Sunday, August 31, 2014

By The Numbers: Drew Miller

By The Numbers will highlight the Red Wings on-ice accomplishments in the 2013-14 season. Each week during the off-season, By The Numbe...



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This university's library doesn't have a single paper book


Bookless libraries aren't quite so far-fetched as they used to be. Florida Polytechnic University, opening for the first time this fall, features a $60 million, Santiago Calatrava-designed main building with a library that doesn't hold a single paper book within its walls. Instead, the library has space for reading, desks for doing work, and a number of desktops, laptops, and tablets readily available. It joins a small handful of universities that have opened such libraries in recent years. Instead of books, the library has a deal with publishers that lets students access a title once for free. If any other student "takes out" the ebook of that title, the library automatically purchases it for its collection.


Of course, print still has...


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A spaceship in Cupertino: Apple's journey to build a new headquarters


Apple is a stupendously wealthy company, and it's in the middle of building a new corporate headquarters befitting of that success. The Norman Foster-designed Campus 2 — commonly referred to as "The Spaceship" due to its distinctive circular design — will add 2,800,000 square feet of office space to the company's Cupertino, California operations, and it will hold more than 12,000 employees. It will also be entirely powered by renewable energy, thanks to one of the largest solar arrays ever designed for a corporate campus. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs oversaw the building's design before his death, but the campus has struggled to get off the ground. It's reportedly $2 billion over budget and it's been delayed by at least a year. It's...


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Saturday, August 30, 2014

See the special effects that bring 'Game of Thrones' to life


Game of Thrones didn't get much love from the Emmys last week — it only won just four technical awards out of 19 nominations — but there's no denying what an impressive achievement the series is. Its creators have brought a massive, fantastic world to life on TV in a way that only film has in the past, and much of the credit goes to the special effects companies that make it all possible.


Montreal-based visual effects studio Rodeo was among those honored on Monday, and now it's released a video showing off its work for season four of the show. Its work includes bringing Meereen to life, as well as filling in crowds for some of the more stunning battle scenes in the show, but the way its work transforms serene locales into magnificent...


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The Weekender: Labor Day Weekend edition


And just like that, summer ended. We hope you had a good one. Welcome back to the Weekender, a place where you can wring out that last few drops of the season before we buckle down for months of iPhones, smartwatches, and conferences as far as the eye can see. Think of it as an oasis before we all head to Thunderdome.


We're not sure if you've been on vacation all this time, but this week was an incredible one in tech news. Scroll down for more. But there's no rush. There's plenty of other...


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Friday, August 29, 2014

Philippe Starck's latest bike design puts fur between your legs


Industrial designers love to be provocative almost as much as they enjoy being original. Fulfilling both briefs with a furious disregard for common sense, leading French designer Philippe Starck has this week unveiled a new range of electric bikes. Dubbed Starckbike and built by e-bike specialists Moustache, the new collection features four distinct styles, each with "specific ergonomics adapted to its terrain and field of exploration."


The Mud Starckbike is designed for all-terrain...


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T-Mobile's next 'Uncarrier' announcement coming September 10th


T-Mobile is going to try shaking up the wireless industry again on September 10th. The carrier has just sent out invitations for an "Uncarrier 7.0" event taking place at one of its own stores in San Francisco early next month. There's no big stage show this time, and T-Mobile's tagline for the upcoming news is: "This time it's personal." The event's scheduled to kick off at 1PM PT / 4PM ET, and we'll be bringing you whatever announcements John Legere and Co. make to set T-Mo apart from the competition once again. In case you've forgotten, some of T-Mobile's previous "Uncarrier" initiatives have included a move away from two-year service contracts, 200MB of free tablet data each month, free international data coverage, unlimited music...


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The 13 movies and TV shows we're most looking forward to this fall


The air is getting cooler and fall is coming up fast: time for apple-picking, sweaters, and, well, a lot more time indoors. For us, that's as good an excuse as any to start mulling over the next season's line-up for movies and TV: whether you're watching in a 3D megaplex or on the tablet propped up on your bedside table, there's some good stuff coming up this season. So here's what we're daydreaming about, from the retro-futurism of Ascension to the weird superhero counterpoint of Birdman and...


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From Game Boy to the new 3DS XL, this is the full history of Nintendo's handheld dominance


My first-ever video game anything was a Game Boy. I was supposed to get it for my fourth birthday, but thanks to a sudden stop at a red light, my early present slid out front under the driver's seat and landed effortless at my tiny feet. That was 25 years ago; today, Nintendo has announced new 3DS and 3DS XL consoles that are million billion times more powerful than the original Game Boy (rough estimate)


Nintendo's success in the portable game market is nothing if not phenomenal, with well...


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From Game Boy to the new 3DS XL, this is the full history of Nintendo's handheld dominance


My first-ever video game anything was a Game Boy. I was supposed to get it for my fourth birthday, but thanks to a sudden stop at a red light, my early present slid out front under my the driver's seat and landed effortless at my tiny feet. That was 25 years ago; today, Nintendo has announced new 3DS and 3DS XL consoles that are million billion times more powerful than the original Game Boy (rough estimate)


Nintendo's success in the portable game market is nothing if not phenomenal, with...


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Meet the man building the Fort Knox of bitcoin


In July, a bitcoin startup named Xapo announced it was raising $20 million, bringing its total backing to $40 million. It was using this funding for an unusually intense security setup. Xapo tells users that they can feel secure because their bitcoin will be stored in offline servers, scattered across multiple continents, in secret underground vaults, with armed guards, and biometric sensors. We sat down with Xapo CEO Wences Casares to discuss why he thinks such extreme measures are necessary and how he sees bitcoin changing the world.


This interview has been edited and condensed


What makes you so passionate about bitcoin?


"When I was growing up, I saw them lose everything, three times."


My parents were sheep ranchers in Patagonia,...


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Smartphones are about to get awesome again


Smartphones. They’re all just a bunch of undifferentiated rectangles, right? You’d be forgiven for feeling a little jaded about the rate of innovation in smartphones over the past couple of years. A 4-inch iPhone still dominates the consumer landscape, HTC is still designing beautiful but flawed masterpieces, and Samsung is still the world’s foremost purveyor of cheap plastic.


It’s as if we’ve been stuck in a long winter hibernation, waiting for the next wave of real excitement to awaken us...


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Unfiltered America: one Instagram account is documenting the Everyday USA


David Guttenfelder returned to the US last month after spending the previous 20 years working as a photojournalist overseas. His career with the Associated Press had taken him to far flung places across the globe — Nairobi, Tokyo, North Korea — so his return should have marked a homecoming for the Iowa native. But it didn’t quite feel like that.


“The United States kind of feels like a foreign country to me,” Guttenfelder says. “I’ve never worked here as a photographer before. I’ve never had...


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Thursday, August 28, 2014

Virtual insanity: 60 years of VR in pop culture


The peculiar portrayals of VR through pop culture history


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The mystery of Death Valley's sailing stones has been solved


On a cracked lakebed in Death Valley called Racetrack Playa, there are a collection of boulders, some weighing several hundred pounds, that clearly, mysteriously, move. They leave long serpentine trails behind them in the dirt, and for decades visitors have guessed at how they migrate across the desert floor. Hurricane force winds, sliding sheets of ice — and, of course, aliens — were all contenders, but then last December the cousins Richard Norris and James Norris caught the rocks in the act.


In a paper published in Plos One, they describe watching a thin layer of ice break into large panes and get pushed by a light wind against the boulders, which then began to slide through the mud at about 15 feet a minute. "We were sitting on a...


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25 of the most amazing Hyperlapse videos we've seen so far


Hyperlapse is the newest standalone app from Instagram, and it's attracting plenty of praise for bringing easy time-lapse capabilities and unmatched image stabilization to the mobile world in a simple way. It's not only the newest way to make the mundane look cool, it's inspiring fresh takes on mobile videos — and it's only two days old.


The app has been replacing Ice Bucket Challenge videos on social feeds across the world with stabilized time-lapse videos of drives home, passing clouds,...


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If we ran Amazon Studios, here are the shows we would make


Today, Amazon Studios posted a fresh batch of five TV pilots as part of its year-old, semi-crowdsourced production efforts. This third season, which includes two hour-long dramas and three half-hour comedies, indicates a stepping up on Amazon’s part, particularly in terms of who’s behind the camera: this time around, the roster includes Shaun Cassidy, creator of American Gothic, Marc Forster (World War Z), and Steven Soderbergh, who in his return from “retirement" has really taken to the...


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Stop ruining my escapist fantasies, Sarkeesian haters


Earlier this year, I passed on buying Watch Dogs, a game I had been tentatively excited about for over a year. There were a lot of reasons for this, but one specific plot point clinched it: Aiden Pearce was yet another man motivated by villains killing a woman (or in this case, a girl) he cared about. Arthur Gies' review in Polygon confirmed my growing worries, writing that "female characters in Watch Dogs are victims, to be kidnapped or murdered in the interest of plot or character...


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This surreal iPad game blends Donald Duck and Salvador Dali


In 1947's "Sleepy Time Donald," Donald Duck goes about his day while sleepwalking. He gets out of bed, puts a boot on his head instead of a hat, and ventures over to Daisy's house to take her out on a date. (She plays along because she's worried that waking him could have "fatal" results.) Later on, when he stumbles into a large brick building, instead of hitting his head he just starts walking up the wall as if it that were a perfectly normal thing to do. Klaus Pedersen and his team thought that would make for a perfect video game. Back to Bed, which launched earlier this month on Steam and is available today for iPad, blends this idea with the world of Surrealist art to create a fantastically unique experience. It's Walt Disney meets...


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Scientists are recording the sound of the whole planet


In a few weeks, sensors in Indiana will go online that will record, in the words of Bryan Pijanowski, every sound the Earth makes. The array of microphones, geophones, and barometric gauges will run for a year, taping everything from the songs of birds arriving in the spring to the vibrations of the continent as ocean waves pound the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. They will measure earthquakes on the other side of the world and the stomping of cattle nearby, the ultrasonic whistles of bats and...


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Don’t listen to e-cig companies that claim you can vape vitamins


Can you really vape vitamins? That’s the claim from companies like VitaCig, the latest innovation from a company that built a marijuana e-cig and is working on an alcoholic one.


VitaCig is a "nicotine-free e-cig that delivers a water-vapor mixed with vitamins and organic flavors." All VitaCigs are said to contain Vitamins A, B, C, E, and CoQ10, an enzyme complex the American Cancer Society says may have beneficial health effects but has not been adequately studied.


The $5 disposable devices comes in five varieties: Calm, Relax, Refresh, Grace, and Energize, each boasting attendant health benefits. VitaCig users — some of whom are also shareholders of its parent company mCig’s penny stock — say they love it.


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Leap Motion wants to be a window to the real world for VR headsets


One of the best features of VR headsets also happens to be one of its greatest shortcomings. Headsets are designed so that you can't see anything else, making games incredibly immersive. Yet it also means that interacting with the real world requires removing it from your head. Not doing so brings the risk of knocking things over, including yourself. San Francisco-based Leap Motion has come up with a solution: you attach its $79.99 infrared camera sensor to the front of your headset, and use software to display live video of the real world right in the mask. Even better, you can do it without fully leaving whatever game or virtual experience you're in, opening the door to new augmented realities.


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G Watch R or the Moto 360: what's your favorite round smartwatch?


Late last night, LG released the first images of its second Android Wear smartwatch, the G Watch R. Coming mere months after the introduction of the rectangular and uninspiring G Watch, this new wearable is much more smartly designed and — LG makes a big point of this — uses the full circle of its round display. Motorola's Moto 360 had many of us swooning when it debuted alongside the original G Watch, but one of its intrinsic failures remains a small sliver of disused screen space at the...


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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Previewing the East: N.Y. Rangers





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Samsung announces curved Gear S smartwatch with 3G


Not to be outdone by LG's teaser of the new G Watch R, Samsung has revealed the next iteration in its own smartwatch family: the curved-display Gear S. This new smart wearable features a curved 2-inch Super AMOLED display, not unlike that found on the Gear Fit, and is similarly built around Samsung's own software, this time in the form of Tizen. Aside from the larger screen, the Gear S differs from what we've seen so far in offering 3G connectivity of its own, meaning you can keep it synced up to your smartphone even when the two devices aren't close enough to maintain a Bluetooth connection.


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The LG G Watch R is a round, retro smartwatch with good looks to spare


LG's G Watch was one of the first Android Wear devices to hit the market, but it didn't quite capture the fancy of the buying public the way the beautiful, round Moto 360 did. So LG went back to work, and came up with a beautiful, round smartwatch of its own. Meet the G Watch R.


The G Watch R's key feature is its display, a 1.3-inch Plastic OLED panel that takes up 100 percent of the watch's round face. LG promises that it's viewable in sunlight and clear from any angle, and the plastic...


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HTC announces the world's first 64-bit Android phone


Around a year ago, Apple announced the iPhone 5S, the first and so far only phone to run on a 64-bit processor. Now, as noted by AnandTech , HTC has announced the first Android phone to make use of the same ARMv8 technology that Apple's A7 chip employs. Unlike the iPhone 5S, though, HTC's Desire 510 is a pretty budget-conscious affair; aside from the 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 401 processor, it features a 4.7-inch 854 x 480 screen, a five-megapixel camera, and 1GB of RAM.


The primary advantage of 64-bit processing is the ability to address more than 4GB of RAM, so the Desire 510 isn't going to set any power records. Android itself doesn't even support 64-bit yet, so unless this phone gets updated from 4.4 KitKat to the new...


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This 'Counter-Strike' livestream was interrupted by a real-life SWAT team


A YouTube feed of a Counter-Strike game took an unexpected turn today, when it was interrupted by a very real SWAT team that happened to be sweeping the building. The gamers in the video are part of The Creatures, a group based in Littleton Colorado that publishes videos to YouTube and Twitch, and since the broadcast was in progress during the raid, their entire arrest ended up on the livestream.


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Malcolm Gladwell to write pilot for TV medical drama


Everyone’s favorite pop sociologist has just been contracted to pen a TV show: as New York Magazine reports, Malcolm Gladwell will be co-writing The Cure, an American medical thriller starring a "young, impulsive" black neurologist. Gladwell, whose five books about behavioral science and psychology have sold more than 4.5 million copies worldwide, will be taking point on the story, which involves the main character "taking the law into her own hands" as she fights to cure some sort of ghastly disease.


An act of individual heroics outside the system is an obvious hook for Gladwell, who recently explained to an interviewer at Forbes that many of Americans’ health care woes could be solved if patients lived healthier lives rather than...


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Best New Apps: Hyperlapse


Instagram might be best known as and endless stream of pictures of your friends' meals, but their new standalone video app Hyplerlapse aims to change that. It's a dead simple way to create time-lapse videos accompanied by an outstanding built-in image stabilization algorithm that can make shaky videos look steady enough you might think they were filmed with a professional rig. It just takes one tap to start recording, lets you pick your playback speed after, and easily shares your video to Instagram and Facebook.


The easiest way to make a time-lapse on your iPhone


With few controls, the creativity really comes from how you use Hyperlapse. The best ones so far tend to fall into three categories. First is the typical timelapse, where the...


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This smart thermostat wants to turn up the heat on slumlords


In New York, keeping the heat on can be a battle. Buildings are required to keep temperatures above 68 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 55 at night, but between faulty boilers and often hostile landlords looking to save on fuel, that doesn't always happen. The result is that many tenants are left in the cold. This winter the city got more than 200,000 reports of heating violations — sometimes more than 5,000 in a single day — but just a fraction of those made it through the city's courts. Gathering evidence of the violations is difficult, and pushing a complaint through can take months, having little effect until long after the weather changes. As a result, many tenants have no option but to wait the winter out.


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How to feed the cities of the future


Come along with The Verge for the second season of Detours. We’ve traveled across the country to find the people, groups, and companies that are solving America’s problems in new and unconventional ways.


At MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Caleb Harper’s CityFARM demonstrates the future of food production. He grows plants through aeroponics, a system that produces plants without soil. Plants are hooked up to servers and misting mechanisms. LEDs fill in for the sun and ladybugs (purchased on Amazon) occasionally make an appearance. Plants are periodically sprayed with a nutrient-rich mist that provides optimal pH balance. Light and temperatures are closely monitored. The environment nurtures plants that have twice the nutrient...


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Scientists raised these fish to walk on land


Raising fish on land seems like the sort of idea you’d get while recovering from general anesthesia. But for three McGill University researchers, it made perfect sense. How else would you find out what behavioral and physiological changes might have taken place when fish first made the move from sea to land over 400 million years ago?


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An oral history of virtual reality: 18 insiders on its past, present, and future


When Facebook bought virtual reality company Oculus in early 2014, virtual reality blew up. While game and movie studios began reimagining the future, others looked back at the “old days” of VR — a loosely remembered period in the 1990s when gloves and goggles were super cool and everyone was going to get high on 3D graphics. But things were never so simple. We spoke to 18 key VR innovators about their work and dreams. What follows is over two decades of memories and visions for what the future could be.


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Summer review: the 9 movies and TV shows you need to watch


We know how it is. It's summer, the beach is calling, and you're spending as much time as possible hanging out in front of the grill. There just isn't that much room in your life for, say, binge-watching the most depressing show of the year or keeping up with the latest Tom Cruise vehicle. But if you're afraid of missing out, don’t fret: even if the movie industry is done for the season, you aren't quite.


Summer is the season when all of the biggest, most explosive, and most expensive movies...


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HTC One M8 for Windows review


The classic Oreo cookie is a wonderful thing. (By classic, I mean the Double Stuf, let’s be real here.) It’s the right combination of crunchy and soft, sweet and, well, more sweet. It’s the best cookie ever and I won’t hear any arguments.


But that hasn’t stopped Nabisco from messing with the formula. The company has released dozens of variations on the idea: different cookie flavors, different filling, different experiences. Some have been a great success, others never should have left the...


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GoPro's $60 'Fetch' harness captures a dog's perspective of the world


There's now an official GoPro harness designed to help attach the company's action cameras to your dog and capture the world from a canine's perspective. It's called Fetch — because of course that's the name they chose — and retails for $60.


The harness has mounting locations for both a dog's back and chest; GoPro says the former should produce unique over-the-head footage of your pet running around the dog park, barreling through a training course, or playing fetch. Finally you'll be able to see the other side of those tug-of-war battles. The chest perspective, by contrast, will get you an up close and personal look at a dog digging up your yard or chewing on a bone. Or you can go crazy and put two GoPros on your pet to be sure you're...


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Check out these amazing secret ’70s photos from Blondie's Chris Stein


Apparently Blondie photographer Chris Stein has been sitting on a cache of killer flicks from decades past he hasn't shared with the world until now. Being in one of the coolest bands in the world gave him access to basically everyone else cool, so he's got photos of everyone, up close and personal. Read the interview he gave to Smithsonian about his new photo book and check out a slideshow of great shots.


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Watch 13 of the internet's best 'Simpsons' videos



The Verge community — that's you — is currently helping us review every episode of The Simpsons. We've also asked several Vox staffers to contribute their thoughts on the show's legacy.



Matt Groening has produced over 550 episodes of The Simpsons. Adding in the feature-length film, that makes more than 12,000 hours of Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa to watch. That being said, if you somehow still haven't gotten your Simpsons fix with FXX's twelve-day marathon, here are some of the best S...


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Prime-time Twitch is bigger than CNN, MSNBC, and MTV

The New York Times had a great data-driven article this morning about just how big Twitch has become. One year ago the video game live-streaming platform wasn't even equal to HLN in size. Fast-forward to this summer and Twitch is bigger during prime-time hours than CNN, E!, or MSNBC, with occasional spikes that put it above MTV as well.

Right now Twitch has about 715,000 concurrent viewers during prime time, but will quickly eclipse that if its growth continues apace. With Amazon...


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How to sneak a Tesla into Russia for just 6.5 million rubles


In much of the Western world, the Tesla Model S is becoming a normal sight in traffic; it’s just another sedan. A particularly quiet and environmentally friendly one, granted, but a workaday four-door nonetheless.


In Russia, on the other hand, a Model S attracts the attention of pretty much everyone. Tesla doesn’t do business there, so when Dmitry Grishin — the wealthy 35-year-old entrepreneur behind internet mega-portal Mail.ru — navigated hell and high water to bootleg one into Moscow,...


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How does BMW sell an armored car? By shooting it dozens of times


Earlier this week at Moscow's International Auto Salon, BMW rolled out an armored version of its largest SUV, the X5 Security Plus. That in itself isn't particularly interesting; a variety of automakers, particularly European ones, offer bullet-resistant cars and trucks on a regular basis. But some of BMW's official press photos paint a striking portrait of the abuse this vehicle is capable of withstanding.


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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Red Wings Firsts: Teemu Pulkkinen

DETROIT – The Red Wings got a look at many young minor-league prospects during the 2013-14 season, including Teemu Pulkkinen. The forward made his NHL debut on March 14 in Detroit’s 2-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers. Calling up Pulkkinen fro...



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This iPhone 6 'leak' video is hilarious and perfect


I'll be honest: this video hits kind of close to home. Especially because I saw the headline "Is this the new iPhone 6?" and clicked on it like a maniac, and then I sat for two minutes and twenty seconds (not including the pre-roll ad) and watched every single second of Doldo411 telling me about the new iPhone 6. I know I won't be the only person Doldo411 victimizes this way. I hate Doldo411. I hate myself.


But I don't hate this video. It's amazing. It's a perfect send-up of the millions of videos we've all watched and made and dissected over the years. You should watch it. The iPhone 6 is in it.


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This year's Burning Man is being livestreamed right now


Have you been noticing a lot of vacation auto-responders this week? That's because everyone you're trying to email is at Burning Man, the arts-and-crafts-and-drugs festival set in the middle of the Nevada desert. Luckily, you don't have to feel too left out: this year, organizers are streaming the whole show live on the internet. You can see the Man, looming enormously over the flat dusty plain known as the playa, and the Burners, bustling around Black Rock City on tandem bikes and art cars. Be sure to tune in on Saturday, August 30th, at 9PM PT, when they actually burn the Man.


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A physics experiment might soon tell us if we're living in a 2D hologram


For all we know, the three dimensional world we see around us is really an illusion — one that’s actually in 2D. It’s a slightly unsettling idea, but it’s also one that physicists have been thinking about for some time. Unfortunately, until recently, a 2D universe wasn’t something we could verify. Now, thanks to an experiment recently launched at Fermi National Laboratory in California, we might finally be able to determine how the universe stores the information we interact with everyday — and whether we’re living in a hologram.


"For thousands of years we have assumed that space is made of points and lines," said Craig Hogan, director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, in email to The Verge. But "maybe that is not right —...


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This is Uber's playbook for sabotaging Lyft


Uber is arming teams of independent contractors with burner phones and credit cards as part of its sophisticated effort to undermine Lyft and other competitors. Interviews with current and former contractors, along with internal documents obtained by The Verge, outline the company’s evolving methods. Using contractors it calls "brand ambassadors," Uber requests rides from Lyft and other competitors, recruits their drivers, and takes multiple precautions to avoid detection. The effort, which Uber appears to be rolling out nationally, has already resulted in thousands of canceled Lyft rides and made it more difficult for its rival to gain a foothold in new markets. Uber calls the program "SLOG," and it’s a previously unreported aspect of...


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Verge Detours season 2 debuts tomorrow


Detours starts tomorrow! The second season of our show that tackles big American problems and those using big solutions to solve them. We kick off in Boston, visiting MIT where they are rethinking the future of food. It's an ambitious project, the kind we like best. Stay tuned every Wednesday for the next eight weeks for a new episode!


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You never have to go outside again thanks to 'Sounds of Street View'


If you spend too much time in front of a computer (like many of us here), you may sometimes get a strange itch to stand up and go "outside." You know, that bright place with all the loud noises and the people. But you don't actually have to do that anymore, thanks to "Sounds of Street View," a new experience for your web browser that adds ambient, site-specific noise to a few of the panoramic photos on Google Maps. Right now, it lets you click around and hear sounds recorded at the Place du Palais in Avignon, France; Hapuna Beach, Hawaii; and Balboa Park, San Diego, California.


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You can now watch Showtime on Apple TV


The Apple TV is adding access to a new channel today: Showtime. The channel's Showtime Anytime service is now available through the Apple TV, and it allows subscribers to watch any of the network's original series and on-demand programming. Perhaps most notably, it also allows subscribers to watch what's being broadcast live on Showtime, which isn't a common feature among these streaming apps. That means that if there's a television show debuting or a live event being broadcast, Showtime subscribers without access to a cable box won't have to wait until it comes on-demand later to watch it.


Showtime Anytime has been available on a number of other devices before now, including the Xbox 360 and the Roku. Apple has really been playing...


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The Verge Back to School Guide 2014


The Verge gets you equipped for the first day of class with all the gear, gadgets, gizmos you need for the academic year.


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'The Simpsons Arcade Game' was the best game ever based on a TV show



The Verge community — that's you — is currently helping us review every episode of The Simpsons. We've also asked several Vox staffers to contribute their thoughts on the show's legacy.



The fate of Maggie Simpson, and possibly Springfield, and almost certainly the world, is firmly in my hands. Waylon Smithers (in his best bad-guy turn ever) has just come out of Springfield Jewelers, diamond in hand and cronies in tow. But before he could get away, he ran square into Homer and the Simpson family, and diamond went flying into Maggie's Hoover of a mouth. Smithers grabbed baby and jewel alike and scampered off. But I've saved her before, and I'll do it again. I just need like six bucks.


This is how The Simpsons Arcade Game got me. It...


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Donald Glover will finally play Spider-Man on TV


Prior to the Amazing Spider-Man reboot, fans were up in arms to see Donald Glover play Spider-Man on the big screen. While the role eventually went to Andrew Garfield, it looks like the actor will finally get his chance to play Spidey. In this Sunday's Ultimate Spider-Man on Disney XD, Glover will play Miles Morales, Marvel's half-black, half-Hispanic Spider-Man from the Ultimate Universe.


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