Bitcoin is a new currency built off "Satoshi Nakamoto's" (alias) 2008 Bitcoin white-paper. Bitcoin provides its users with a way to make peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions without having to use a bank as a mediator. There is no middle man, no corporation backing it, and no one has access to your money, except you. It's decentralized from government, run by the people, for the people.
University video game design programs have been spreading like wildfire around the world over the last ten years. They allow students, researchers and game developers to work on their craft in an academic environment away from the harsh realities of the market, and have led to some interesting products like Fl0w from USC and Ulitsa Dimitrova from Germany. Both games take on topics not often addressed in mainstream games and do so in simple, poignant ways that aim to influence the rest of the ...
HOOSGOW 64 points (14 points without the bingo) Definition: a jail [n]
Danish developer Playdead has made only one game, a little indie, side-scrolling, puzzle platformer called Limbo. It just happens to be far and away the best video game of that prominent genre (and perhaps the best indie game period) on the Xbox 360, and quite possibly for PlayStation 3 and PC, too. Critical and financial success has followed in droves, and today... Playdead has taken advantage of that success and indie-fied themselves even further by purchasing back the portion of the compan...
Video games are the newest major expressive media. As such, their role in society is still being defined continuously. A monumentally important example of this took place yesterday at the US Supreme Court. After a long deliberation, the highest court in the land handed down a decision invalidating a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors on the grounds that video games are protected speech under the First Amendment, like movies and books.
They've been at it for a few years now, but the crazy group of amateur rocket scientists who call themselves Copenhagen Suborbitals have triumphed over adversity, successfully launching their DIY rocket nearly 2 miles into the sky last Friday. The privately funded, non-profit aims to one day send human beings into suborbital space on the cheap, without the need of government budgets and administration.
The Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T.) has provided three different energetic and passionate methods for voicing support for Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese artist and activist who has been detained without known reason by the Chinese government since March 31st.
Understandably, the tragedy in Japan has substantially risen the level of worldwide radiation-related hysteria. So much so, as an alternative to stampeding health food stores for iodine tablets, crafty individuals and organizations are hacking together personal radiation detectors. Rather than relying on the government, the creation and modification of handheld Geiger counters provides a self-sufficient solution to today's questions regarding radiation. Profiled below, three admirable organiz...
Tonight is the night. Christmas Eve. The night where Santa Claus and his trusty reindeer soar across the skies to deliver presents to all the good little boys and girls around the world. But tell me— do you know where Santa Claus is right now?
By Ethical Traveler As the world becomes ever more interconnected, being an ethical traveler becomes both easier and more urgent. Travelers today have access to far more information than we did even 10 years ago. We can observe–almost in real time–the impact that smart or selfish choices, by governments and individuals, have on rainforests and reefs, cultures and communities.
How to dress for a job interview is important to know before you go in. Watching the video will establish ways to assess company culture, exceptions, accessories to dress at a job interview and how to play it safe and professional.
The Telegraph presents 2009's most spectacular stunts. This year's roster of adrenaline junkies include the craziest daredevils of their fields: wingsuiting, parkour, motocross, climbing, sky diving, auto racing, and more.
What is in store for the future? Flying cars? Maybe. Dinner in a pill? Perhaps. How about 4-legged army tank robot dogs? Hell ya!
Over the past couple of weeks, there have been a series of high-profile hacks and leaks. From the rooting of CombinedSystems, to a secret FBI conference call leak, all the way to the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on U.S. government sites—with a lot in-between. As governments move to close their long fingers around the free speech that exposes their secrets, this shadowy collective of loose-knit, but like-minded individuals are hell bent on preventing them. Or are they?
Not every DIY project is as executable as, say, making a potato gun. Occasionally, we observe a quixotic project that is just plain wonderful. Consider rich guy Philip Anschutz and his eponymous Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). His ambition to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles is a Fitzcarraldo-sized DIY project that, if the stars align, might happen in time for the 2016 season.
Another week has passed on the online battlefield as the CISPA legislation continues to grind away at our freedom. Here at Null Byte, we try to keep our community informed and knowledgeable at the same time—and that means creating content for them to learn from.
The only thing better than successfully pulling off a new experiment is doing it with household materials. You get to laugh in conceit as professional scientists everywhere spend all their grant money on the same project you just accomplished with some under-the-sink chemicals! However, there are times when DIY gets dangerous. Some household chemicals are not pure enough to use and some are just pure dangerous. Let's take a look at two problems I have encountered in the course of mad sciencing.
It's soon going to be time for the elections and everyone is prepping up for it. The Republicans are waiting to elect Romney, who in my and many others view will not keep his promises. The Democrats are trying their best (its working) to make Obama as strong as possible against Mitt, who, in their minds, will be easy to defeat. Obama's acceptance polls have been steadily rising in the past few months.
So far, I've talked a lot about what's going on in the world around us, but it's time I come back to politics for a bit. That said, the name of this world is somewhat misleading, in the sense that I talk about everything, not just politics! But I digress again.
I recently posted a link to what seemed to be a very useful guide on Lifehacker for creating a TOR button in Chrome. However, when I tried it myself, it did not work. Also, it lacked a warning on the limits of Tor, which I think are important. Therefore, I decided to create an updated and more comprehensive tutorial.
I'm sure we've all heard about MSN and Yahoo! Messenger, right? They can be useful, but the setup can be quite time consuming for those who need to use it just once or twice—and the privacy statements are a real bother. For example, we must provide our real details. You could use Fake Name Generator, but if you get caught, you will have your account suspended. I don't have a law degree, but to my understanding the United States recently passed legislation that gives the authorities the power ...
Representative Henry A. Waxman is in charge of California’s 30th Congressional district. He is part of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Ever since he began his career in the government business, he has been involved with health and environmental issues. He represents cities such as Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Malibu, Westlake Village and West Hollywood, as well as such areas of Los Angeles as Beverly-Fairfax, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Beverl...
I'm pretty sure that it's a universal dream for everyone in the world to retire early. Who wants to to be stuck with the rest of the country and retire when you're almost 70 years old? You heard me right, 70! Most people can't go out and do the things they love to do by the time they're 70, unless they've been practicing good health and exercise their entire life.
Today's tutorial will teach you how to erase data permanently so that it cannot be recovered. Many believe that having a file shredder on the computer means you are up to no good.
Video games were blamed in the death of Chris Staniforth last May, but now things have gotten worse as video games take the blame for a more recent tragedy...
Some cops already have the ability to extract data from your cell phone using handheld forensic devices, but soon police officers will have a new mobile data collection toy to play with—an Apple iPhone. Actually, it's an iPhone-based device that connects directly to the back of an iPhone, which is designed to give law enforcement an accurate and immediate identification of a suspect based on their facial features, fingerprints and even their eyes.
Anybody who spends most of their day on the internet should know all about lulz. Lulz are most often jokes made at the expense of web users, as popularized on 4Chan. Today, a consortium of hackers called LulzSec is attempting (and in some cases succeeding) in efforts to shut down some of the games that offer web users a giant share of their online fun. World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EVE Online, and Bethesda Softworks have all been targeted by LulzSec's hacking efforts in the last week,...
Oktoberfest is the world's largest annual beer festival located in Munich, Germany! The festival starts in late September and lasts until early October -approx 16-18 days. Oktoberfest is an important part of the Bavarian Culture and has been going on for over 200 years. Each year the festival is held in an area called Theresienwiese, but often referred to as Wiesen for short. Wisen is located near the center of Munich. Oktoberfest is held as one of the world's largest fairs with over 5 millio...
Private browsing is all the rage with browsers these days. Once you go into private browsing mode, you can traverse the internet without leaving a trail. Your history? Deleted. Your cookies? Destroyed. Your bookmarks and non-private history? Preserved for when you come back to the surface.
It's currently 2011, but when you fire up your game console, put your hands on the controller and play the new Dead Space 2 video game, you're warped into the future— into the year 2511— just 3 years after the events that took place in the first Dead Space. And it's sure to be a beautiful, frightening, futuristic experience.
There is an abstinence game being created by the University of Central Florida with $400k+ of taxpayer money. The game is directed at middle school girls to help them handle and cope with sexual advances.
L4D2: Chapter two - The Underground "Ok explain something to me, how is an under-the-river tour scenic?" - Nick
Move over NASA— SpaceX is taking over. Well, not really. But today, the privately funded spacecraft company broke all expectations when their Dragon capsule fell to a soft landing in the Pacific Ocean, completing an undoubtedly successful demo flight of nearly two full trips around Earth. It was the first re-entry of a commercial spacecraft ever, bringing commercial space transportation closer to reality.
“Of a generation who remembers Tiananmen Square, 1989, I considered how some excuse – the lack of, or slow progress on, human rights in China because ‘times have changed’, or because other concerns, including making money, come first, or because rights, freedom, and democracy are somehow different issues there than in the West.” Denise Chong
Professionally and academically speaking, I am a computer scientist, but I also enjoy lock picking as a hobby, so I thought I would share what knowledge I have with this. Before we start doing anything, first we need to understand the fundamentals of how locks work and then acquire and familiarize ourselves with basic lock-picking tools.
ACTION MOVIES The Hunger Games (2012)
In the first part we differentiated the two types of control, mental and physical. In part 2 we will dig deeper into Physical crowd control and analyze examples that are present today.
There are so many hackers around these days, and they are becoming very smart. So smart that they have successfully taken down many government websites. The most recent attack was on the Department of Justice (DOJ). To read about the history of these hackers, check out Wikipedia.
Google Reader is ostensibly just an RSS aggregator, a tool that lets you catch up on your favorite blogs. How could Google have anticipated that getting rid of its social features could have angered so many people who were actually using it as their default social network, and who enjoyed it precisely because it didn't function like Facebook or Google+?
It's a question I've been pondering a lot lately. Technically, children under the age of 13 are not allowed to join Facebook. But according to a Consumer Reports in May, 7.5 million children 12 and younger are already on the site. Currently, federal law prohibits websites from collecting personal data from children without parental permission. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, as it is more commonly known, has been in effect since 1998, but has not been updated since.
