Archive for February, 2013

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy

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The Daily Roundup for 02.28.2013

call -151 writes “An editorial appearing in the ACM notices complains about the effects of the Elsevier boycott particularly with respect to academics refusing to do unpaid review for for-profit journals, particularly the extortionate Elsevier journals. Mathematician Tim Gowers’s post gave energy to this about a year ago and recently he reflected on progress in several directions, including developing new arXIv overlay journals. Not disclosed in the ACM editorial is that the author serves on three Elsevier editorial boards; I take it that his complaining about the difficulty of finding referees is an indication that the boycott is having some good effect.

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Editorial In ACM On Open Access Publishing In Computer Science

Sure, the next wave of gaming consoles may be arriving pretty soon, but while we wait for the PS4 and whatever Microsoft has in store for us, why not have yet another Xbox 360 bundle to choose from, right? Today the Redmond-based company released its Spring Value set, which includes that slim console with 250GB of storage space (as well as the accustomed peripherals, of course), one month gratis of Xbox Live Gold and, perhaps to make it all worthwhile, Darksiders II and Batman: Arkham City — although the latter of the two will be available via download code rather than as a physical copy. Folks that call the good ol’ US of A home can snag the fresh bundle starting today for $299, which is on par with similar bundles that Microsoft’s released in the past — granted it’s not as sleek-looking as some of the pricier ones. Filed under: Gaming , Home Entertainment , HD , Microsoft Comments Source: Major Nelson

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Xbox 360 250GB Spring Value bundle now available in the US for $299

Cast your vote now on Threadless for these Spock socks (called, predictably enough, “Spocks”). Leonard Nimoy called them “fascinating”. Need I say more? Score Spocks | Threadless (via IO9)

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Vote for Spock socks!

Dropbox users are reporting spam coming to unique email addresses used for the cloud storage service. In a forum thread from yesterday , a user complained that a Dropbox-specific address had been receiving spam since February 20th, suggesting that the address had been exposed. After a moderator dismissed the claim by saying that spammers might have guessed the address randomly, several other people raised the same issue, most with addresses that were used only for Dropbox.

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Dropbox users claim email addresses leaked to spammers, company blames 2012 security breach

A Yeti “can be photographed or caught alive but it must not be killed or shot at,” explains a 1959 US embassy dispatch on the laws that all hunters should know before searching Nepal for mythical beast. “There are, at present, three regulations applicable only to expeditions searching for the YETI in Nepal,” reads the letter that the US State Department received from its embassy in the Nepalese capitol. Slate dug up the memo and is presenting it alongside a brief history of Yeti hunting, a sport that proved popular enough in the 1950s for the Department of State to be concerned with it. Now that you know, make sure to get your license before heading out on the hunt.

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Don’t shoot at a Yeti — it should only be caught alive

When Kellee Santiago resigned from her previous gig as president of thatgamecompany, she left behind a job running one of the most highly acclaimed indie game studios in the industry. But she left on a high note, having helped craft Journey — not just one of the best games of 2012, but a high mark on the medium. Her next move is similarly bold, taking the reins of the Android-powered OUYA console’s digital content library as “Head of Developer Relations.” On Santiago’s LinkedIn profile, she describes her new job as, “curator of content for the games section on OUYA” (among other things); a job she’s plenty qualified for given her time on the board of the Indie Fund (an angel investment group of successful indie game devs). “This role seems almost like a logical extension of everything I’ve done up to this point,” Santiago told us in an email interview this afternoon. Indeed it does.

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OUYA’s Kellee Santiago talks game publishing, her new role as Head of Developer Relations

Scientists have pulled off a real world, rodent-scale version of Vulcan “mind meld” from Star Trek, linking the brains of pairs of rats together over the internet to allow them to share sensory information and solve problems together in realtime without being in the same room, or even on the same continent. “These experiments showed that we have established a sophisticated, direct communication linkage between brains,” said the project’s leader Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University, in a statement released Thursday . He and his colleagues at Duke and ELS-IINN , a Brazilian neuroscience institute, constructed what they say is the first working “brain-to-brain” interface by surgically implanting electrodes in the brains of… Continue reading…

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Scientists link rat brains together over the internet to transfer sensory information

Common wisdom would suggest that executives talk up their existing device lines to keep customers buying until the next generation is ready. Leave it to Google CFO Patrick Pichette to think outside the box, if not necessarily for the better. He told guests at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference that the current roster , while good, doesn’t “‘wow’ by Google standards” — it reflects the 18-month device pipeline that fell in Google’s lap when it acquired Motorola last year.

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Google CFO says the Motorola pipeline doesn’t ‘wow,’ hasn’t heard of the Osborne Effect

Army private Bradley Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to 10 of the 19 total charges made by the US that he leaked unprecedented amounts of classified material to Wikileaks, the anti-secrecy organization run by Julian Assange. Manning entered a not guilty plea to the government’s more serious charge of “aiding the enemy,” which carries a

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Bradley Manning military trial updates: live-blogs, who to follow on Twitter, and analysis

A pediatrician on CNN who co-hosts the CBS show The Doctors said something stupid and trans-hatey on the February 27 edition of CNN Newsroom. During a panel discussion about Coy Mathis, a trans girl suing her school district for the right to use female restrooms at her elementary school. Sears warned that the 6-year-old Colorado

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TV pediatrician on CNN says something stupid about transgender girls

Boing Boing pal Jesse Thorn points us to a fun-sounding comedy/alt-culture cruise: The Atlantic Ocean Comedy & Music Festival, presented by MaximumFun.org, Splitsider and KCRW. Best url ever: boatparty.biz. Talent includes: Maria Bamford, Kurt Braunohler, John Darnielle, Dan Deacon, John Hodgman, Hari Kondabolu, Josie Long, Al Madrigal, Marc Maron, Nellie McKay, Eugene Mirman, Jasper Redd,

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Floating alt-comedy festival on a cruise ship sounds pretty cool

Truthout reports: “The US Secret Service has refused to release its records on Aaron Swartz to Truthout. The agency claimed in a letter, sent to Truthout and a researcher in response to two separate Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, that the release of any documents the agency has on the late Internet activist would

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Secret Service denies Truthout’s FOIA request for Aaron Swartz documents

A Hyphen magazine short doc on the life of an Asian immigrant farmer in Silicon Valley.

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Silicon Valley’s success squeezes California’s immigrant farmers

Sony is still being secretive about its forthcoming “world’s first” 4K movie download service , but it sounds like it will eventually work with the equally-mysterious PS4. That’s the word according to Sony Electronics President and COO Phil Molyneux, who said “I promise you will not be disappointed” when asked if the service would support his company’s new console. That certainly makes sense, and it lines up with previous reports that the PS4 would support 4K photos and video , but not games. Molyneux spoke to The Verge at a Sony event in New York City where he’d invited the press to compare Sony’s newest TVs, headphones, and cameras to similar products from competitors — an event designed to highlight what Molyneux called his…

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Sony 4K movie service will work with PS4, require 100GB-plus downloads

If you were hoping to see a revelatory smartphone from Motorola in the coming months, you might want to tone down those expectations. Google’s Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President Patrick Pichette today said that products in Motorola’s current and upcoming pipeline “aren’t ‘wow’ by Google standards.” The surprisingly honest admission came during Pichette’s session at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference. When questioned on where things stand with Motorola at the moment, Pichette didn’t mince words.

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Google’s CFO admits products in Motorola pipeline aren’t ‘wow by Google standards’

http://www.engadget.com/eupodcasts/eu_podcast_017.mp3 In a week that plays host to one of Europe’s biggest tech shows, as you can imagine, there’s a fair amount to talk about. Someone should probably do a podcast that covers these sort of things! Who would be more qualified, then, than our very own tech-loving Europe shift? Fear not then, as everything from Nokia’s colorful new line up, LG’s curious acquisition, to ASUS’ even more curious naming convention, gets the Engadget treatment.

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Engadget Eurocast 017 – 02.28.13

Basic science — the kind of research done for curiosity’s sake, in order to better understand how parts of our world work — is the foundation of applied science — research that’s aimed at developing a product, or tool, or achieving a goal. In the United States, the federal government is, by far, the number

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How will the Sequester affect science

An absurdist joke is spreading across Twitter in a viral pattern. No one has control, no one is safe, and after two days, the contagion is still growing. The virus will likely hit your stream soon if it hasn’t already, but it’s not so easy to spot — it looks like any other normal tweet. “Wow,” it reads, with a link.

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‘Wow’ all the way down: Donald Trump sparks Twitter’s latest weird meme

Geeks who are into fast cars and stereoscopic displays must think that watching F1 races in 3D is the bees-knees. However, FIA, the sport’s governing body, has often been resistant to new technology — only adopting HD a few years ago . That’s why when the FIA asked Sky to produce a test-broadcast of the practice laps in the run up to the Barcelona Grand Prix, the British broadcaster jumped at the chance. Naturally, BSkyB wanted to show off its technical marvel, and so invited us to come and see what it was like

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Sky broadcasts Barcelona Grand Prix practice in 3D, we go take a look

Even when your eyeballs look still, they aren’t still. Every time your heart beats, it creates almost imperceptible changes in your skin tone as blood moves through your body. Tall buildings and construction cranes wobble slightly in the wind, even though our eyes can’t usually catch them at it. Now, a team at MIT has

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How to make the invisible visible

McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets aren’t just weirdly-shaped forms of “white boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, seasoning [autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring (botanical source), safflower oil, dextrose, citric acid], sodium phosphates, natural flavor (botanical source), water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached

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Official names of McNugget shapes

Microsoft announced today that it plans to expand its Surface RT availability to additional markets. Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, and Taiwan will all receive Surface RT units in late March. Microsoft is also promising that the UK, Australia, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, and New Zealand will be able to buy Surface Pro “in the coming months.” The lack of clarity on Surface Pro availability outside the US and Canada is less than ideal, but Microsoft’s continued expansion of Surface is notable. The software maker recently expanded its Surface RT availability to 13 European countries earlier this month, an important step if Microsoft is serious about its Surface future . With the additional markets announced today,..

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New markets announced for Surface Pro and Surface RT

Microsoft’s Surface is continuing its global retail rollout, expanding its reach well beyond the western hemisphere. In late March the RT model of Redmond’s in-house tablet effort will come to Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan, adding to the pile of European nations where it’s already launched. Meanwhile, the Surface Pro will finally be leaving the Americas and heading for Australia, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the UK sometime in the coming months.

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Surface RT coming to six more countries in late March, Pro in the ‘coming months’

$99.99 gaming console Ouya will be shipping to its Kickstarter backers on March 28th, the company has just announced . A full retail launch is still planned for June, but the console will be shipping soon to more than developers, who started receiving kits late last year. We’re also hearing about some potentially exciting new Ouya projects. While we already knew a bit about what was coming to the platform, the company has announced that designer Kim Swift (of Portal and Left 4 Dead fame) and her team at Airtight Games will develop a new title exclusive to Ouya

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Ouya shipping to Kickstarter backers March 28th