On Sunday night in Queens, New York, James Reyes, 32, reported to police that he was the victim of a carjacking and a 7-year-old boy with special needs was in the vehicle at the time. Turns out only the first part of that was true. — Read the rest
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) predicted this week that the system will see peak highs in energy use this week, topping out at a possible 74,034 megawatts on Wednesday. It’s not super likely that consumers will see problems—but given the state of the grid and the…
This 1997 pitch for Rockwell Automation's Retroencabulator makes me feel like an idiot for not already owning one. The technology improves upon a 1944 machine called the turboencabulator:
The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings were in a direct line with the panametric fan.
What happens when you have a copy of Crysis: Remastered and Nvidia’s new RTX 3080 graphics card in your possession? You see if the RTX 3080 can run it, naturally. One of my hopes for Crysis: Remastered was that it would be just as punishing on PCs today as it was when originally released in 2007. Now that the game has…
Darth Vader bought a lottery ticket at the Di Endz Sports Bar in May Pen, Jamaica and won $95 million. Darth showed up to claim his prize in full armor, revealing nothing to the public other than his abbreviated alias, W. Brown. From the Daily Star:
[Simone Clarke-Cooper, assistant vice president at Lottery sponsor Supreme Ventures Limited] said, "Unfortunately, Jamaica is not like other markets. In other markets, they don't necessarily do it, but here I think they opt to do it to keep themselves safe. We are not going to tell them not to do that because their safety is of paramount importance to us as well.
"People have been coming with their own disguises. They usually don't need our help, and they are usually very creative, perhaps beyond anything that we could think of or imagine, and it has been very effective over the years," she added.
* MLB is giving clubs the sounds (but teams can have their own) & a touchpad device to use it
* There are 75 effects/reactions
* MLB-provided sound is derived from audio recorded for "MLB The Show" at real MLB games
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the entertainment-baudrillardian complex.
To distract from an eerie, empty stadium, the Japanese baseball team Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks brought in more than 20 robots to liven up the otherwise dead atmosphere when they played against the Rakuten Eagles. But the robots only made the game eerier for some fans, while they delighted others.
"I think this is like a dystopia," wrote one Twitter user.
Another called the performance "insanely beautiful."
Boosted by the supportive robots, the Hawks won 4-3 as they look to defend their 2019 NPB title.
Of course, the stadium is empty because of coronavirus fears. Baseball fans in Japan haven't been permitted to watch games live, but that will change tomorrow, according to Japan Today, when professional baseball games will start letting in up to 5,000 people to watch.
Bardcore musician Alvaro Galán, aka Algal the Bard, performed an incredible medieval cover of the song “Toxicity” by System of a Down. Galán not only composed this version, but played each and every traditional instrument, thus making the otherwise heavy metal song sound like it was written in the Middle Ages.
Instruments: Bouzouki, Lute-guitar, Tin Whistle (Bb), Hand Drum, Darbuka and tambourine.
Russian photographers and adrenaline junkies Vitaly Raskalov and Vadim Makhorov, who are no strangers to traveling to the world's towering skyscrapers and climbing them with absolutely no safety gear, have recently conquered the second tallest building in the world. The daredevil duo managed to gain access to China's Shanghai Tower earlier this month, ascend the 650-meter-high structure, and take some incredible photos from their unique viewpoints.
As if rooftopping/skywalking and photographing from such great heights wasn't enough, the two ventured off with the added pressure of sneaking into the construction site to scale the unfinished building while the city was busy celebrating the Chinese New Year. Raskalov says, "Aware of the strict Chinese law, we prepared carefully and picked an appropriate date, the Chinese New Year day. At that time the security was less watchful, workers were on vacations, and cranes did not work. We got to the crane at around midnight. It took us almost two hours to get on the 120th floor by foot. And also, we spend almost 18 hours on top of the building, sleeping and waiting for better weather."
Watch their heart-pounding adventure in the video, below.
In the latest story coming out of China, it is said that the eye of a Chinese woman was injured as her damaged iPhone allegedly exploded in her hands. The woman says that prior to exploding, her iPhone 5 was heating up more than usual during a phone call. This isn’t the first incident report [...]
Glowing bunny rabbits aren't just for Sherlock Holmes reboots and acid trips anymore. Scientists from the University of Hawaii recently collaborated with a team from Istanbul, Turkey, where a couple of bright green lab rabbits were just born as part of a larger effort to better understand hereditary illness and make cheaper medicine. Also: Glow-in-the-dark bunnies!
Earlier today, students at California State University, Long Beach were asked to evacuate and/or take shelter after reports that there was an "armed gunman" on campus. People were told to, "lock and blockade doors, close blinds, silence cell phones and remain calm." Scary. Luckily, there wasn't a shooter though. It was just a guy carrying his Samsung Galaxy Phone.
Green shows the countries you want to live in because they have little to no Internet censorship. Yellow reveals countries that you might not want to stay in too long because they might increase censorship in the future. And if you love the Internet, you should probably avoid every other color because they all have different degrees of censorship, with pink being the most pervasive (gray is not classified).
Well, that didn't take long. Just one week after announcing the mass production of its first 3D V-NAND memory, Samsung has revealed an SSD based on the chips. The simply named V-NAND SSD combines up to 64 dies in a 2.5", 7-mm form factor. The top model offers 960GB of storage capacity, and there's a 480GB version, as well. You wouldn't know this thing was special by looking at the outside, though.
The folks at Kotaku spotted a video of Epic's Unreal Engine 4 demo from GDC on YouTube. The video is really a tech demo of Epic's UE4 technology and not any upcoming IP, but in usual Epic fashion it looks downright impressive. Even more exciting is the fact that the demo was run entirely on a single GeForce GTX 680. With the next generation of game consoles targeting GPU performance under that of a 680, the performance target makes sense.
Fortnite will be Epic's first game to use Unreal Engine 4. We can also expect UE4 to make its way onto mobile devices as well thanks to the excellent UDK for Android and iOS.
J & D Foods is at it again folks. Not happy with just releasing Baconlube they have decided to take it up a level and are now selling Bacon Condoms. Yes, you read that right.
J&D’s Bacon Condoms™ are proudly Made in America of the highest quality latex. Every Bacon Condom has been rigorously tested to help ensure reliability and the utmost safety for when you’re makin’ Bacon. As an added bonus, J&D’s baconlube™ ultra premium water based meat flavored personal lubricant has been generously applied inside and out for an even more hot pork experience.
I’d say enjoy but somehow I don’t want to know if you do or not.
Lucenthome Cellular Shade are not your average blinds. These blinds feature a double shade system that can be adjusted depending on the amount of shade desired. For example, an opaque shade is suitable for blocking the bright morning sun, while a lighter see-through shade is great for afternoon reading. Each set of blinds is configured with two out of the six possible shades: opaque, semi-opaque, emboss, washer, aya, and see-through.
Due to its honeycomb structural design, the blinds have an thermal insulating effect that can help moderate indoor temperature. It is made of a polyester fabric, giving off a warm feeling.
Lucenthome Cellular Shade also features a cordless system, where the blinds are simply pulled down or up. Additionally, these blinds can have a completely open top, which is pleasantly different from traditional blinds that are always anchored to the top.
Is this our first look at Google Babble? According to an anonymous tipster, yes. If anything, the screenshots presented above are a pretty appealing mockup of what we might eventually see from Google’s rumored unified chat service. The app looks like a much more refined version of the Google+ messenger for Android with features like image sharing and even voting streamlined.
A pop-out menu gives quick access to certain Google services (for sharing files, events, location, etc.), and it looks like you will be able to pop directly into a video hangout by tapping the button at the top of the chat panel. It looks like a pretty great solution. Could we see it as a keystone feature of Android 5.0 (Key Lime Pie)?
What do you guys think? The real deal or a clever mockup? We would take it, either way.
Here’s to hoping the UI looks a little something like this concept
It’s a rumor we’ve heard before. Google isn’t content with Glass being the only form or wearable Google technology and will soon introduce another piece of jewlery, an Android powered smartwatch. Back in October of last year, we saw a patent filed by Goog’s from back in 2011 giving us a clear look at their plans for a smartwatch. More than a simple “smartwatch,” the patent filing showed a device similar to Glass with a mounted camera and even a clear flip cover for displaying augmented reality type information in the real world. Pretty much like Glass, but on your wrist.
When it comes to Google’s smartwatch, don’t let that their patent filing get your hopes too high. Right now, everything is still hearsay and it’s entirely possible many of the ambitious augmented reality features in the watch were scrapped in favor of Glass. Whatever they’re working on, it’s big enough for Google to call in the big guns. They’ve recently recruited the once Apple fanboy Guy Kawasaki to help with their smartphone division, while Andy Rub tackles bigger fish in their X Labs.
We expect to learn more during this year’s Google I/O in May. You may remember last year saw the debute of Glass, and maybe this fabled smartwatch will have have Sergey Brin making yet another dramatic entrance. Anyone excited? For those that would have felt self conscious with Glass on their heads, will a smartwatch make the next best alternative?
This has been circulating again over the last few days:
As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.”
It’s a year old, but it appears from the outside that it’s still probably accurate.
...
