Maine teens wary of social media after homicide

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The death of a 15-year-old Maine girl allegedly killed in a bizarre kidnapping plot involving a fake Facebookprofile has prompted some of her classmates to scale back their social media use — or ditch it altogether.

Nichole Cable was allegedly killed by an acquaintance who used a fake profile to lure her from her home, then kidnap her in hopes of becoming a hero when he miraculously "found" her, according tostate police.

Video of the Day: Yep, that's a pigeon using a touchscreen

Pigeons are the lowest common denominator of the bird population. They just sort of cluster together and make a lot of noise (and crap on you from unprecedented heights). And because they've grown accustomed to living in urban areas, they display none of the healthy fear of humans that other wild animals do. How annoying.

Atari founder plays Asteroids using his body as the spaceship

Although old school arcade games like Pong, Defender, and Galaga feature outdated graphics and barebones plot lines, the classic games still capture the imagination, as exampled by theconstant reinvention of the titles for today's market. Now a new iteration of one of the biggest old school gaming hits, Asteroids, introduces a fully interactive component that could breathe new life into an almost forgotten game title.

Awww ... this Back to the Future baby stroller will melt your heart

Because babies can screw up history, too. 

Are you a time-travel fan with scads of free time, and in possession of a baby? Well then, assuming you didn't steal that baby in an effort to destroy/save/fight the future, we hope you'll draw inspiration from this family.

It's Time For Gaming's Contractors To Strike?

With millions of people in this country out of work, this guy has the nerve to be mad about playing video games for a living? Ummm, okay.

My name is Nathan (RC) Peters. In March 2011, I was hired on as a contract Quality Assurance tester to work at Certain Affinity studios in Austin, Texas. I worked on the multiplayer portion of Halo 4. Here is an inside look at the reality of being a contract worker within a video game company, and why you should never accept a job as a contractor.

Tesla founder offers more details on Hyperloop transport system

As the founder of both SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk has garnered a reputation as being the closest thing we have to a real-life Tony Stark, aka Iron Man. And while the playboy charisma and crime-fighting aspects aren't readily apparent, it does appear that Musk is dedicated to using technology to push us further ahead faster than most in terms of things we can use right now. His latest idea is the Hyperloop, a concept for a next-gen high-speed transportation system that he generally offers little detail on, that is, until yesterday.

Huge asteroid buzzing Earth has its own moon

New NASA radar images reveal a previously unobserved smaller satellite asteroid orbiting monstrous space rock "QE2."

The huge asteroid -- 1.7 miles long, to be exact -- that is zipping by Earth this week isn't alone.

No, it isn't carrying an alien virus or a golden DVD containing the second season of "Firefly," but it does have a traveling companion. NASA radar images just released show a previously undiscovered moon orbiting the asteroid known as "QE2," technically making it a binary asteroid system.

The smaller asteroid circling its larger celestial road trip buddy is estimated to be about 2,000 feet wide.

Printed electronics

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Scientists at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) are working on a new technology that makes it possible to quickly and efficiently print functional electronics, such as sensors, light-emitters, transistors, and even semiconductors. Though the technology is in its earliest days, and it's not clear how it will be employed, the promise is there for a wide range of possible uses, in industry and beyond. LINK

Cosplay We Love: Lady Thor makes us forget all about Chris Hemsworth

Acura lowers price on redesigned 2014 MDX crossover

Visit an Acura dealer to check out the automaker's redesigned 2014 MDX when it hits the market in July and you might be surprised that the price of entry has been lowered to $42,290 compared to the outgoing model's $43,280 list price.

That represents a $990 decrease from the outgoing model once the mandatory $895 destination charge is included.

Jaguar F-Type halfway to sold out

The order books for the Jaguar F-Type have only been open for a few weeks, but the British automaker says the all-new sports car is already a rousing success.

Bumblebee Gets Classic Look For Transformers 4

Transformers 4 is still a year away from hitting theaters, but that hasn’t stopped producer Michael Bay from giving us a sneak peek at the cars that have already been penciled in to make appearances in the movie.

Yesterday, it was a redesigned Optimus truck, a Bugatti Veyron, and a Chevrolet Corvette Stingray.

BMW Designs M8 Gaming PC for ASRock

It looks like BMW DesignWorks is designing computer cases again. This time around the design company has put its considerable talents to work for ASRock. What do you think of the design? Yay or nay?

  

Toilet Water Coffee at Starbucks in Hong Kong Now Down the Drain

A Starbucks in Honk Kong is making changes after reports surfaced that the pricey cups of coffee in the establishment were being made from what some called "toilet water" from a nearby public restroom.

The culprit is the Starbucks outlet on the first floor of the Bank of China Tower, according to HK magazine. For the past two years, the Starbucks employees slipped into the building's car park restroom to nab the water. It was first reported by the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily, complete with video evidence.

The newspaper said an employee from Starbucks would push a cart with a big bucket to collect water. A reporter observed that a plastic hose was used to connect water from a sink next to an urinal. After filling the bucket, the employee would wheel the cart back to the coffee shop.

Google Ordered To Comply With FBI's Secret NSL Demands

Who cares about the constitutionality of warrantless National Security Letter requests...full speed ahead! 

NSLs are controversial because they allow FBI officials to send secret requests to Web and telecommunications companies requesting "name, address, length of service," and other account information about users as long as it's relevant to a national security investigation. No court approval is required, and disclosing the existence of the FBI's secret requests is not permitted.

FBI Must Return Kim Dotcom’s Seized Property

I'm not sure how this can be considered a win, the FBI has been combing through that data for months. I mean, who cares if they have to give it back now? They already went through all of it. By the way, who decides what is or is not "directly related to the ongoing prosecution?"

The New Zealand High Court has ordered the police to inspect all digital information illegally seized last year from Kim Dotcom’s mansion, and return everything not directly related to the ongoing prosecution. The judge further ruled that the FBI must ship back cloned drives that were sent to them, and destroy all copies the U.S. Government has archived.

Instagram: We're 'Not A Photography Company'

Hey, did you guys know that Instagram is not a photography company?  Here's the founders explaining why they are not a photography company:

Instagram is not a photography company. In fact, Systrom said, Instagram is a communications company. "It's about communicating a moment (to someone). It just happens to be an image...It's about more than that. It's about communicating a message."

List of Keywords Used By DHS to Monitor Social Networking Sites

Unless you want a visit from the feds, I would avoid talking about the pork clouds in Mexico on Facebook. Thanks to Jon S. for the link.

The DHS has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor various social networking sites. The list provides a glimpse into what DHS describes as "signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S."

Museum Gets Video Game Designer In Residence

AMD's Xbox One Deal Valued At More Than $3B

Who will be the big winner in the upcoming PS4 vs. XBO console wars? AMD, the company powering all the next-gen consoles. 

Posting on his LinkedIn profile, the former AMD vice president of Strategic Development stated that AMD had signed a multi-year deal with Microsoft valued at over $3 billion. The posting also revealed that AMD provided a "custom silicon solution" to Microsoft for the Xbox One.

What made the perfect NASA astronaut in 1959

On April 9, 1959, the world met America’s first astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. The so-called "Mercury Seven." These men were all cut from the same mold, in excellent physical shape and of incredibly sound mind. They were all vying to be the first man in space, but none of them could predict exactly what NASA was looking for.

The Right Stuff

Over 9,000 geeks joined NASA for world's largest hackathon

Last weekend, NASA gathered together more than 9,000 people from 44 countries for what was dubbed the "largest hackathon" ever. Some 83 hours later, NASA called time and checked out the results.

The projects that materialized turned out to be as brilliant and varied as their creators. Over 750 projects ended up being submitted in 58 different categories. Here are a few of the highlights:

Popeye on Mars: A reusable spinach greenhouse, meant to be deployed on Mars. For 45 days at a time, this little beauty can cultivate not only healthy greens, but the oxygen the plants create as well.

Ultra fast 'Li-Fi' is only a year away, says French start-up

Li-Fi, short for Light Fidelity, is a wireless data transfer technology first made popular by Harald Haas in his 2011 TED Talk. Now a Parisian company by the name of Oledcomm has announced that they'll have Li-Fi devices on the market sometime next year.

Li-Fi technology works by rapidly turning on and off a light source, creating binary code. The flashing of the light actually happens much faster than the human eye can detect, allowing for a Li-Fi data connection to resemble a simple LED bulb.

Scientists already trying to stop Mars astronauts from killing each other

We might be more than a decade from a Mars mission, but NASA's already weighing psychological risks.

The space agency hopes to send a group of astronauts to visit the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s, and while the most high-profile part of the preparation for that mission is making sure we have the right spacecraft to safely carry astronauts to and from Mars, scientists are also worrying about the mental health of the space explorers who would attempt such a mission.

Now you can learn to say 'May the Force Be With You' in Dothraki

Well, this is a linguistic match made in geek heaven.

You might remember David J. Peterson from that time he told us all thatwe say "Khaleesi" wrong. He's the guy who created nearly all of the Dothraki language (as well as the Valyrian languages) for HBO's Game of Thrones, and though he's a stickler for pronunciation, he's certainly not above having a little fun with the words he dreamed up. The fun-loving Thrones fans over at Vulture got in touch with Peterson recently and asked him to come up with Dothraki translations for eight catch phrases from throughout pop culture. Not surprisingly, two of them were among the most famous sayings in sci-fi history.

How should Iron Man 3 have ended? Probably a little something like this

Iron Man 3 was pretty good, but this would have been better.

As geeks, we have a solemn duty to mock the things we love. And this video from the folks at HiSHE does just that.

Guy makes lightsaber at home with 3000mW blue laser

YouTube user styropyro also goes by the name “The DIY Laser Guy” and you'll see why soon enough. Yeah, that's a 3000mW laser in the video below — it kinda hurts our eyes just watching this demonstration from the safety of our computers. In many ways, it reminds us of the Spyder III"lighstaber" laser.

Tesla expanding Supercharger network for coast-to-coast drives

PALOS VERDES, Calif. -- It appears that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk got bored with the Internet. After PayPal, Musk said creating another Internet company would have been like falling off a log. Instead he went for some more risky and ambitious projects -- sustainable energy and space exploration to make life interplanetary.

The sustainable energy project turned into Tesla Motors, and that seems to be going well after years of struggles and naysayers. "If I had a dollar for every time someone brought up DeLorean or Tucker I wouldn't need to IPO," Musk said in conversation with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the D: All Things Digital conference here.

Why'd the FBI Kill Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Accomplice-to-Be if He Was Unarmed?

Law enforcement officials are walking their claims of self-defense all the way back a week after the shooting of Ibragim Todashev — the 27-year-old man who was about to officially confess to a triple murder in Massachusetts and finger Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev while he was at it — in his Orlando home by an FBI agent. The Washington Post and Orlando's NBC affiliate   both now report that Todashev was unarmed and alone in a room with the single FBI agent when he was killed early on the morning of May 22, two evolving details that continue to raise questions about why investigators used lethal force against a man who may not have posed a lethal threat but who definitely had key information on Tsarnaev.

The Post's Sari Horwitz and Peter Finn report that Todashev "lunged at the agent and overturned a table," at which point, according to Orlando's WESH, "the FBI agent believed he could have possibly been going for his gun or the sword in the room, and that's when the agent opened fire." So, yes, there may have been a giant sword somewhere in Todashev's apartment near Universal Studios, and there could yet be missing pieces in the bizarre public puzzle of this terrorism subplot — the FBI said in a second statement about the case Wednesday that an internal review of the incident was still underway, and the Boston bombing investigation has not been short on misinformation coming from anonymous law enforcement officials. But some initial reports after the Jack Bauer-style saga surfaced last Wednesday insisted that Todashev, after orally confessing to a grisly 2011 killing in Waltham, Massachusetts, attacked the agent with a knife. Within a day, but under the radar, some of the anonymous officials began to change their story, backtracking about the Todashev confession standoff and telling outlets like the AP that "it was no longer clear what had happened." The FBI has only said in a statement that "a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual."

Apple screen could react to the force of your touch

A newly published patent application describes a way to control your device via the pressure applied to its touch screen.

Your future iPhone or iPad could offer an interactive touch screen that reacts to the pressure exerted by your touch.

3D Printing Mechanical Hands

I can't believe this guy has raised less than forty percent of the ten thousand he needs for this project. Hopefully, with a little help, he'll hit his goal in the next thirteen days.

Man builds model human colon, studies what comes out

Science stinks, literally. At least it does when you build a model human colon to follow the life cycle of E. coli and other bacteria.

After noting that scientists tend to study bacteria in isolated environments with carefully crafted growing conditions, engineer Ian Marcus, who recently earned his PhD from UC Riverside, decided to take matters into his own hands.

Move over tequila, here comes Chinese firewater

CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - Chinese baijiu, a flammable, pungent white liquor averaging a 110-proof wallop, is the world's most consumed form of liquor thanks to its popularity in China, but for the first time distillers are looking to develop export markets.

According to data from International Wine & Spirit Research, Chinese people drank over 11 billion liters of baijiu in 2012; the spirit, distilled from sorghum, wheat or rice, accounted for more than one-third of all spirits consumed in the world.

Why China Wants to Be More Like America

China’s Communist leaders like to point out that American-style democracy is chaotic, and that western capitalism causes manic booms and busts. Yet they’re borrowing heavily from the American playbook as they remake China’s huge, state-dominated economy.

China recently announced a series of reformsmeant to speed the transition from a fast-growing yet still-spottily developing nation to a wealthier and more mature economic powerhouse. Among other things, new policies are meant to scale back Beijing’s role in the economy, open state-run industries such as finance and energy to more private businesses, and provide more ways for foreign investors to participate in the Chinese economy. Eventually, market forces would set interest and exchange rates, which are now controlled by the government.

[H] Reader Workstation of the Day

Warning! Looking through our 2013 Post Your Workstation thread will make you feel like an inadequate slob if your workstation doesn't look as good as this one belonging to JacobC1983:

 

Apple May Have To Go Back to Samsung!

I cannot imagine how humiliating this has to be for Apple. 

Despite an ongoing lawsuit with Samsung that has led to ever increasing animosity between the two companies, Apple is said to be considering new contracts with Samsung to provide displays for its product lineup. According to Korean site ETNews.com (via AppleInsider), Apple is planning to resume purchasing LCDs from Samsung Display as the company is better equipped to keep up with high demand.

Twitter Too Complicated For Newcomers, Says CEO

Did Twitter's CEO just say Twitter is too complicated for newcomers? Seriously? The bar seems to be set pretty damn low if you ask me.

The information network, because it constrains tweets to 140 characters or less, has inspired people to create a new type of language for conversations and memes, Costolo said. But this "remarkable language is superhard to understand" if you're new to the platform, he added, citing how members often place a "." in front of the "@" when tweeting replies that they want all their followers to see. Kind of confusing, right?

Test Bench Beauty

After spending the last couple of weeks married to the test bench for 20 hours a day, I looked down and thought, "Damn that is pretty." Maybe I just need some sleep.

Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks Google Glass won't go mainstream

In recent months, a number of analysts and tech pundits have loudly criticized Apple, asking why the company hasn't pulled another category-defining product out of its hat in the face of stiffer competition from the likes of Samsung and others. Last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook sat for a wide ranging interview to answer the critics who think that the post-Steve Jobs Apple may have lost its mojo.

Right off the bat, AllThingsD interviewers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher pulled no punches, asking Cook nearly every sensitive question you can think of, from the company's falling stock price, to questions regarding the popularity of iOS versus Android, to the lack of new products emerging from the company's Cupertino labs. As expected, Cook refused to reveal anything specific about the company's upcoming products, which, according to comments made during the company's last earnings call, will appear in the fall and in 2014.

YouTube update lets you downshift any video into epic slow motion

Slow motion video footage makes almost everything better, which is why, thanks to affordable high-end video gear, this kind of footage has become even more popular in recent years. In fact, the dynamic is so popular, one of the guys behind the popular tech podcast DiggNation just launched a new video show called Distort entirely devoted to slow motion footage.

Weird Chinese ad shows Iron Man knockoff fighting ... gonorrhea?

Has the Armored Avenger finally met his match?

So far we've seen Iron Man do battle on the big screen with the power-hungry Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger, the revenge-bent Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, the diabolical Mandarin and, of course, a horde of extra-dimensional aliens led by Loki. But today he's battling his most vile nemesis yet: an STD.

OK ... so it's not really Iron Man, but it is a pretty obvious Iron Man ripoff. The armored hero in the video above -- who really only differs from Iron Man when it comes to the shape of his helmet and his chest logo -- suits up so he can zip into a Chinese city and save a family of five from a group of nasty-looking villains. Iron-ish Man quickly zaps the villains into oblivion and high-fives the little boy.

Terrifying Falling Skies ad will make you think twice about wearing contacts

What is ClearGaze, and how is it connected to Falling Skies? Intially, the latest viral video promoting season three isn't about the show at all. But we soon learn that looks can be deceiving. What starts off as a typical contact lens commercial turns into a terrifying sight.

Google X labs once mulled levitation and teleportation research

Google's top-secret lair, dubbed the "Google X" labs is a crazy and amazing place where ideas of the future are born, and sometimes actually see the light of day in public. Two of the lab's most coveted projects — self-driving cars and Google Glass — have already begun to deliver to a geek's drool-worthiest sci-fi dreams. But did you know that Google X once considered working on levitation and teleportation, before the ideas were ultimately scrapped? Insane, we know.

Introducing ANA: 3D printing meets cryptography and data storage

Four years ago, a man by the name of Janos Stone got an idea in his head. He'd been tinkering around with the then-budding field of 3D printing, and wanted to find a way to make the experience more personal. He's been hard at work over at Northeastern University ever since, and we recently sat down with Mr. Stone to check on his progress.

Breakthrough in HIV Research Enabled by NVIDIA GPU Accelerators

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have achieved a major breakthroughin the battle to fight the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) using NVIDIA® Tesla® GPU accelerators, NVIDIA today announced. Featured on the cover of the latest issue of Nature, the world’s most-cited interdisciplinary science journal, a new paper details how UIUC researchers collaborating with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have, for the first time, determined the precise chemical structure of the HIV "capsid," a protein shell that protects the virus’s genetic material and is a key to its virulence. Understanding this structure may hold the key to the development of new and more effective antiretroviral drugs to combat a virus that has killed an estimated 25 million people and infected 34 million more.

UIUC researchers uncovered detail about the capsid structure by running the first all-atom simulation of HIV on the Blue Waters Supercomputer. Powered by 3,000 NVIDIA Tesla K20X GPU accelerators – the highest performance, most efficient accelerators ever built – the Cray XK7 supercomputer gave researchers the computational performance to run the largest simulation ever published, involving 64 million atoms.

Introducing Gmail's New Inbox

Google just announced it will be rolling out brand new Gmail features starting today. The company says the new features aren't mandatory, you'll be able to go back to the classic look with the click of a mouse.

New virus called ‘threat to the entire world’

The first death in France from a new SARS-like coronavirus brings the worldwide total for the disease to 27 deaths and 49 infections, CNN reports.

The 65-year-old Frenchman was diagnosed after returning from a stay in Dubai.

According to CNN, the World Health Organization has said the disease was first seen in Saudi Arabia last year. The virus is "a threat to the entire world," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's general director, told the network.

The Centers for Disease Control explains that coronaviruses can affect people or animals and, in worst-case scenarios, cause SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). And it notes there's currently no vaccine to protect against human coronavirus infection.

RC car transforms into a quadcopter

If Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were made now, it would probably look a bit more like something Batman or James Bond would drive, but we'd like to think it would look a little more like this.

Called simply "B," the toy, which is currently being funded on Kickstarter, is the creation of U.K. computational-engineering PhD student Witold Mielniczek. Unlike other remote-controlled toys out there, it's also a multitalented piece of gadgetry that's able to traverse both ground and sky.

Leica cam that shot Times Square kiss sells for $150k

The 1937 camera, a nostalgic reminder of the long-ago days before everyone toted a smartphone, was one of many photographic gems offered at a Vienna auction.

Any camera from the 1930s would probably get photophiles excited. But make it the cam that snapped the famed shot of the couple kissing in Times Square on V-J Day and you've got an OMG find.

Build your very own customized robot with Linkbot

Have you always wanted to build or program your own robot, but didn't know where to start? Well, you’re in luck, because if the Linkbot Kickstarter project is successful, you'll soon have access to a functional robot that works out of the box that you can build upon and expand as you gain more knowledge about how it works.

1st creepy clip from new sci-fi horror flick Last Days on Mars

The first clip from the new, indie sci-fi flick Last Days on Mars has finally been released, and space looks to be a very creepy place.

Directed by Ruari Robinson, who almost helmed that aborted Akira flick, the British sci-fi horror project screened at the recent Cannes Film Festival to a decent amount of buzz. The screenplay is based on Sydney J. Bounds’ short story The Animators, and tells a freaky zombie tale on the final days of a six-month mission to Mars.

The first clip does a good job of setting the mood, and even has a vague homage to the classicAlien chestburster scene with a dash of Prometheus thrown in. Hey, zombies are all the rage these days ... and now they’re in space!

1st look at Transformers 4's newest undercover Autobots

Filming has finally begun on Michael Bay's Transformers 4. The cast and crew have set up shop in Monument Valley in the Navajo Nation near the border of Arizona and Utah. That explains the scenic backdrop of the first production photos featuring two new Autobots. 

Calif teen misses trip, 5 friends die in crash

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Tamer Mosallam was supposed to get picked up on Memorial Day for a trip to the beach with friends, but his father had other ideas and the carload of teens left him behind.

It would be the last time the 17-year-old would see his friends alive. The five teens — two boys and three girls — died late Monday afternoon in a fiery wreck that left the car they were riding in split in two and engulfed in flames. Among the victims were two of Mosallam's closest friends and a pair of sisters who had performed in a high school dance extravaganza over the holiday weekend.

"I was supposed to be with them in the car, that's why there were three girls," Mosallam said, explaining that he was to have been the third boy for a three-way double date. "They came to my house but my dad wouldn't let me go out because I was studying for a test."

Scientists transform cement into liquid metal

It's not the same as turning lead into gold, but scientists at the Illinois-based Argonne National Laboratory and the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute/SPring-8 have developed a method for turning cement into a liquid metal semiconductor.

Wearable swim monitor helps guard against drowning

Unbeknowst to many, drowning ranks fifth among the leading causes of unintentional injury death in the U.S. And, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children havethe highest drowning rates. An concerned emergency physician from North Carolina has developed a system designed to address this issue.

U.S. accuses cyber exchange of laundering $6 billion

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors have indicted the operators of digital currency exchange Liberty Reserve, accusing the Costa Rica-based company of helping criminals around the world launder more than $6 billion in illicit funds linked to everything from child pornography to software for hacking into banks.

The indictment unsealed on Tuesday said Liberty Reserve had more than a million users worldwide, including at least 200,000 in the United States, and virtually all of its business was related to suspected criminal activity.

Feds Shut Down 'Financial Hub Of The Cyber-Crime World'

Oh damn, there are going to be a lot of pissed off criminals out there today.  Thanks to AceGoober for the linkage.

Liberty Reserve was the financial glue that held together a massive worldwide network of cybercriminals, but the network that enabled $6 billion to change hands has been ripped apart, U.S. prosecutors said Tuesday, leaving thousands of criminals wondering where the money is.