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This January 25, 2015 photo appears to show a Chinese made CH-3 drone, owned by Nigeria, which has crash landed upside down. The two AR-1 ATGMs attached to its wing pylons suggest that Nigeria is turning to drone strikes as the bloody war against Boko Haram continues.

As the brutal Boko Haram insurgency has entered its 7th year in Nigeria, the relationship between the government and China has deepened. In many ways it is a match of needs.

Riyadh (AFP) - Saudi Arabia's new King Salman on Thursday further cemented his hold on power, with a sweeping shakeup that saw two sons of the late King Abdullah fired, and the heads of intelligence and other key agencies replaced alongside a cabinet reshuffle.

The announcement came a week after Salman acceded to the throne following the death of Abdullah, aged about 90."Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud issued a royal order today, relieving Prince Khalid bin Bandar bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Chief of General Intelligence, of his post," the official Saudi Press Agency said.

Rep. Molly White asks Muslim visitors to pledge allegiance to America

The Texas and Israeli flags are waved by protesters who gathered to disrupt and heckle a group gathered for a Texas Muslim Capitol Day rally, Thursday...

A newly elected Texas state lawmaker is under fire for a divisive Facebook post asking Muslim visitors attending an event at the state capitol in Austin to pledge allegiance to the United States.

The event, Texas Muslim Capitol Day, was organized by the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Bill Gates Is Worried About the Rise of the Machines

He may be one of the world’s pivotal computing pioneers, mentioned in the same exuberantly geeky breath as Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Tim Berners-Lee. His technological exploits may have earned him over $80 billion, making him the world’s richest man. Yet even Bill Gates is somewhat concerned about the potentially destructive power of technology.

In a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Wednesday afternoon, Microsoft’s former CEO fielded an array of questions ranging from the banal (“Do you have a pet?”) to the cringeworthy (“Star Trek or Star Wars?”) to the painfully esoteric.

A new era of peace and prosperity is upon us! Remember how great things were after they changed the broadband definition last time? There was dancing in the streets, streaming content everywhere and unlimited access to porn. Wait....

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to change the definition of broadband internet in the United States. This change, passed by FCC commissioners by a 3-2 vote, raises the minimum download speeds for broadband from 4 Mbps to 25 Mbps and minimum upload speeds from 1 Mbps to 3 Mbps. If the speeds they provide don’t reach this standard then internet service providers cannot call those connections "broadband."

Valve announced today that it has paid out over fifty seven million dollars to the people who create content for its games (hats

).

When we launched the Workshop late in 2011, we expected that it would grow, but not that it would grow this much, this quickly. So far, the total payments made to individuals for the creation of in-game items sold in Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have passed $57 million. This money was earned by over 1,500 contributors spread out across 75 countries.

Worldwide shipments of over one billion? Wow! That is a lot of Android phones.

For the first time ever, worldwide shipments of smartphones packing Android exceeded 1 billion units in 2014, a significant gain from the 780.8 million units that shipped around the world in 2013, researcher Strategy Analytics announced Thursday. Android dwarfed its second-place competitor, Apple's iOS, which mustered 192.7 million worldwide shipments in 2014.

We've been fighting off scumbag malware makers at every turn for years and now we have to worry about them targeting our games?

Gaming accounts are one of the hottest targets for black hats as we roll into 2015. Any form of financial investment in gaming – from paid memberships to rare in-game items – make consumers a prime target for hackers and scammers. Even if they’re locked down tight, criminals can still make use of personal information by going after platform holders and developers and stealing from the source.

Wait, Canada actually has a spy agency?

Canada's electronic spy agency sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world, as part of a sweeping bid to find extremist plots and suspects, CBC News has learned.

How does Netflix know what you are watching? This blog post explains everything and it even has a diagram to help you understand how it works all (sorta).

Our system needs to know each member’s entire viewing history for as long as they are subscribed. This data feeds the recommendation algorithms so that a member can find a title for whatever mood they’re in. It also feeds the "recent titles you’ve watched" row in the UI. What gets watched provides key metrics for the business to measure member engagement and make informed product and content decisions.

If you are a Linux user there is a good chance there is a GHOST in your machine. If you haven't done so already, make sure you patch your box as soon as possible.

"GHOST poses a remote code execution risk that makes it incredibly easy for an attacker to exploit a machine. For example, an attacker could send a simple email on a Linux-based system and automatically get complete access to that machine," said Wolfgang Kandek, Qualys's CTO in a statement. "Given the sheer number of systems based on glibc, we believe this is a high severity vulnerability and should be addressed immediately. The best course of action to mitigate the risk is to apply a patch from your Linux vendor."

Good news! Google Fiber is coming to four more cities across the US. Bad news! Unless you live in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville or Raleigh-Durham you are still out of luck.

Now, Google Fiber is live in Kansas City, Provo and Austin, and we've started to see how gigabit Internet, with speeds up to 100 times faster than today’s basic broadband, can transform cities. It can give them new platforms for economic development and new ways of using technology to improve life for their citizens. And, around the country, it seems to be catching on.

We've been asking this question since the iPad first came out.

Five years after its debut, the iPad faces an existential dilemma. No one knows what it’s good for. When Apple unveiled its tablet, the value proposition was relatively straightforward. At that time, you had your iPhone 3GS with its tiny screen, and your MacBook with its two-hour battery life. Those products left a nice big swath of casual use cases in-between for a third device to take care of.

Check it out, this is like Google Fiber for your brain.

I'm not going to debate whether or not "video game addiction" is a real thing or not, I'm just saying that, in the grand scheme of things, there are worse addictions to have.

Experts estimate that more than 3 million Americans between eight and 18 could be suffering from video game dependency. And medical authorities are finally noticing. The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders recently christened the phenomenon as "internet gaming disorder."

Following the story we posted last week (here), it looks as though Valve has now banned two teams that were also caught cheating.

"We can confirm, by investigating the historical activity of relevant accounts, that a substantial number of high valued items won from that match by Duc "cud" Pham were transferred (via Derek "dboorn" Boorn) to iBUYPOWER players and NetCodeGuides founder, Casey Foster," Valve's post states.

Atlanta (CNN)Two bodies, one male and one female, were recovered Monday in the case of a Marietta, Georgia, couple, who went missing after contacting a car seller on Craigslist.

The bodies have not yet been identified, said Telfair County Sheriff Chris Steverson. He said the couple's car was also found submerged in a nearby lake.

"It's not the outcome we had hoped for but, obviously, it's the one we have to deal with," Steverson said. "We'll analyze the vehicle, the bodies and hopefully we can come to some conclusion as to how they met their fate."

Earlier Monday, the suspect sought in the case who had posted a Craigslist ad turned himself in, the Telfair County Sheriff's Office said on its Facebook page.

Authorities have said that Ronnie "Jay" Adrian Towns, 28, was wanted on charges of giving false statements and criminal attempt to commit theft by deception. His family was integral in securing his surrender, Steverson said.

'Deceptive' communication

Elrey "Bud" Runion, 69, and his wife, June, 66, placed an ad looking for a 1966 Mustang on the advertisements website and contacted a car seller on Craigslist.

They drove to the South Georgia town of McRae from Marietta, an Atlanta suburb, on Thursday to meet someone who responded to the ad, relatives said.

No one has heard from them since.

I'm not saying it's time to bust out the tinfoil hats but right now might be a good time to at least start wrapping your car in it.

The system collects data about vehicle movements, including time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities.

Sports Illustrated has laid off all six of its staff photographers and will rely more on freelancers.

Brad Smith, director of photography for Sports Illustrated, spoke about the move Friday in a report from the National Press Photographers Association.

Scientists at the University of Rochester have used lasers to transform metals into extremely water repellent, or super-hydrophobic, materials without the need for temporary coatings.

Super-hydrophobic materials are desirable for a number of applications such as rust prevention, anti-icing, or even in sanitation uses. However, as Rochester’s Chunlei Guo explains, most current hydrophobic materials rely on chemical coatings.

Honestly, with all the security shenanigans between Google and other tech giants this week, I half expected Microsoft or Apple to come out with the 60+ fixes issued today for Chrome 40. Now that would have been funny.

Google announced on Wednesday the release of Chrome 40 for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The latest update for the popular Web browser (40.0.2214.91) includes a total of 62 security fixes. According to the search giant, external researchers reported 26 vulnerabilities, 17 of which are high severity issues.

You have to watch this video of a Pro CS:GO player getting busted for cheating live online. Thanks to cageymaru for the link to the laugh.

This is strange, I thought people liked having the government share their personal information with any ol' company?

Bowing to an outcry over privacy, the Obama administration reversed itself Friday, scaling back the release of consumers' personal information from the government's health insurance website to private companies with a commercial interest in the data.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese health authorities on Wednesday described the gender imbalance among newborns as "the most serious and prolonged" in the world, a direct ramification of the country's strict one-child policy.

The statement will add to growing calls for the government to scrap all family planning restrictions in the world's most populous nation, which many scholars say faces a demographic crisis.

The officer in charge of the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been fired for a “loss of confidence” after he allegedly had an affair with a woman whose husband was recently found dead in the waters off the base.

Captain John Nettleton was relieved of command on Wednesday by Rear Adm. Mary M. Jackson, commander of Navy Region Southeast, “due to loss of confidence in Nettleton's ability to command,” according to a statement from the Navy.

The statement declined to give additional details because of an ongoing investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which is focused on the death of Christopher Tur, a civilian employee at the Navy Exchange on the base who had moved to Guantanamo with his family in June 2011.

Vladimir Putin looked less than thrilled when watching a slow-moving military robot riding a four-wheeler. Hey, not all cyborg bikers look like the Terminator.

This Russian robot looks like more Daft Punk than combat ready.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin -- nicknamed Superputin -- pilots jets, drives racecars, rides horses, tranquilizes polar bears, fishes shirtless in freezing Siberian rivers and is a martial arts master in Judo.

Warning alarms in AirAsia flight QZ8501 were "screaming" as the pilots desperately tried to stabilise the plane just before it plunged into the Java Sea last month, a crash investigator said Wednesday.

"The warning alarms, we can say, were screaming, while in the background they (the pilot and co-pilot) were busy trying to recover," the investigator said, adding the warnings were going off "for some time".The noise of several alarms -- including one that indicated the plane was stalling -- can be heard going off in recordings from the black box in the Airbus A320-200's cockpit, the investigator told AFP, requesting anonymity.

The investigator, from Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), added that the pilots' voices were drowned out by the sound of the alarms.

Thank you, Microsoft. Thank you for throwing a crazy augmented reality announcement into a standard operating system event. Thanks for thumbing your nose at Google (which just gave up on the first version of Google Glass), and showing us Microsoft HoloLens. It is surely the most unexpected announcement to come out of Microsoft in years — maybe ever.

(Photo: Microsoft)

Bill Gates sat down with Wired to discuss a variety of topics, including his fifteen year plan. On a related note, Bill Gates also drank poop water with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show:

"We want to give global citizens a way to lend their voice, urging governments, companies, and nonprofits to make these issues a priority," the letter explains. In particular, the Foundation will ask its Global Citizens to push for a meaningful reboot of the UN’s Millennium Goals, and to hold their governments accountable for meeting those targets. It’s a surprisingly populist approach for the Foundation, which has tended to turn to billionaires for the bulk of its support.

I'm not sure how accurate the statistics in this article are. I mean, those kinds of numbers would make Facebook the leading cause of divorce among adults (that cheat).

The law firm revealed that many of their cases revolved around the fact that people had used the site to track down and get back in touch with exes, or posted information that contradicted claims about their finances.

Share your Netflix password with a friend? That's a trip to the big house.

"Under the new proposal, sharing your HBO GO password with a friend would be a felony," Nate Cardozo, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, told an audience of researchers and IT pros Saturday (Jan. 17) at ShmooCon 2015, a security conference held annually in Washington, D.C.

I was about to ask how this can even be legal and then I realized this is an actual law that went into effect on January 1st in Illinois.

If your child has an account on a social networking website, e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, ask.fm, etc., please be aware that State law requires school authorities to notify you that your child may be asked to provide his or her password for these accounts to school officials in certain circumstances.

If this video of old people playing GTA V doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will.

Des Moines, Iowa (CNN)On a bright, clear morning in April 2013, two professional poker players from California were heading west on Interstate 80 in rural Iowa when they were stopped by two Iowa State Troopers.

Before that stop was over, the officers had seized $100,000, which the men said was money to play poker. The troopers also called ahead to California authorities, who raided the men's homes and ultimately indicted one of them, John Newmerzhycky, on a charge of illegal possession of drug paraphernalia.

If this sounds unusual and way out of the ordinary, it isn't. The seizure is just one of thousands of highway stops that state and local authorities call "interdictions:" Roadside stops aimed at catching drug dealers or even terrorists, but which can also result in cash seizures alone with no criminal charges attached.

According to a pair of not-so-subtle teases, Xiaomi will launch a new flagship smartphone on Jan. 15. One of those announcements implied this Chinese-made device could launch in two variations and be its thinnest smartphone yet.

Leaving little to the imagination, Xiaomi's two teasers read "As ___ as paper" and "___ is better than one." This suggests that Xiaomi's next phone, rumored to be called the Mi 5 or Mi 4s, could arrive in two ultra-slim flavors.

Sick and tired of grinding away in Destiny? This guy has it all figured out.

VIDEO

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(CNN)One military wife recalls staying up all night and deleting every Facebook picture of her children, every post that mentioned them or where they went to school. She Googled herself, trying to figure out how easy it would be to find where the family lived. In the morning, she went to her car and scraped the military decal off the front window.

As the spouse of a Special Forces soldier, she's always tried to be conscious of how much she advertises that she and her three young children are a military family.

"It's hard because I am so proud of what my husband does, but lately so many spouses that I know are actually scared that they could be targets of ISIS or someone who sympathizes with ISIS," she said, asking that CNN keep her name out of the story for that reason.

This week brought the latest in a string of attacks that members of military families say has spooked them into quietly changing the way they operate online and in real life.

Now that ATLAS doesn't have to be plugged in anymore we are all screwed. Damn you DARPA!!!

DARPA revealed upgrades to its Atlas robot on January 20, 2015. The robot was redesigned for DARPA by Boston Dynamics, with the goal of improving power efficiency to better support battery operation. Approximately 75 percent of the robot was rebuilt; only the lower legs and feet were carried over from the original design. The upgraded robot will be used by up to seven teams competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge

It’s technically a stroller but this incredible new handmade piece of hardware more closely resembles the Tumbler.

The team of craftsmen over at Super-Fan Builds has done it again, designing and building a reinforced replica of the Batmobile from Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy into a working baby stroller.

The winner of the $270 million Mega Millions jackpot in Illinois on Friday has not yet come forward. But Alex Snelius already has some strong, if unsettling, advice. Snelius won the lottery back in 2000, taking home over $18 million. He never thought it would be a “curse.” “It’s a curse, it’s a curse, believe me it’s a curse,” he says. “One thing I would eliminate: friends and relations, because they’re [the] worst enemy of all, the friends and relations.” Even now, Snelius gets hundreds of letters each month from strangers seeking cash, but it’s friends and family who left him in a lurch after loaning out $3 million. “They cannot pay,” Snelius said. “Some of them filed, even, bankruptcy, you know? So what are you gonna do?” For 15 years now, Snelius has donated $100 to White Sox Charities for each Sox home run, all to honor Ursula, his late wife. He’s given away another $3 million to various charities, including Catholic causes. For his generosity, Cardinal Francis George presented him with an honorary zucchetto. “Right now, if I could win the lottery again, I’d probably give it all away,” Snelius says. And yes, Snelius still plays the lottery, for just that reason. “Give it to charity. That’s the most important thing,” he says. Snelius is a 78-year-old Lithuanian immigrant who retired from the trucking business. He says that’s another mistake. To keep sharp, he says, keep working. Snelius beat odds of 175 million to one to win his big prize and he still plays because there’s no reason that lightning couldn’t strike twice. VIDEO

Michael Moore has taken to Twitter to share his thoughts on snipers.

The Fahrenheit 9/11 director wrote that he grew up being told that snipers are cowardly. "My uncle killed by sniper in WW2," Moore wrote. "We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot you in the back."

Read MoreBox Office: How 'American Sniper' Played Like a Superhero Movie
"Snipers aren't heroes," he continued. "And invaders are worse."

Moore spoke directly about director Clint Eastwood's film American Sniper on his Facebook page. He praised the film for star Bradley Cooper's performance and for its antiwar sentiment, but he also wrote: "Too bad Clint gets Vietnam and Iraq confused in his storytelling. And that he has his characters calling Iraqis 'savages' throughout the film."

An AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162 people on board climbed faster than normal and then stalled, the Indonesian transport minister said Tuesday.

Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28 in stormy weather, during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Indonesia's meteorological agency has said bad weather may have caused the crash, and investigators are analysing the data from the jet's black boxes before releasing a preliminary report.

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Two cars claiming to be the fastest production models ever built in their classes finally went head-to-head for the heavyweight championship this weekend in a showdown between Dodge’s Hellcat line and Tesla’s new AWD Model S.

Dodge claims its 2015 Challenger Hellcat is the fastest production model muscle car ever made, while Tesla staked the same claim in the overall sedan category for its dual-motor P85D when it was unveiled last fall (Dodge boasts the same of its 4-door Charger Hellcat).

The Twitter accounts of the New York Post and United Press International were hacked Friday. Both companies tweeted that a war had broken out between the United States and China.

At 1 p.m. ET, the Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) accounts of both companies reported that the Chinese military had fired a missile on a U.S. warship, sparking a full-blown battle. They also claimed the U.S. Federal Reserve was to make an emergency announcement about interest rates.
Within minutes, The New York Post erased most of the messages on Twitter. UPI's tweets, however, remained up.

These are not the best of times to be one of China's massive, state-owned steel mills. The domestic economy is slowing, competition is increasing, and there's widespread disgust and impatience with the smog pouring out of their stacks. In short, their lucrative business model for the past three decades is slowly dying. So what’s a manager of a Chinese steel mill to do?

One surprisingly popular option is to bid China goodbye. In November, Hebei Iron & Steel Co Ltd, a provincial-owned company and China’s largest steelmaker by production, announced that it was moving 5 million tons of its annual production -- roughly 11 percent of the 45 million tons of steel it makes every year -- to South Africa. According to press reports, it won’t be going abroad alone. By 2023, Hebei Province -- China’s most polluted province -- plans to export 20 million tons of steel, 30 million tons of cement and 10 million weight boxes of glass capacity (a weight box equals roughly 50 kilograms) to points still not named.

At first glance, the export of excess industrial capacity wouldn’t appear to make much business sense. As Bloomberg News noted two weeks ago, Hebei Iron & Steel’s South African mill will be “equivalent to two-thirds of that nation’s output last year, and a third of continental Africa’s.” In other words, it's not clear there's much demand in these new locales for the Chinese steel giant's plentiful wares. Why, then, are they doing it?

If this isn't quote of the day, I don't know what is.

"Throughout all of this, I think the biggest mistake we consistently made was that we were arrogantly deaf to problems raised by a vocal minority of players," Titov told Gamasutra. There was a lot of hate out there on the web being aimed toward us, the studio, and the game. Today, I realize that there was plenty of reason for that hate, but at the time, we were foolish and thought that we didn't have to listen to or respond to 'haters.'" LINK

Hands down, the biggest "losers" when it comes to privacy was the general public.

But you were also the biggest loser this year in terms of privacy and security. Ongoing revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance have made it clear that the intelligence agency, and its spy partners in the UK and elsewhere, will not rest until they’ve seized or deciphered every bit of your data. LINK

The Pew Research Internet Project has put out an interesting report on technology's impact on workers. The findings? Among other things, workers in the US say they need e-mail more than a landline and social media is worthless in the workplace.

The high value of email comes despite the challenges of the past generation, including threats like spam and phishing and competitors like social media and texting. Surprisingly, landline phones outrank cell phones for these internet-using workers. Social media is very low in importance. LINK

Turtle Rock Studios wants $60. This shouldn’t be surprising: $60 is the going rate for a modern AAA game, and Turtle Rock is making one, namely, Evolve, its upcoming 4 v 1 asymmetrical shooter. Their only problem is that they don’t want to have to wait until they’ve actually made a game to get your $60, which just sounds like a pain. So they’ve cooked up a little pre-purchase bonus, wherein you can skip all of the normal progression mechanics in the game and unlock some top characters right off the bat. It comes with the tacit implication that everyone who doesn’t pre-purchase the game is playing a more boring or, at least, less fun version of the game, but if we need to cripple games to incentivize pre-ordering, then so be it. It’s like F2P, minus the F.

DALLAS (Reuters) - A U.S. Army soldier who just returned from West Africa and was self-monitoring for Ebola symptoms was found dead on Tuesday near the Texas base where he was posted, Fort Hood officials said.

Army officials said initial screening results showed the soldier was not infected with Ebola. A more conclusive test was underway "and results will be released when complete to confirm the preliminary findings," they said in a statement.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made a pitch Tuesday for funding of a new long-range bomber to replace the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and bolster the nation's nuclear triad of bombers, missiles, and submarines.
"The one thing we cannot fall behind in is modernization. That has to start now," Hagel said of the program to develop and field a new long-range bomber for the 2020s.
"I think the long-range strike bomber is absolutely essential to keep our deterrent edge as we go into the next 25 years," Hagel told reporters after a town-hall meeting with airmen at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, home to the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
Last summer, the Air Force opened a competition to build the new air

To an audience full of auto-industry executives in Detroit, Tesla Motors co-founder and CEO Elon Musk made a few bold statements on Tuesday: Tesla is growing, will turn a profit eventually, and was doing so in large part because the rest of the industry didn't want to build electric cars — at least ones that people would buy.

In a rare question and answer session at the Automotive News World Congress, Musk said he envisioned Tesla building "a few million vehicles" per year by 2025 — compared to less than 100,000 today. He said Tesla was only unprofitable because it was ramping up production for one new model, designing another and building a $5 billion battery factory, with regular profits expected by the time it launched a new small vehicle in 2020.

Report shows deep Secret Service problems.

Washington (CNN)Top Secret Service officials are out of their jobs following months of scandal at the law enforcement agency, sources said on Wednesday.

Four senior officials -- responsible for investigations, technology, protections and public affairs -- are being asked to leave their posts, though they could still technically stay with the Secret Service, a person at the agency said.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigns

The four officials identified by the source: Dale Pupillo, Jane Murphy, Paul Morrissey, and Mark Copanzzi.

Apple has apparently decided to end its "single of the week" promotion after an eleven year run. No more free ride for you!

Apple has seemingly ended its weekly iTunes "Single of the Week" promotion that gave out a free music single download each week on the iTunes storefront. As noted by Business Insider, a member of the Apple discussion forums claims an Apple support employee informed him the company decided to drop the weekly promotion.

$7.5 billion for BlackBerry? What in the world is Samsung thinking?

Executives from the two companies, which are working with advisers, met last week to discuss a potential transaction, the source said, asking not to be identified because the conversations are private. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said in a statement that it "has not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry.

Just so we are clear, we think you should have your ass kicked for making parenting decisions based on feedback from Facebook. Click LIKE if you agree.

Sure, getting advice on how to get a toddler to sleep through the night or how to deal with a fussy eater makes sense and seems relatively harmless. But is there something creepy about picking a baby name based on Internet responses or deciding on a punishment based on the opinions of followers?

This is definitely your 3D printed feel good story of the day.

By all accounts, I shouldn't have hit the dummy target 300 yards downrange because everything was working against me. For starters, the Las Vegas desert was windy as hell. Factor in that I was shaking thanks to nerves, cold temperatures and the pressure of a camera rolling while I tried something brand-new and you have a recipe for failure. Or should have. While I can barely pull off a headshot in a video game, I nailed one on my first try with TrackingPoint's high-powered, precision-guided rifle. Once the initial wave of "Holy shit!" wore off, something else replaced my elation: I didn't feel I'd earned that bull's-eye because basically all I had to do was pull the trigger. On my way back into Sin City, I couldn't get over just how cold and emotionless that left me feeling.

Oscar-winning actor and musician Jared Leto recently paid $5 million for a legendary ex-military complex where top-secret nuclear films were produced, Variety reports.

The complex is known as Lookout Mountain Laboratory, at 8935 Wonderland Avenue in Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon area not far from the Sunset Strip. It was built as the Lookout Mountain Air Force Station but became best known — after declassification, at least — for its studios that documented atomic bomb testing in the Nevada desert and the Pacific. (Click here or on a photo for a slideshow, including a few historical pictures.)

"Every time you see an atomic explosion on TV, for a scare film or whatever, we filmed it," photographer Jack Cannon told the Los Angeles Times in 1999.
The nuclear-related work produced there — thousands of motion pictures and still photographs — was classified for decades, seen only by military and government functionaries. Between the 331 bomb blasts they documented, they produced training films, the L.A. Times said.

Can't get your hands on a real Shelby Cobra? Do what these guys did, print yourself one.

How are we to know that these people didn't have psychological problems to begin with? We are talking about iPhone owners.

A new study finds that people separated from their iPhones could suffer serious psychological and physiological effects. A study done by researchers from the University of Missouri found that users who were unable to answer their ringing iPhones while solving simple word search puzzles saw increases in their heart rates and blood pressure, while dealing with anxiety and unpleasantness.

The day has finally come, Microsoft no longer offers free support for Windows 7. That said, Microsoft is still offering extended support, security fixes until 2020. LINK

You know the FCC has to be thinking "which ones?"

Verizon has repeatedly claimed that utility rules would harm investment in broadband networks, urging the Federal Communications Commission to avoid imposing new regulations. Yet Verizon’s statements to the FCC have avoided mentioning that its own utility-style common carrier status helped the company charge landline phone customers higher prices to fund construction of the fiber network over which it provides FiOS Internet and TV.

Reece Crowther joins HuffPost Live to talk about Zano, the selfie-taking drone.
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Kickstarter

J.C. Penney plans to close approximately 40 stores in 2015, about 4 percent of the chain's total stores, the retailer told The Huffington Post Thursday.

About 2,250 jobs will be lost, according to Joey Thomas, a spokesman for the company. Most stores will close around April 4, 2015, he said.

Here's a list of the stores that are closing:

LINK

Summary:The PC-on-a-stick will come pre-loaded with Windows 8.1 for $149, or Linux for just $89, when it starts shipping in March.

Lost amid the hoopla of Intel's other CES announcements -- the official launch of Broadwell processors, the microscopic Curie wearable PC -- the chip giant has also provided details about its forthcoming Compute Stick, a PC-on-a-stick that will ship with either Windows 8.1 or Linux pre-installed.

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Big data in a small package: The 1TB Samsung portable SSD Samsung

It's a new year and there is no sign that the pace of innovation in storage is slowing anytime soon, with Samsung choosing CES 2015 to roll out its latest tiny solid-state disk drive (SSD) with an enormous data capacity.

The Samsung Portable SSD T1 is a one terabyte disk drive in a package that is smaller than a credit card - 72mm by 52mm in comparison to a credit card's dimensions of 85mm by 53.98mm. That is one small package in which to cram one terabyte - or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes - of data.

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Like traditional hard drives, solid-state storage has mostly relied on the venerable SATA interface to transfer files. SSDs that make use of a faster PCI Express connection have been few and far between, with a large price premium. But a new generation of drives is emerging that could substantially increase the popularity of SSDs using PCIe, with a number of them being displayed at CES.

The M.2 form factor was initially designed to fit into tight quarters, but it can be wired through the PCI Express connection to get the best of both worlds: energy efficiency and blazing performance. We've seen some of these M.2 PCIe 2.0 drives last year, such as the Lite-On EP1 series, but a handful of manufacturers are preparing to increase that tally.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp <SBUX.O> on Thursday said Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead, who as chief financial officer helped lead the coffee chain's massive and successful restructuring, is taking an extended unpaid leave from the coffee chain to spend more time with his family.

Alstead has been with Starbucks for 23 years and his last day in his current role will be March 1, the company said in a statement.

DETROIT (AP) — Subaru is recalling about 199,000 cars and SUVs for a second time to fix rusty brake lines that can leak fluid and cause longer stopping distances.

The recall covers the 2009 through 2013 Forester, 2008 through 2011 Impreza, and the 2008 through 2014 WRX and WRX-STI models. It affects vehicles in 20 U.S. cold weather states and Washington, D.C., where salt is used to clear roads in the winter.

Subaru says in documents posted Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that salty water can splash on the brake lines through a gap in the fuel tank protector. That can cause rust and leaks. A recall from last year for the same problem didn't work due to incomplete repair instructions to dealers.

Xiaomi Corp. zoomed past Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung (005930) Electronics Co. in China smartphone sales just three years after releasing its first model. Founder Lei Jun is now on a buying spree to take that momentum beyond handsets.

Since November, the maker of Mi devices has participated in more than $600 million of investments in three companies and announced it bought into dozens of startups making everything from an air purifier to low-energy light bulbs.

Xiaomi, which doubled revenue to $12 billion last year, could be just getting warmed up. Lei wants to be No. 1 in smartphone sales and has committed to spending $1 billion on content as he seeks to build a brand bigger than Apple and Samsung within a decade. Much like with Apple's success, the idea behind his investments is to assemble enough products and services that customers will be glued to Xiaomi.

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese automaker Nissan and NASA are teaming up to advance the technology behind cars that drive autonomously.

Yokohama-based Nissan Motor Co. and NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, announced Thursday a five-year research-and-development partnership for autonomous vehicle systems so they can eventually be applied to commercially sold cars.

Nissan is excited about the potential of self-driving cars, which executives say could lead to improved safety, a pillar for future autos along with low emission technology.

Founded in 2009 by an engineer with a childhood love of radio-controlled model planes, DJI has become the world's biggest supplier of civilian drones — possibly the first Chinese company to achieve that status in any consumer industry.

It has grown from 20 employees to a workforce of 2,800, including Chinese, Americans and Koreans at its headquarters in this southern Chinese city and at outposts in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Frankfurt, Germany. PHOTOS

The first thing you notice about Pinal Airpark is the noise: There isn't any.

More than 120 massive airplanes — most outfitted with engines that, when revved, could make your teeth ache from half a mile away — are splayed on both sides of the airport's 6,800-foot runway. Yet the place is so quiet you could hear a rattlesnake approach.

The shah of Iran's private jet spent its last days here, parked next to aircraft the CIA used for covert missions in Southeast Asia and Central America.

Leaked pic may show us how massive Apple’s reinvented 12-inch iPad will be

The iPad’s momentum has been seriously slowing down lately, which is why Apple is reportedly trying to give it some fresh life with a massive new 12-inch “iPad Pro” that will supposedly be the closest thing to a tablet-PC hybrid the company has yet released. MacRumors has snagged a leaked photo taken from a Weibo account in China that’s simply labeled “iPad Pro” and that seems to show the manufacturing mold for the device’s rear shell, althoughMacRumors points out that this pic may be for a dummy unit that isn’t the final version.

DALLAS (Reuters) - Seismologists installed a new earthquake-monitoring device in the Dallas suburb of Irving this week after a series of minor tremblors rocked an area near the site of the former Dallas Cowboys football stadium.

Irving was shaken by nine quakes on Tuesday and into Wednesday, including three measuring magnitude 3.6, 3.5, and 3.1, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The quakes were the strongest in a series of about 20 minor quakes to hit around the stadium area since September.

Five smaller quakes registering between 1.6 and 2.9 were recorded on Tuesday in the suburb. Another 1.7 magnitude quake was recorded in the nearby city of Farmers Branch late on Tuesday night, according to the USGS.

The number of violent crimes dropped across the United States by 4.4% in 2013 compared to the year before, according to estimates released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the last decade, the number of violent crimes declined by nearly 15%.

John Roman, senior fellow at public policy research organization the Urban Institute has told 24/7 Wall St., “A 4.4% reduction in violent crime is astonishing. If you saw a similar increase in GDP, or a similar decrease in unemployment, it would be huge national news.”

Despite the national improvement in crime rates — as well as significant improvements in some of the most dangerous states — a number of states were much more dangerous than the rest of the nation. In fact, South Carolina and Delaware had among the largest decreases in violent crime and still had some of the highest violent crime rates.

Three law enforcement officers who were flying back to Utah after attending the funeral of a New York police officer came to the rescue of a fellow passenger who was allegedly trying to kill herself.

Salt Lake City detectives Robert Odor and Cody Stromberg and Salt Lake County Sgt. Terry Wall were on a JetBlue flight from New York back to Utah on Monday following the Sunday funeral for Wenjian Liu, one of two police officers killed in Brooklyn last month.

The officers were flying for free since the airline offered to pay for law enforcement officers from across the country to attend funerals for Liu and his partner Rafael Ramos. Odor said at a press conference Monday night that a flight attendant announced that the officers were on board "and she said 'you will never have a safer flight,' and so I guess that's one way to curse a flight, is to tell everybody how safe it's going to be."

Despite no military training, Dean Parker traded his surfboard for an AK-47, joining the Kurds to do battle against the jihadists after hearing ‘God’s call’

Dean Parker, a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, was enjoying a peaceful life as a surfing instructor in Costa Rica when he decided to trade his surfboard for an AK-47 and join the fight against ISIS.

Parker, 49, was teaching surfing in Zancudo, Costa Rica, when he saw a report about the plight of the Yazidi people trapped on Mount Sinjar by Islamic State fighters, according to MailOnline.

Parker told MailOnline that he “heard God’s call” to take up arms against the jihadists, despite having no military experience.

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Rep. Molly White asks Muslim visitors to pledge allegiance to America

'Deceptive' communication

Sports Illustrated has laid off all six of its staff photographers and will rely more on freelancers.

The Twitter accounts of the New York Post and United Press International were hacked Friday. Both companies tweeted that a war had broken out between the United States and China.

Despite no military training, Dean Parker traded his surfboard for an AK-47, joining the Kurds to do battle against the jihadists after hearing ‘God’s call’

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