Common Car-Buying Mistakes

Thinking of buying a car? Don't make the mistake of dropping by a lot to browse. You may end up with more than you bargained for.

"That's a good way to accidentally buy a car," says Joe Wiesenfelder, senior editor for Cars.com. Salesmen are going to bring all the pressure to bear that they can to entice you to make a purchase.

Everyone knows it's important to research a vehicle before taking it on a test drive, but not everyone knows the kind of reconnaissance that leads to getting a fair deal.

Six small cars with high gas mileage rated Top Safety Picks

Smaller cars that get high gas mileage are getting safer -- a lot safer. None of the 13 small cars recently tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety were rated poor in any of the four key crash tests. Six of them were given the coveted Top Safety Pick rating in their size class."The list of cars with the best fuel economy now includes those with the highest crash test ratings in their class, too," says David Zuby, the Institute's chief research officer." 

New McLaren: An affordable supercar at $231,000?

An affordable exotic? The McLaren MP4-12C supercar is, judged by the standards of the people who buy rare, ultra-fast cars. That's a pre-production car above in the Drive On parking lot this week. When the car rolls into McLaren's 10 North American dealerships -- nine in the U.S. and one in Canada -- in October, the starting price is to be $231,400, including $2,400 shipping from the factory in Woking, U.K.

First person on Joplin missing list found alive

JOPLIN, Mo. – As emergency workers in Joplin searched Thursday for more than 230 people listed as missing after a tornado tore through the city, one was sitting in a wooden chair outside the wreckage of her home, cuddling her cat.

Sally Adams, 75, said neighbors rescued her Sunday after the storm destroyed her house and took her to a friend's home. When The Associated Press told Adams she was on the missing list, she laughed and said "Get me off of there!"

Missouri officials had said they believed many of the missing were safe and alive but simply hadn't been in touch with friends and family. When they released the list of 232 names Thursday morning, they urged survivors to check in. Cell phone service in the city remains spotty.

Adams said she lost her phone in the storm and had no way of contacting her family to let them know she was OK. She was placed on the missing list after relatives called a hot line and posted Facebook messages saying she was missing.

Mladic hauled into courtroom after 16-year hunt

BELGRADE, Serbia – Sixteen years after the bull-necked military commander went on the run, a pale and shrunken Ratko Mladic was hauled into a courtroom Thursday to face charges of genocide in ordering torture, rape and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

A Serbian government that has changed mightily since Mladic's alleged atrocities trumpeted his early morning arrest as a victory for a country worthy of EU membership and Western embrace. It banned all public gatherings and raised security levels to prevent ultra-nationalists from making good on pledges to pour into the streets in protest. Riot police broke up one small protest.

Mladic was one of the world's most wanted men, and faces charges of genocide and war crimes at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where judge Fouad Riad said there was evidence of "unimaginable savagery."

My Blog Is Also Paying My Bills

Casting the digital equivalent of a message-in-a-bottle into the Internet’s vast sea of content, many people start Web sites or blogs hoping that they will find an appreciative audience for their precocious parrot videos, cupcake recipes or pithy commentary on everyday life. The dream, of course, is that they will develop a large and loyal following — and potentially profit from it.

While most of these self-publishers don’t attract the attention of anyone other than indulgent family and friends, there are those who find wider recognition and some income. What the successful have in common is a passion for their subject and a near-compulsion to share what they know. Advertising, merchandising, offline events, book deals, donations and sometimes sheer luck also play a part.

“My advice is to choose a topic you’ll never get tired of,” said Stephanie Nelson, 47, of Atlanta, a homemaker who founded CouponMom.com in 2001 to share tips on saving money by using coupons. “The first three years I made no money at all, so I had to love what I was doing to keep going.”

13-year-old soccer player scores on incredible bicycle-kick

It didn't take long for 13-year-old Kenner Galeas to become an instant star on his Arlington Soccer Association club team. Playing in a game recently for the U-14 Civitans Bengals, Galeas scored on an incredible bicycle-kick that now has the entire Internet going crazy over the youngster's finish.

Just What You Needed: Higher Taxes

While you hear a lot about the federal income tax, you don't hear much about the Social Security tax. That's odd because for many folks especially the self-employed Social Security tax can be the bigger hit. Here are some little-known truths about how the Social Security tax works and how much it can amount to.

As an employee, your wages are hit with the 12.4% Social Security tax up to the annual wage ceiling. Half the Social Security tax bill (equal to 6.2%) is withheld from your paychecks. The other half is paid by your employer. Unless you understand how the tax works and closely examine your pay stubs, you may be blissfully unaware of how much the Social Security tax actually costs.

The Social Security tax wage ceiling for both 2010 and 2011 is $106,800. If you made that much or more last year, the Social Security tax hit on your 2010 wages was a whopping $13,243 (12.4% x $106,800). Half came out of your paycheck. Your employer paid the other half.

Honda, Toyota production halved.

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese auto giants Toyota and Honda saw global production halved in April as the March 11 earthquake and tsunami ravaged supply chains, the companies said Friday.

Honda reported a 52.9 percent year-on-year drop in worldwide production and an 81.0 percent slump in domestic output, while Toyota said global production was down 48.1 percent.

The quake and the resulting tsunami shattered component supply chains and crippled electricity-generating facilities, including a nuclear power plant at the centre of an ongoing atomic emergency.

Seismologists Tried for Manslaughter for Not Predicting Earthquake

Earthquake prediction can be a grave, and faulty science, and in the case of Italian seismologists who are being tried for the manslaughter of the people who died in the 2009 L'Aquila quake, it can have legal consequences.

The group of seven, including six seismologists and a government official, reportedly didn't alert the public ahead of time of the risk of theL'Aquila earthquake, which occurred on April 6 of that year, killing around 300 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But most scientists would agree it's not their fault they couldn't predict the wrath of Mother Nature.

"We're not able to predict earthquakes very well at all," John Vidale, a Washington State seismologist and professor at the University of Washington, told LiveScience.

Air France jet crashed nose-up after 4 minute ordeal

PARIS (Reuters) – Pilots wrestled with the controls of an Air France airliner for more than four minutes before it plunged into the Atlantic with its nose up, killing all 228 people on board, French investigators said Friday.

The 2009 emergency began with a stall warning two and a half hours into the Rio-Paris flight and nine minutes after the captain had left the cockpit for a routine rest period.

The Airbus A330 jet climbed to 38,000 feet and then began a dramatic three and a half minute descent, rolling from left to right, with the youngest of three pilots handing control to the second most senior pilot one minute before the crash.

The timeline was described in a note by France's BEA crash investigation authority, which said it was too early to give the causes of the crash ahead of a fuller report in the summer.

The Best Jeans for Men : The GQ Denim Report

We sifted through hundreds of men's jeans in stores this spring and came back with these 20 slim-fit pairs of all prices, brands, and fades.

Model: Arthur K. Grooming: Kumi Craig

Acne Jeans

Roc Soft Raw $230

You know how your girlfriend got her special jeans? These are the guy version of those. They're not cheap, but a lot easier than doing squats. Buy 'em as small as you can button them. They'll stretch a little and age better that way.

Available at Acne Studio, 10 Greene St, NY and acnestudios.com

T-shirt (shown throughout), $52 by AG Adriano Goldschmied, available at AG Beverly Hills and AG Soho. Bracelet by Miansai. Boots by Red Wing Shoes.

Aussie student finds universe's 'missing mass'

SYDNEY (AFP) – A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called "missing mass" of the universe during her summer break.

Undergraduate Amelia Fraser-McKelvie made the breakthrough during a holiday internship with a team at Monash University's School of Physics, locating the mystery material within vast structures called "filaments of galaxies".

Monash astrophysicist Dr Kevin Pimbblet explained that scientists had previously detected matter that was present in the early history of the universe but that could not now be located.

"There is missing mass, ordinary mass not dark mass ... It's missing to the present day," Pimbblet told AFP.

"We don't know where it went. Now we do know where it went because that's what Amelia found."

Before and after: Devastation of the Joplin, MO tornado

PHOTOS

Google may reveal mobile-payment plans Thursday

NEW YORK--Google is hosting a press event here Thursday where it's expected to take the wraps off plans to turn smartphones into mobile wallets.

The new mobile payment system will work on select Android-based phones sold on Sprint Nextel's network, according to a Bloomberg report that cited unidentified sources. Google reportedly plans to introduce the service initially in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

University of Virginia ordered to disclose Michael Mann's emails

Could the long-running fight over former UVA professor Michael Mann’s emails be edging toward resolution? Perhaps. Yesterday, a Prince William county judge ordered the University to comply with a FOIA request from Del. Bob Marshall and the American Tradition Institute. According to the organization’s press release, getting the state-funded school to comply with the FOIA law was a test of both patience and will:

Under FOIA the University was required to produce the documents within five days of its receipt of payment for “accessing, duplicating, supplying or searching” for the documents. Alternatively they could have entered into an agreement with ATI on when they would supply the documents, or they could have gone to court to ask for more time. They did none of the above. Instead they promised to provide some of the documents “shortly” on April 6; then specifically on May 6, 2011; and always stated they would get to the others later on. They did none of this either, so ATI went to court to compel production and compliance with the law.

Paging Chris Anderson: Darpa Wants DIY Drones

Darpa is starting a contest to design pint-size spy drones. But the agency’s proposal for this competition seems almost tailor-made for a group led by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. This could get awkward.

The Pentagon’s way-out research arm announced today that it’s holding a competition to design unmanned aerial vehicles that cost less than $10,000 each, and can be carried in a rucksack.

That’s old hat for Anderson and his DIY Drones crew, who have been working for years on little robo-planes that cost a fraction of that.

Back to the Future spoof shows REAL consequences of time travel

In the 1985 movie Back to the Future, Marty McFly, under the assumed name "Calvin Klein," went back in time to save Doc Brown from the Libyans. At the end of the movie, Marty returned to an even better present, with bad guy Biff Tannen now a handyman.

Xbox Live Game Marketplace down

Microsoft's Xbox Live Game Marketplace and the Games for Windows Marketplace are both down, victims of what the company says is "an internal operational error."

Microsoft didn't disclose any other specifics about the cause of the problem. But a spokeswoman said, "This issue is impacting users' ability to browse and purchase content from the Marketplace."

The company also didn't say when it expected the service to be restored, other than noting that it is "actively working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20066157-75.html#ixzz1NPX0nXQk

Fujitsu contest winners design the future (photos)

PHOTOS

How the defunct Dell Adamo led to the new XPS 15Z

Just more than two years ago, Dell introduced one of its most unlikely products ever. The Adamo laptop was stylish, it was expensive, and it wasn't around that long. The product was killed less than two years after its very splashy debut.

On Tuesday, Dell is set to announce the XPS 15Z, a $999 laptop that is in many ways a descendant of the Adamo. While the XPS 15Z lacks the same daring design and sleek profile, it's much more in line with what people have come to expect from Dell nowadays: some thoughtful style, decent quality, but still very accessible to mainstream consumers.

Image of the Day: America's first and only nuclear artillery test

On May 25th, 1953 the U.S. tested nuclear artillery for the first and only time. The shell was fired at the Nevada Test Site (now known as the Nevada National Security Site, or N2S2) as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole with about 3,200 onlookers present.
Although nuclear artillery didn't exactly catch on and has since been replaced by ballistic missiles, this was a significant event for nuclear weapons testing in the U.S.
Every day, DVICE selects a fresh image from the wonderful world of technology. See them all by clicking this link. PHOTOS
Via Wikipedia

Explosive new 3-D Green Lantern trailer blows us away even in 2-D

Pull up a chair, everybody—Tomar-Re (Geoffrey Rush) is about to tell us a story. In the latest Green Lantern trailer, the alien gives a history lesson on the Lantern Corps, the Guardians of the Universe and their super-exclusive power rings. And even though you can't tell on your computer—the trailer's in 3-D!
Of course, you'll have to head to a theater to see this in 3-D, but it still blows us away.

Vin Diesel whines he won't get paid enough for Pitch Black 3

There's good news for all you Riddick fans out there. It seems that with Diesel's career back on the rise, there's a plan to make Pitch Black into a trilogy. There's a catch, though, and Vin's asking his fans for some spiritual (read: financial) advice.
He recently wrote on his Facebook page:

"GRRRR.. D T the writer/director just landed in New York with the good news. We can start filming this summer. However, there is a catch ... in order for us to make a true R rated film, I must work for scale upfront. Not unlike the "Find me Guilty" experience (which I wouldn't have changed for the world)...

How bad is your HD?

A few weeks ago I asked how many people had given up on standard definition completely and only watch high definition. Interestingly, even though the majority of you had made the switch, it seems many were dissatisfied with the picture quality of their HD programming.
At the top of the HD quality pyramid is Blu-ray, of course. Lots of bandwidth, lots of storage, and pristine image quality are the hallmarks of what will surely be our last physical media format.
Quality degrades rapidly, though, as you change media. In many markets, the HD broadcast (over-the-air) signal is nearly as good as Blu-ray. But this isn't always the case. Many stations try to squeeze multiple channels within their allotted bandwidth (such as 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, and so on, all from the same station). This has a noticeable and negative effect on the quality.

Duke Nukem Forever to launch in mid-June

Duke Nukem Forever is finally ready to launch--after what seemed to some like an eternity.
"Duke Nukem Forever is the game that was once thought to be unshippable, and yet here we are, on the precipice of history," Christoph Hartmann, president of publisher 2K Games, said yesterday in a statement that may have contained just a tinge of hyperbole. "Today marks an amazing day in the annals of gaming lore, the day where the legend of Duke Nukem Forever is finally complete and it takes that final step towards becoming a reality."

Lucas reveals 50 hours of live action Star Wars has already filmed

Back in 2005, George Lucas announced that the Star Wars universe would get two television shows: an animated show (The Clone Wars, which hit the big and little screen in 2008) and a live-action show set between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Now Lucas finally explains why the live-action show "sits on a shelf."
During an interview with G4TV, Lucas explained that 50 hours of a Star Wars television show are waiting ... for a new way of making movies.

Why you won't be seeing a Stan Lee cameo in X-Men: First Class

Is a Marvel Comics movie without a Stan Lee cameo still a Marvel Comics movie? He's been a hot dog vendor in X-Men, WIllie Lumpkin in Fantastic Four and (most recently) a guy who rips up his truck trying to move Thor's hammer. If you're hoping to spot him in X-Men: First Class, though, you're going to be disappointed.

Treebot: Autonomous Tree Climbing by Tactile Sensing

Robotic adhesion with supersonic air jets

Amphibious robot tumbles after you over any terrain

Robots are pretty limited when it comes to getting around. Got a set of wheels? Well, hopefully there's no stairs between point A and B. Legs? That's a start, but robot legs require balance and present all kinds of problems. This robot doesn't need any of that fancy stuff: it just constantly tumbles end over end, and it's surprisingly effective.

Is Darpa Recruiting Wired’s Editor to Build Drones?

Darpa is starting a contest to design pint-sized spy drones. But the agency’s proposal for this competition seems almost tailor-made for a group led by WIRED editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. This is gonna get awkward.
The Pentagon’s way-out research arm announced today that it’s holding a competition to design unmanned aerial vehicles that cost less than $10,000 each, and can be carried in a rucksack. That’s old hat for Chris and his DIY Drones crew, who have been working for years on little robo-planes that cost a fraction of that. Darpa wants to crowdsource the design and development of these UAVs, with hardware hackers collaborating online to dream up the ultimate robotic flying machine. Funny, that’s exactly what’s been going on at DIY Drones site since May of 2007.

Navy Chief Dreams of Laser Warships, Ocean-Spanning Robots

 
NEWPORT, Rhode Island — Adm. Gary Roughead will leave the Navy in September. Until then, he’s got one big, overriding mission: Make the seas safe for American lasers and robots.
As the top U.S. naval officer for the past four years, Roughead hasn’t been the flashiest or most charismatic man in uniform. And being part of the Navy in an era of land wars makes being overshadowed somewhat inevitable. He’s earned high marks from defense wonks for largely sorting out Navy shipbuilding, perhaps his highest-profile accomplishment.

Space agency blessing moves Skylon spaceplane closer to reality

Making your own spaceplane from scratch is obviously not an easy task, which is why we're not all going to the moon on weekends. Reaction Engines is taking it seriously, though, and their Skylon spaceplane concept has just passed a technical review by the European Space Agency, moving it one step closer to reality.
The Skylon spaceplane is a single stage to orbit craft, meaning that it doesn't use booster rockets of any kind and can take off and land from a conventional runway.

Google Street View before and after shows tornado's true destruction

It can be hard to picture what the neighborhoods of Joplin, MO looked like before a tornado came through and flattened pretty much everything. But this comparison shot using Google Street view makes the destruction painfully clear.

Surprise! NASA unveils manned 'Deep Space Transportation System'

With the Space Shuttle's last ride right around the corner, there's a worry that NASA will be out of the manned spaceflight game for good, leaving it to the private sector instead. Well, walking back out onto the stage like a rockstar for an encore, NASA just screamed, "We're going into deep space, ya'll!" before diving into the crowd.

Violent thunderstorms kill 7 in Oklahoma, Kansas

EL RENO, Okla. – Violent thunderstorms roared across middle America on Tuesday, killing seven people in two states, with several tornadoes touching down in Oklahoma and high winds pounding rural Kansas.
The high-powered storms arrived as forecast, just two days after a massive tornado tore through the southwest Missouri town of Joplin and killed 122 people.
Several tornadoes struck Oklahoma City and its suburbs during rush hour, killing at least five people and injuring at least 60 others, including three children who were in critical condition, authorities said.
Cherokee Ballard, a spokeswoman for the state medical examiner, said four people died west of Oklahoma City in Canadian County, where a weather-monitoring site in El Reno recorded 151 mph winds. She did not have any immediate details about the deaths.

No iOS 5 for iPhone 3GS?

Eldar Murtazin, editor-in-chief of Russian mobile phone blog Mobile-Review today reported in a Tweet (via MacStories) that iOS 5 will not be compatible with the iPhone 3GS, limiting the next-generation operating system to the current iPhone and of course new models yet to come as far as the iPhone is concerned.

Just one comment. Apple iPhone 3Gs wont be upgradable to iOS 5.x. iPhone 4 will.

The information is unverified and it is unclear from where Murtazin obtained the information, but he does have a very solid reputation in the mobile phone rumor community. Murtazin does not, however, frequently report on Apple's plans.

4th-Grade 'Paleontologists' Discover 11,500-Year-Old Mastodon Hair

Earlier this year, Linda Azaroff's fourth-grade class received a 2.2-pound (1-kilogram) box containing what one student described as a "clump of dirt."
But this wasn't just any dirt — it was sediment, or matrix, collected from a backyard in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 2000, where a project to deepen a backyard pond uncovered the remains of a mastodon — an extinct elephantlike animal. Working under a deadline, but not wanting to miss any important pieces, excavators carted away about 22,000 pounds (10,000 kg) of matrix from around the bones, more than they could realistically sort through in the years to come. [25 Amazing Ancient Beasts]
The excavators turned to citizen scientists volunteering for the Mastodon Matrix Project, which enlists school classes, hobbyists, families and other volunteers scour the matrix from mastodon excavations. Since 2008 alone, more than 3,500 participants from around the U.S. have worked on matrix from Hyde Park.

Obama code-named ‘smart alec’ in Britain

 

Do Brits think Barack Obama is a bit of a "smart alec"?

The label certainly appears to fit in the minds of British police. Scotland Yard, the UK's police force, has given Obama the security codename 'Chalaque' for his visit this week to the United Kingdom, the UK Daily Mail reports. The term is reportedly a Punjabi word meaning someone who is too clever for his own good, according to the newspaper.

Beyonce's Billboard Music Awards Show Strikingly Similar To Year-Old Performance From Italian Singer

Many were impressed when Beyoncé thanked fired Destiny's Child members LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson in her Billboard Music Awards acceptance speech Sunday night when she received the Millennium Award. But her acknowledgments included a major omission: Italian singer, dancer, actress, and television host Lorella Cuccarini, who appears to have inspired Beyoncé's show-stealing performance of her new song "Run The World (Girls)."

Prepaid cards attract money launderers

BOGOTA, Colombia – Forget bulk cash. Heavy and hard to hide, it's simply not the most convenient cross-border conveyance for a 21st-century money launderer.
A safer and increasingly attractive alternative for today's criminal is electronic cash loaded on what are called stored-value or prepaid cards. Getting them doesn't require a bank account, and many types can be used anonymously.
U.S. crimefighters consider the cards a burgeoning threat that regulators haven't adequately addressed.
In the past year, said John Tobon, a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the cards have become the preferred means of paying couriers who transport illicit drugs across the U.S.
No one knows how big a role the cards play in moving the more than $20 billion in drug earnings that U.S. authorities estimate crosses from the U.S. to Mexico annually. Yet while anyone crossing that border with $10,000 or more in cash must declare it, prepaid cards are legally exempt.

'i3D' Demo App Shows Off Head-Tracking 3D on iOS Devices

Last month, French researchers Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay posted a videoshowing off a method for using head tracking by a device's camera to simulate three-dimensional scenes for the iPad, a concept in which Apple has expressed some interest. 

Internet rules at center of 'e-G8' forum in Paris

PARIS – France wants better regulation of the Internet. Google's executive chairman says policymakers should tread lightly and avoid "stupid" rules.

Bridging such differences about how the Internet could or should be more regulated took center stage Tuesday at an "e-G8" meeting aimed to parlay the digital world's growing economic clout into a cohesive message for world leaders at the Group of Eight summit later this week in Normandy.

The two-day Paris gathering has brought together Internet and media world gurus such as Google Inc. executive chairman Eric Schmidt, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And the discussion includes issues such as protecting children from "evil stuff" on line, preventing illegal downloading of copyrighted materials and shielding Facebook users from unsolicited invitations.

The e-G8 comes amid concerns in the industry that some countries — including several in Europe such as France — have taken measures or enacted laws that could curb Internet freedoms.

Cray's XK6 super kicks out Opterons for Nvidia GPUs

Supercomputer maker Cray has finally jumped on the GPU coprocessor bandwagon, and it looks like someone is going to have to hitch Belgian draft horses to that wagon and reinforce its axles once the XK6 hybrid super starts shipping in the fall.

Cray made a name for itself as a provider of vector processors back in the 1970s and morphed into a maker of massively parallel x64 machines with proprietary interconnects in the 1990s. With GPUs – whether they are made by Nvidia or AMD – being more like vector engines than not, the adoption of a GPU as a coprocessor is a return to its past. Or more precisely, considering that Cray is really Tera Computer plus Cray Research plus Octiga Bay, one of its pasts.

Image of the Day: Awesome Star Wars-themed mobile food truck

That Candy Land movie will be like LOTR ... but with candy. Really.

Ever heard the phrase "Two great tastes that taste great together"? While we're not certain it applies here, you've got to admit that imagining Christopher Lee playing Lord Licorice is the kind of funny that, once seen, cannot be unseen.

Maybe that's exactly what screenwriter Jonathan Aibel was going for when he announced what his epic board game movie would be like:

nsanely realistic sculpture of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin

Everybody's always complaining about that "uncanny valley"—robots or other re-creations looking almost human but not entirely human so that the gap between the two creeps us out. Yet sometimes erasing that gap can be just as creepy.

Scientists reach a record 26Tbps by laser

Researchers have used a single laser to transmit data at a 26 terabits per second over an optical fiber cable, a data-transmission breakthrough that promises to come in useful for cloud computing and 3D TV transmissions.

The transmission is biggest volume of data ever carried by a laser beam, according to the group of scientists, led by Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. With the demonstration, which sent the equivalent of 200,000 high-resolution images across 50 kilometers in one second, the researchers said they had broken their own record of 10Tbps, set in 2010.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest line rate ever encoded onto a single light source," the researchers said in an announcement yesterday.

Read more of "Scientists hit record-breaking 26Tbps by laser" at ZDNet UK.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-20065615-76.html#ixzz1NI9KMzvj

Modder stuffs a crazy powerful PC into a desk

What computer is all glass and aluminum and looks sexy as hell? No, it's not an iMac; it's this "L3P D3SK" made by a fella named Peter from the Netherlands. Yep, he shoved an entire computing rig directly into a desk. In terms of style points, the L3P D3SK beats the pants off this PC in a desk.

$1 billion Star Trek resort promises 23rd century experiences

Now that Disney World has its own Star Wars "Star Tours" attraction, what about Star Trek fans? Fans of Captain Kirk and Spock will have to travel to Aqaba, Jordan to get their Dilithium crystal fix.

Rubicon Group Holding's $1 billion, 184-acre "Red Sea Astrarium" is a resort with a Star Trek twist. According to Hotelier MiddleEast, RGH and Paramount Recreation are working closely to create a Star Trek attraction that will "deliver a variety of multi-sensory 23rd-century experiences, culminating with a state-of-the art space-flight adventure that takes real-time immersive entertainment experiences to bold new heights." That and it's inspired by the 2009 J.J. Abrams' Star Trek flick. Yikes, wasn't that a total disaster? (Then again, I'm more of a Star Wars kind of guy).

Maker Faire 2011

Maker Faire took place in San Mateo, CA this weekend. If you're not familiar with Maker Faire, it's a place where people who make cool stuff come to show it off. "Cool stuff" is a fairly broad category, and you'll find all kinds of weird and wild stuff at Maker Faire.

Most of it isn't for sale, and some of it has no practical purpose at all, but who cares! Here's a gallery of a bunch of the best stuff that we saw over the weekend. PHOTOS

Via Maker Faire

Dot for iPhone 4 makes it easy to see the world in 360-degrees

Shooting panoramic videos usually requires several cameras and a lot of post-processing to piece the vids together. Those days are over. Kogeto's Dot attachment for the iPhone 4 lets anyone easily capture pano vids without having to break the bank.

Image of the Day: subway map of Microsoft's empire

If you've ever wondered about Microsoft's acquisitions and investments, this infographic was made for you. And not only is it informative, but Robin Richards designed it as a subway map — a convoluted mess of lines that look pretty darn awesome. 

Alleged ‘Social Network Spy’ Returns

It was barely a month ago that a military contractor deleted her bikini-clad avatars after her online friends in the security world accused her of trying to tease out sensitive information. But now the social media phenomenon known as Primoris Era is back, writing for a prominent seapower blog.

The self-proclaimed “First Lady of Missiles” is now blogging pseudonymously for Information Dissemination, a naval strategy blog run by Danger Room pal Raymond Pritchett. Primoris Era’s hiatus from the Internet, prompted by a Defense Department investigation into whether she violated security protocols, is officially over.

Attack Helos in Libya Mean Deadly Days Ahead – For Everyone

The two-month-old civil war in Libya is about to get a lot deadlier, for both sides.

In a bid to break a weeks-long stalemate in Libya, France and the U.K. have simultaneously made a portentous decision. Both countries are deploying tank-busting attack helicopters from their respective amphibious ships, currently sailing off the Libyan coast.

“What we want is to better tailor our ability to strike on the ground with ways that allow more accurate hits,” said French diplomat Alain Juppe.

The Pentagon Confronts New Enemy: Rust

It scours the bottom of Navy ships, invades the crevices of Air Force jets and costs the Defense Department $23 billion a year. It’s not a clandestine agent or biological weapon. In fact, it’s in your home right now.

It’s rust.

Apparently, rust is pretty expensive (and ugly). Fighting corrosion costs over 3 percent of the national GDP, or about $1,000 per person per year. The Defense Department estimates that it will spend $114.5 billion over the next five years on the nasty nuisance.

Sony announced world’s first 16.41 Megapixel Exmor R™ CMOS image sensors for mobile phones

Sony announced the commercialization of two new “Exmor R” back-illuminated CMOS image sensors with dramatically improved photographic performance including significantly high sensitivity and low noise. In addition, Sony will launch two new lens modules equipped with these image sensors, which also include the smallest and thinnest*1 model for mobile phones. This is also the first time that “Exmor R” is commercialized for the use in mobile phones. The Exmor R™ CMOS Sensor inside selected Cyber-shot™digital cameras and Handycam® camcorders captures extraordinarily detailed pictures even in low-light. Exmor R™ CMOS Sensortechnology by Sony lets you enjoy fabulous, low noise images in all shooting conditions. VIDEO QUALITY (Low Light) EXAMPLE

'Combustible Dust' Plant Explosion May Cost Apple 500,000 iPads

It looks like dust—that's right, dust—was responsible for a deadly explosion at a Chinese factory that supplies Apple iPads. The blast, which happened last Friday (pictured above) killed three workers and injured 15 others.

Not just any dust, say Chinese investigators, but something called "combustible dust." Yep, I had to look that one up, too.

Apple gadgets gobble 80 percent of mobile video

Apple's mobile devices are dominating the wireless video-viewing marketplace, a new report from video service provider FreeWheel has found.

According to the company in its Monetization Report, which tallies over 10 billion video views, 30 percent of all videos FreeWheel analyzed during the first quarter were watched on the iPhone. Another 30 percent of viewers used the iPod to watch video content while on the go. Apple's iPadsecured 20 percent market share, bringing the company's total video viewership in the first quarter to 80 percent.

Android accounted for 20 percent of the market during the period.