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Valve announces ‘Robotic Boogaloo,’ the first ‘Team Fortress 2′ update built by the community

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:15:03 +0000

Valve is pushing out another update to Team Fortress 2, its 356th since it first shipped the game as part of The Orange Box in 2007. But there’s something special this time around — the new content, titled Robotic Boogaloo, is the first to be created entirely by fans. Polygon reports that the update will have 57 virtual items, mostly hats (naturally), and include a comic that connects it with the game’s expansive backstory. In a blog post announcing the release, Valve said that just because it’s pushing out community-developed updates doesn’t mean that it will stop producing its own content for the game. “As far as we’re concerned, there’s plenty of room for both to happily co-exist,” says the company.

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Valve announces ‘Robotic Boogaloo,’ the first ‘Team Fortress 2′ update built by the community

Ask Engadget: can you use an Android tablet as a graphics tablet?

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 09:45:00 +0000

We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget inquiry is from Xan, who wants Cintiq functionality without paying Cintiq prices. If you’re looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com. “I’m a student and I’m considering staying on to do graphic design, and I really like the look of Wacom’s Cintiq devices. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford one even if I sold a kidney, so I was wondering if I could turn an Android tablet into a cheaper version?

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Ask Engadget: can you use an Android tablet as a graphics tablet?

Mobile Miscellany: week of May 13th, 2013

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 08:45:00 +0000

If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought a new handset from Sony to the US and UK, updates to Nokia Creative Suite and three new (and very inexpensive) smartphones from Blu Products. These stories and more await after the break.

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Mobile Miscellany: week of May 13th, 2013

PS4′s ‘play while downloading’ feature arrives on PS3 first with ‘The Last of Us’

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 08:01:06 +0000

With the PlayStation 4, Sony is trying to lower the friction in buying games from PSN by letting you start playing games while they’re still downloading . Now it looks like the new feature will actually make it to the PlayStation 3 in time for the PSN release of Naughty Dog’s anticipated The Last of Us on June 14th. Speaking with Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann and game director Bruce Straley, Game Informer reports that the game will be playable once 50 percent of the content has been downloaded, cutting wait time in half. Onstage at its big PlayStation 4 announcement in February, PS4 lead system architect Mark Cerny said that players would only have to download “just a fraction” of a game’s content before starting to… Continue reading…

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PS4′s ‘play while downloading’ feature arrives on PS3 first with ‘The Last of Us’

Top UK government officials tamper with inquest into Brit assassinated by Russian spies in London, suppress evidence

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:36:08 +0000

Marina Litvinenko, widow of Alexander Litvinenko (a British citizen who was assassinated in London by two former KGB agents who poisoned him with radioactive polonium) has accused the British government, Secretary of State William Hague, and PM David Cameron of sabotaging the coroner’s inquest into her husband’s death. Hague and Cameron intervened in the coroner’s

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Top UK government officials tamper with inquest into Brit assassinated by Russian spies in London, suppress evidence

Cast AR hands-on with Jeri Ellsworth at Maker Faire 2013 (update: video)

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:33:00 +0000

When Valve ‘s first hardware hire, Jeri Ellsworth , tweeted back in February that she was fired from the company, we were disappointed but also intrigued by what she meant by “time for new exciting projects.” Well we finally saw what she’s been up to here at at Maker Faire 2013. It’s called Cast AR, and it’s a pair of 3D augmented-reality glasses that she and former Valve programmer Rick Johnson were working on at Valve before they left. The model we saw is still in the early prototype stages, but the concepts are already in place. Perched atop a pair of active shutter glasses are a couple of miniature LCD projectors, which bounce images from a connected computer onto a special reflective surface at a 120Hz refresh rate. A camera module sits on the eyewear’s bridge and monitors an array of infrared LEDs embedded in the reflective surface.

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Cast AR hands-on with Jeri Ellsworth at Maker Faire 2013 (update: video)

Alt-week 5.16.13: bug eyes, robo-cops and fake flowers

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. If we’re to find a common thread in this week’s collection of stories, it’d be nature’s guiding hand. How it inspires science, how we seek to imitate it, and how unnatural the future of policing could be. This is alt-week, Filed under: Science , Alt Comments

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Alt-week 5.16.13: bug eyes, robo-cops and fake flowers

Google’s potential Nexus Q successor revealed in FCC filing

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 03:54:05 +0000

An update to the Google Music app broke compatibility with the ill-fated Nexus Q — but it appears Google may have a new media streamer waiting in the wings to replace it. A recent FCC filing provides some sparse details on a mysterious product referenced as the “H840 Device.” Google is mentioned as the product’s manufacturer, and it’s described as a “fixed base station” with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. What’s most intriguing, however, is the product’s purpose: one of the documents states plainly that “The device functions as a media player.” Douglas Adams fans are also likely to get a kick out of the device’s model number, as well. It’s listed as the H2G2-42, no doubt a sly wink towards The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . The Nexus Q had..

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Google’s potential Nexus Q successor revealed in FCC filing

Is this the best song from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest?

bigBrains — Sun, 19 May 2013 03:20:31 +0000

The battle of the bands, featuring acts from Ireland to Israel, is underway as we speak. Embedded above is Cezar Ouatu’s particularly excellent It’s my life, this year’s Transylvanian entry. Our Europe Correspondent Leigh Alexander will be filing a report, but not until she’s had a bit of a lie down.

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Is this the best song from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest?

What would you like to see Google do next after I/O? – Verge Forums

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 23:13:05 +0000

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What would you like to see Google do next after I/O? – Verge Forums

To do this weekend: Maker Faire Bay Area

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:53:55 +0000

Maker Faire Bay Area is this weekend, in San Mateo, California! Pesco, Mark and I will all be there, and I’m sure many of you reading Boing Boing will be, too. Mark has been posting some great behind-the-scenes snapshots on his Instagram. And of course, the #makerfaire hashtag is a good way to peek at

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To do this weekend: Maker Faire Bay Area

ZTE and Huawei face EU investigation over predatory pricing

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:39:06 +0000

Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE and Huawei are set to face an EU investigation for anti-competitive behavior. Although the pair have both seen moderate success marketing their consumer devices in the region, the investigation is regarding the companies’ infrastructure equipment, which provides the backbone for the industry. In recent years Chinese companies have taken around a quarter of of the EU market, with sales of around €1 billion (roughly $1.3 billion). But according to European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, the success has been due to anti-competitive predatory pricing.

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ZTE and Huawei face EU investigation over predatory pricing

World’s tiniest monkey eats a noodle

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:28:01 +0000

About this video, which shows a Pygmy Marmoset noshing on a macaroni, Meredith Yayanos says: “The tinier the primate, the deeper the Uncanny Valley.” I don’t know anything about the conditions under which this video was shot, but obviously monkeys belong in their natural habitat, not in someone’s home eating macaroni. Still, wow: how amazing

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World’s tiniest monkey eats a noodle

The Last of Us will debut ‘play while it downloads’ feature on the PS3

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:27:00 +0000

Even though we don’t yet know what the PlayStation 4 looks like or how much it will cost, one of the many details revealed at Sony’s February event was that games will be playable even as they download . Now it turns out we won’t have to wait for the new hardware to experience that feature on a console — Steam, for example, does this on PCs with some games — as The Last of Us leaders Bruce Straley and Neil Druckman told Game Informer the PS3 game will be available as a download the same day it arrives on discs, and is playable once the transfer is 50 percent complete. There’s no word whether other developers will have access to the “magic” Naughty Dog worked out with Sony to make it happen, but as least there will be as little delay as possible before you begin exploring its post-apocalyptic landscape June 14th.

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The Last of Us will debut ‘play while it downloads’ feature on the PS3

Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:15:46 +0000

I reviewed Ronald Diebert’s new book Black Code in this weekend’s edition of the Globe and Mail. Diebert runs the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and has been instrumental in several high-profile reports that outed government spying (like Chinese hackers who compromised the Dalai Lama’s computer and turned it into a covert CCTV)

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Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

How the $4,000 ‘Cards Against Humanity’ Kickstarter became a multi-million dollar business

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:47:05 +0000

When Cards Against Humanity saw its $4,000 Kickstarter campaign successfully raise almost four times its original goal, its makers were ecstatic. Two years later, the cards-based party game, which is available as a free PDF download or for $25 as a ready-made package, has generated an estimated $12 million in revenue, and in the past year alone was downloaded 1.5 million times from its website. It’s also spawned a reseller culture, with frequent stock shortages leading opportunists to sell the game for as much as $100 on sites like eBay. Despite that, its makers have stayed true to their cause, and have refused several investment and merchandising offers, preferring to go it alone.

The Weekender: a new ‘Star Trek’, Google’s big event, and government and science as games

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:00:02 +0000

Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we’ll bring you important articles from the previous weeks’ original reports, features, and reviews on The Verge. Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you might want to read again. Continue reading…

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The Weekender: a new ‘Star Trek’, Google’s big event, and government and science as games

What’s the difference between consumer marketing and propaganda?

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:53:05 +0000

To call something “propaganda” is to connote a laughably unsubtle attempt at mind control, from the kind of nasty stereotypes mocked in BioShock Infinite to a hilariously redubbed North Korean propaganda video that many thought was real — precisely because we expect such attempts to be ham-fisted and idiotic. At The Guardian , Eliane Glaser argues that we should be looking instead at how behavioral science, advertising, and even memes can nudge us in certain directions. “The notion that propaganda is always a state-run, top-down affair provides a cloak for our complicity,” she writes. “Social media’s veneer of openness and people-power exemplifies western propaganda’s habit of masquerading as its opposite.” Continue reading…

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What’s the difference between consumer marketing and propaganda?

Amtrak boosts WiFi on select trains, more upgrades coming this summer

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:11:00 +0000

There are plenty of wonderful things about train travel: the leg room, the scenery, the lack of security pat-downs. The WiFi , on the other hand, has long been the slowest thing about Amtrak. The company announced today that it’s finally doing something about its frustratingly sluggish service, upgrading wireless on select trains, including the Acela express between Boston and Washington DC and a few California lines like the Capitol Corridor, Pacific Surfliner and San Joaquin. Travelers to other destinations will have to wait a bit longer for quicker load times — Amtrak has promised that the rest of its WiFi-equipped trains will be upgraded by “late summer.” Comments Via: Slashdot Source: The New York Times

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Amtrak boosts WiFi on select trains, more upgrades coming this summer

How ‘Westworld’s’ killer android created movie pixelation

bigBrains — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:28:48 +0000

Every time a reality TV star’s mouth is pixelated to obscure a curse, the producers are using a technique pioneered for Yul Brynner’s killer robot in Westworld . John Whitney Jr., who created the effect for director and writer Michael Crichton, wanted to simulate how an android might see the world. To do so, he divided the screen into tiny squares, calculating the average color of each one, and filling them with that color, creating a shifting low-resolution version of normal vision.

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How ‘Westworld’s’ killer android created movie pixelation