Geeking Out

50 essential LGBT films (Flavorwire) Dan Abrams to become Nightline anchor (Mediaite) 9 awards you don’t want to win (Mental Floss) Jimmy Fallon’s World of Warcraft tribute ballad (The Mary Sue) HBO Go arrives on Apple TV (GeekSugar) A couple people showed up the other night to protest Brazil’s Olympic spending (SportsGrid) 15 reasons to love your scumbag friend (Guy Code Blog) (Title pic via Reddit)

Dear ladies and gentlegeeks, I’m happy to report that Microsoft has changed its position on the XBox One DRM policy, meaning that you will be able to trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today on your 360. The console also no longer requires a 24-hour online check-in to play games, which will now be region-free. Yay! Microsoft, thank you so much for listening to your fans. -Pre-Order the Xbox One Here. [Source: Xbox.com]

Despite the pacing and narrative problems of the first The Amazing Spider-Man, Sony’s set to make not just two but three more films for your friendly neighborhood web-slinger. They originally had a trilogy in mind but decided otherwise — and apparently this expansion that means that Mary Jane Watson’s being bumped from the second movie to the third. So what are they going to do with all those scenes Shailene Woodley has already shot? Who knows? Who cares? More Gwen Stacey, please! This news doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, actually — between the addition of Harry Osborne, the awesomeness of Jamie Foxx’s Electro and Paul Giamatti’s Rhino, and what we’re all assuming is the inevitable death of Gwen, the story for Amazing Spider-Man 2 seemed kind of crowded as it was. In a brief statement to Deadline, Mark Webb (his unintentional pun of a name will never not be funny to me) said as much: “I made a creative decision to streamline the story and focus on Peter and Gwen and their relationship. Shailene is an incredibly talented actress and while we only shot a few scenes with Mary Jane, we all love working with her.” MJ was only expected to appear in the movie very briefly, but she did have scenes with Emma Stone as Gwen, so if she is getting washed down the proverbial water spout at the end of this film — which she might not be! —  that footage probably can’t be salvaged for the next movie. Which I guess is a shame, but given that there are also rumors that Felicity Jones has already been cast as Black Cat, I feel like easing up on the love triangle stuff might be kind of nice. It might not be canon, but at least it won’t feel so cluttered. Shailene’s clearly not getting recast, however, so all of you folks that don’t think she’s hot enough or whatever can keep on griping about it. As a fellow fake-redhead, I’m going to support her in all her endeavors. (via ComicBookMovie.com, image via marvelousRoland) Meanwhile in related links Check out the first glimpse of Rhino Let’s hope no one threatens Webb like they did Dan Slott Spider-Man’s webs are real, guys! They’re real!

Not every project at the recent Red Bull Creation Challenge made it into the spotlight, sometimes with good reason. The company undoubtedly wants to reward good ideas. Here on the Internet, though, we get way more mileage out of the bad, especially when it feels like something that gets us one step closer to Futurama actually happening. And so it is with the concept of a robot designed to "overheat, go crazy and urinate everywhere." Funnily enough, that's what I do whenever I drink Red Bull, so it makes perfect sense. Sadly, there is no video yet of him in action. But you can get a sneak peek at his creation at Hack A Day, and in the video after the jump... Continue reading "Movie Bumblebee Got Served, Because Here's Pissbot!" >

The Xbox One will not require regular online check-ins or place restrictions on game lending, Microsoft announced today.

It’s really easy to hate on Microsoft right now, and for good reason — the more we heard about their draconian rules for the Xbox One, the more we never wanted to pick up an Xbox controller ever again. Apparently, however, Microsoft’s grokked just how angry even the most lenient of gamers are right now, because they’ve announced a complete reversal of practically every single policy that’s gotten heat from critics. Wait, really? Just like that? Well, now things are about to get interesting. What we’re getting from multiple sources, as well as the just-launched official report, is that  that Microsoft will be “moving away” from the more ridiculous measures such as 24-hour check-ins and used game restrictions. In other words, everything that you’ve been complaining about? They’ve “heard” all that “feedback” and now they’ve changed their minds completely. Okay, well, maybe not completely, because according to the beginning of their update they still seem pretty pleased in their original ideas: As is our heritage with Xbox, we designed a system that could take full advantage of advances in technology in order to deliver a breakthrough in game play and entertainment. We imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing, and new ways to try and buy games. We believe in the benefits of a connected, digital future. Here’s the gist of what they’re changing: You won’t need to be online in order to play games. Downloaded games will work just the same online as they do offline if they’re single-player. Games will work on the Xbox One just as they do on the 360, meaning that when you put a disc in to play, it’ll just play. No linking to single accounts and no not being able to loan the physical game out to friends. In fact, there’ll be no more restrictions on loaning or trading games at all. Your Xbox won’t need to check into every 24 hours anymore. No more region locks, so you can play an Xbox One anywhere even if it hasn’t been released in your country’s market yet. The family sharing plan will basically no longer exist, because the account link that would have enabled it is gone. So now, the only real differences between PS4 and Xbox One are the $100 jump in price and the exclusive games you’d be getting on either console. Well, that and Microsoft servers might be a bit less capable than Sony’s, given that so many people have jumped onto the official report that it wouldn’t load properly for, like, twenty minutes. It’s not totally clear why they’re doing this now since they’ve spent every waking moment since E3 justifying all this bullshit, but I’m not about to look a gift console in the mouth. Then again, I’m still sort of mad that they even tried to pull all of this off in the first place, so I might stay away from the Xbox One on principle. No telling how many people will do the same. (via GiantBomb, image via Frederik Hermann) Meanwhile in related links But can Don Mattrick take back his dumb attitude as easily? At least now we can all just be earnestly excited for Titanfall Wonder what CliffyB will have to say about DRM now

Netflix has ordered 300 hours of original programming from DreamWorks Animation. Suddenly, resurrecting Arrested Development seems unambitious.

I think more than a few of us were a bit worried by the teaser image above, implying to those who didn't necessarily know the characters depicted that Batman would be part of a team with a gun-toting Alfred and Katana as an obligatory affirmative-action partner, facing off against giant mutant animal-people. However, the first real footage is out, and it doesn't seem that way it all - it's a Batman in solo action the way you would hope, with slick martial arts and the usual gadgetry. And while I'm not entirely familiar with all the new villains, it's nice to see things changed up on that front and the roster probed a bit more deeply. I hope they do some dark reimaginings of the Minstrel and Egghead. There has to be some new deconstructionist way to make them actually threatening, right? Watch after the jump. I think I'm sold on it. The show debuts July 13th. Continue reading "Beware the Batman Looks Better Than Expected" >

As if Gabe Newell had to do anything more with Steam for PC game players to consider him their benevolent overlord, there might be an amazing new feature coming to the service. Some code has been located in the most recent Steam beta that mentions a “shared library.” That’s right, you could potentially let your friends borrow your PC games in the future. The addition of a shared library would be giving the PC something that has long been an advantage consoles have over it. Once you’re done with a PC game, there’s not much you can do with it outside of uninstalling it or just leaving it to wallow in your personal Steam library. I can’t do this with the games I have on my PC, but shouldn’t that be an option? These are the lines found in the code that indicate the possibility of a shared library: “SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicense_Title” “Shared game library” “SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_OwnerText” “Just so you know, your games are currently in use by %borrower%. Playing now will send %borrower% a notice that it’s time to quit.” “SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_BorrowerText” “This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library.” Regardless of intention, this code found was only in the beta, and Valve has neither confirmed nor denied the coming of a shared library. So this is all up in the air now. Maybe Valve will give us the ability to sell our used Steam games next? At least let us trade them in for virtual hats, folks. (via Kotaku) Meanwhile in related links Your used games are killing the industry because they are actually affordable PSA: Torchlight free on GOG.com for a limited time Over-the-top video game/pop culture mashups

We’re just days away from the end of Google Reader, so if you haven’t found your alternative yet you’d better get on that. I’ve been happy with the switch to Feedly, and the service has just improved. Feedly has launched a standalone browser version of its reader, and has made it even easier to migrate your Google Reader feeds. They’ve also launched Feedly Cloud as well as its first nine apps to broaden Feedly’s usefulness. The in-browser version of Feedly is a nice touch for anyone with an irrational fear of plugins or extensions, but the bigger improvement is the integration of Feedly into other services like Evernote, IFTTT, and Sprout Social. There are others for more specific platforms. Apps for Nextgen Reader, gNews Reader, Press, gReader, Newsify, Pure News, and Meneré are also being offered with more to come. Feedly has moved from being a simple reader to its own platform, and in my opinion they’re the service to beat when it comes to gobbling up Google Reader users. That’s something they’ve done quite well already. A representative from Feedly told me that before Google announced the looming death of Reader, Feedly had four million users. Between the announcement they’ve jumped up to 12 million as of the end of May. If you’re still looking for an RSS solution, I’d really recommend Feedly. It was a solid choice before, but the way things are progressing I think I actually prefer Feedly to Google Reader at this point. (via Feedly) Meanwhile in related links Digg Reader is also an option you’ll have, but not until next week Google thinks your Reader alternative should just be Google+ I’ve been using Feedly for a few months now, and I really like it