Category: Story

Story Travel

U.S. Now Targeting Mexican Drug Lord’s Family, Too

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As reported on Wired. BY ROBERT BECKHUSEN Accused Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman after his arrest in 1993. Photo: AP/Damian Dovargane   If there’s one rule to running the mob, it’s to keep your family close. For Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the cocaine kingpin of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, he’s kept his family so close to the business that it’s attracted the attention of the U.S. government. On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department added two top-level Sinaloa…

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Engineering Entertainment Story Tech

‘The Avengers’ visual effects reel reveals how ILM built a fictional New York City

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As reported on The Verge. By Kimber Streams In celebration of its Oscar nomination, ILMVisualFX has released a video breaking down the slew of effects used in Marvel’s The Avengers. The reel shows how the company built and rendered the city of New York as well as the process of animating Tony Stark’s Ironman suit and Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk. In the comments, ILMVisualFX has answered a few questions about its visual effects process, saying that the…

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Apple Business Story Tech

The Apple economy dominates CES 2013, but Samsung isn’t far behind

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As reported on The Verge. By Ellis Hamburger Apple hasn’t made an appearance at CES since 1992, but its products are everywhere. At CES 2013, iPhones and iPads adorn the sides of booths for everything from Bluetooth speaker manufacturers to car audio companies. Booth after booth is named iFrogz, iSkins, and iLounge. Row after row of companies like Otterbox and Speck have made fortunes building cases for Apple products. Just Mobile’s booth is something like an aluminum…

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Space Story Tech

Unblinking Baby Telescopes Will Hunt Exoplanets for Cheap

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As reported on Wired. BY ADAM MANN Image: A schematic drawing showing two of four planned small telescopes in the Minerva project, which will look for exoplanets in our stellar neighborhood. PlaneWave/Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT)   LONG BEACH, California — A new ground-based telescope project named Minerva will be dedicated to uncovering extrasolar planets in our nearby stellar neighborhood. Given its small size and relatively low cost, it could represent a way for astronomers to…

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News Story Tech Trends

U.S. Cities Relying on Precog Software to Predict Murder

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As reported on Wired. BY KIM ZETTER A precog in the film Minority Report who can see the future and predict events. Photo courtesy of Dreamworks/20th Century Fox   Who needs the freaky precogs of Minority Report to predict if someone’s likely to commit murder when you have an algorithm that can do it for you? New crime-prediction software used in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and soon to be rolled out in the nation’s capital too, promises to reduce the homicide rate…

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Story

Portal short film creator tapped for feature-length Y: The Last Man adaptation

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As reported on Polygon. By GRIFFIN MCELROY Dan Trachtenberg, creator of the acclaimed 2011 Portal-themed short film No Escape has been chosen to direct the feature-length film adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn’s Y: The Last Man series of graphic novels, Vulturereports.An adaptation for Vaughn’s novels, which tell the story of a mysterious plague which kills every living male on Earth — save for escape artist Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand — has been in the works for years. Vulture learnedfour months ago…

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Story

Oculus Rift: deep inside the immersive, disorienting virtual reality gaming experience

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As seen on The Verge. By Nathan Ingraham VIEW FULL GALLERY Previous Next While the hardware may be straightforward, the experience of using the Rift is anything but. Strapping on the Rift and stepping into that virtual, 3D world was a lot like seeing a 3D movie for the first time — it’s initially a shock to your system. The Oculus team says that lag and latency in the final dev kit will be improved over…

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Story

LG Ultra HD Touch Display hands-on (video) HD

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As reported on Engadget. By Sarah Silbert We bet you’re yawning at the mention of 4K TVs by now, but here’s a slight twist on that high-res concept. LG is showing off the so-called Ultra HD Touch display at its CES booth. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: a 4K TV with five-point multitouch. LG isn’t demoing this product as a TV — though technically it could work as your standard set; instead it has the Ultra HD Touch…

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Story

Jon Stewart Fought Through A Cold To Deliver A 20-Minute Riff On Gun Control

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As reported on Businessinsider.com by Brett LoGiurato Comedy Central Jon Stewart caught up last night following a lengthy hiatus and delivered a substantial riff on curbing gun violence in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.  Stewart, who has spoken out on the topic of gun control multiple times in the last year, battled a cold that left his voice raspy throughout the nearly 20-minute long segment. He opened the show…

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Story Tech

I Raised My Kids On the Command Line…and They Love It

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As reported on LifeHacker. byJohn Goerzen Two years ago, my son Jacob (then 3) and I built his first computer together. I installed Debian on it, but never put a GUI on the thing. It’s command-line, and has provided lots of enjoyment off and on over the last couple of years. The looks of shock I get from people when I explain, as if it’s perfectly natural, that my child has been able to log…

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