can actually give live birth ! no eggs no legs no problem
theres also WORM lizards, or amphisbaenians, and many of them are completely blind. the skin of these lizards is very loose, and they generally move sortve in an accordion motion, folding themselves in and stretching out again
despite their wide habitat range, not a lot is known about them ! most of em are less than 6 inches long, and not ALL of them are entirely legless - look at this five toed worm lizards tiny hands
A series of underwater photographs by photographer Brandi Mueller capture a graveyard of sunken World War II planes off the coast of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Mueller explained to Mashable that the planes had not crashed, but rather they were discarded there after the war because it would have been too expensive to transport them back to the United States.
The planes sit on the ocean floor 130 feet below the surface and are a popular site for divers.
Two weeks after Reddit CEO Steve Huffman outlined a new set of guidelines for moderating content on the site, Reddit’s head of community, Jessica Moreno, has announced that she’s leaving the company.
Unlike Blount, who cited the “glass cliff” Ellen Pao was placed on as one of her reasons for departing the site, Moreno hasn’t given gender discrimination as one of the motivating factors behind her departure. In a statement to re/code, she explained:
I have enjoyed my time at Reddit but after four years I feel that it’s time for me to move on. While I am working with Steve on a transition plan, I am looking forward to taking time off to spend with my family. It was a difficult decision to make right now as Reddit is taking difficult steps in a much needed positive direction. I’m excited to see the progress being made and glad I could be a part of it.
Reddit told re/code,
Jessica is going to return to Salt Lake City to be with her family, but we’ve yet to settle on a date. We’re grateful for her invaluable contributions to our community, from Secret Santa to industry-leading policy changes, and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.
Moreno’s replacement hasn’t been identified yet, but she’s “working with [CEO] Steve [Huffman] on a transition plan.”
Emma Frost’s outfits over the years have always required a lot of double-sided tape; her X-shaped cleavage window in particular has come under fire for its impracticality, but her creators always insist that she dresses this way because she’s a self-actualized woman who cares about performative fashion. But have boob windows really been all that fashionable since 1995?
Juliet Kahn recently took the sartorial choices of Emma Frost’s creators to task in Comics Alliance, noting that a real fashionista would be up to date on the latest styles. Inspired by Kahn’s critiques, fellow White Queen fan Terry Blas founded the “Emma Frost Fashion Redesign Project,” a Tumblr devoted to fan-made fashions designed especially for Ms. Frost. The submissions range from practical to sensual to elegant, each one an outfit that would do Emma proud. Further submissions are encouraged.
Alvin Hsu posted an adorable video of his 9-week old Corgi puppy Peanut Butter’s futile attempts to walk down the carpeted stairs of his home. Hsu remained incredibly encouraging throughout the whole process and tried, despite the pup’s vocal reticence, to coax Peanut Butter down to the next step.
'Oehrlein suggested fighting Kuratas on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by drones filming the action'
There is a massive square-city-block building in West Oakland called American Steel. It used to be a repair shop for huge cargo ships. But as the industry left Oakland, the giant, rusted hull of a building took on a new purpose, housing artists, tinkerers and makers who need space to build big projects. It has a crane that they can use to lift objects up to 10 tons, like old cars they’re fixing up, huge steel statues, or in MegaBots’ case, giant fighting robots.
MegaBots was founded by three engineers who didn’t want to use their skills to go work for another large tech firm in the valley, or launch another startup with missing vowels in its name. “We kind of wanted to leave our boring day jobs and build something the world’s never seen before,” co-founder Matt Oehrlein told Quartz.
What they really wanted to do was live out their childhood fantasies, when they fell in love with video games like the MechWarrior series. So they built a robot that they could get into and fight another robot with. And they set themselves the goal of turning that into a business.
The Mark II, at rest.(Quartz/Mike Murphy)
Engineers Gui Cavalcanti and Andrew Stroup originally met in 2013 on a short-lived Discovery Channel reality show about building things, hosted by an actor who was once in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. They soon hatched their plan to build a giant robot, and brought in theirfriend Oehrlein to build out the robot’s electrical systems. Stroup left the company in January (he was replaced by Brinkley Warren) and the team movedto Oakland to build the first robot.
“As a company, that’s what we’re selling: Giant robots as entertainment.”
Once they had a working robot, they challenged Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a fight with its giant robot, Kuratas (Suidobashi said yes.) The fight will take place next year. The challenge is not just about having fun: It’s an essential step in turning this into a real business. Oehrlein told Quartz the company’s goal is to launch and subsequently host a robot fighting league. Like the mixed martial arts UFC fighting league, but for 15-foot-tall robots. He said MegaBots will not onlybuild robots, but also show other teams how to build their own, meaning the threesome could one day become the Bernie Ecclestone of giant fighting robots, assuming that becomes a thing people want to watch.
If MegaBots’ video challenging Japan’s Kuratas to a fight is anything to go by, people will totally want to watch. To date, the YouTube video has been viewed over 5 million times. Rather like UFC or Formula 1, Oehrlein says this sport is going to be “inherently dangerous,” which is probably part of the attraction for many. When asked why the team decided to have the robot piloted by a person, instead of controlled from a distance like the robots on BattleBots, Oehrlein said danger was never an issue, that the team wanted to be at the center of the action regardless: “The question for us was always, ‘How many pilots?'”
MegaBots’ Matt Oehrlein in an abandoned shipping container-turned-MegaBots laboratory(Quartz/Mike Murphy)
“What’s more interesting to me is having a super interesting fight that people actually want to watch,” Oehrlein said. He added that MegaBots are looking into media distribution for the fight, but couldn’t comment on who they have been speaking with. “The dream is to get this out in front of as many people as possible.”
The Mark II wasn’t wearing much of its Oakland-inspired green-and-yellow armor when Quartz visited, as the team is currently working on upgrading the robot. Soon, they will launch a Kickstarter page to fund bigger weapons and the self-stabilizing robot legs they want to add to the Mark II, as opposed to the treads it currently sits on.
While beating Kuratas wouldbring Oehrlein some national pride, he said the main objectiveis getting people excited about the robots. “I’m going to consider [the fight] a success if people have an awesome time watching the fight, and are hungry for more,” he said. “Because as a company, that’s what we’re selling: Giant robots as entertainment.”
“That’s the whole thing about MegaBots—it’s real—these robots actually exist. They’re not CGI, they’re not special effects, they’re real robots, fighting each other.”
Oehrlein thinks show business is the bestroute for MegaBots’ robot, for now. He doesn’t think the military will be calling any time soon: The robots just aren’t agile enough, or any stronger than what the military already has access to.
“A lot of people accuse us: ‘You’re going to end up building war machines for the military,'” he said. “The reality is, giant walking robots are pretty much worse than tanks in every possible way—but they look really cool.”
There are other benefits to giant robots beyond theirentertainment value. Oehrlein said he envisions innovations in robots’ ability to walk (which they’re working on before next year’s fight), in safer human-robot interactions—which is certainly an issue—as well as advances in virtual-reality technology to watch the sport. (This also happens to be one of the issues holding back another potential new sport—FPV drone racing—from entering the mainstream.) “I can’t see Google wanting to acquire us,” Oehrlein said, “but maybe they would be interested in some of our technology.”
The logistics of next year’s fight haven’t yet been worked out—Oehrlein suggested fighting Kuratas on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by drones filming the action—but the two sides have yet to settle on a location. Whether it’ll be in one stadium, or a traveling show, is uncertain, but Oehrlein thinks the demand for the fights is there. “People are sick of watching robots on TV—they want to see it live,” he said.
“That’s the whole thing about MegaBots—it’s real—these robots actually exist. They’re not CGI, they’re not special effects, they’re real robots, fighting each other.”
Oehrlein said that, like many, the team was inspired by artists and movies in their youth, and he hopes to inspire the next generation of makers. “We think that us bringing our own dreams to reality, those are going to be other children’s dreams,” Oehrlein said, “and they’re going to build even bigger and badder robots, and do even more amazing things than we’re doing.”
Why decide between clean-shaven and going full hipster beard when you can have both?
Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi, who finished second in the men’s high jump competition on Saturday at London’s Diamond League track and field competition, has captivated spectators’ attention—not only because of his aerial talent, but also because of the half-beard he sports.
Tamberi debuted the look at the 2015 European Championships in March, but he has been playing with the idea since 2011, The Independent reports.
He has said that the unique facial hair is a good luck charm for him. And indeed, the half-beard brought Tamberi to a second-place finish—for which he cleared 2.28 meters (7.4 feet)—on Saturday and helped him to break the Italian world record on July 1, at 2.34 m, Sports Illustrated reports.
I hope the end result is it being torn down and dropped back into the ocean
Rendering of the new LaGuardia Airport.(New York State)
New York State announced a $4 billion overhaul of LaGuardia Airport that will completely remake the facility that US vice president Joe Biden once likened to a “third world country.”
The airport, long considered cramped and overcrowded, will have 240% more space.
New connections to the airport, currently accessible by car and bus, will include a rail link and high-speed ferry.
Delta Air Lines, which maintains a hub at the airport, has approved the plan and will rebuild its terminals. (The fate of the Marine Air Terminal, an official historic building, is unclear.)
It will be the first new airport built in the United States since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The long-discussed project is expected to break ground in 2016 and take three years to complete—before the inevitable delays and cost overruns. “It is actually happening,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo said in announcing the plan.
Detailed renderings weren’t immediately available, but it appeared that LaGuardia’s runways would remain the same and the construction would happen around them. Here are two screenshots from a video that was played at the press conference:
Here’s a screenshot of the imagined ferry terminal:
Biden was on hand for the announcement of the project. He referenced his now infamous comments about LaGuardia’s “third-world status” and praised the plan to revitalize the facility. “New York deserves a better airport, and its future demands it,” Biden said.
'Google is still going to push the same behavior, but now the accounts it’ll ask users to create won’t be public by default.'
The slow death of Google+ continues. Today Google announced that it will be slicing out its social network from the rest of its services, meaning users won’t be forced to set up a Google+ account to comment on YouTube videos or use Google Photos. Soon, you’ll be able to use Google services with just a private Google account.
Bradley Horowitz, head of Google’s newly-created Photos, Streams and Sharing division, said in a blog post that Google+ will soon stand on its own. The social network will still be around—for the foreseeable future, at least—but it won’t be required to use other Google services. Google had once intended to cut down on YouTube trolling—and drive sign-ups for Google+ from its popular sister-site—by forcing commenters to use their real names by signing up for a Google+ account, but it abandoned that policy in 2014.
By some measures, Google+ only had about 4-6 million users posting in January 2015. Although Google+ won’t leave a legacy of a social network that ever rivaled Facebook on user numbers, it did manage to shift users into signing into its services. Forcing YouTube commenters to sign up for Google+ and adding an account for all Gmail users essentially created an army of accounts for which Google now has search and web browsing information—something Facebook always had for the billion-plus daily searches on its network. Google is still going to push the same behavior, but now the accounts it’ll ask users to create won’t be public by default.
Similar to Facebook’s Creative Labs, Google+ can serve as a platform to test new ideas. Hangouts was born out of the social network, and has ultimately proven to be a successful product for Google, especially within Gmail and Android. Similarly, Photos—which falls under Horowitz’s remit—has received generallypositive reviews since its launch in May (barring some very awkward image recognition issues). It also started life as a feature within Google+.
The next graduate from the platform could well be its local listings section. Google bought Zagat in 2011 and integrated its reviews into Google Local, which it then folded into Google+. It shut down Local this week, but it seems unlikely that it would leave its Zagat listings or its database of local businesses without a longterm home.
A Google representative told Quartz that it plans to let users delete abandoned profiles set up on Google+ to comment on YouTube videos, but said details on how exactly they’ll be able to do that will be revealed “in the coming months.” No word on the fate for Google+ Local.
Relieved of the notion of integrating with every other product at Google, Google+ can now focus on doing what it’s already doing quite well: helping millions of users around the world connect around the interest they love.
'Eight days earlier, a man who had been "showing signs of mental distress" also died in police custody, the Houston police said.
On July 18, an officer was at a Houston convenience store when he saw a man "bleeding from the head," Houston police said in a release.
The officer tried to help the man "who became combative and was showing signs of mental distress," the police said. "As the officer tried to get the suspect medical attention, the suspect charged the officer."
The suspect then "charged at" other responding officers, "so the suspect was restrained," police said.
Paramedics were attending to the suspect "when he went from fighting to suddenly being non-responsive," police said. The man, whose identity was not released, was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead.
According to the police, witnesses said the man was injured before the incident and police had "made multiple attempts to calm the suspect in order for him to be treated for his injuries."
This incident is also under investigation by the Houston Police Department's Homicide division and Internal Affairs division. Houston police said today they are still awaiting the man's autopsy results.
Both of these deaths come on the heels of the widely-publicized arrest of Bland, who died at a jail in nearby Waller County, Texas, on July 13.'
The new upgrades, which Bloomberg reports will cost $300 to $800 per trip, will be offered on select routes to passengers with “medallion” status in the Delta SkyMiles frequent-flyer program. That includes customers who travel 25,000 miles or 30 segments annually, and spend $3,000 a year on qualifying purchases.
Delta says the upgrade will include transportation to the departure airport’s private aviation area and complimentary catering on board. The airline operates a fleet of 66 private jets.
The availability of upgrades will be limited to “specific markets where an available Delta Private Jets aircraft is otherwise not in use,” Delta says. As Bloomberg warns, the program doesn’t come with extra frequent-flyer miles; customers who spring for the upgrade will be offered the same mileage they would have gotten on the commercial flight they originally booked.
Australian cats are facing an unprecedented crackdown. In order to protect endangered species like the ringtailed possum from feline predators, the federal government is calling on owners to keep their domestic cats inside at all times, especially near conservation areas, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
The call from the country’s first “threatened species commissioner,” Gregory Warner, comes after the country announced a cull of 2 million feral cats, which drew anger from animal rights activists including the French actress Brigitte Bardot. The country’s feral cats like to feast on hundreds of species, including 16 that are threatened worldwide.
“The plan over the long term is to make this part of our culture, and then it becomes normalized,” said Warner. “It’s a journey that Australia has to go on.”
Australian veterinarians cautioned against a blanket approach, saying some cats may develop behavioral or physical issues after being confined.
The total body count of Australia’s cats has not been measured, but Canadian researchers estimated in 2013 that cats kill 76 million to 416 million birds a year.
Thinking about flying around the US this summer? Consider yourself warned: not only are flights, on average, at their most expensive in June, July, and August—and they’re also the most likely to be utterly miserable.
Most Expensive
In the past two years, airfares have hit elevated levels for tickets sold in May and June, up as much as 17.4% over when prices are lower in January, according to data collected by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Many of the tickets priced in May and June are for flights in July and August.
The BLS only gives us a glimpse at the industry-wide trends of ticket pricing and airline market and price their fares in much more nuanced and complex ways. Nonetheless, almost no routes are at their cheapest in summer.
Most Crowded
More passengers fly into, out of, and around the US in summer than any other time of year. But the airports stay the same size.
To meet demand, airlines fly more planes on more routes during the summer, so it’d be easy to think that there would be more empty seats. In fact, it doesn’t get better once you get on the plane. They’re most crowded in summer, too. The industry’s capacity utilization is at its highest in June, July, and August.
Known as load-factor, the metric is the portion of seats on flights that were filled to the number of seats that were available weighted for the length of the flights. So, even though airlines have more seats to fill in summer, they’re better at filling them then than any other time of year.
Most Delayed
To add insult to injury, summer flights are most likely to arrive late or not at all. Between delays, diversions, and cancelations, June and July have a worse on-time performance than December and January.
On-time performance varies from year to year, but 75.3% of flights in July have landed on time since 2011. By that same measure, flights in November have arrived on time 83.8% of the time.
Delays, cancelations, and diversions are caused by all sorts of events, from weather, to air traffic control issues, to sick passengers, to corporate logistics.
