It has been a glorious week for the internet. We were perplexed by the color of a (kind of tacky) dress, we got emotionally invested in a high-speed llama chase, a new season of House of Cards is on Netflix, and, most importantly, the FCC has officially voted in favor of Title II classification for the internet. Let’s raise our glasses to Tom Wheeler with this playlist of tracks by supporters of net neutrality and songs that capture the tenacious spirit of the open internet.
If you’re in a revolutionary mood, I suggest you start with "Try Out Your Voice" by Big D & the Kids Table. Revel along with Deniece Williams’ "Let’s Hear It For the Boy," which I can only imagine was intended to laud Chairman Wheeler. Or maybe just take a cue from...
It looks like Huawei is taking smartwatches very seriously. And it must be said, the company has made a very attractive looking smartwatch. As spotted by Droid Life , Two official promo videos for the "Huawei Watch" have accidentally been set live on YouTube ahead of the device's likely announcement tomorrow at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Before the videos were released, the watch was pictured in an advertisement at Barcelona's El Prat airport.
The metal watch has a circular face like the Moto 360. Unlike that device, however, it has an entirely circular display that measures 42mm in diameter. One of the promotional videos reveals that the device has a sapphire display and a stainless steel unibody casing. There is also a...
Hello fellow weekend-goers, and welcome back to The Weekender. This week, Bill Gates predicts the eradication of certain diseases by 2030, David Cronenberg talks Fifty Shades of Grey, and we examine what's behind Pebble's new smartwatch design. We'll also be setting you up for a stellar weekend back on this terrestrial plane. So sit back and take a journey with us.
Taco Bell just announced its newest co-branded menu item, and the result is truly nuts. The fast food taco slinger and Cap'n Crunch are shoving their collective calorie-filled parts together and creating Cap'n Crunch Delights — colorful donut holes sprinkled with mashed bits of cereal.
That Taco Bell thought it was chill to replace sprinkles with cereal is bad enough, but the restaurant chain is also, astoundingly, calling the donut holes a "breakfast item." The worst, worst part? The donuts are filled with MILK... or some kind of creamy milk product.
TACOBELL is testing new CAP'N CRUNCH DONUT HOLES filled with MILK ICING. All the news on #… http://t.co/SUHUHC3DuA http://ift.tt/1C5bLKI
— foodbeast.com (@foodbeast) F... Today is Friday. TGIF. For most countries, it’s the last day of the workweek and the first day of the weekend. Friday has been reserved for some great events. Good Friday. G.O.O.D. Fridays. Black Friday. Friday night lights. It’s even pay day for some. House of Cards season 3 was released today . Fridays are great for a lot of things, but new music isn’t one of them. Yet here we are.
The record industry is adopting Friday as the global album release day this summer . Among the evidence supporting this decision is Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled album, which was released on a Friday and went HAM , selling 828,000 copies in 72 hours. And then Drake did it again, selling 495,000 units of If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late in 96 hours. The...
Thursday's FCC vote was a huge win for net neutrality, but it isn't the whole story. The FCC's latest move is just the latest entry in an evolution that stretches back more than 80 years, long before the internet or modern telecoms arrived on the scene. To put it in context, we've put together a quick refresher on the history that led up to Thursday's momentous ruling, and where it leaves us going forward.
Whenever I shoot a video with my smartphone, I usually end up with a minute or two of terrible footage surrounding the 10 or 15 seconds (if I'm lucky) that are actually worth holding on to. If you're like me and also like sharing your creations to YouTube, things are getting a little easier. An update to the YouTube Android app is set to roll out that'll prompt users to trim their videos to capture the best moments before sharing. It's a feature that most Android phones have buried somewhere in the gallery app, but it's still nice to see YouTube making an effort to help users shoot and share better video. The update is rolling out now, but it might not be live yet for all users. When you get it, just please make sure you shoot your...
I always wanted a Power Wheels. But I'm a native New Yorker who grew up in a small walk-up apartment, and my mom was not keen on the idea.
PayPal has cut ties and ceased all payments to Mega, Kim Dotcom's encrypted storage startup. Mega announced the news in a blog post, blaming Visa and MasterCard for pressuring PayPal into dropping the site. Mega was founded in the wake of MegaUpload's seizure by the US Department of Justice, and piracy rumors have followed the site since its inception.
The family of a 48-year-old man who died in November is suing the maker of a medical scope, following a superbug outbreak at a UCLA medical center late last year. The man, Antonio Terres Cerda, died in November. But what seemed like an isolated incident is quickly turning into a much bigger scandal. The type of medical scope that spread the superbug in California has been implicated in a number of other deaths in others states, reports Bloomberg .
Google just revealed a wild proposal for remaking its main office space in Mountain View, California — rather than simply build more modern office buildings, Google is seeking to build some giant glass "canopies" with insides that can be rebuilt and repurposed easily depending on what the company needs. It's incredibly ambitious, and the company already admitted that some of the technology it needs to pull this vision off doesn't exist yet. And even if this does come to pass the way Google wants, the first of these buildings won't exist for another five years.
Nonetheless, Google's plans are impressive and beautiful enough to warrant a closer look.
The following renders and accompanying descriptions come straight from Google's...
My dad was — and is — a huge Star Trek nerd, and when I was a kid he'd excitedly show me episodes of the original series in syndication. It was a show that he watched in college, he'd say, explaining why Kirk was Kirk, Bones was Bones, and most importantly, why Leonard Nimoy's Spock was Spock. One of my earliest moments of geek fandom was when I tracked down the script for the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage." I got it, read it, and excitedly took it to my dad. Kirk wasn't even in it, I explained to him. Spock had these crazy emotions!
My dad knew, of course. He was a Star Trek geek after all.
It's a familiar sinking feeling. What if the easy app you use all the time is leaving you vulnerable to a digital attack? Even worse, what if the features that make it easy to use are the same ones that make it vulnerable?
That's the case made in a Slate piece by Alison Griswold yesterday, taking Venmo to task for lax security practices. Griswold followed a user whose account had been compromised and drained of close to $3000. The subject didn't find out until a full day later, thanks to disabled notifications. It's unclear how the attacker got in, but the company does not support the two-factor protections that might have kept him out. (Venmo's parent company PayPal offers both two-factor authentication and mandatory notifications for...
Lenovo says the next batch of Windows 10 computers will come with a minimum of bloatware, as the company looks to "become the leader in providing cleaner, safer PCs." The announcement comes on the heels of the disastrous Superfish adware, which came pre-installed on a number of Lenovo machines and broke fundamental SSL protections, exposing users to man-in-the-middle attacks. Lenovo has been widely criticized for its pre-installed software practices in the wake of the news, and this is the first indication that the company may be changing its ways.
Electric cars may help save the environment, but when it comes to saving money, electric trucks are where it's at. At least, that's the proposition from Ian Wright, one of the five original founders of Tesla and how head of his own firm, Wrightspeed.
His pitch is simple: companies should retrofit their gas-guzzling trucks to run on his range-extended, electric powertrains. These vehicles are pretty much running throughout the day, says Wright, burning up fuel and money. Converting them means that any savings on running costs and maintenance provided by electric innards are recouped much quicker than with regular cars.
A family car burns 600 gallons of fuel a year — a garbage truck uses 14,000 gallons
"Consumer automobiles don’t burn...
Sci-fi! Action! Comedy! Biopic! Frozen! This week's new trailers include basically everything you could ask for. Nine of the best are below. All of them are for films coming out in the next few months, so get ready.
Bill Gates was the The Verge's first-ever guest editor this past month, narrating episodes of The Big Future that illustrate the bets he and his wife Melinda are making with their foundation over the next 15 years. It has been an intense and rewarding collaboration: we've produced four independent features examining those bets, and now five episodes of the show. Above, we have Melinda Gates discussing how life for the poor will change in the next 15 years. As the month comes to a close, it's time to let Bill himself onto our pages for a farewell. — Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief
Dear Verge readers — Every year, Melinda and I write an Annual Letter in hopes of helping spark a broader a conversation with the global community about how...
Every year, tens of thousands of reporters, analysts, and suited-up businesspeople descend upon Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress trade show. Mobile World Congress, or MWC if you're in the know, is the largest trade show for mobile technology: phones, networks, hotspots, infrastructure, and more phones.
In recent years, MWC has been fairly sleepy, shifting from a consumer-centric show with big product launches to a more business-focused one that catered to infrastructure announcements. But this year it appears the show will swing back in the other direction: there are lots of companies that will be at MWC this year, and some major product announcements are expected to drop.
The fun starts on Sunday, and we'll be there covering it...
A new proposal to limit access to ketamine around the world would have a devastating effect on the health of millions of women in poorer countries, say campaigners. Although in developed nations ketamine is known primarily as a party drug, in lower income countries it's one of the most widely used anesthetics available, and is particularly notable for its use during caesarean sections.
ketamine is easy to administer for non-skilled health workers
Because ketamine is injectable, it's far easier to administer and transport than gas anesthetics, making it indispensable for doctors carrying out life-threatening surgeries in rural areas. It's also safer than other anesthetics as it induces a dissociative state but allows patients to retain...
Netflix's flagship original series is back. After (briefly) appearing a couple weeks early, the third season of House of Cards is now officially available. That's 13 new episodes of the political drama starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright — and we're about to binge-watch the whole thing in one sitting.
Today NASA released a visualization of storm swirls that took place in 2014, and the results are pretty spectacular. The data were gathered thanks to NASA's "Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory" (GMP), a satellite network that provides near real-time precipitation data covering the entire planet. But the patterns shown in the video aren't just meant to look pretty — they're going to help save lives.
Today's FCC decision to protect the internet with Title II regulation is a big win for the internet and net neutrality advocates — and the start of a big fight for both sides of the issue. But here's a pretty big question, what is net neutrality?
The answer isn't always so clear, and depending on where you read about today's news first, your interpretation of the phrase might vary a bit. That isn't to say anyone is flat-out wrong, but that summarizing an abstract concept can be open to various interpretations (we're partial our own interpretation, of course). Yes, there are already hundreds of standalone "what is net neutrality?" explainers, and there will assuredly be hundreds more. But for those who read only one news item on today's...
WhatsApp's bold encryption policy has caused a Brazilian judge to order a countrywide suspension of the app. The suspension was apparently triggered by an ongoing investigation in which WhatsApp declined to assist law enforcement. The case had been under appeal since an initial ruling earlier this month, but the order seems to have been served to cellphone operators today. Because of WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption, only users have access to the encryption keys for private conversation, and the company cannot hand over transcripts even when legally compelled to do so.
“If we could actually be in your bedroom and help you with this, we would,” says Dr. Chris Donaghue. The tattooed, slick-haired sex therapist stares past the camera with a knowing smirk about what comes next.
Donaghue continues: “But we can’t. That’s where the Sex Box helps us. Because after sex, the oxytocin’s at its highest, so you’re going to feel the most open and vulnerable and honest. And that’s when we can best really, really help you guys… So, Elle and Brandon: are you ready to go into the Sex Box?”
This is just a very normal video of police rounding up some stray llamas. Or trying to, anyway — it turns out the llamas just want to run free. To feel the wind in their fur.
The police and townspeople are trying to round the llamas up, as the news choppers hover. I'm rooting for the llamas. RUN FREE, RUN FAR, THELMA & LOUISE IT IF YOU HAVE TO, YOU BEAUTIFUL CREATURES.
The police caught the black llama, but the white one still runs free... for now
"fuck the police" —llamas
— Brendan O'Connor (@_grendan) February 26, 2015 Last year Facebook took a socially responsible step forward when it allowed users to choose from preset custom genders like "cisgender" or "transgender." But while the company worked with GLAAD to generate the custom genders, the move was not completely celebrated because users were still made to choose from pre-defined options. Now, it appears those options are gone as the company has started rolling out a new version of its custom gender field. This version still populates suggestions as you type, but also allows users to type in any word they wish to represent themselves with across Facebook.
It works the same way as the "infinite" gender options Google+ rolled out back in December, and the options that Facebook introduced last...
One of the interesting things about the net neutrality debate is how resistant it's been to traditional left-right politics — turns out everyone hates their cable company. The millions of people flooding the FCC's servers with comments have been so effective that Republicans have actually changed their broad policy position to prohibit fast lanes after years of saying they were fine. In fact, a Republican bill in Congress right now lays out almost exactly the same net neutrality plan the FCC just voted on. The only difference is that Obama wants to implement those rules under the authority of Title II, while the Republicans would just pass their bill.
That's not stopping Fox News from you know, being Fox News. Its headline today? "FCC...
Disqus, which makes a popular website plug-in for hosting comments at the end of articles you read on the internet, relaunched its homepage today as a full-fledged social network. Log in to your Disqus account, and you'll find a news feed with stories from the people, blogs, and websites you follow on the network. You'll also see the latest comments on your own site, if you have one, and recommendations for other commenters to follow. And for the first time, Disqus is creating standalone forums that are separate from article pages.
We’re finally starting to understand how Ebola infects living organisms, which means we’re getting closer to finding a way to stop it. The virus enters and infects cells thanks to channels in the cell’s membrane, according to a study published in Science today — and a molecule found in an Asian herb appears to be able to stop that process in mice.
Apple has just announced its highly anticipated Apple Watch event; it's happening on March 9th. The company today invited media to a gathering taking place at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Arts Center. It's here we're expecting to hear final pricing and availability details on the company's first wearable. The event's tagline is "Spring forward," an obvious reference to time — and a watch.
We know that the Apple Watch will start at $350 for the aluminum Sport model, but the company has remained silent on pricing details around both the regular version and ultra-luxurious Apple Watch Edition. CEO Tim Cook previously revealed that the device will ship at some point in April.
Developing...
Before it tackles net neutrality, the FCC is setting a major precedent for municipal broadband: it's just voted to preempt state laws that were preventing two cities from building out their own locally run broadband networks. The decision was prompted by separate petitions from Wilson, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee — both cities that've established high-speed, gigabit internet services, but have been barred from expanding to neighboring communities due to existing state laws. So far, 19 states have similar regulations to those that the FCC is overriding in Wilson and Chattanooga, but today's ruling affects only those two specific cases.
Yesterday, auto lender Santander Consumer USA agreed to pay at least $9.35 million to resolve the accusation that it illegally repossessed over 1,100 vehicles from active military personnel. The company is a close partner of the ride-sharing giant Uber, which funnels drivers with low credit to Santander loan officers. It’s not the company’s first brush with the law: the lender holds over $40 billion in car loans and has repeatedly been the subject of criminal investigations into its subprime auto loan arm.
According to the US Department of Justice, Santander violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), a consumer protection statute that forces lenders to seek court approval before repossessing assets of active duty soldiers.
T...
At its February Open Commission Meeting, the FCC will vote on one of the most controversial and game-changing measures in internet history: application of so-called Title II regulation, which would help ensure that companies can't restrict or limit the internet for profit.
The smartphone business is notorious for eating companies alive. Even giants of industry have fallen: Sony is on the cusp of throwing in the towel on its phone division, Nokia is now out of the game entirely after having been the largest manufacturer of phones in the world as recently as 2011, and even smartphone-centric companies like HTC are struggling. Yet somehow, there are a few upstarts that are navigating these treacherous, Samsung- and Apple-infested waters — sometimes with enormous success.
Somewhere in this technological New Wave lies Xiaomi, a Chinese firm founded in 2010 that has become impossible to ignore. That’s driven partly by its unapologetic Apple mimicry: its marketing, product strategy, and design aesthetic all...
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has secured land for the first full-scale Hyperloop, planned for a 2016 launch in the California model town of Quay Valley. Building off Elon Musk's freely available designs, the crowdfunded company has staked out a five-mile stretch of Quay Valley adjacent to California's Interstate 5 freeway as a place where the innovative transportation system can be deployed. If successful, it would be the first full-size implementation of Musk's ideas, published in August 2013. "This installation will allow us to demonstrate all systems on a full scale and immediately begin generating revenues for our shareholders through actual operations," CEO Dirk Ahlborn said in a statement.
Audi will announce its second-generation R8 supercar at the Geneva Motor Show next week (we'll be there!), which will be available in a couple flavors of V10 engine producing anywhere from 540 to 610 horsepower. By all appearances, it's going to be a beautiful machine — the first R8 certainly was.
The most interesting thing about it, though, is that there will be an e-tron model (Audi's parlance for all-electric) that will only be built by hand "upon request." The new R8 e-tron can zip from 0 to 62 mph in 3.9 seconds — slower than the high-performance V10 model and Tesla's Model S P85D at 3.2 seconds, but still impressive. The car features a T-shaped battery that stores some 92 kWh, far greater than the 49 kWh of the last R8 e-tron and...
Today, Google is announcing a "pilot program" on the Google Play app store which will allow app makers to purchase a spot at the top of search results. The program will work very similarly to how ads work on a traditional Google search, but instead of highlighting websites, developers can highlight their apps. That means that individual search terms will be bid on by advertisers, and sponsored results will have a small "Ad" tag on them.
Google says that the pilot program will begin in a very limited way, accessible only to a pre-chosen "pilot group" that has already begun pushing their apps via ads in traditional web searches — but it's reasonable to assume it'll open up to more app makers in relatively short order.
To go along with...
Police in Paris yesterday detained three Al Jazeera journalists on charges of flying a drone without a license, marking the latest development in what's been a bizarre week for a city still reeling from last month's terrorist attacks. The arrests come amid growing anxiety surrounding unauthorized drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have been seen hovering above popular tourist sites and government buildings in recent weeks.
For two consecutive nights this week, small, non-military drones were spotted above some of Paris’ most famous landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides military museum, as well as the US embassy and major traffic junctions along the city's border. At least five drones were reported by...
While Spotify adds new features and improvements to its range of mobile apps on a regular basis, the streaming music service is making some useful changes to its desktop app today. The main addition is the integration of the Musixmatch service, bringing fully integrated lyrics straight into Spotify for desktop. A new lyrics button will bring up on-screen lyrics, and you can also search or browse for lyrics using the explore feature in Spotify.
Musixmatch has been one of the most popular apps for Spotify desktop, and Spotify’s Dave Price describes lyrics integration as a "sought-after feature." Other improvements include a tweaked friend feed to view what playlists, songs, and artists friends are listening to, and daily viral charts to...
This is the latest example we've seen of Northern Europe acting like its living 15 years in the future: a gorgeous biomass power plant encased in a rainbow-colored geodesic dome. The project was commissioned by the city of Uppsala in Sweden, with the plans drawn up by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG. There's no guarantee that this thing will get built, but BIG has a reputation for making crazy projects work.
The plant would use existing cogeneration biomass technology to supplement Uppsala's energy supply during the cold, dark, Swedish winters. 'Biomass' here refers to any biological matter used as fuel (it's usually plant matter) while the term 'cogeneration' simply means that the plant produces both heat and...
What you see pictured above is 99.99 percent certain to be the HTC One M9, a flagship Android smartphone that will steer the fortunes of its maker for the coming year. HTC would have preferred to keep it all a big enigmatic secret until this Sunday’s grand unveiling, but circumstances have once against conspired against its best-laid plans. The silver-and-gold cat is out of the bag and it looks an awful lot like its One M8 predecessor. Reactions have swiftly coalesced into two polarized camps: there are those who liked the incumbent design and see the new phone as just more of a good thing, and then there’s the more vocal group that’s already writing off HTC’s chances because of its apparent stagnation and lack of innovation. Both are...
I'll be honest with you, Verge readers — sometimes it is not altogether easy to find the words to put in articles.
This one, for example, is about a music video for a song called "Ni Pal Ja Ya (It's Your Destiny)" by K-pop duo Norazo. It sounds like a pair of excited chihuahua puppies using a Casio keyboard's demo mode to remix Beethoven's Fifth, and the video begins with trippy visuals and a mysterious voice that our Korean intern Sojung assures me says the following:
"Become rich by listening to a song — I really like this song — I want to keep listening to it — This lively song will make me rich — I keep wanting to make people around me to listen to this song — I will want to buy this song — I don't know why but I will get money...
Lenovo.com has been hacked. As of 4pm ET, users visiting the site saw a slideshow of disaffected youths, set to the song "Breaking Free" from High School Music. The source code for the page identified it as, "the new and improved rebranded Lenovo website featuring Ryan King and Rory Andrew Godfrey," both of whom have been publicly identified as members of the hacker collective Lizard Squad. It's unclear whether King and Godfrey are actually related to the hack, or if the attackers are simply using their names and photos to muddle their true identity.
1996 could have been a very different year. While both Nintendo and Sony had seminal, fondly remembered forays into 3D with Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot that year, Sega was left out. But it wasn't for a lack of trying: the company attempted to do the same with Sonic the Hedgehog by launching a game for its fledgling Saturn console called Sonic X-treme, which was due to launch in time for that year's busy holiday season. It started life as a Genesis game, but was eventually turned into what would have been Sonic's 3D debut, though production troubles meant that the game was ultimately cancelled in 1997.
Sonic fans have been unable to see what could have been for the franchise. Until now, that is.
"A snapshot in time."
A group of...
Google's DeepMind AI can beat 49 Atari video games. That may not sound like much, but it taught itself to play -- a significant step for machine learning.
Google acquired DeepMind Technologies last year, beating out Facebook on the bid. At the time, there was speculation about whether the acquisition would matter for search or robotics. The answer may be both: the machine learning techniques that led to today's study — published in the journal Nature — let computers discover patterns in data. And while the methods used to help the computers learn to play video games have been around for "several decades," according to an accompanying editorial, they hadn't been combined in such a useful way before.
"The approach displays impressive...
It's safe to say that the $250 August smart lock is off to a good start, if for no other reason than it's already landed a coveted spot on Apple Store shelves. But consumers aren't exactly racing to ditch their keys in favor of unlocking the front door with a smartphone, so there's still plenty of room for other companies to try their hand. Today we're getting a look at one of those alternative: it's called Sesame. And if nothing else, it aggressively undercuts August on price.
Sesame follows the same basic idea as August and other smart locks. You attach it to the lock on the inside of your door and, when in range, pull out your smartphone to quickly get inside. There's also an accelerometer inside that can open up when it detects a...
Google's taking a big step out in front of its music streaming competitors today. The company has just announced that effective immediately, you'll be able to upload up to 50,000 songs from your personal music collection and store them in the cloud through Google Play Music — all for free. The previous limit was 20,000.
Netflix is ordering five new children's series, including a rebooted Inspector Gadget that will debut next month. Like the original cartoon, the new Inspector Gadget follows a bumbling detective outfitted with crazy, high-tech gear that he uses while tracking down a crime syndicate. This series actually appears to be positioned as a sequel, with the original cartoon's villain returning, Gadget being brought out of retirement, and his niece — now somewhat older — in training to fight crime. It also sounds as though she'll get in on more of the gadgets and combat this time around, too. The one big difference between this and the old series is that it's now computer animated, to fairly mediocre results.
While parents who eschew MMR out of fears of autism might be the most frequently discussed "anti-vaxxers," they’re not the only ones who are letting misinformation dictate choices about their children’s health. In fact, far more parents are neglecting to immunize their children with Gardasil, a cancer vaccine.
Gardasil provides immunity against several strains of HPV, a virus known to be responsible for numerous forms of cancer — most notably cervical and anal — and genital warts. The vaccine is incredibly effective: in its original form, it protects against the four strains of HPV that cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases and 90 percent of genital warts; an updated version approved this past December protects against five...
Motorola teased an announcement in the form a hand-delivered package last week, and sure enough, today the company delivered a box with a new Moto E. The second-generation Moto E is still Motorola's most affordable smartphone in its lineup, but this time around it has a larger 4.5-inch (but still 540 x 960 pixel) display, faster 4G LTE networking, and a faster Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor.
Unless you're looking really closely, it's hard to tell the difference between the new Moto E and last year's model. But that's not really a bad thing: last year's phone kept Motorola's design philosophy and great ergonomics intact and felt a lot better than most other entry-level smartphones. The new Moto E is no different in those respects, but...
The parasitic worms that cause river blindness give birth to 1,600 larvae each day. “I’ve heard people say that they feel this buzzing under the skin; they feel the little larvae under the skin and it’s itchy,” says Elodie Ghedin, a molecular parasitologist at New York University. The larvae then travel to various parts of the body, including the eyes, where they cause inflammation and lesions when they die.
Parks and Recreation ended its run last night after seven seasons in a turbulent primetime NBC slot. It was a witty, endearing show that became so good it elevated the careers of almost every cast member. After last season's finale flashed forward three years to 2017, we learned that the show was going to stick to that time jump, and the show's creator Mike Schur was quoted as saying that Parks would become "very gently sci-fi" in its final season.
That may have been a bit of an understatement. Every episode was filled with both subtle and obvious glimpses of a noticeably different society. Many of the ideas presented by the writers are used for laughs, but like any good sci-fi we can use what's depicted to reflect on what our current...
It's a little after 9 PM on a Saturday in Berlin, and Adolf Hitler is splashing around a wooden hot tub with three naked Nazis. The three men are all white-bearded and very fat, with laurel crowns on their heads and big, peachy members. They welcome Hitler with open arms as he dives head-first into the tub, and the führer responds with howls of pleasure, rubbing his head under the folds of their man boobs like an unusually affectionate wolf. Tonight, that's exactly what he is.
This wasn't quite what I expected from my first-ever exorcism. From Thursday through Sunday last week, the Berlin Academy of the Arts (Akademie der Künste, or ADK), staged Germania : a multi-story theatrical performance that revives the Nazi ghosts of the school’s...
Eddie Ray Routh has been sentenced to life in prison for killing Chris Kyle, the former military sniper who was the subject of the film American Sniper. Routh, 27, was found guilty of fatally shooting Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield at a firing range near Fort Worth in February 2013. A prosecutor in the case said that Routh acted coldly and deliberately, waiting until Kyle had completely unloaded his weapon before ambushing the pair from behind. Routh's lawyers argued that he was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed that Kyle and Littlefield were plotting to kill him. The jury deliberated for just over two hours before finding Routh guilty. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
KYLE WAS LIONIZED IN HIS HOME STATE FOR HIS...
For a company on the brink of its most important product launch ever, Samsung appears to be uncommonly relaxed about the whole thing. A new Is This The Next? website from Samsung's Norwegian team introduces us to a set of amusingly exaggerated concepts for what the Galaxy S6 might look like. Will Samsung's next flagship phone have a three-sided display? Will it be durable, made wholly out of glass, and feature stereo speakers on the front? Samsung takes all the breathless speculation about its next flagship and produces a slice of smart humor that's endearing even to those of us that it mocks.
Aston Martin's new Vulcan is aptly named. Like the Roman god it borrows its name from, the British car maker's new, limited edition supercar is, well, blazing hot. Oh, and it shoots flames out of its side-exit exhausts. This is the most extreme Aston Martin ever made since the One-77, and just 24 will be going on sale. Each boasts a 7.0-liter V12 engine, upwards of 800 brake horse power, and a price tag of £1.5 million ($2.33 million, plus local taxes), with Aston Martin's CEO Dr Andy Palmer describing it as "a sports car for true sports car lovers," and promising that the Vulcan "sets a whole new standard in the ultra-high luxury supercar class."
An Illinois congressman was found to have used taxpayer and campaign funds on private plane travel, concert tickets, and other lavish expenses after the Associated Press cross-referenced his Instagram account against his flight records. Republican representative Aaron Schock, who is already facing several ethics probes, reportedly spent more than $40,000 on private air travel from 2011 onwards, and took his interns to a sold-out Katy Perry show in June last year, a $1,928 expense that he listed as a "PAC fundraising event."
Making video games is hard. It’s a long, complex process that can involve hundreds of people making thousands of decisions, all in the hope of creating a coherent product at the end. And while as a player it’s impossible to know the reality behind a game’s production, sometimes individual decisions do stand out in their ability to have a major impact on a title.
Homeworld, a space-based strategy game first released in 1999, is one example of this. Whoever’s call it was to make the spaceships emit colorful light trails in their wake made a pretty amazing decision, because it helped solidify one of the most distinctive art styles in the history of gaming. Homeworld rendered space warfare as gorgeous, balletic battles, with every movement...
If you were premiering an exclusive, heavily anticipated gadget, why would you do it on Kickstarter? It's been a much-asked question since this morning when Pebble did just that, dropping their new Pebble Time onto Kickstarter. For now, it's the only place you can order it. There was even a $40 discount for anyone who got their order in early. But why?
Paul Feig's upcoming Ghostbusters reboot is definitely going to be scarier than the originals. During an interview on AMC's Talking Dead on Sunday, the Bridesmaids director admitted that he felt "very inspired" by The Walking Dead, and is looking to bring a similar sense of constant dread to the comedy.
"What I love is how they play with the danger," he said, "they play with the scariness, but also the idea that it’s always about running the gauntlet. And that’s something, an element I want to bring to this Ghostbusters reboot is having to get through these various obstacles that are supernatural and all that. I really feed off of The Walking Dead."
Microsoft is revealing today that it plans to kill off Google and Facebook chat from its Outlook.com email service "within the next couple of weeks." In an email to Outlook.com customers, Microsoft says it’s removing Google Talk integration "due to Google’s decision to discontinue the chat protocol used by the Google Talk platform." Microsoft will also be discontinuing support for Facebook chat in Outlook.com, but the company has not revealed why it’s killing off the social network’s chat integration.
Facebook and Google services for Outlook.com also integrate with the people feature of the webmail service and keep contacts up-to-date, and Microsoft says this feature will be unaffected by the decision to discontinue the chat options....
Fun fact: celebrities draw breath. It's true! Similar to the rest of us, humanity's performers and entertainers do, in fact, interact with the air around us as a means of survival — sometimes even unconsciously.
The Guardian has posted a video that will melt your heart into an mushy stew. According to the short, a blind man has the ability to see his wife after 10 years. Allen Zderared, now in his late 60s, began to lose his site nearly two decades ago, but thanks to a prototype bionic eye and the help of Minnesota's Mayo Clinic, the Minnesotan can "see shapes and human forms."
Jimmy Fallon is very well known for his musical impressions; his Neil Young is out of this world. So, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the deck was stacked against Christina Aguilera when Fallon asked her to take part in a game of musical impressions with him last night on The Tonight Show. Though, the minute she started belting the "Folger's Coffee" jingle in Cher's signature contralto, Fallon must have known he was going to lose.
Charlie Nash has been part of the Street Fighter canon since Street Fighter 2. In its story, we learn that Nash's death at the hands of M. Bison inspired his mentee, the military beefcake Guile, to join the Street Fighter tournament, creating a morbid loop in the franchise's mythos.
Nash first appeared as a playable character in the prequel series, Street Fighter Alpha. Because Nash's death must motivate Guile's involvement in Street Fighter 2, Nash never survives his storylines in the Alpha games. He's murdered by Bison in Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior's Dreams, betrayed by his own soldiers and tossed off a waterfall in the second Alpha game, and Alpha 3's story has Nash sacrifice himself to keep Bison inside a base set to explode.
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Earlier this month Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal was pushed out of her role in the wake of the company's embarrassing hack attack, and today the studio is starting its new era. Former 20th Century Fox head Tom Rothman has been named as Pascal's replacement, where he'll serve as the chair of Sony's Motion Picture Group.
Rothman is a Hollywood veteran, having been at Fox for nearly two decades. There he oversaw huge blockbusters like Titanic, Avatar, and the X-Men franchise. He left in 2012, and joined Sony in 2013 to bring the company's TriStar movie label back to life. TriStar subsequently co-produced films like Elysium and the Evil Dead reboot.