Here's another news clip on the Texas Kite Festival. Everything should be OK, right? Apparently, it was so important that police dressed in army uniforms had to force the attendees to buses. Of course we don't know how to go home, right? In addition, there was a helicopter circling overhead. What do you think is happening here? Here's my guess: indoctrination. We are being prepared mentally to accept their presence as a normal thing. What's ahead of us, I wonder.
Created by the University of Pennsylvania, these bots would impress Q himself. This army of mini quad-copters are controlled with rhythmic precision, a truly awe-inspiring collaboration of music and technology. From playing a synthesizer to drums and cymbals, each robots is multi-talented. The tiny helicopters are equipped with reflectors, making it possible to plot their position using infrared lights and cameras positioned around the room. Check out the video!
Scrabble Bingo of the Day: CABRESTA [n/pl.] A cabresta (also cabestro or cabresto) is simply a lasso, a rope formed with a running noose that's used on ranches and Western plains for catching horse and cattle. Cabresta comes from the Spanish word halter, which refers to the headgear used for leading or tying up livestock and other animals. But halter also used to mean to hang someone by roped noose, which could be how it became popular as a term for a noosed lasso.
VNC is a great protocol that you can use on Windows and Linux machines to remotely control computers. This is useful if you need to control your computer when away from home, help your grandma check her email, or help a client with a disk cleanup. VNC is secure in the sense that it requires authentication in order to make the connection, but after that, the data is sent over the internet unencrypted. This means that an attacker could sniff your traffic and snoop everything that's going on. Th...
Users of the latest AMD 6xxx series graphics cards may have noticed that when they are playing Skyrim, their framerate isn't anywhere near what it is supposed to be with dual GPUs in Crossfire. AMD is working on releasing drivers with these issues fixed, but it has been too long since Skyrim has come out to just sit and wait.
In the level "Going Hunting", you take control of the co-pilot of an F-18 Hornet tasked with shooting down enemy planes. To get the 'You Can Be My Wingman Anytime' achievement, you'll need a perfect playthrough of the level. That means you don't get hit, and all the enemy planes are shot down without running out of ammo. Do this, and you'll get 30G on Xbox 360, or a bronze trophy on PlayStation 3. If you need some guidance, check out the video below.
Here's a tougher achievement for you guys to get in Battlefield 3. In the level "Thunder Run", you take control of a big friggin' tank. Use it to take down six enemy tanks before you reach the fort, and you'll get 25G on Xbox 360, or a bronze trophy on PlayStation 3.
Check out this truly incredible redstone mechanism by Users Rezz and Psycho_ewt! It's an automated redstone game with a twist. You control the interactive screen using a retro NES controller. Let us know what you think or if you'd like to see us reverse engineer it. This build contains:
I have had a lot of people ask me, "How does my neighbor keep getting into my wireless?!". Chances are, these people are all using WEP, a deprecated wireless encryption protocol. Either that, or you are using one weak WPA passphrase.
Get Gorgeous makeup tips for school Wash face and apply current skin treatment or moisturizer.
What's more fun? Winning against your friends or winning against others with them? It's an age old question, and in video games, the former one-on-one multiplayer has been the norm. But cooperative multiplayer has made a comeback, with Halo and Diablo II starting the trend, the first mainstream shooters and RPGs with great co-op modes. And now good local and multilplayer co-op games are available in almost every genre.
Contrary to popular belief, eliminating household pests from your home can be accomplished without completely bombing your living space with a mess of toxic fumes. Whether you have annoying fruit flies in the kitchen, fleas on your beloved pet or silverfish lurking around your bathroom, it is very likely that a DIY, non-toxic and super inexpensive solution exists for your household bug problem.
Fatherhood is difficult, especially when you're an octopus. That is the moral of the 2011 IGF Student Showcase winner Octodad, available for free from its website. This hilarious little title was created by a team of interactive media students at DePaul University in Chicago, and is the latest in a stream of successful indie games to come out of collegiate video game design programs. In fact, it's so successful that a sequel is in the works.
Xe Systems, the Private-Defense-Contractor-Formerly-Known-As-Blackwater, has been busy attempting to re-brand themselves. They have a new name, several new sub-names, and have at least titularly shifted their focus to training rather than mercenary work. Controversial founder Erik Prince is no longer with the company, which is now owned by a large investment consortium.
A century ago there wasn't much life available for quadriplegic people. Handicap accessibility was barely even a concept, and lacking medical technology kept any semblance of independence out of reach. Today those unfortunate enough to be paralyzed from the neck down have brighter prospects, but are still unable to participate in many activities. Video games are a great option for those who do not have the use of their legs, but for quadriplegics, the use of a standard controller is not an op...
This amazing Star Wars Sand Crawler is built entirely out of legos. Includes lighted eyes of the Jawas and a working crane to life the droids.
Android devices are becoming more and more popular with each passing day, so why is it that Google has yet to design a software program that allows users to manage their music and video libraries on their computers? Apple's iTunes offers iPhone users an easy way to control their media files, as well as effortless syncing capabilities. But where's the option for Android smartphones? Is there no easy way to synchronize your media library with your DROID?
Angry Birds might be the most visible video game franchise in the world today. It has sold 100 million units, as many as all the Sims games put together. It has been incorporated into board games, birthday cakes, and Israeli sketch comedy shows. And yet, this piece of seeming mass-media whoredom is an indie game. Wha?
Could the world really be coming to an end tomorrow? Presuming you believe the biblical prediction from 89-year-old Harold Camping, May 21st, 2011 is undeniably Judgment Day. If you have confidence in that prophecy, you're probably not even reading this because you're too busy either A) preparing for the Rapture or B) sitting in your backyard bunker hoping to outwit annihilationism.
My idea for a Yumi-fied how-to guide is this: Learn to juggle. I thought for the longest time that I couldn't juggle because of some personal deficiency. That, somehow, a connection between the two halves of my brain and my hands could not be formed and I would never be able to do it. I had watched people do it, I had even bought sets of special juggling balls (regular balls sold in a nice box) but nothing seemed to work. It seemed as though the ability to juggle was a gift possessed by some,...
Video games and art have somewhat of a sticky relationship. Many video games have large teams of talented artists doing amazingly creative work, and yet the art community is only just beginning to utilize video games as art (sometimes). Perhaps if video games were shown not just as a medium of expression, but as a means of creating great art as well, the art community would be forced to consider it differently. The third part in the Hacked Kinect series will focus on the artistic possibilitie...
Today we pay homage to a phenomenon. One as diffuse and amusing as the internet itself, and as pointless as dog Halloween costumes. I'm speaking, of course, of giant games.
Last week Amazon set their sights on the mobile app market, launching their Appstore for Android. This week they're attacking Android devices once again, but that's not all—they're getting into the online storage biz.
If you dig case mods and Resident Evil, it's fair to say you'll find Ron L. Christainson’s nothing short of epic. Inspired by the renown video game and movie, Ron—an artist and PC tech from Seattle—has already spent a year constructing the mod from scratch, and still has a couple months of work ahead of him.
Scientists have good and bad news for hard-driving people who boast they need only six hours of sleep a night. The good news is a few may be right: Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco have identified a family with a genetic mutation that causes members to require only six hours sleep a night. The bad news? The gene is vanishingly rare in humans, found in less than 3% of people.
You have two choices for keeping your living room looking fresh: A. constantly update the decor by tripping out on acid—NOT recommended—or B. paint your living room white and get two video projectors. Created by Mr. Beam:
If the whale tail cookies and edible undies weren't naughty enough, you've still got about 24 hours left before Valentine's Day to whip up one of F.A.T. artist Randy Sarafan's step-by-step clap-off bras. Inspired by the electronic singing panties and remote-controlled bras of the secret underworld of Syrian lingerie, Sarafan made a mission to "fast-forward lingerie technology in the West".
Halyomorpha halys, squash bug, shield bug ... What's in a name? A pest is a pest and the brown marmorated stink bug is a pest par excellence. Though some home gardeners are content to use insecticides, you'll find that it's generally easier to work with nature than against it. And let's face it: trading noxious bugs for noxious chemicals isn't much of a victory. Particularly if you're growing food.
Here is a more concrete - and amazing - application of the Minority Report fantasy that the Kinect enables.
Jonathan Guberman of Site 3 coLaboratory hackerspace in Toronto has created an Arduino-controlled mechanical typewriter that can type on its own, detect what is being typed on it, and run text-based interactive fiction games such as the classic (and to most, all but forgotten) Zork. Guberman says:
Japanese artist and visual designer Akira Nakayasu creates robotic plants that not only respond to human touch, but anticipate human touch.
A new study from John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign promises an exciting new tech-chic addition to the world of body modification: flexible, implantable LEDs that would radiate sub-dermal luminescence. Just imagine the possibilities.
Relax PETA, it's not as evil as it looks (although those neural electrode implants do look painful).
Little boy gamers don't care about coffee tables. But when a little boy gamer grows up, he's gotta have some kind of furniture. Like a giant NES coffee table with a fully functionally, giant NES controller. So Matt (grown boy gamer) built one:
From The LATimes: "Brown, the Democratic nominee, touted talking points — living within California's means, no new taxes without voter approval, returning control to the local level — that could come from a Republican playbook. Whitman, his GOP rival, unveiled her seventh attack ad against Brown, this time enlisting the words of former President Clinton during their contentious 1992 Democratic presidential primary battle. Tellingly, both candidates avoided mention of their political party.
Earbuds have always been a problem for me. Maybe I have abnormally shaped ears, but when I go running, my iPod Shuffle earbuds are a chronic distraction, always popping out. With the iPod Shuffle, you're bound by the Apple brand earbuds, as the controls are on the headphones rather than the device itself. Damn you, Apple.
What if everything in life was controlled by augmented reality? Keiichi Matsuda imagines: "The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us.
Ever feel like your brain is playing tricks on you? Well, that's because it is. Lifehacker has put together ten common weaknesses of the human mind, and how you can be beat them.
Can a well-directed thought be as good as a mouse click? With an Emotiv EPOC headset, the answer is yes. And then some. Though Emotiv describe their device as a "high-resolution, neuro-signal acquisition and processing wireless neuroheadset," we're quite content to call it a thinking cap.
The prerogative of most fancy, pricey lenses nowadays is ultimate sharpness. However, if you're partial to that soft, out of focus look, you can make your own lenses to achieve this type of effect.
