As reported on Wired. BY JAKOB SCHILLER A UPP soldier reacts to the distant sound of a gunshot by taking out his gun in the Sao Carlos shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. March 7, 2012. When a city is chosen to host a major global event like the Olympics, officials go into high gear to ensure their metropolitan area is ready for the world’s eyes. In addition to building enormous amounts of infrastructure there’s…
As reported on Wired. BY VALENTINA PALLADINO Arcing lines represent each victim’s saga. Image: screenshot Data visualization firm Periscopic has developed a somber but thoughtful graphic showing the number of gun deaths in the United States in 2010 in terms of years of life that could have been. The project, officially launched on Monday, started out as an internal exploration of data for Periscopic co-founders Dino Citraro and Kim Rees and their team, and quickly became a compelling visual…
As reported on The Verge. By Tom Warren It’s all about the cloud, tablets, and mobile Following rumors of a Microsoft multi-billion dollar investment in Dell, the software giant has confirmed its moves to help take Dell private. Microsoft will invest around $2 billion in the form of a loan to Dell, a deal that was supervised by Silver Lake — the same private equity firm that helped Microsoft acquire Skype for $8.5 billion back in 2011. The loan may seem…
As reported on The Verge. By Sam Byford Monty Python’s Flying Circus stars John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones are set to work together again on Absolutely Anything, a sci-fi farce that will blend live action and CGI footage. Jones is directing the project, which will begin filming in the UK this spring, and tells Variety “It’s not a Monty Python picture, but it certainly has that sensibility.” Robin Williams is also on board to voice a talking dog.…
As reported on The Verge. By Jeff Blagdon The computer of Dr. Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri has made a rare mathematical discovery — the world’s largest known prime number, 257,885,161 – 1. The integer is more than 17 million digits long, so if you wanted a hard copy to hang on your wall or something it would take more than 13,000 pages of A4 paper. The size of the find crushes the 2009…
As reported on TechCrunch. by GREGORY FERENSTEIN America got bamboozled yesterday, courtesy of an unintentional media fabrication: the government is not building a super-fast national Wi-Fi network. A somewhat confusing feature in The Washington Postabout a few loosely connected government initiatives about greater access to faster Wi-Fi got twisted into a story about a plan to create a so-called “Super Wi-Fi” network. What ensued looked like a game of telephone between hair-trigger media outlets. In fairness, I was…
As reported on TechCrunch. by DARRELL ETHERINGTON Dell has indeed made the decision to go private, according to reports today from The AP and other sources. The deal reportedly involves a leveraged buyout worth $24.4 billion by company founder Michael Dell and partners. Talks about Dell going private have been growing this year, with reports last week saying that Michael Dell was offering up to $1 billion of his own funds to take control of the company to help make it happen. The deal…
As reported on TechCrunch. by NATASHA LOMAS Vine, the Twitter-owned video sharing iOS app which lets users knit together snippets of video to create six second loops, has had its user age rating increased to 17+. The increase was bundled in a v1.0.5 app update which requires users to confirm they are “at least 17 years old” before the download begins, and warns of “frequent/intense sexual content or nudity”, among other warnings of “infrequent” drugs, alcohol, tobacco, horror/fear…
As reported on Engadget. By Sharif Sakr No one can doubt the stamina of Australia’s consumer watchdog, the ACCC. For six long years it hauled Google from hearing to hearing, court to court, in the belief that the internet giant should be held responsible for any “misleading” advertisements displayed as search results. But now the ACCC must accept defeat. Five judges of Australia’s High Court have unanimously overturned an earlier ruling from a lower court that would have required…
As reported on Engadget. By Tim Stevens It’s a compelling proposition: all the power and application compatibility of a laptop running a proper desktop operating system, all the portability and convenience of a tablet, all mixed together in one package. That’s the core idea behind Microsoft’s Surface tablets but, as we saw with the Surface for Windows RT a few months ago, its ARM-based nature resulted in some substantial drawbacks. Namely: app selection. Running Windows is all well…