Perv: The Cat (Short Film)

A sexy short comedy, following an everyman about to score with the woman of his dreams who goes to extreme measures to escape the mysterious curiosity of Perv: The Cat.

James Bonds pitted against each other in viral video

(AP Photo/File)We all know James Bond is unkillable. He's survived explosions, deadly top hats, a henchman with metal teeth, and high-powered lasers aimed directly at his nether regions. The only person who could possibly put 007 out of commission is, well, another 007.

So, what happens when Sean Connery's Bond faces Daniel Craig's? What about Roger Moore versus Pierce Brosnan?

Video editor Brad Hansen answers those questions by seamlessly splicing together clips from various Bond adventures. All 007s participate in a multi-round duel to the death (yes, even Lazenby). Who gets the better of whom?

Chrysler Profit Rises 80 Percent

DETROIT – Chrysler said its third-quarter profit rose 80 percent on the strength of new models, less debt and steadily growing sales in both American and international markets.

The third-largest Detroit carmaker said Monday that it earned $381 million in net income, up from $212 million in the same period a year ago. Revenue for the quarter was $15.5 billion, an 18 percent increase from $13.1 billion in the same period last year.

The results could be seen as the latest evidence that Chrysler’s improbable comeback from its government bailout and bankruptcy was not only sustainable, but accelerating.

“We’ve changed the conversation at Chrysler Group,” said Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of both Chrysler and its Italian parent, Fiat. “We continue to work feverishly and are pleased to see that our all-consuming aspiration for excellence is translating into results.”

At least 50 flooded houses destroyed by NYC fire

NEW YORK (AP) — A huge fire has destroyed at least 50 homes in a flooded neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens.

More than 190 firefighters were trying to contain the blaze in the Breezy Point section and two people have suffered minor injuries, a fire department spokesman said.

Sandy leaves death, damp and darkness in wake

NEW YORK (AP) — As Superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark.

New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center.President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the city and Long Island.

The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at least 16 people in seven states, cut power to more than 7.4 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio, caused scares at two nuclear power plants and stopped the presidential campaign cold.

Apple software, retail chiefs out in sweeping overhaul

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook on Monday replaced the heads of its software and retail units in the company's most sweeping executive shake-up in a decade following embarrassing problems with its new mapping program and unpopular store-related decisions.

Software chief Scott Forstall, who oversaw the launch of the flawed mapping software and much criticized Siri voice-enabled assistant, will leave Apple next year and serve as an advisor to Cook in the meantime.

Forstall, seen as a polarizing figure inside Apple, had been billed as one of the future candidates to take the top job at Apple. He was the executive behind the panned Apple Maps app that the company announced with much fanfare in summer.

IBM brings carbon nanotube-based computers a step closer

IBM's technique can arrange single carbon nanotubes -- and sometimes pairs -- between two electrical contacts. It's an essential part of making a transistor in which a nanotube leads from a source on one side to a drain on the other. At left in this is an image of a chip designed to test the technology electrically; at right is a close-up of the nanotubes stretching from one electrical contact to another.

(Credit: IBM) In the effort to find a replacement for today's silicon chips, IBM researchers have pushed carbon nanotube technology a significant step ahead.
Carbon nanotubes are very small structures made of a lattice of carbon atoms rolled into a cylindrical shape, and a team of eight researchers have figured out a way to precisely place them on a computer chip, IBM announced today. That development allows them to arrange the nanotubes 100 times more densely than earlier methods, a key step in economical chipmaking, and IBM has built a chip with more than 10,000 carbon nanotube-based elements.

Felix Baumgartner: Mars is a waste of your tax dollars

 
Felix Baumgartner hasn't stopped leaping.
The man who chose to risk his life on behalf of mankind and a caffeinated drink, wants you to know that sending little machines to Mars is a pointless exercise.
Yes, you might have thought that the famed sky-leaper would be in favor of any sort of spatial exploration.
But, no. In an interview with the Telegraph he made it clear that the Mars money could be spent more wisely.

Burglar uses iPhone as flashlight, accidentally records the crime

 
If you're going to burgle a house, iPhones can be very useful.
Sadly, for 23-year-old Emmanuel Jerome, his iPhone was useful to the police as well as himself.
Being of evidently subtle mind, Jerome decided not to turn the lights on at a home he and some of his friends burgled. Instead, he apparently used his iPhone as a flashlight.

Walking Dead's Rick on his 'incredibly brutal' S3 machete-wielding

 

There's no denying that Rick Grimes, the protagonist of AMC's The Walking Dead, has taken a turn since he first rode a horse into Atlanta looking for his wife and son after waking up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse two seasons ago.
[Spoiler alert!]
In fact, he may just be moving from the "hero" to "anti-hero" category now that he's killed countless Walkers, blown away two dangerous human types in a bar, killed his best friend Shane, macheted a former inmate and hacked off Hershel's leg to keep him from turning into a Walker.
It's been one tough road for the former lawman and his small band of survivors as they hunt for safe haven and possibly find it in a prison after eight months on the run, and English actor Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick, is thrilled to see the evolution, or maybe de-evolution, of his character.

9 over-the-top horror films so disgusting that they got banned

 

What if you made a killer horror movie and nobody came to watch? These offensive titles had a rough time getting into theaters and some are still being kicked to the curb. For the 28th of our 31 Days of Halloween feature, have a peek at this lurid list of banned and blacklisted fright flicks from over the years.

Super creepy deep-sea noises…what's going on down there??

 

There's a lot going on in the deep sea — things that make noises creepy enough to make the perfect Halloween soundtrack. Screeching, mysterious 'bloops', the unlikely call of a train whistle, and other sounds picked up by underwater microphones are all delightfully haunting.

LG Launches 84-Inch, Ultra HD Television at $19,999

If you are the type personality that just has to have the biggest and baddest product on the market, I hope you have very deep pockets. If you want to impress your friends with a new 84" Ultra High Def TV, you are going to have to cough up some serious bucks.

According to LG’s site, there are currently no online retailers stocking the television yet and it can only be purchased at a handful of high-end home theater stores.

Steve Jobs’ High-Tech Yacht Makes Its Debut

One of Steve Jobs last projects has been completed. The yacht Steve Jobs envisioned and helped design has made its appearance a little over a year after his death. The design is sleek and described as minimalistic, much like the design interior of his Apple Stores. The yacht has been christened ‘Venus’. Thanks to Forum member !@#$%^&*() for the link.

Is the Era of Gaming Console Declining?

Predictions have the gaming console industry reaching its peak this year and beginning its inevitable decline. The console is by no means dead, at least not right away, but analysts see the decline as an opportunity for the evolution of the gaming console. But what form it will evolve into is the big question.

Your smartphone is quickly getting to the point where its hardware could display good-looking games in 1080p on your television, and it won’t be long before your phone and TV can sync up without cables.

Sandy: East Coast braces for epic hurricane, ‘life-threatening’ storm surge

 

"Superstorm." "The Perfect Storm." "Frankenstorm."

Whatever you want to call it, the East Coast is bracing for Hurricane Sandy, a "rare hybrid storm" that is expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge to the mid-Atlantic coast, Long Island Sound and New York harbor, forecasters say, with winds expected to be at or near hurricane force when it makes landfall sometime on Monday.

Unlocking Your Smartphone Will Soon be Illegal

For the next three years at least, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) will have new exemptions concerning what you can and cannot do with your hand held devices. The new rules go into effect on October 28th.

Clearly, some of these new rules (no jailbreaking tablets, no ripping DVDs so you can watch them on tablets, no unlocking phones without permission) are ridiculous from a user standpoint.

AMD Expected to Unveil ARM-Based Server on Monday

Amid speculation of the ‘doom and gloom’ rumors concerning the nature of AMD’s announced news conference on Monday, informed sources have said that the news conference will be to announce the plans for an ARM-based SeaMicro 64-bit processor design server.

It probably wouldn't be the only company with such a product. Hewlett-Packard and Dell are just two of the vendors that are also pursuing ARM-based servers, as the industry looks to reduce power consumption in data centers.

Drug Cartel Kingpin’s Death May Make the Zetas Even Deadlier

When Mexican marines killed the leader of the Zetas earlier this month, they killed the only person capable of holding Mexico’s most dangerous cartel together. But instead of collapsing, the cartel could become even more dangerous. That’s the conclusion reached in an upcoming report from West Point.

“I think it will be harder to detect and determine who the heads are of these smaller groups, and by that defeat them,” Samuel Logan, the director of intelligence firm Southern Pulse and the report’s author, tells Danger Room. The reason why involves the complex and shifting allegiances and economics of Mexico’s drug trade, and the risks in killing or capturing drug lords. Like insurgent warlords, killing one can provoke more bloodshed as rivals scramble to fill the vacuum.

Man Who Sued Facebook Faces Criminal Charges

I think we all saw this coming. I guess this puts a damper on his claim of owning half of Facebook. 

The businessman sued Facebook and its CEO in 2010 claiming a 2003 contract he signed with Zuckerberg, then a Harvard University student, entitled him to a stake in the social media company. This past March, as part of that case, Facebook released emails sent by Zuckerberg around the time of the contract to show Ceglia's claims were false. Ceglia used the federal court system to perpetuate his fraud and will now be held accountable for his criminal scheme.

One Million Email Addresses For Five Dollars

Ever wonder how much your e-mail address is worth? If you guessed $5 per million you are the winner (or loser, depending on how you look at it)!

That’s the rate paid by Bogomil Shopov, a Bulgarian blogger and digital rights activist, for a collection of 1.1 million Facebook names, user IDs, and emails posted to the social marketing site Gigbucks earlier this month for a grand total of five dollars. "I just bought more than 1 million… Facebook data entries," Shopov wrote on his blog Tuesday. "OMG!"

Apple's Schiller: 'Old technologies are holding us back'

With Tuesday's unveiling of the iPad Mini and a fourth-generation full-sized iPad, this has been a major week for the iPad. On Friday, Windows 8 went on sale — making it an even bigger week for Windows PCs.
But this newsiest of tech news weeks also turns out to be a reasonably significant one for the Mac. Much of Apple's Tuesday event was devoted to new models, including a substantial overhaul of the 13″ MacBook Pro with a Retina display, two absurdly thin new iMacs and an updated Mac Mini.

Watch a Robotic Navy Boat Shoot Missiles for the First Time Ever

Killer robots have officially gone out to sea. For the first time, the Navy has fired missiles from a remote-controlled boat, as shown in the video above.

The firing came as part of a test off the Maryland coast on Wednesday. Six of Rafael’s anti-armor Spike missiles got fired off a moving inflatable hulled watercraft, aiming for a floating target about two miles away. The missile firings and the boat’s controls were all handled remotely by Navy personnel on shore at the Navy’s Patuxent River base.

Testing out Texas's new superhighway with a 220 mph run

The state of Texas just opened a stretch of highway with the highest speed limit in the United States, so to test out its toll collection systems, they asked Texas-based car tuner John Hennessey to give it a high-speed blast.

He showed up with a Cadillac that pumps out 1,226 horsepower, and proceeded to fly past the toll machines at speeds reaching as high as 220.5 miles per hour. The high speed section of SH-130 connects San Antonio and Austin, but authorities were concerned that a 85-mph speed limit might be too high for the TxTag toll readers to work properly.

Oakley unveils Airwave ski goggles equipped with Recon's MOD Live heads-up display, iOS app

Remember late last year when Recon Instruments introduced its MOD Live Android-enabled heads-up display for the likes of ski goggles?Joining the ranks of other optics makers, Oakley's partnered with the company to seamlessly integrate the augmented-reality unit into its own goggles, dubbed Airwave. It's not just another shell for the system, either, as Oakley will be providing a companion app that'll work with iOS -- which seems to be first official instance as such since Recon itself said it would be coming earlier this year.

Send all of your garbage to Sweden, please

Let this be a lesson to you, American voters: when you live in a highly developed ultra modern welfare state like Sweden, with excellent healthcare and many other public benefits, the system is secretly so unstable and broken that the entire country is desperately trying to import trash.

How to eat fresh raw Triceratops: an illustrated guide

As you have probably never suspected, there is a right way, and a wrong way, to go about eating Triceratops. Since Triceratops have been extinct for, oh, 65 million years (give or take), we haven't been able to do much in the way of culinary experimentin' on them. But Tyrannosaurus had millions of years, and we've now learned its secrets.

It's fairly common for paleontologists to find Tyrannosaurus bite marks on Triceratopsbones, but nobody had ever taken a comprehensive look at lots of different bite-scarred bones all at once until Denver Fowler from the Museum of the Rockies did and published his results in the latest issue of Nature.

Video shows what a REAL Viking sword fight would have looked like

As fantasy nerds, it probably goes without saying that we really dig sword fights. But it also probably goes without saying that the fights we see in, say, Game of Thrones andThe Lord of the Rings aren't particularly true to life. As these two historical fight choreographers show, things were actually much messier.

NOAA to East: Beware of coming 'Frankenstorm' - Sandy

WASHINGTON (AP) — An unusual nasty mix of a hurricane and awinter storm that forecasters are now calling "Frankenstorm" is likely to blast most of the East Coast next week, focusing the worst of its weather mayhem around New York City and New Jersey.

Government forecasters on Thursday upped the odds of a major weather mess, now saying there's a 90 percent chance that the East will get steady gale-force winds, heavy rain, flooding and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Halloween on Wednesday.

Meteorologists say it is likely to cause $1 billion in damage.

Drone of silence: the national-security policy that Obama and Romney won’t debate

Robert Gibbs was holding court in the press room at last week’s second presidential debate at Hofstra University. The former White House press secretary turned senior adviser to the Obama campaign had a single-minded mission of boosting the president to quote-obsessed reporters. So it is easy to imagine Gibbs’ exasperation when he began being hectored by video journalists from the activist groupWe Are Change.

Their recently released three-minute video of the encounter is mostly familiar footage of a campaign mouthpiece trying to deflect off-message questions from unknown reporters. Asked about drone attacks, Gibbs retreated to the kind of non-responsive answer that he used to deliver from the lectern in the White House press room: “When there are people who are trying to harm us -- and have pledged to bring terror to these shores -- we've taken that fight to them."

What came next is what makes this press room face-off sadlyemblematic of larger truths. The question involved the drone killing a year ago in Yemen of a United States citizen, the 16-year-old son of American-born cleric and al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki.

Apple CEO Compares Surface To A Flying Car

What do you say about a competitor's product that you've never used? How about that it is confusing....like a car that flies and floats. Ummm, what?!?

It's a "fairly compromised, confusing product," said Cook, who added that he hasn't used one yet. "One of the toughest things you do with what product to make, is to make hard trade-offs and decide what a product should be, and we've really done that with the iPad, so the user experience is incredible. I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I don't think it would do all of those things very well."

Milky way PHOTO

This is easily the coolest nine billion pixel image you will see all day.

This striking view of the central parts of the Milky Way was obtained with the VISTA survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This huge picture is 108 500 by 81 500 pixels and contains nearly nine billion pixels.

With ‘Safe Haven,’ Desktop Weaponeers Resume Work on 3D-Printed Guns

Three weeks after a group of desktop gunsmiths had its leaded 3D printer seized by the digital manufacturing firm that owned it, the weaponeers have quietly restarted plans to build a gun entirely of printed parts. The group has also begun expanding their operation with outside help, including space for ballistics testing provided by a mysterious firm involved in the defense industry.

Cody Wilson, founder of the Wiki Weapon project, tells Danger Room that the unnamed company’s owner “wanted to offer me a safe haven, basically.” Wilson describes the company as a “private defense firm” in San Antonio, Texas, but the company’s owner is wary of negative publicity and Wilson doesn’t want to reveal the firm’s name without consent.

“We’ve got basically a space where we can do experiments. Ballistics, basically. So it’s not quite a range — we’ve got a range — but we’ve got floor space where we can literally test the guns and set up instrumentation,” Wilson says.

A shooting at a spa near a Brookfield, Wis.

GRESHAM, Ore. (AP) — Searchers found the body of a young Oregon woman who vanished this week on her way to work and a neighbor has been arrested, Gresham police said late Friday night.

The body of Whitney Heichel, 21, was found on Larch Mountain, a remote, forested area east of Gresham, Police Chief Craig Jungingertold a news conference.

Shooting at spa in Wisconsin: 4 dead, including gunman, police say

A shooting at a spa near a Brookfield, Wis., mall on Sunday left four dead--including the shooter--and four others wounded, police said. The suspected gunman, 45-year-old Radcliffe Haughton, of Brown Deer, Wis., was later found dead inside.

The shooting occurred at the Azana Spa across the street from the Brookfield Square Mall at approximately 11:15 a.m. local time, police said. Inside the spa, police found what appeared to be an improvised explosive device (IED), and a bomb squad was called in as officials worked to clear the two-story building.

NKorea threatens to attack SKorea over leaflets

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's military has threatened to strike a South Korean border area where anti-Pyongyang activists plan to launch leaflets from balloons next week. South Korea immediately vowed to retaliate if attacked.

North Korea has made similar threats without following through. Its vow on Friday came a day after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak warned against provocation as he made a surprise visit to a front-line island shelled by North Korea in 2010.

Secret Soviet bunker gets transformed into a Russian hipster club

With all those old Soviet-era military facilities lying empty in Russia, so many of them get repurposed into the type of facility that the old Politburo would never have approved of. This gigantic structure, called Bunker 42, lies about 200 feet under the downtown Moscow streets, and has been transformed into something that looks like it's equal parts Star Wars bar and spacecraft from the movie 2001.

Nissan is developing car upholstery that feels like human skin

It's pretty creepy sounding, but instead of going all Ed Gein on us, Nissan engineers are working to develop synthetic materials that can replicate the touch and feel of a human finger.

Ford closes Belgian plant in 2014; 9,500 jobs hit

BRUSSELS (AP) — Ford Motor Co. announced Wednesday it planned to close a car plant in eastern Belgium — one of its main European factories — by the end of 2014, a move that would result in 4,500 direct job losses and 5,000 more among subcontractors.

Exactly half a century after construction on the Genk plant started, Ford told a management council there that production was winding down since slumping European sales has forced a restructuring of its plants.

Stuff Android Fanatics Say

This "Stuff Android Fanatics Say" video is just as funny as the iPhone version we posted awhile back, if not funnier. 

Is Windows 8 A Make-Or-Break Moment For Ballmer?

Personally, I think Ballmer is going to be around for a long time but, who knows, maybe Windows 8 really is going to be a make-or-break milestone for Microsoft's CEO. What do you think?

"This is going to be his defining moment," said technology industry analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. Ballmer's "legacy will be looked at as what he did or didn't do with Windows 8. If Windows 8 is not a success, a lot of people will be looking for Microsoft to make a change at the CEO level."

The Hobbit rules them all with these 5 new stunning mag covers

Empire Online has released five new amazing The Hobbit magazine covers in order to celebrate the upcoming and highly anticipated The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. And we've got a fantastic, stunning look at five important characters from the movie.

What NOT to expect from Iron Man 3's Mandarin and those ten rings

Over the past two years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has gotten more ... alien. It's all part of the studios' plan to rope in new otherworldly characters. But their next sequel,Iron Man 3, will go in a different direction. 

Next summer, Tony Stark's back with another solo adventure. Judging from the film's trailer, he'll be attacked on all fronts led by the evil Mandarin. If you're familiar with the comics, you know that name is synonymous with the Ten Rings. And yes, he wears them in the movie, but they'll be nowhere near as powerful.

Missile fries enemy electronic systems as it zooms past - CHAMP

Most military weapons systems rely on sophisticated electronics for control, so if you can somehow knock out the circuits, the weapons will become useless. A new type of missile tested last week by Boeing and the USAF exploits this vulnerability, by zapping selected buildings with microwave energy so powerful that all electronics inside will stop working.

The Apple-ization Of Microsoft

Is Microsoft really planning to sell a branded smartphone? I'd be surprised to hear otherwise.

Indeed, as the company prepares for what might be the most critical series of announcements in its 37-year history, the question isn't whether it's planning its own Windows Phone. Rather, it's what Microsoft hopes to gain by releasing it.

Zynga cuts 5 percent of work force, ending 13 games

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Zynga Inc has laid off 5 percent of its full-time workforce and shut its Boston office, launching a sweeping overhaul that may also see the struggling "FarmVille" creator close its Japanese and British offices.

(Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith)The company, which is trying to arrest a steep decline in earnings as users gradually migrate onto mobile devices or rival games, plans to "sunset" 13 unspecified older titles, Chief Executive Mark Pincus said in a staff memo on Tuesday.

The company provided Reuters with a copy of the message to employees, which came a day before the struggling game-maker was due to report third-quarter earnings.

Pincus added that Zynga would significantly pull back its investment in "The Ville" game - a major recent initiative - and scale back on its Austin, Texas studio as it sought to cut costs. He also said the company is "proposing" the closure of its Japanese and British offices.

Watch Darpa’s Rescue Robot Jump, Climb and Dodge Obstacles

Robots aren’t often athletic. But in this new video, a prototype version of a robot sponsored by the Pentagon’s blue-sky researchers climbs over wooden blocks, jumps while maintaining its balance, and climbs up stairs — the kinds of athletic tasks that Darpa wants robots to perform in order to aid with disaster relief.

High School Ring Returned 50 Years Later

Scuba diver Brad Swain found a high school class ring at the bottom of a New Hampshire lake nearly 50 years ago, and spent about 40 years tracking down its owner.

Earlier this month, the freshly cleaned and polished ring - a gold band with a blue stone - was delivered to a surprised and delighted woman in Florida.

When Swain, now 68, of Glastonbury, Conn., was in his early twenties, he was snorkeling in Lake Winnipesaukee where his family has vacationed since 1948, and came across the ring in the shallow water. He doesn't remember exactly which year he found the ring, but knows it was "sometime between 1962 and 1965."

Pentagon’s Newest ‘Humanoid’ Walks as Awkwardly as You Do

It’s not going to dance Gangnam Style any time soon. But in order to help sailors extinguish shipboard fires, the Navy’s newest robot has to learn how to move as awkwardly as real people do.

This is the Autonomous Shipboard Humanoid, or ASH, the latest robotic creation from Dennis Hong’s team at Virginia Tech. ASH is based on Hong’s award-winning (and Gangnam-dancing) CHARLI-2, a highly mobile, 4-foot-tall ‘bot. Only ASH is going to have a major upgrade from CHARLI-2: titanium springs in his legs and butt that act like human muscles. No more will robots amble stiffly like, er, robots.

What clinched Ian McKellen's return for the Hobbit?

Making a film series like The Hobbit is a huge commitment. If you doubt it, just ask Ian McKellen, who briefly considered not returning to his role as Gandalf before realizing the reason he had to return.

Holy 007! THIS GUY could be the next James Bond

Most would admit that Daniel Craig has done a capable job as the latest version of famed British spy James Bond, but apparently the studio is already thinking ahead to who could replace him—and one proposal would be a major change for the character.

Paraplegic survives 3 days stranded in NM desert

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A paraplegic man who says he was stranded in the New Mexico desert without his wheelchair dragged himself about four miles down a dirt road over three days before a motorist stopped to help him.

Tattered and dirty, Ricky Gilmore's blue jeans tell part of the story. His body tells the rest — the skin on his left leg and buttocks is shredded, his wrist is sprained and his kidneys are in bad shape from going without food and water.

B&N: PIN pad tampering was "sophisticated" crime

NEW YORK (AP) — Barnes & Noble Inc. said Wednesday that the tampering of devices used by customers to swipe credit and debit cards in 63 of its stores was a "sophisticated criminal effort" to steal information, and reiterated it's working with federal law enforcement authorities.

The nation's largest bookseller late Tuesday disclosed the data breach in stores in California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and warned customers to check for unauthorized transactions and to change their personal identification numbers, or PINs.

Artist draws gadgets with human guts

If artist Mads Peitersen ran the world, I wouldn't be telling you about the iPad Mini, but instead the new bioPhone 5, with a dual-valve processor and twice the intestinal track length of previous generations. Also, Apple now covers cracked bioPhone ribs under Apple Care. It's a bold new world!

Safety Becomes a Concern With High-Caffeine Drinks

Among the latest entrants in the energy industry’s caffeine race is a pocket-size squeeze bottle called Mio Energy.

Each half-teaspoon serving of Mio, which is sold by Kraft Foods, releases 60 milligrams of caffeine in a beverage, the amount in a six-ounce cup of coffee, the company says. But one size of the bottle, which users can repeatedly squeeze, contains 18 servings, or 1,060 milligrams, of caffeine — more than enough, health specialists say, to sicken children and some adults, and even send some of them to the hospital.

Watch Spielberg + Williams perfect the E.T. theme in 1981 video

The theme to E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is a classic tune that can immediately invoke a wave of nostalgia for a generation of Steven Spielberg fans. But before it was tugging our heartstrings, Spielberg and composer John Williams were banging that sucker out on a piano to make it sound just right.

Algebra proves useful after all, boosts Wi-Fi speed by 16x

Listen up, kids: stay in school. Learn algebra. It may seem utterly useless, and 415.8 / x = 4.2 percent of the time, it is. But just wait until you're trying to play a game or stream a video over a terrible wireless connection, 'cause with the magic of algebra, you can boost your Wi-Fi speed by a factor of 10 or 20 or more.

The reason that terrible Wi-Fi connections are terrible isn't usually related to slow speeds inherent in the connection itself: most of the time, the thing to blame is packet loss. Packets are individual little chunks of data that are flowing all the time between your wireless router (or a cell tower) and your smartphone or laptop or whatever.

Canon 5D Mark III update to unlock high-end HDMI video

Canon plans to release a notable firmware update to its high-end EOS 5D Mark III in April that will let videographers use the SLR to record uncompressed HDMI video.

As the successor to the 5D Mark II that jump-started the video SLR revolution four years ago, the 22-megapixel 5D3 has big shoes to fill. The new update surely will help professionals who need better quality, even if ordinary folks need not care much. Here's what Canon had to say about the news:

When shooting video, HDMI Output makes possible the recording of high-definition uncompressed video data (YCbCr 4:2:2, 8 bit) from the EOS 5D Mark III to an external recorder via the camera's HDMI terminal. This, in turn, facilitates the editing of video data with minimal image degradation for greater on-site workflow efficiency during motion picture and video productions. Additionally, video being captured can be displayed on an external monitor, enabling real-time, on-site monitoring of high-definition video during shooting.

If you're not familiar with the mumbo-jumbo, 4:2:2 refers to the camera's "chroma subsampling" behavior, and it's a significant step up from the 5D Mark III's current firmware, which compresses video down to 4:2:0 for HDMI output.

Videocameras capture both color and brightness information, but typically don't capture color information for every pixel. Moving from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 means the camera records color information for twice as many pixels. (Adobe Systems has a good explanation of chroma subsampling if you're curious.)

Instant iPad obsolescence

An astute friend of mine once satirically defined our age of seemingly instant obsolescence: just buy and thro-o-o-ow it away. At first blush, it's funny because it can't be true — you don't buy something and then just throw it away. But after Apple's iPad press event Tuesday I'm not so sure.

Seven months ago, Apple unveiled the most advanced tablet PC extant, featuring its most advanced processor and the highest resolution screen on any device of any kind ever. But in less time than it took to complete a baseball season, iPad 3 is now not only old news, but it soon will disappear as if it never existed.

Could this be who Michael Bay wants as the star of Transformers 4?

Whether you want it or not, Transformers 4 is happening. Michael Bay is wasting no time finding a new face for the franchise. Instead of going with a young unknown, the director's eyeing a more established actor.

Twitch is reporting that Mark Wahlberg is in early talks to star in the robot sequel. The actor recently worked with Bay on his bodybuilding project Pain and Gain, which is under the Paramount umbrella—like Transformers. The screenplay will be written by Ehren Kruger, who wrote Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Why did Apple launch the iPad 4 now?

Apple's release of another new iPad this year has many scratching their heads. But Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty sees method behind the madness.

In an investors note out yesterday, Huberty ticked off three reasons why the company unveiled the iPad 4 so soon after its predecessor, which arrived earlier this year.

Netflix CEO Says He's 'Tired of Making Excuses'

And the "Quote of the Day" is brought to you by the guy running Netflix.

"You're very gracious, because I imagine what you really feel is 'Why do we make seasonality excuses and then Olympics excuses and aren't you getting tired of hearing it?'" Hastings said. "We are tired of making those excuses, as opposed to getting back to our track record."

More people are using Wi-Fi names to tell off their neighbors

We thought we knew all we'd ever need to know about naming a wireless network. Don't use your name or address — basically, just stay away from using personal information at all. Pretty standard, right?

Not anymore. This simple setup step is being used increasingly for a secondary, and much more sinister purpose: To send (pretty hilarious) passive-aggressive messages to neighbors with semi-anonymity.

Prototype device creates gasoline out of thin air

You've got to give it to those boffins over on that island of theirs: despite the funny way they talk, they're damn clever. A British company called Air Fuel Synthesis has apparently (apparently) developed a system that harvests carbon dioxide and water vapor straight out of the air and turns it into gasoline that you can put straight into your car. Um, wow.

This seems crazy, but according to an article in The Independent, Air Fuel Synthesis has a process that does, uh, air fuel synthesis that's been operating since August. The refinery combines water vapor and carbon dioxide, taking hydrogen from the water and combining it with carbon in the CO2 and a catalyst to create methanol, which is run through a bioreactor to turn it into gasoline. In some sense, it's just combustion in reverse, and it's the same basic trick that plants use to make a living as well, meaning that it confers the additional advantage of scrubbing the atmosphere of CO2 as it goes.

Get your 1st look at Cheadle and Pearce in 2nd Iron Man 3 teaser

It's a good week for Iron Man fans. We're just hours away from the premiere of Iron Man 3's first trailer, and we've already gotten a peek at the villain and a few seconds of awesome teaser footage. But one teaser just wasn't enough. Another clip has just hit the 'net, and it's got some new faces.

Listen: Whale mimics human speech

According to a study published in the October issue of Current Biology entitled "Spontaneous human speech mimicry by a cetacean," whales can talk.

Not to burst your bubble ring or anything, but now that we've suckered you in, let's clarify what we mean by "talk."

A beluga whale named "NOC" (he was named for an incredibly annoying sort ofCanadian gnat), that lived at the National Marine Mammal Foundation (NMMF) in San Diego up until his death five years ago, had been heard making some weird kinds of vocalizations. At first, nobody was sure that it was him: divers heard what sounded like "two people were conversing in the distance just out of range for our understanding." But then one day, a diver in NOC's tank left the water after clearly hearing someone tell him to get out. It wasn't someone, though: it was somewhale, and that somewhale was NOC.

RESTORATION OF DEFOCUSED AND BLURRED IMAGES

How many times have you rushed to grab a picture of something amazing happening right before your eyes, only to get a result that's too blurry or out of focus to use? Well before you click that delete button in disappointment, you may want to check out this impressive app that takes steps to de-blur your snaps.

SmartDeblur was developed by Vladimir Yuzhikov to fix two tough problems that we all encounter with picture taking, blurring due to poor focusing, and blurring due to camera movement during the exposure. Either one can seemingly ruin a picture, but Yuzhikov says that you shouldn't assume that all is lost.