ATMs are everywhere today and provide crooks with a relatively easy way to rob you blind. In the following video, the crew from The Real Hustle demonstrates how easy it is for a thief to get his hands on your ATM card information and PIN number.
So now that you’ve seen this, do you still think that ATM machines are safe to use? Being in the place of the young woman in the video, would you have noticed that the machine she was using had been tampered with?
[Via TechEblog]
It’s an all-out typeface-off in the sequel to the Font Conference.
By Jimmy Rogers (@me)
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Seems that this week’s science stories are all going to the physicists. Between 8:00PM and 11:00PM (EST) TONIGHT, a “Minotaur I” rocket should be visible to the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States. It is being launched from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia (the state where I happen to be located!).
The firey exhaust is visible for 800 miles from its launch site so pray for clear skies tonight!
Want a preview? This video of a boy and his father watching a similar launch in California is not only spectacular, but their commentary will warm your heart (or at least it did mine).
It’s not every day you get to see a rocket launch so take the time to watch the sky tonight. If you do see something (or not), please post a comment on the experience so others out of range can hear about it first-hand!
[via Gizmodo]
By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
So Google is getting in on the whole “going green” thing by foregoing the “noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air” in favor of renting a bunch of goats to chew on the lawn at the company headquarters in Mountain View. Two hundred of them hang out for a week with a border collie, munching the Google grass (which I’m sure is delicious), before being shipped to somewhere else. Somewhere like Yahoo?
Because after Google’s (perhaps slightly smug) announcement, Yahoo popped up and said, “Don’t get all high and mighty about those goats, Google, because we totally beat you to the punch.” Apparently they’ve been using goats-as-lawnmowers for years.
On a side note, does anyone else find that “Yahoo” twittering to “Google” kind of anthropomorphizes them in a slightly creepy way? However, one thing that is not slightly creepy are these goats, which are indeed much cuter than lawnmowers.
However, I submit that it wasn’t search engines that herded the goats into Silicon Valley, but rather Livejournal, where Frank the Goat has been doing their yardwork since 1999.
Of course, The Washington Post wonders how much fuel it takes to ship goats around – less than the lawnmowers, one would hope? Though in any case, with Google taking up the cause, I can’t help but wonder what might be next: iGoat?
Amazon is set to unveil a new Kindle reader with a much larger screen designed for newspapers and magazines. The new model may also be an attempt to capture the textbook market.
The company has a press conference scheduled for a New York university tomorrow, but the news of the device has already broken. Pictures of the new Kindle (including the one shown here) have already appeared at Endgadget, which is rapidly becoming the home of leaked product images. That site also says the device will be known as the Kindle DX, a detail not confirmed anywhere else.
The increased screen size, reported as 9.7”, should make it easier to view newspaper pages complete with photos and – more importantly for the publications – adverts. However, the more important point to watch for is whether Amazon announces any changes to its pricing policy. At the moment it insists on fixed pricing for all periodicals, but publishers argue they need the discretion to set the price that best suits their audience.
The university setting of the press conference may link into reports that Amazon is targeting the textbook market. There are even claims that some leading universities will supply all new students with the large-screen Kindle, complete with course textbooks preloaded. However, it’s not clear if students will get the devices free of charge or simply have them subsidized.
With students nationwide spending something in the region of $8.6 billion a year on textbooks, that’s a lucrative market to get into, particularly considering the high proportion of costs which goes on paper and printing means Amazon has room to undercut publishers.
BetaNews makes a good point about why students might not be keen on the idea: unlike with printed textbooks, they’d not be able to sell the content on the second-hand book market after finishing their modules.
James T. Kirk is the new kid at Starfleet Academy and he’s got no friends… until…
Thanks Kate!
The original version isn’t really entertaining, but now that I’ve seen this one, I have to get myself a Slap Chop right now!
By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
As far as well-known authors embracing social networking go, Neil Gaiman has been right up there, a popular blogger since 2001 (and yes, I do rather love John Scalzi, who definitely beat him to the punch, but we’re talking pure star power here). Now he’s taking Twitter by storm, sort of like the literary equivalent of Ashton Kutcher (I’m also pretty sure that Wil Wheaton is the geek equivalent). And in celebration of hitting 333,333 followers (not quite as impressive as 1 million, but a much cooler number), he tweeted this challenge on Thursday:
In celebration of the upcoming 333,333rd follower & probable end of the world, twitter a photo of yourself & armageddon and/or tea #teapix
And of course the Internet responded, as we are wont to do, and I for one have enjoyed perusing pictures of tea (one of my favorite things) and/or armageddon (one of my conceptually favorite things). Here’s a rather nice one from a flickr user, titled The Four Teapots of the Apocalypse:
I also highly recommend searching for some of your favorite writers on Twitter, as I find that they generally have more interesting things to write about than what they had for breakfast (or at least an eloquent way of expressing it). Some of them may not be near the 333,333 mark, but are interesting just the same (sorry again, Mr. Scalzi, but would it help if I told everyone to buy 17 copies of Zoe’s Tale?).
Tech site Endgadget is reporting that Microsoft plans to launch a gadget for the Xbox 360 which extends the Wii-style motion control to cover the entire body.
According to the site’s source, which has the somewhat lightweight description of “someone who purports to be in the know”, the system would not involve controllers. Instead there would be a horizontal bar which includes a camera, a microphone and two sensors. (Pictured above)
As well as allowing for video conferencing-style features, the system would apparently allow full-body and hand motion control. Not only would this allow extended actions in fighting games, such as kicking and ducking, but it would also allow for hand gestures such as grabbing or pinching.
On the surface, the story sounds ludicrous and the technology doesn’t seem plausible. However, it was widely reported in February that Microsoft was attempting to buy 3DV, an Israeli firm which makes the Zcam, a device which captures body motion without controllers.
The system works by sending out infrared light pulses and then taking photographs with the camera at extremely short intervals. By analyzing how much light is reflected from each pixel in the picture, the system can work out how far the relevant object is from the camera and thus detect the pattern of movements.
The firm has already demonstrated the system for use in games such as boxing, so the Xbox reports are at the very least feasible.
Of course, that’s all well and good until you put your foot through your TV attempting a Prince of Persia wall jump.
If you could travel in time, wouldn’t you travel back to show yourself how to time-travel? This scenario is bound to turn out very different from anything you could imagine. Hirsute, an award-winning short film, is about as weird as any time-travel story should be. Wonderfully written and directed by A.J. Bond, produced and shot by Amy Belling.
