Babcock unsure where Wings go from here

TAMPA, Fla. -- The future of Red Wings coach Mike Babcock has been a topic of discussion all season. With his contract set to expire and the Red Wings now eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs after losing Game 7 of their Eastern Conference fir...

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Blown opportunities cost Wings series

TAMPA, Fla. – Two games stand out as probable reasons the Red Wings’ plans to meet the Montreal Canadiens in the second round of the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs were thwarted – Game 4 and Game 7. The Red Wings had a great opportunity to put the T...

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TWO DOGS' NIGHT

With an inspired, rugged performance by captain Jeff Hoggan -- aka "Two Dogs" -- leading the charge, the Griffins clawed their way to a 5-2 victory over the Toronto Marlies on Wednesday in Game 3 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals at Van Andel Arena. Now down 1-2 in this best-of-five series, the Griffins will face another must-win when they host Game 4 on Saturday at 7 p.m.

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Kronwall disagrees with league decision

TAMPA, Fla. – With the verdict less than a day old, Niklas Kronwall was still struggling with how he felt about his one-game suspension levied by the NHL on Tuesday. “It’s hard to describe,” said Kronwall, who will sit out tonight’s Game 7 of t...

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Wings down a second D-man for Game 7

TAMPA, Fla. – Niklas Kronwall won’t be the only defenseman not in the lineup for the Red Wings when they tangle with the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference first-round series. Veteran defenseman Marek Zidlicky, who was obta...

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FRK AND CZARNOWCZAN SENT TO TOLEDO

The Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday reassigned right wing Martin Frk from the Griffins to the ECHL’s Toledo Walleye. In addition, the Griffins assigned defenseman Scott Czarnowczan to their ECHL affiliate.

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Wings' Kronwall suspended for Game 7

TAMPA, Fla. – The Red Wings will play the biggest game of the year without their biggest weapon on the back end. Defenseman Niklas Kronwall has been suspended for one game for his illegal hit Monday night to the head of Tampa Bay forward Nikita...

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Wings' Kronwall faces Player Safety hearing

Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall will have a telephone hearing Tuesday with the NHL Department of Player Safety for a hit against Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov during Game 6 of the Eastern Conference first-round series at Joe Lou...

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Wings need third road win to advance

TAMPA, Fla. – It’s not ideal, but still not impossible. If the Red Wings are to move on in the Stanley Cup playoffs, they’ll need to win a third road game against the Tampa Bay Lightning in their Eastern Conference first-round series. The fa...

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Zetterberg scoreless again in Game 6

DETROIT — Unable to score a goal for a sixth game in the series with Tampa Bay, one of the most proficient goal scorers in Red Wings playoff history, Henrik Zetterberg, is on the verge of being shut out for the first time in his career. Averag...

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Notes: Energy is set on winning Game 6

DETROIT – The Red Wings have been at this Game 6 crossroads before. As was the case two years ago against Chicago and three years before then versus Phoenix, the Wings would rather close out the Eastern Conference first-round series tonight at ...

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Quincey returned with playoffs in mind

DETROIT — Kyle Quincey had a decision to make on July 1. Stay in Detroit with the team that drafted him and where he has played 186 games of his career, or test the waters of NHL free agency. Comfortable with the group and the organization, Qui...

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TORONTO TAKES 2-0 SERIES LEAD

T.J. Brennan’s power play goal with 6:36 remaining broke a 2-2 tie before the Toronto Marlies added a pair of empty-net goals in the final minute to escape with a 5-2 victory over the Griffins on Sunday at Ricoh Coliseum. After losing an early 2-0 lead, Grand Rapids was unable to capitalize on a five-minute power play during the third period that included a two-man advantage for two full minutes, setting the stage for Brennan’s late heroics. Game 3 of the best-of-five series is Wednesday at Van Andel Arena.

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Notes: Mrazek the difference-maker in series

DETROIT — The biggest question mark coming into the playoffs has become an exclamation point. Surrendering just nine goals through five games of the first-round series, goalie Petr Mrazek has neutralized an otherwise potent offense with a chanc...

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Wings don't squander Game 5 lead

TAMPA, Fla. – Asked about Luke Glendening’s playmaking acumen, Drew Miller had some fun at the expense of his younger linemate Saturday night at Amalie Arena. “I think I’m teaching him a little bit about offense and how to get some points as w...

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MARLIES SCORE EARLY AND OFTEN

Teemu Pulkkinen scored twice in his first AHL game since March 6 to provide an anticipated boost to the Griffins’ offense, but the team’s defensive breakdowns resulted in Grand Rapids dropping Game 1 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals by a 7-4 count to the Toronto Marlies on Saturday at Ricoh Coliseum.

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Notes: Regrouping is a Game 5 priority

BRANDON, Fla. – The Red Wings have dealt with adversity before, but not to this magnitude. Thursday’s loss was a devastating punch to the sternum for the Wings in their Eastern Conference first-round series with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Instead...

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GRIFFINS VS. MARLIES

The Griffins' Western Conference Quarterfinals series against the Toronto Marlies will kick off on Saturday at 3 p.m. at Ricoh Coliseum. Click here for a series preview as well as a look back on the Griffins' 2014-15 regular season.

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JUST IN TIME

The Detroit Red Wings on Friday assigned right wing Teemu Pulkkinen to the Griffins.

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Lightning exploit Glendening's absence

DETROIT – Tyler Johnson has struggled to shake his shadow against the Red Wings. The Tampa Bay center finally managed to do it late Thursday night, only because the shadow went to the Red Wings’ dressing room and did not return. Luke Glenden...

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Mrazek's bid at history spoiled

DETROIT — Just 1:16 of ice time separated Petr Mrazek from history. Surrendering two goals on consecutive shots in the final five minutes of regulation would squander the Red Wings goaltender’s bid at becoming the first rookie since 1937 to pos...

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Notes: Healthy Ericsson thrives in playoffs

DETROIT – Sitting in the stands watching as his teammates were eliminated from the playoffs last spring is making this month’s Eastern Conference first-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning much more enjoyable for Jonathan Ericsson. The ...

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Notes: Callahan gets job done for Bolts

DETROIT — Like Justin Abdelkader’s importance to the Red Wings, forward Ryan Callahan’s value on the Tampa Bay Lightning’s top forward line cannot be understated. Playing much of the season alongside first-rate goal scorer Steven Stamkos, ...

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HICKETTS IN TOWN

The Detroit Red Wings have reassigned defenseman Joe Hicketts from the Western Hockey League’s Victoria Royals to the Griffins.

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Notes: Consistency will be key for Wings

DETROIT – Now that the Red Wings have taken a 2-1 lead in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference first-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, consistency becomes the biggest factor. But like every Stanley Cup playoff game there are two s...

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Google Fi: all the news on the search giant's plan to remake the wireless industry

Google is now a mobile carrier. Today the company has made official its plan to offer wireless service to owners of its Nexus 6 smartphone. It's called Project Fi, and Google is launching an early invite program beginning today. "Similar to our Nexus hardware program, Project Fi enables us to work in close partnership with leading carriers, hardware makers, and all of you to push the boundaries of what's possible," the company wrote in a blog post.

The service is only available for the Nexus 6 and requires a special SIM card for Project FI — it will work with both existing Nexus 6 devices and new ones. Google says that right now the service is only available as an "early access program," and during that program it won't work on other...

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What the hell is an MVNO, and why is Google building one with Fi?

Google announced its own wireless network today. That sounds pretty ambitious and expensive. Plus you get what arguably the best, or least the most flexible, data plan offered by anyone, even trumping T-Mobile’s "Uncarrier" approach. But building a mobile network is a massive expense. Is Google betting everything on this new project?

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eBay is about to lose its growth engine PayPal

eBay and PayPal are getting ready to split apart into two separate companies — and it may hurt eBay's bottom line. The company just announced its Q1 2015 earnings, and while the overall business was healthy (net revenue was up 4 percent year over year), there are signs that the spinoff of PayPal later this year might be painful.

PayPal today is one of the strongest parts of eBay. eBay Payments revenue, of which PayPal is the key component, grew 14 percent year over year, by far the healthiest of eBay's three current business divisions. But revenue from eBay Marketplaces, the traditional eBay storefront we've all come to know and tolerate over the last few decades, declined 4 percent year over year. That's a relatively small decline —...

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The House has passed a controversial new cyber info-sharing bill

Today, the House of Representatives passed the Protecting Cyber Networks Act in a bipartisan 307-116 vote, taking an important step forward in Congress' ongoing efforts to promote cyber threat-sharing. The bill is meant to help network operators share information about possible threats more quickly and easily, making it easier to defend against any subsequent attacks. "Our bill will ensure that we have the tools to address these attacks by enabling voluntary information sharing of cyber threats between and among the private and public sectors," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in a statement.

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Price comparison: Google's Project Fi versus Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile

You've now got the option of choosing Google as your wireless carrier instead of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, or T-Mobile. Well, Nexus 6 owners do. With Project Fi, Google is aiming to make its presence felt in the mobile industry as a service provider in addition to being the leading force behind Android. Google's focus with the new effort is simplicity and bills that aren't confusing. It's an approach not unlike the one John Legere's T-Mobile has tried to lead with its Uncarrier effort. But how does Google's plan compare to what you'd get from the biggest players in wireless right now? Let's take a look.

Project Fi

For $20 a month, Google gives you unlimited domestic voice calling and texts, unlimited international texts, coverage in over...

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This Earth Day, let's remember what we stand to lose

Climate change is real, and we're getting closer to the point where we won't be able to do anything about the warming of our planet. But everywhere you look, climate change deniers keep popping up.

You can almost understand why that is —  trying to care about something that you think might affect us in a few hundred years or more is so hard, right? And it still snows a lot every year, so that obviously doesn't mean the Earth is warming, right?

The problem is that the effects of climate change are a lot closer than many people realize. Many landscapes, plants, and animals are in danger of not existing in the next 100 years. So in an effort to keep reminding people of the very real, impending threats that climate change poses, here...

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The oldest medical journal in the US just backed same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage in the US just received the backing of one of the world's most well-respected medical journals. The New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial today outlining its position — a position that is, unsurprisingly, tied to the many health obstacles faced by LGBTQ folks, as well as their families.

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Yahoo reportedly prepping a new app to compete with Google Now

Yahoo may be behind in the search game, but it could be looking to compete with the likes of Google and Microsoft when it comes to creating a personalized search tool. On an earnings call yesterday, CEO (and former Google executive) Marissa Mayer said that Yahoo was "particularly interested in search in the mobile sector, what happens when you involve context," and it's apparently focusing attention on "what happens when you involve personal information, from things like email." Today, Business Insider reports that a source has provided more details about the project, which is supposedly known as Index.

Index is supposed to be a smartphone app, following up on Yahoo's current Aviate launcher for Android. Aviate acts as a personal...

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How does Google Fi's coverage compare to AT&T and Verizon?

Google surprised virtually no one when it formally announced its new cellular service plan called Google Fi today. Google Fi is currently very limited — it's an invite-only program and only works with Google's own Nexus 6 smartphone — but it offers some very interesting things when it comes to service plan pricing and network coverage. Like Republic Wireless, Google Fi is heavily reliant on Wi-Fi networks for both calls and data. But it has a unique trick up its sleeve when you don't have access to Wi-Fi: it will automatically switch between Sprint or T-Mobile's networks based on whichever service is stronger where you are.

But as many people already know, Sprint and T-Mobile don't quite have the same level of coverage as Verizon and...

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Datsyuk still leaves teammates in awe

DETROIT — On Tuesday, Red Wings center Pavel Datsyuk was announced as one-of-three finalists for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, an award he’s been nominated for six times in his 13 NHL seasons. An honor bestowed upon players who exhibit th...

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Comcast can't answer the only important question about the TWC merger: why not compete?

Today, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen published a 2,900 word essay called "Setting the record straight on criticisms of the Comcast-TWC transaction." Naturally, this noble effort in corporate spin required making inappropriate references to great leaders. "While it may be easy for critics to do this from the sidelines," Cohen wrote, "we would rather try, in the spirit of President Kennedy, to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

So let's do that, Mr. Cohen. Let's light a candle on the only relevant question in the Comcast / Time Warner merger that Comcast has refused to answer.

Are you chicken?

If competition is so vibrant and healthy in the broadband market — enough to make net neutrality regulation a bad idea,...

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More than 70 percent of Facebook's $3.54 billion revenue is now mobile

We've learned a couple of things about Facebook over its first three years as a public company. It knows how to mint money, is increasingly mobile, and somehow keeps adding users despite having what feels like every internet-connected human being on the planet already signed up for its service. The company, which reported its first quarter earnings today, now has 1.44 billion monthly active users, and 1.25 billion on mobile, an increase of 13 and 24 percent, respectively.

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Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina is running for president

In two weeks, the 2016 campaign will get its first candidate from the tech industry. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that on May 4th, Carly Fiorina will launch her presidential campaign under the Republican ticket. Fiorina first entered politics in 2010 with a failed Senate campaign, although she served as an advisor and central fundraiser for John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008. Fiorina served as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, a tumultuous period during which the company merged with Compaq and struggled with the collapse of the dot-com bubble.

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New Google Cultural Institute exhibit focuses on the island where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner

The Google Cultural Institute is a sort of only museum, cataloging and sharing various online artistic and historical exhibits, and that collection expanded today with a new exhibit focusing on South Africa's Robben Island. The island is most well-known for being the site of Nelson Mandela's imprisonment for 18 of the 27 years he was behind bars before his release in 1990.

Google's new exhibit was produced in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation as well as the Robben Island Museum and consists of seven interactive exhibits focusing on the trial that led to Mandela's imprisonment, Mandela's life at Robben Island, quotes from various political prisoners held there, a prison tour, and more. There are also 25 different street view...

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Tidal Discovery will give independent artists more control over their music

Even though Tidal is backed by some of the biggest and richest artists in the world, it hasn't forgotten about independent artists. Speaking to Smashd, Tidal CIO Vania Schlogel detailed an upcoming service called Discovery that will make it much easier for independent artists to get their music on Tidal. Discovery will allow independent artists to upload their music directly instead of the current model which requires them to go through a third-party service.

Tidal will share user listening habits with artists

"When it comes to the distribution of music, I want to get to a point where there are no blockades for artists in order to be able to easily do that for themselves," Schlogel told Smashd. Artists using Tidal Discovery will also...

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Lionel Richie is Google's secret ambassador for Project Fi

Google just announced Project Fi, a super important and possibly disruptive wireless service. But here's another disruption: if you call the number prominently displayed on Project Fi's "Experience" page, somebody actually picks up. That somebody is Lionel Richie, singing "Hello." It starts right in the middle of the song, of course, much in the same way that Google is entering the wireless market in medias res. Then is unceremoniously cuts out after a run through the key lyric, just like...

Just kidding, no hot take analysis here, except that Google know how to make a good joke. Just dial 404-978-9316 and enjoy. Enjoy it All Night Long. "Dancing on the Ceiling" jokes are left as an exercise for the reader. Richie is Google's secret...

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Ebola drug saves infected monkeys from death

An experimental Ebola drug kept monkeys from dying when it was administered to them 72 hours after infection. The finding bodes well for a human drug trial that’s already underway in Sierra Leone — a country were nine cases of Ebola were reported just last week.

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T-Mobile's John Legere finds a way to knock Sprint in Google Project Fi announcement

Press releases are flying from Google, Motorola, and T-Mobile in the wake of Google's Project Fi announcement this afternoon — a wireless service that could completely upend the way data is sold, if it's successful. T-Mobile CEO John Legere, a man who is never at a loss for words, also published a blog post of his own.

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Mosquitoes may like some people's genes better

Ah, spring, when a young outdoorswoman's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of insect bites. While I do own DEET-based repellant, my main trick for avoiding bites is inviting my friend Allie along on hikes or camping trips — when we return, she's covered in mosquito bites, and I'm scot-free. Yes, mosquitoes really do like some people better than others, and a new paper from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine suggests there's a genetic component to that preference.

In the study, scientists compared how attractive sets of twins were to mosquitoes, using groups of identical and fraternal twins. The identical twins were more similarly attractive to mosquitoes than the fraternal twins, according to the study, published in PLOS...

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Jony Ive says the Apple Watch can't be compared to traditional watches

Apple has been committed to selling its Watch like it were a fashion item, but at a Condé Nast conference in Florence this morning, Apple design chief Jony Ive described how it's still very much built as a gadget. "Our focus has been doing our very best to create a product that's useful," Ive said, according to Vogue. "When we started on the iPhone, it was because we all couldn't bear our phones. The watch was different. We all loved our watches but saw that the wrist was a fabulous place for technology, so there were different motivations. I don't know how we can compare the old watches we know with the functionality and the capability of the Apple Watch."

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It's surprisingly difficult to tell male and female Stegosaurus apart

Around 150 million years ago, it might not have been that difficult to look at a Stegosaurus and tell whether it was a male or a female. Today, however, it's a big challenge. Researchers find themselves staring at piles of bones, often unable to tell whether they're looking at multiple animals, different species, or one individual with a number of variations. Because of that, researchers seem to agree that there's been no convincing evidence so far for sex-based differences — like the mane on a male lion, a phenomenon scientists call "sexual dimorphism" — in any dinosaur, despite those differences being common among modern animals.

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Toyota is working with Morgan Spurlock to make people like hydrogen cars

Toyota is pushing hydrogen as a viable alternative fuel harder than any other automaker in the industry, but it still has an enormous uphill battle: the refueling infrastructure doesn't exist, and you've got influential badasses like Elon Musk saying that it's "bullshit."

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Google launches its own mobile network for Nexus 6 owners

Google is now a mobile carrier. Today the company has made official its plan to offer wireless service to owners of its Nexus 6 smartphone. It's called Project Fi, and Google is launching an early invite program beginning today. "Similar to our Nexus hardware program, Project Fi enables us to work in close partnership with leading carriers, hardware makers, and all of you to push the boundaries of what's possible," the company wrote in a blog post.

Google's new offering is unique in that the company will charge consumers only for the data they use rather than hit them with a flat monthly fee that comes with a preset amount of data. If you fail to use all the data you've paid for, Google will refund you the difference.

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Everything you know about Marvel Comics is about to change

The Marvel universe is about to explode. Again.

Next month, just as Avengers: Age of Ultron hits theaters, the self-styled House of Ideas will kick off its own summer blockbuster series in Secret Wars, a universe-spanning event helmed by Avengers writer Jonathan Hickman that will pit superheroes and villains from across time and between dimensions against each other. Five years in the making, it’s the single biggest thing Marvel has done with its comics characters in its 76-year history, and according to Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso, it promises to change how it tells stories for decades to come.

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Long-suspected pesticide is harming bumblebees

When honey bees began dying en masse in late 2006, one of the early suspects was a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. These chemicals are often applied to seeds before planting, so that the poison permeates the entire plant as it grows, including its pollen and nectar. The European Union placed a moratorium on the chemicals even as research results were mixed: at the doses honey bees might experience on a farm, neonicotinoids seemed to cause disorientation and a weakening of the immune system, but nothing to explain the die-offs.

Now, two studies published in Nature indicate the neonicotinoids are a problem for pollinators, though not in the way many first assumed. In the first study, researchers at Lund University looked at...

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Help me buy my dream car, Paul Walker's Supra from The Fast and The Furious

This is it.

If you had to identify one piece of Fast & Furious memorabilia to put on a pedestal above every other, Brian O'Conner's Supra — the "10-second car" he owed Dom — would be it. And now it's up for auction.

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Comcast's dealings with Hulu could jeopardize its merger with Time Warner Cable

Comcast's involvement in the potential sale of Hulu may dampen its chances of getting its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable approved by the Justice Department. According to The Wall Street Journal, Comcast, 21st Century Fox, and Disney executives met at the Allen & Co. conference in 2013 to discuss the potential sale of Hulu — which was garnering billion dollar offers at the time. Instead of hammering out the sale, Comcast reportedly convinced its partners that it could raise Hulu's value and make it a true competitor to Netflix, promises that played a significant role in the decision to pull Hulu off the market, according to The New York Times.

Comcast is restricted from making management decisions involving Hulu

Due to its deal...

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Facebook introduces Hello, an app to replace the Android dialer

Phone calls may have fallen out of fashion, but Americans still make 1 billion of them every day. And yet the experience of making a call isn’t all that great: phones don’t always recognize numbers, contacts can be difficult to manage, and they rarely take advantage of newer technologies like Wi-Fi calling. Now Facebook is introducing an app designed to fix that: Hello, an Android-only dialer app that seeks to modernize phone calls while also working to put Facebook at the center of all your communications. Among other features, it lets you more easily make free calls over Wi-Fi.

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Risk that H5N2 avian flu virus will infect humans is low, CDC says

The risk that a highly infectious strain of avian flu virus named H5N2 will infect humans is "low at this time," CDC officer Alicia Fry said during a press conference earlier today. The virus, which infects turkeys and chickens, is different from previous flu strains that have been able to infect humans, she said. So far, it has "not caused infections in humans anywhere in the world."

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Fighting anti-vaxxers with a marathon science reading

Last Thursday night, 30 prominent New York writers, many of them young parents, gathered at the Brooklyn bookstore and event space PowerHouse Arena to take gentle aim at the anti-vaccine movement. Their weapon of choice: all 163 pages of On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss, read aloud without interruption, a kind of incantation against misinformation and pseudoscience.

Four rows of wooden pews were set up to seat readers and visitors, who also scattered along the high concrete steps lining the back of the store. On the bottom step sat a giant golden teddy bear. At 6PM, after some brief opening remarks, organizer Maris Kreizman launched into the first lines of the book, which recall the myth of Achilles, "whose mother tried to make...

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Valve opens applications for free Vive VR development kits

As promised last month, Valve is letting developers apply for an early edition of its Vive virtual reality system. Ars Technica noted this morning that the SteamVR site now includes an application form for a free Vive development kit. Unlike the Oculus Rift DK2, which sells publicly for $350, Vive kits will be free to selected developers. According to a Valve statement, they'll start shipping "later this spring," going out in batches through the summer. The company warns, however, that "supplies may be limited."

The Vive, created in partnership with HTC, involves a lot more hardware than its competition at Sony, Samsung, and Oculus. In addition to the headset, developers will receive two base stations, which scan a 15-by-15-foot patch...

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Amazon wants to deliver packages to the trunk of your car

Amazon will begin testing a pilot program next month that will deliver packages directly to the trunk of your car, at least if you own an Audi, according to Financial Times. The online marketplace has partnered with DHL and Audi to deliver packages to select Audi-owning Prime customers in Munich. Amazon says the DHL delivery agent will get one-time keyless access to your trunk when it's time for your package to be delivered. Audi says there will be no additional insurance issues, as the delivery agent won't have access to the rest of your car.

Having packages delivered directly to your car could help alleviate the stress of not being home for important deliveries, or having to send packages to your place of work. Audi isn't the first...

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Microsoft's Xbox One is getting Miracast streaming support

Microsoft is finally enabling Miracast support on Xbox One. While the company’s gaming console has long included the ability to stream individual files from Windows PCs, Miracast support will enable Xbox One owners with Android phones, Windows phones, and Windows PCs to cast photos and video straight from devices to the console. Microsoft is enabling Miracast with an update to the SmartGlass preview app for Xbox One, and the company will also let users power on and off consoles as part of the update.

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Construction workers in China accidentally unearth dinosaur eggs

Heyuan is a city in the mountainous Guandong province of China that bills itself as the "Home of the Dinosaurs," and rightfully so. In 2004 the local museum was awarded a Guinness World Record for the largest collection of fossilized dinosaur eggs (10,008 at the time), and almost 17,000 egg fossils have been found there since 1996. That number just grew a tiny bit larger after workers stumbled upon 43 fossilized dinosaur eggs in the red sandstone beneath the roads they were repairing. Some measured up to 5 inches across, and 19 of them were fully intact.

Heyuan is not just a hotspot for fossilized eggs — 11 fossilized skeletons and almost 200 footprint fossils have been discovered since 2006, according to a 2008 report from China Daily....

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Win a Mophie Juice Pack for the Galaxy S5!

Do you like free stuff? If you do, and you happen to own a GS5, you've come to the right place. Today we're giving away a Galaxy S5 Mophie Juice Pack on our Facebook page. To enter, go here and like the photo (you can also do the same with the embed below). Rules: must be 18+, a resident of the US, sweepstakes begins today, April 22nd at 10:30AM ET, ends tomorrow, April 23rd at 10:29AM ET; full rules.

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Posted by The Verge on Wednesday, April 22, 2015

If you haven't liked us on Facebook yet, you probably should: we host all of our giveaways there, and we upload video exclusively for the platform...

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The great unbundling: cable TV as we know it is dying

Over the last two weeks, Verizon and Disney have been having a public spat about the future of cable television. Verizon wants to offer its customers a selection of slim cable bundles with its FIOS service. Disney says it violates their contract, specifically splitting off ESPN and ESPN 2 into a separate sports package. Verizon knows that, regardless of what the actual contract says, publicizing this offering is an easy win, so long as Disney takes the blame for not letting it happen.

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J.J. Abrams and Chewbacca recreate Lady and the Tramp with a Twizzler

I'm not sure if "the new director of Star Wars and the galaxy's most famous Wookiee making out" was ever the plot of someone's fan fiction prose, but now we kind of know what that would look like.

Let's back up first. Remember the ice bucket challenge? Back then, we used the pain of cold, often solidified water to raise awareness for ALS. What if instead we did something far less jarring and way more awkward? That's the crux of the Twizzler challenge, which was started in support of Autism Awareness Month (which, yes, is this month). Just like the famous spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp, two people start on opposite ends of a Twizzler and then eat until they meet in the middle. Then, like the ice bucket challenge, you challenge...

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Inside the surprisingly dark world of Rube Goldberg machines

On the eve of the 2015 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest college nationals, six teams gather in Columbus, Ohio’s Center of Science and Industry children’s museum to set up their machines around the walls of the hangar-like space and eye up the competition. The teams have made the trip here by car, their carefully assembled machines, months in the making, broken down and borne by trucks and U-Haul carriers. Team members lean over each other to place a golf ball here and balance a domino there, assembling their delicate contraptions for the next day’s judging.

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The 9 most interesting cars (and goggles) from Shanghai’s auto show

On the heels of the New York auto show just a few short weeks ago, the press days of Auto Shanghai 2015 are now behind us — and the announcements weren't limited to Chinese automakers: the global titans of the auto industry were out in force with cars and technologies that will have a big impact in the months and years to come.

And, yes, there was some weird stuff, too. Volvo ditched the front passenger seat for its new concept, and Chevy made something akin a giant blender blade.

Let's take a look at some of the major reveals of the show — and when you're done, be sure to read up on our hands-on experience with Mini's crazy Augmented Vision goggles.

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The UK political scene is in the grip of real (and fake) teenage fandoms

Politics in the UK is usually a depressing mix of gaffes, blunders, sexist headlines, and barely-disguised racism, but it's been lifted from the gutter this week with help from an unexpected corner: teenage fangirls. Or, at least, teenagers who are kind-of-pretending, kind-of-not-pretending to be over-the-top supporters of opposition leader Ed Miliband, showering him with the sort of praise and adulation usually reserved for members of One Direction.

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Microsoft Band gets more app integrations, smarter coaching

Microsoft is today announcing an update to its Band wearable that adds integration with bike-tracking apps Strava and MapMyRide, as well as further insights based on the information captured by the Band's various sensors. The Strava and MapMyRide integration follows the addition of a Bike Tile that came in February and lets users share their tracked rides to those networks.

The new insights are visible on the Microsoft Health Web Dashboard, a website that lets users review their activity captured by the band. The Health platform can now provide comparisons with other Band wearers based on height and weight, so users can easily see how they stack up. (Microsoft notes that this data is anonymized and is used in an opt-in program, so those...

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Aziz Ansari is making a Netflix sitcom with Parks & Rec producers

Aziz Ansari is teaming up with some of the producers of Parks & Recreation for a new sitcom at Netflix. Deadline reports that the currently untitled show, which stars Ansari, has been given a 10-episode run. Eric Wareheim (the latter half of Tim & Eric), H. Jon Benjamin (who voices Archer), Lena Waithe (a Dear White People producer), Noël Wells (formerly of Saturday Night Live), and Kelvin Yu (who writes for Bob's Burgers) have also been cast. There's no formal description for the show just yet, but Deadline describes it as a semi-autobiographical comedy that "deals with dating and relationships," which sounds like an elaborate way of describing almost every sitcom.

Ansari has worked with Netflix in the past, with two standup specials...

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Has Lomography made the best instant camera yet?

Look, I know today’s digital cameras are amazing. I know you can get 50-megapixel sensors, hybrid viewfinders, and see-in-the-dark video capabilities, and I know it’s easier than ever to share the stunning results. But there’s one thing these cameras just don’t do: produce a physical product right there on the spot.

For that, you need instant film. And while that used to mean digging your parents’ Polaroid out of the loft, these days you can go for something newer. If you do, that’ll probably mean going for something that shoots Fujifilm’s Instax format. Most of the cameras that use Instax are cheap, toy-like devices, but Fujifilm itself raised the bar last year with the gorgeous Mini 90, an instant camera that took cues from the...

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Avengers: Age of Ultron review

The Avengers was the film that made me fall in love with Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. It was the scene when Agent Coulson died, and our comic book heroes turned on each other — backbiting, blaming, lashing out as their center collapsed. After five and half movies’ worth of comic book acrobatics and space villains, we were suddenly watching just a handful of scared people in a room, acting all too human. And I cared. Given that we were dealing with larger than life characters like Thor and Captain America, it was nothing short of a miracle. But that one scene elevated an entire franchise, and $1.5 billion later, Joss Whedon had cemented the Marvel empire as a blockbuster factory. More importantly, the film's colossal success...

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First Click: Tesla's a battery company, not a car company

If you didn’t know better, what product do you think a company named after Nikola Tesla would make? The inventor made famous by his pioneering work in the distribution of electrical energy, and infamous for his attempts to wirelessly transmit power across great distances.

You probably wouldn't say cars.

Bonus points if you said “death beams." As noted in Tesla's obituary, the man claimed on his 84th birthday to have invented a directed-energy weapon measuring just one-hundred-millionth of a square centimeter. Yet even at that size Tesla said it was so powerful that it could destroy 10,000 airplanes at a distance of 250 miles and instantly wipe out an army of one million soldiers.

Jeremy Welch, cofounder and CEO at Chrg, says Telsa...

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The most accurate clock ever built only loses one second every 15 billion years

Scientists have a set a new record in accurate timekeeping, creating an atomic clock that won't lose or gain a second in 15 billion years — a time span greater than the estimated age of the Universe. The clock measures the oscillation of strontium atoms to create its "tick," and could one day become the standard for the world's official time — Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Currently, UTC is set using atomic clocks that measure the vibrational frequency of the element caesium, although these are only accurate in the region of one second in hundreds of millions of years.

The strontium clock, developed by physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder, measures the...

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New Zeiss Sony lenses have built-in OLED displays

There's a new line of Zeiss lenses on the way for Sony Alpha mirrorless cameras, and they come with a weird twist. The full-frame autofocus Batis lenses have built-in OLED screens that can display information like depth of field or the distance of the focal plane from the camera. Zeiss calls the displays an "absolute highlight — an innovation that is currently unparalleled in camera lenses."

Useful? Well, maybe. Cool? Probably. There are two Batis models announced so far: a 25mm f/2 wide-angle lens and an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens. They'll both be available from July, and will work best on Sony Alpha cameras like the A7 II, A7R, and A7S. Pricing hasn't yet been released, but expect it to be on the high end.

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If you're horrible on the internet, Clear app could save your job

Picture the scene — you wake up fuzzy-headed after a few drinks, grab your phone, and discover you've said something horrendous and offensive on the internet. Do you own up to it, apologize, try to grow as a person? Or do you download an app that will search through your entire archive of social media posts and comments to remove anything that could one day land you in trouble?

If you choose the latter — or if you're new Daily Show host Trevor Noah — you might be interested in new iOS app Clear. The app connects to your social media accounts, using an algorithm to search for both directly offensive content like swear words, and references to racial groups or sexual orientation. Once the search is complete, users get a breakdown of how...

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Drone bearing radiation symbol lands on Japanese Prime Minister's office

A dron marked with a radiation symbol has landed on the roof of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's office, on the same day a court approved the restart of a nuclear power station that has lain dormant since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The small drone, reportedly some 50 centimeters long, was discovered on the roof on Wednesday morning at around 10:20 AM local time. Abe himself is currently out of the country.

According to The Guardian, the drone was carrying a small camera, a water bottle, and a flare. The Asahi Shimbun says the vehicle was also fitted with a small canister. Aerial footage from the scene appeared to show the device, first covered by a small piece of cardboard, before being obscured by a large blue tent erected by...

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Daredevil is coming back to Netflix for a second season

Matt Murdock — better known as crime-fighter Daredevil — is finding his way back to the small screen. Netflix has announced that the Marvel hero will return in a second season of Daredevil, due to hit the streaming service at an unspecified point in 2016. No plot details have been announced yet, but it looks likely that Murdock will widen his net, dealing with other villains from the comic company's vast stable.

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Google could launch its wireless service tomorrow

Google is close to launching its own wireless service and may officially reveal it on Wednesday, according to The Wall Street Journal. As previously leaked, the service is said to run on Sprint and T-Mobile's networks, and only work on the Nexus 6 (above) at first; the phone is expected to be able to switch between the two networks depending on which signal is stronger. The WSJ also says that customers will be able to pay only for the data they use, rather than buying a set amount each month and losing the unused portion.

Like Google Fiber, Mountain View's foray into high-speed broadband, the wireless service won't be a mainstream offering — at least at first.  "We don't intend to be a carrier at scale," Google senior VP Sundar Pichai s...

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