Geeking Out

I know it's something I say to myself on a regular basis: "You know, I'm just not tired enough, and those five-hour energy drinks mixed with vodka and crushed vitamin B tablets just aren't helping things any. I need the stuff of nightmares in my house to deter any reasonable chance of restful slumber while I worry about something wanting to bite my face off." Oh hai Morbid Enterprises. You say you haven't just made a realistic, life-sized replica of the zombie girl from The Walking Dead's first episode, but that that she also has motion-activated snarling and grabbing action? And she costs less than most Hot Toys figures despite being four times the size and having an action feature to scare the piss out of me? Not that I'll ever be allowed to actually have this in our home, but yeah, thanks for making it, guys. UPDATE with assist from GrimlockPrime: She's available now and cheaper as another site's exclusive, and has been for a while? Kinda skeezy, Entertainment Earth.

Transatlantic travellers took another step closer to ditching their phone chargers this week with two major wireless charging firms announcing they’ll use a common standard. The deal is between American firm Powermat and Finland-based PowerKiss, which are among the leading providers in North America and Europe respectively. Both firms use a form of inductive charging in which two devices each have an induction coil. One passes on electricity in the form of an electromagnetic field, while the other then converts this field back into a charge for a battery. With phone charging this involves a mat connected to a power supply, with the phone being placed on the mat. A few phones have a built-in device for using wireless charging, but for the most part users put their phone in a special charging cover before placing it on the mat or, with the PowerKiss set-up, insert a special device into their phone (pictured). There are two main, incompatible, technologies for such charging, known as PMA (for Power Matters Alliance) and Qi. Powermat uses PMA while until now PowerKiss had used Qi. That meant many US customers would have been unable to use wireless charging when visiting Europe. The two firms have now agreed to merge and PowerKiss will switch its systems to use PMA. That creates a network of 1,500 charging points in the US and 1,000 charging points in Europe. It doesn’t completely kill off Qi, which remains the preferred standard of some of the major phone manufacturers. Sean Hollister of the Verge has an interesting take. He believes Starbucks’ decision to not only trial PMA but to join the Alliance’s board may be the step that helps persuade those on the fence to get behind that system as the standard.

Get ready for Kindle Worlds, a place for you to publish fan fiction inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. With Kindle Worlds, you can write new stories based on featured Worlds, engage an audience of readers, and earn royalties. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries, with licenses for more Worlds on the way. Also get ready for gay orgies at Hogwarts, stories about dudes marrying ponies, marathon farting sessions, and basically you nice folks at Amazon realizing you've unleashed hell on Earth and need to cancel the program with some awkward back-pedaling in maybe a week or two. Seriously, for every potential Fifty Shades of Grey (obviously what they're thinking of), you're going to get five million variations on "Mario the Super Pimp": (Why, yes, I was waiting for any old excuse to post that.)

astroengine writes "The mother of all cosmic collisions has been spotted between two galaxies containing a total of 400 billion stars, igniting the birth of 2,000 new stars per year! This incredible event was first spotted by the recently-retired Herschel infrared space observatory (abstract), a mission managed by the European Space Agency. This violent discovery isn't just awesome to look at, it could also help explain how massive, red elliptical galaxies evolved in the early universe." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So you’ve gone and caught em’ all. Now what? Pokémon (maybe) are living things and you’ve crammed them into a tiny Poké Ball without a second thought like a savage. What’s it really like in there? The real estate experts at Movoto broke it down in their latest infographic. It seems like they are either completely wonderful or horribly monstrous living conditions. This infographic briefly explains the different theories about what exactly happens to Pokémon when they’re put inside a Poké Ball, and some theories are more pleasant than others. Let’s take a look: I’m not as opposed to the Data Theory as the folks at Movoto seem to be, because I’m fine treating my fictional fighting monsters as objects. Also, if they’re data then they can basically just be living inside The Matrix, which is pretty great. The Physical Size theory is pretty sad though, but it raises the question — If you can shrink a Pokémon enough to cram it into a Poké Ball, why can’t you shrink it enough to fit comfortably? The Ideal Environment Theory is much more pleasant either way, and in fact makes me wish I lived inside a Poké Ball and not my house. My house is lovely, but it doesn’t have a Poké-masseuse or a working hot tub. Normally Movoto breaks these things down and slaps a price tag on them, but the price would vary wildly based on which theory you’re going with, and also by the amenities in each Ideal Environment. Movoto seems pretty settled on the Ideal Environment Theory, but I’d like to propose one of my own: All Poké Balls are really TARDISes and The Doctor will eventually regenerate into Psyduck. PsyDuckter Who. Please, BBC make PsyDuckter Who be a thing. (via Movoto) Relevant to your interests Yoda’s swamp hut is actually quite affordable How many Tetris pieces would it take to build your house? Here are the logistics of wrapping your house in bacon

FuzzNugget writes "A contributor at ScienceBlogs.com has compiled and published a shockingly long list of systematic attacks on scientific research committed by the Canadian government since the conservatives came to power in 2006. This anti-scientific scourge includes muzzling scientists, shutting down research centers, industry deregulation and re-purposing the National Research Council to align with business interests instead of doing real science. It will be another two years before Canadians have the chance to go to the polls, but how much more damage will be done in the meantime?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the summer approaching it has me thinking of all the wonderful treats that remind me of those long days. In the summer all the neighborhood kids would gather up what little change we could and we would ride our … Continue reading →

Mark Cuban has always had a reputation for being an ass (Google him and you'll get more than enough information on that) and while I have never cared before (as I don't live in Dallas and aren't confronted with Cuban news) his dickishness has now creeped onto my turf and I feel that it it is necessary to address an issue that is seemingly become popular these days:  Asking creative people to give up work for free. Now, as a writer I expect to do a certain amount of writing for free (which I, and all the writers do for Forces of Geek) so as to stay on the radar career-wise and parlay that into jobs that pay (which have resulted from being on FOG!) , or I will work on projects with fellow writers/artist/whatevers in what is considered a barter system (if you help me build my website, I'll contribute to your blog, etc. etc.) which happens all the time. But when a billionaire (or a company that has a budget to hire people) asks creative people to do something major without paying them for the work, it is then that I have a problem. Here's what sparked my pisstivity (taken from Cuban's Maverick blog): Read more »

After the reveal of the Xbox One, there were still a lot of questions floating around about exactly how Microsoft would be handling used games and whether it’d play Xbox 360 titles. Those questions were answered, in conflicting ways, and they’re “it’s complicated” and “no, no it will not.” Bummer. As far as backward compatibility goes, that’s definitely off the table. The Xbox One, henceforth known as the Xbone, has a fancy new architecture that just doesn’t support the play of Xbox 360 games. This is a pattern with consoles of late, so it’s not all that surprising — just disappointing. The more complicated issue going forward is the way in which the Xbox One will work with secondhand games. Initially, there was some confusion over some statements made by Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison where he basically told reporters that users would have to pay to use their own game on someone else’s hard. In short, they’d be buying a whole new game just to play it at their buddy’s house. This made waves, obviously, and stems back to the fact that it appears that yes, all Xbox One games install to the hard drive, and yes, they are all associated with your account. You can download your profile to other systems and play the game. Want to use the game on a different account? You’re going to have to pay some money, though Microsoft’s also vaguely spoken about some sort of service to allow for the selling of used games. We’ll likely know more going forward, but it sounds like GameStop’s going to be none too happy about it. Harrison also went on the record as telling Kotaku that the Xbox One would require an Internet connection every so often to keep going, and that certainly sounds like the always-on functionality that everyone was initially worried about. Even on a smaller scale, the idea of being forced to connect is not one that sits well with people. In response to questions from Polygon, Microsoft’s decried these as “potential scenarios” rather than absolute fact. So, yeah, the whole thing’s a mess right now. (via Polygon, Kotaku, Wired) Relevant to your interests Say hello to the Xbox One Sony releases pointless blurry preview of PS4 Outlook finally assimilates Hotmail

Nerval's Lobster writes "MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL source code, split off in the wake of concerns over what Oracle would do with MySQL licensing. In addition to its role as a 'drop-in replacement' for MySQL, MariaDB also includes some new features that (some claim) make it better than MySQL. Jeff Cogswell compares MySQL and MariaDB and suggests (in his opinion) that there's 'more than enough reason to ditch MySQL and switch over to MariaDB and stay there.' Why? While he breaks down MariaDB's new features and thinks many of them aren't that fantastic, and while MariaDB's performance isn't that much better than that of MySQL ('MariaDB's performance appears a bit better on multi-core machines, but I strongly suspect that one could tweak MySQL to match'), the questions over Oracle and MySQL licensing give him pause. 'MariaDB shows every indication that it will be around for quite awhile, while you can't really say the same of Oracle's MySQL,' he writes. 'Free-and-open MySQL competes with Oracle's proprietary and extremely competitive tools. That alone is grounds for concern — will Oracle do something to impede MySQL's development?'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.