On February 21, Korean National Police Agency teamed up with Rovio Entertainment to create a campaign in which Rovio’s iconic Angry Birds can be used as a sort of anger management in a campaign that aims to prevent violence in schools. That’s right, Korea thinks that a video game — even one with the word “Angry” in the title — can actually help prevent violence. I wish I could say more of my own countrymen were equally enlightened.

The details of exactly how the program will work are a bit unclear at the moment, but the basic premise is pretty easy to understand: The Korean police will play off childrens’ familiarity with the Angry Birds characters to more effectively convey messages of violence prevention.  Senior vice president of Rovio Asia, Henri Holm, is understandably excited to see the company’s creations being used for a good cause.

I really hope that the campaign is successful in preventing school violence because that would be a good thing, but I can help but be afraid that the birds might actually overcome their own anger issues. Hopefully we won’t all end up playing Placid Birds a year or two down the line. That just doesn’t sound like much fun.

(via Kotaku)

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So it seems that Tesla cars have an interesting problem that you might not think an electric car would have; they can’t charge from 0% battery. If you leave a Tesla parked for too long, its background systems — which are permanently running  – can drain the battery all the way down, at which point the car is effectively useless unless you purchase a new battery from Tesla for about $40,000. Your Tesla can get “bricked.”

The issue seems to plague all models of Tesla Motor’s vehicles, but has recently gotten some attention due to a blog post by Michael DeGusta which highlights the matter. The big deal here is not only that the Tesla can brick, essentially destroying $40,000 by doing so, but also that the Tesla can brick just from being left alone. Fortunately, the always-on systems don’t draw too much power; on a fully charged battery, a Tesla can last about 11 weeks without a recharge, after which it will become completely useless. You can’t even push a bricked Tesla.

It sounds pretty far out, I know, but DeGusta says that he’s found five instances of bricked Tesla Roadsters and has been pointed to all of them by a Tesla service manager. Granted, they all seem to involve weird circumstances since it’s rare to not use your car for 11 weeks, but a Japanese man who had one imported, and then had some voltage problems, found himself with a big ol’ Tesla-shaped brick, and he isn’t the only one.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of all this is the way that Tesla appears to have dealt with the issue so far. For one, if this happens to you, you’re going to have to shell out; your warranty will be voided for “failure to maintain the Battery at a proper charge level at all times.” On top of that, the owner’s manual seems to gloss over the possible effects of neglecting your charging duties, saying:

The Tesla battery is optimized for nightly charging… The Model S battery will not lose a significant amount of charge when parked for long periods of time. For example, Model S owners can park at the airport for extended vacations without plugging in.”

You’ll note that there doesn’t appear to be any mention of what happens if you don’t charge it nightly, or what exactly a “significant amount” is, or an “extended vacation” for that matter.

Granted, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever leave your car totally alone for the 11 weeks necessary to brick it, but there are scenarios in which that might happen and $40,000 is a high price to pay, a price that makes even the slightest chance seem like a huge gamble.

Tesla has come out and responded to these critisims. Here’s what they had to say:

All automobiles require some level of owner care. For example, combustion vehicles require regular oil changes or the engine will be destroyed. Electric vehicles should be plugged in and charging when not in use for maximum performance. All batteries are subject to damage if the charge is kept at zero for long periods of time. However, Tesla avoids this problem in virtually all instances with numerous counter-measures. Tesla batteries can remain unplugged for weeks (even months), without reaching zero state of charge. Owners of Roadster 2.0 and all subsequent Tesla products can request that their vehicle alert Tesla if SOC falls to a low level. All Tesla vehicles emit various visual and audible warnings if the battery pack falls below 5 percent SOC. Tesla provides extensive maintenance recommendations as part of the customer experience.

Take that as you will. In any event, it’s good to know.

(via Venture Beat, Engadget)

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Apparently it doesn’t take much to get Kellogg to make you your own cereal, at least if you’re famous. Tim Burgess, lead singer for Charlatans was able to make his dream, “Totes Amazeballs“, a reality after merely tweeting a joke about its existence. When that existence of that tweet made itself apparent to Kellogg, the company responded by making the cereal actually exist, a surprisingly awesome way to react to a joke.

Totes Amazeballs consists of Rocky Road cake, Coco Pops, marshmallows, shortbread pieces, and raisins which frankly, sound totes amazeballs. Apparently Kellogg thought it sounded good too, although it’s worth noting that they made exactly one box. A Kellogg’s spokewoman described the whole thing this way to Adweek:

“It all came about a few weeks ago when Tim tweeted his fans about wanting to create a super cereal called Totes Amazeballs. We really try to make the most of Twitter here at Kellogg’s, and when we saw the tweet, we knew we had to make something special for him.”

Well that’s all fine and dandy, but what about the rest of us? I’ve have been wishing and hoping for just one box of Admiral Crunch for years now. I mean, I’d settle for Petty Officer First Class Crunch if I had to, but no one seems to make the stuff, which is really a crying shame. Is anyone going to make it for me? I highly doubt it, but a guy can dream, right?

(via The Daily What)

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Sometimes you just want to build something that looks cool and has no practical purpose whatsoever. If you’re like me, you just huddle in a corner until the urge subsides, but if you’re like Autuin of Free Geek Vancouver, you actually build a thing. The thing in question this time around is called the Dymaxion Auto-Matic Buckminster Fuller. Basically, it’s an old radio with an old CRT display jammed inside of it that spouts randomly generated quotes attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller. It’s as awesome as it is useless.

The different pieces of this Frankenstein’s monster came together over a period of years. Autuin bought the machine’s shell, an old dead radio, years ago and then was sparked to finally do something with it after purchasing an old Coleman Multifunctional TV Lantern. Ripping the CRT out from one peice of antiquated equipment and plugging it into the corpse of another, Autuin managed to create a seriously awesome retro-futuristic display, and then had to figure out what to put on it.

Ultimately, Autuin settled on using a Markov algorithm to project theoretical (and somewhat garbled) quotes from R. Buckminster Fuller, father of the geodesic dome. The result is an amazingly retro-futuristic monitor displaying retro-futuristic gibberish speeches. What better, useless appliance could you possibly have?

Hop over to the Free Geek Vancouver blog to see a quick video of this bad boy in action and an in-depth breakdown of the build process.

(Free Geek Vancouver via Hack a Day)

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This officially licensed desk lamp is not only Tetris themed, but each tetromino lights up when stacked on top of one that is already lit. That also means you can be a lunatic person and rearrange the pattern every single day you sit down at your desk, being the centerpiece of your boring office’s only fun. The desk lamp is slated to release toward the end of this year in September 2012 for $50, so you’ll have to wait around until then to intricately stack terominos on your desk, but have them light up instead of clear.

(Action Figure Insider via Gizmodo)

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Internet-connected glasses with a heads-up display seem exceedingly futuristic, but if reports are to be believed, you can expect the future to be coming by the end of this year. Google has been working on this project for a while now, and that fact alone is hardly any kind of secret, but now some new details have come to light according to a tipster at 9 to 5 Google and it turns out that it might not actually be too early to start getting excited.

None of the Google employee’s familiar with the product were okay with being named, but they did dish out a number of juicy details. The glasses are said to run on Android (unsurprisingly), have 3G or 4G data connection, a small lens-mounted screen, a small camera, and navigation by subtle head gestures. The price is expected to be around that of a smartphone somewhere from $200-$650, and they may look something like a pair of Oakley Thumps, pictured above.

Probably the two biggest concerns about these glasses so far are U.I. navigation and privacy. On the navigation front, it’s reported that movement through menus and between apps is done largely via head-tilting. While that does sound a bit awkward, sources say that it is easy to learn, becomes almost second nature, and — if done correctly — is relatively inconspicuous. The last bit is especially heartening to hear since a HUD would be significantly less appealing if you had to look like an idiot in order to use it.

When it comes to privacy, Google is still experimenting with how to ensure privacy not so much for users as for non-users. Users of the Google HUD will likely be using a number of different Google apps and can probably expect a flavor of privacy similar to Google’s standard fare. The big issue seems to be preventing users from photographing or recording non-users without their awareness or consent, something Google is still trying to address. It helps that the associated camera is expected to be pretty low-tech and used mostly for Google Goggle-like identification, not video recording or photography.

Obviously there are still a lot of details to come out and probably a lot of development to be done, but if the rumors are true and the glasses are due for release by the end of the year, they’re a lot further along than I would have thought. It’ll be interesting to see how they would fit into the hierarchy of gadgets when almost everyone has a smartphone and many are adopting tablets as their somewhat superfluous device of choice. Nonetheless, if Google is trying to usher a future of augmented sight, more power to them.

(via Bits Blog)

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At earlier bail hearings, lawyers representing the United States said they felt DotCom might’ve had hidden enough money somewhere that he could use to make some sort of escape, but the judge that granted bail said police hadn’t proven that DotCom had enough remaining assets to make said escape.

Kim DotCom said he wants to be with his family in New Zealand, where he can better fight the charges he’s facing. Though DotCom has been granted bail, the story of the MegaUpload takedown and DotCom’s arrest that happened seemingly out of nowhere continues.

(via CNET)

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Streampix aims to be a “stream anywhere” type of service, allowing subscribers to view content through multiple devices, such as iOS and Android, Xbox 360, and web browsers. To begin with, Streampix will offer content from well-known names as NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, Disney-ABC Television Group, Warner Bros., and Cookie Jar Entertainment, which is a children’s network.

Streampix most likely won’t achieve Netflix-style notoriety and success, especially because customers have to be signed up for specific Comcast packages beforehand to even subscribe to Streampix, but existing Comcast customers who are already signed up for the services probably wouldn’t mind rolling their streaming video demands into one bill, rather than pay both Comcast and Netflix separately. Comcast will just have to hope that what they have on offer will be enough to entice customers. Streampix is launching with all of Lost, so that’s at least a good start.

(Comcast via VentureBeat)

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Everyone seems to have the same reaction to this video: You aren’t really on board, but then he is breakfast and you’re right there with him.

Check out Totally Wizard Productions for some more videos from the team.

(via reddit)

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Discovered back in 2009, exoplanet GJ 1214b has been the focus of interest from the start. One of the first planets discovered to have an atmosphere, there’s been a lot of guessing as to exactly what kind it actually has. In 2010, tests showed that the atmosphere was primarily composed of water, and now infrared spectra taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed that it is in fact a waterworld and a planet unlike any other that has been previously discovered.

Like Earth, GJ 1214b has a plentiful supply of water, but it’s unlike Earth in about every other respect. GJ 1214b comes in at about 2.7 times the size of Earth in diameter and about 7 times the weight. GJ 1214b is also a lot closer to its sun than we are to ours; it sits a mere 1.24 million miles out, lapping the star every 38 hours. The Earth, on the other hand, hangs out at a distance of approximately 93,000,000 miles from our sun, completing one rotation every 8,765 hours or so (1 year). As such, GJ 1214b is a bit hotter than Earth with a temperature that’s probably around 446 degrees Fahrenheit (230 Celsius).

Up until now, it was clear that GJ 1214b’s atmosphere was clouded up with something but no one could be clear if it was steam or some other sort of haze. Now, after making a convenient pass in front of its own sun at just the right time, GJ 1214b was in a great position to be scanned by the Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which picked up details about the planet’s atmosphere and confirmed it was composed primarily of steam.

By doing some calculations with all the known variables, scientists were able to calculate GJ 1214b’s overall density, 2 grams per cubic centimeter, which suggests that it has far more water and far less rock than Earth. This fact, in conjunction with the planet’s high temperature, means that it’s probably home to all kinds of phenomena we never see here on our little blue planet, phenomena like “hot ice” and “superfluid water.”

Fortunately, GJ 1214b is pretty close to Earth, in astronomical terms anyways. It’s only about 40 light-years away, and while that means you aren’t likely to see any of the planet’s hot ice in person — not like you’d survive anyways — the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to get a good look after its launch later this decade. If you want to know the gritty details, you can read a paper on the planet here. And if you don’t feel like diving into that, let me put it this way: It’s probably a pretty interesting place, but not even a gilled Kevin Costner could survive this waterworld firsthand.

(via Universe Today)

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As Ars Technica points out, Windows has generally allowed users to use a U.K. keyboard layout, but the poor Brits had to deal with the rough-and-tumble American language Windows for quite a while. Well, no more. Instead of bathroom-and-defense Windows, United Kingdom patrons will now be able to install a standalone loo-and-defence Windows, which means this isn’t just the language pack treatment, it’s a proper tribute to all things slightly different. Standalone languages simply mean that all of the user interface components required to be an independent version of Windows.

Though this isn’t the biggest revolution, the recognition of English as a standalone Windows language will certainly make at least one country pretty happy and probably shouldn’t been an oversight for so long. Meat pies all around.

(Building Windows 8 blog via Ars Technica)

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When the iPhone 4 launched in 2010, some users immediately complained about poor reception when using the device. It eventually came to light that gripping the phone in a certain way covered the antenna integrated into the bezel and appeared to cause a not-insignificant signal drop. That was all in the past. However, Apple has now settled a class-action suit with dissatisfied customers, with those affected winning their choice of a free iPhone case or $15. Don’t spent it all in one place!

Back in 2010, Apple responded to the initial furor with a revamped algorithm for displaying signal strength, but also issued free iPhone cases to affected customers. With the cases, users were unable to completely block the antennas and thus unable to block the signal. The fact that free iPhone cases are once again being offered might seem a touch ridiculous, though they are apparently being offered to those who were unable or uninterested in taking advantage of the 2010 offer.

While $15 per person sounds like a paltry sum, the class-action suit covered some 18 individual lawsuits affecting 25 million customers. That’s a hefty chunk of change, though it’s widely known that Apple has oceans of cash at its disposal.

If you’re part of the lawsuit you should receive an email from Apple within the near future. If you are looking for something to do with your $15, I suggest getting $40 more and buying one of these. Functional, dangerous, and it will probably keep you from messing up your antenna.

(via Macworld)

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(title pic via reddit)

If you had any doubts as to whether or not Mass Effect 3 could live up to its epic potential as a gut wrenching tale of the depressing, messy fight for — at best — a Pyrrhic victory against a foe so overwhelming as to be unbelievable, this trailer should clear things up for you. If you still have doubts, just watch it again. Of course, the trailer didn’t include any comedy, but I trust that won’t be absent from this game either. That is, unless, everyone funny bought the farm in your playthrough of Mass Effect 2. I’ll miss you, Mordin.

(via Piki Geek)

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Walking through the darkness of your bedroom, you suddenly a feel wet, slimy tendril wrap around your neck, lifting you off your feet toward the ceiling. Unfortunately, you don’t have a gun on your person because you thought your bedroom was pretty safe, and instead of shooting your way free, you are pulled up toward the Barnacle and experience an unfortunate death on a ceiling. At least, that’s how it’d be if this sweet Half-Life Barnacle lamp created by Daniel Ritthanondh wasn’t just a sweet lamp, and was actually the bane of your walking-through-a-dark-hallway existence. Check out another picture below, featuring the actual lightbulbs.

(Daniel Ritthanondh via Obvious Winner)

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Television’s favorite manly man with a secret heart of gold, as well as a secret lust for riddles and soft jazz, Ron Swanson, has his own page on the Internet Movie Database. No, not the listing of the character that Nick Offerman plays, but Ron Swanson himself, as if he were a real life person that contributed to the movie and television industry. Interestingly, Ron Swanson’s IMDb credits end in 1996, one year before Nick Offerman’s credits begin in 1997. I mean, you’ve never seen both Ron Swanson and Nick Offerman in the same room, right?!

His writing credits associate him with Chuck Norris movies and television, such as an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, as well as some other Chuck Norris movies. As tired and boring the old Chuck Norris joke is, it’s amusing to see that Ron Swanson had a secret fake hand in his career. I, for one, would be happy to put the nail in the Chuck Norris joke coffin and replace said joke’s titular character with Ron Swanson.

If you’re wondering, yes, Ron Swanson is credited under the individual works’ IMDb pages as well. Seeing as how he’s one of the best characters currently on television — a thin group of characters ever since a certain something went down over on HBO — we’re pretty happy to see him continually get his due, even if it is fake due.

(h/t Uproxx)

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As part of its enduring fondness for watches which aren’t immediately decipherable, Tokyoflash has released yet another watch that isn’t exactly what it seems. The Kisai Stencil Watch, while a little weird at a glance, is probably the most intuitive Tokyoflash watch I’ve seen in a long time. The trick is easy; the numbers are drawn with the whitespace. As you might have guessed by the watch’s name, its face is conveyed via stencil, making it look like jumbled lines at first glance, but also exceeding easy to read once the trick clicks.

As neat as that is, there seems to be one weird issue with the presentation. While the numbers 2-9 can be pretty easily conveyed by sectioning off whitespace in a rectangle, the number 1 is tougher and winds up just being a division down the center. I guess it’s up to you to decide which half is the extra space and which is the number. Of course, 4, 7, 9 have their whitespace issues as well, but those are a little less jarring.

The Kisai Stencil Watch comes standard with a stainless steel body and a leather strap. You also get a choice of backlighting; you can opt for a version that illuminates the space (i.e. the actual number) or one that lights up the divisions. If you’re looking to pick one up, they’re available for the $99 USD right now, but that price hops up to $139 at 11PM EST, so if you’re going to impulse buy, get to it.  I think I’m going to hold out for the inevitable Tokyoflash watch that shows time literally in hieroglyphics.

(via Technabob)

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R.L. Stine is probably best known for his young adult horror series Goosebumps, which graced the tissue-paper thin pages of Scholastic book order forms for most of the 1990s and early 2000s. What you may not know is that Stine is an avid Twitter user, and last week took the opportunity to tweet out an entire horror story, 140 characters at a time. It’s no Welcome to Dead House, but it’s a reminder that Stine is a master of brevity in storytelling. It also features a haunted kitchen, so there’s that.

The tweets were collected by Storify user Jason Boog. What I think is so interesting about this exercise is how much detail Stine is able to wrench into so short a story. We’ve got place, characters, drama, and even a twist ending.

(via Onion AV Club, image via Scholastic)

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For those who have been waiting since the debut of the iPhone to weaponize it, your time has come. Piexon, the makers of fine pepper spray related products, has developed the SmartGuard, a tube of mace attached to an iPhone case. The device’s creators reason that if everyone is carrying a smartphone these days, it makes perfect sense to attach a pressurized nozzle of irritant to it. That way, you’ll never leave home without your pepper spray.

If you’re keen on getting yourself a weaponized iPhone of your very own, it’ll set you back about $55 (49.90 Swiss francs). Replacement canisters, which you’ll need since each has only has six seconds of spray-time, will cost you about $28. The SmartGuard is also for the fashion conscious, coming in black, white, and pink.

Unfortunately, the SmartGuard is merely an iPhone-based holster for a pepper spray canister. Simply detach the cylindrical canister, aim the end at your attacker, and depress the plunger with your thumb. Because the nozzle is located at the bottom of the canister and the plunger locked when attached to the phone, the pepper spray cannot be used when holstered. Frankly, this is probably a good thing as it greatly reduces the likelihood of accidentally spraying yourself in the face when making a call.

Joking aside, I can see some utility in this. Should a mugger order you to surrender your wallet and phone, you’ll have a perfect opportunity to retaliate with the SmartGuard. However, the major drawback of having pepper spray strapped to your phone is that everyone will know you have it. Answer a call at work and your self defense weapon is in plain sight. Whip out your phone to check into a restaurant on FourSquare and now everyone knows you’re packin’. This isn’t so much a tactical drawback as it is socially awkward.

If that’s not a problem for you, why not take one of these and just strap a cellphone to it? Then people will know you’re serious.

(Piexon via Gizmodo)

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As you may or may not be aware, the U.K. is pretty down with the marriage of social media and law in general, so this isn’t too much of a surprise. After all, the U.K. Supreme Court accepts freedom of information requests via Twitter, and is even opening up an account on the service for the purpose of tweeting rulings. This new ruling gets Facebook into the mix as well, at least in England and Wales.

This ruling won’t actually usher in the first instance of a summons being served by Facebook; that’s already happened. The ruling is just saying that it’s okay for it to keep happening. Last year, a lawyer recieved permission from the Hastings County Court to send out a summons via Facebook as a last resort after a debtor managed to avoid all conventional forms of communication.

Of course, it’s not like this is going to become the primary method by which summons are served, although due to the ease with which they can be sent, Facebook summons are likely to become common. It’s actually not that big of a surprise considering that the U.K. has allowed summons to be sent via Twitter — apparently U.K. High Court’s social network of choice — for years now. It’s kind of surprising Facebook hasn’t been roped in until just now.

It looks like there’s new criteria for being a real social network: Whether the U.K. High Court will permit you as a vehicle for summons. You jealous, Google+?

(via The Next Web)

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About 298 million years ago near the modern day city of Wuda, China, a volcano erupted. Over the course of several days it rained down volcanic ash with such ferocity that branches were torn from plants and enormous trees were felled in a nearby forest. The forest plants were completely buried in a layer of thick ash, and was in turn buried over eons of new growth. Now, scientists have unearthed this lost forest, giving them a glimpse into a long forgotten time.

Research at the site is being carried out by both American and Chinese scientists. However, a recent paper published by the University of Pennsylvania’s paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn paints a vivid picture of the ancient forest. Because it was buried so quickly in volcanic ash, preserving the forest in remarkable detail, it’s being called the Permian Pompeii — a reference to the geologic age of the forest and the Roman city which was buried in ash.

According to Pfefferkorn the plants at the site are in excellent shape:

“It’s marvelously preserved,” Pfefferkorn said. “We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.”

While some of the larger flora were ripped apart by the ash, other smaller plants were buried completely intact. Researchers have even found fully preserved leaves and cones at the site.

During the Permian age, most landmasses were clustered along the equator and had yet to form the supercontinent Pangea. Despite this separation, researchers found many known species living in the same area. Looking at three sites totaling over 1,000 square meters, Pfefferkorn describes a forest of low tree ferns occasionally punctuated by enormous 80 foot trees. Using the preserved specimens, the researchers sought the cooperation of Chinese painter Ren Yugao, who created the picture above.

Though most of the species in the forest were already described, the Permian Pompeii forest is a rare find that gives researchers a clear view of the time period. From it, scientists are hoping to learn more about how the plants lived together, and perhaps even the planet’s cycle of climate change. Ironic, since the forest was unearthed through coal mining activities in the region.

(University of Pennsylvania via Gizmodo, Nature)

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I am nothing if not a fan of mechs, and I am stoked to say that it is a very, very good year for mechs. As if it wasn’t good enough already (it is), this mini ED-209 Robocop junkbot is just gravy. A miniscule version of its sophisticated namesake, the mini ED-209 was constructed by TGNsmith out of recycled materials like  an old computer case and some spent propane tanks welded together with some love and ingenuity. The mini ED-209 junkbot actually has a big brother junkbot that weighs over 300 pounds, but this little guy has his own distinct characteristic: He’s for sale.

For $150 dollars, the mini junkbot can be all yours. He stands 13.5 inches tall, boasts a 15-inch wingspan, and a thickness of 8 inches. He’s also capable of a 90 degree torso twist, a must-have when you’re dishing out indiscriminate fire. Although he is cute — in a really indimidating sort of way — TGNsmith points out that he’s not for kids; he has sharp edges. No word as to whether or not he inhereted his father’s glitches.

I’m partial to an Uziel myself, but I have to say that this sculpture is pretty impressive and I’m more than a little drawn to it. If I had a $150 bucks to throw at some dangerous police prototypes, I might have to snatch it up. I don’t though, but if you do, he’s still available at the time of this writing, so maybe you’d like to give him a home. Just treat him nicely, or one of his larger relatives might arrange for you to have a very bad day.

(Etsy via Technabob)

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For Homer Simpson, there is only one beer: Duff. However, Matt Groening is on the record as saying that he will never allow an officially licensed Duff beer on the grounds that it will encourage underage drinking. That surprisingly thoughtful stance has prevented an official cash-in, but that hasn’t stopped some breweries from either trying to push counterfeit Duff, or just coincidentally producing a beer with the same name. If you’re keen to drink Duff, real Duff beer, then these are the best you can get.

A brief note before we begin: It’s well documented that a canned energy drink modeled after Duff beer is available at the Universal Studios Simpsons ride and in limited locations in the U.S. and the U.K.. But that’s not beer, so we’re ignoring it. Also, this list is by no means comprehensive; a quick search on Beer Advocate will pull up a number of other brews. These, however, have the largest Internet footprint and the most to talk about.

Onward!

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Duff (Mexico)

While many of the other Duff beers could perhaps be argued as merely coincidentally named Duff, we’ll start with a true blue ripoff with Duff, from Mexico. Founded in 2006, the company is apparently headed by Rodrigo Contreras who designed a bottle identical to the beer featured in The Simpsons. He even secured a trademark on the name in Mexico and used the Duffman theme music on the brewery’s website — though Wikipedia notes that Mexican law would probably not protect the upstart company. Interestingly, the website seems to have been left to languish for the past three years, but that doesn’t mean the beer isn’t still for sale south of the border.

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Lion Nathan Duff

An exercise in small brewery vs. enormous media conglomerate, the Australian brewery Lion Nathan began producing a Duff Beer in the 1990s. They were quickly and summarily served by 20th Century Fox’s lawyers, resulting in the product being pulled from the shelves and becoming quite the collector’s item. Though Duff is ocassionally available on eBay, Lion Nathan has a number of other beers, one of which is responsible for easily the best beer commercial I’ve ever seen.

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Duff’s Famous Wings

Apparently a titular beer has been brewed for the Buffalo, New York restaurant Duff’s Famous Wings. According to Beer Advocate, the brew is much how I imagine Duff beer, being described as pale, hay-colored, and “just like Coors!” If light beer and wings is your thing, you could move to Buffalo and live like Homer.

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Daleside’s Duff Dark

This is another seemingly coincidental beer, the name playing off the Gaelic word “dubh” which means “dark.” The beer is apparently dark indeed, and full of a “sickly sweet” flavor which seems to have not done it any favors as far as ratings on Beer Advocate are concerned. However, it is still for sale in bottles.

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McDuffs Beer

Story goes that founder Gavin Duff named his brewery after himself when he set up shop in the New Zealand city of Dunedin. However, Twentieth Century Fox filed suit and forced the brewery to change its name. Reborn as McDuffs, the company continues to produce quality beverages. Though the Duff name is gone, the beer remains the same.

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The Legendary Duff Beer

While the Mexican Duff beer did a good job, the gold standard for Simpsons ripoff beers has to go to Eschweger Klosterbrauerei and their The Legendary Duff Beer. Unlike the Mexican brew, this German beer seems to be thriving with distribution across Europe and recently expanded its line to include both cans and bottles. Boxes of 24 cans are available online, but good luck getting them delivered stateside. Aside from the new packaging, the company even launched their first variant flavor: A grapefruit and blood orange infused version of the lager. Surely, Homer would not approve. Despite its apparent success, the beer fell flat on Beer Advocate, which only seems appropriate.

(via Wikipedia)

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I’m all for realistic graphics, but this fan-made GoldenEye 64 mod – which is totally an actual GoldenEye 64 mod, for sure — takes it too far. It’s like it comes out of one uncanny valley and into the next. Maybe they should have put a little of that effort into improving Natalya’s A.I. instead of making sure the bad guys look like real people as they awkwardly crumble. I think I’ll just go play GoldenEye: Rogue Agent; that was way better than GoldenEye 64 anyways. I mean, at least it had an actual golden eye, right?

(via Nerd Approved)

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Updated content follows below.

Remember how the price of Whitney Houston’s “The Ultimate Collection” nearly doubled within the hour following her death? Remember how it got knocked back down and there was just the slightest chance that it could have been unrelated to price-gouging since Sony gave a vaugely plausible story? Now, The Bodyguard, a film in which Houston starred, has been yanked off Netflix streaming. Why? Because the rightsholder (which is most likely Warner Bros.) saw that “there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies.” No two ways about it.

The Bodyguard, a film from 1992, had been available on Netflix streaming up until her death, but suddenly, it isn’t any longer. It seems as if the rights were revoked shortly after her death but the matter has recently been receiving more attention following Kevin Costner’s speech at Houston’s funeral on Saturday. On discovering the film’s unavailability, more than one Netflix user left a venomous review, but Dan McDermott took the initiative to call Netfilx about it, uncovering the particularly ugly truth.

When McDermott got ahold of a Netflix representative, he was treated to the blunt explanation. He quotes the representative on Google+ as saying:

“Okay Dan, I just went and talked to my main supervisor as to why the movie had been pulled and the reason it was pulled was the production company pulled the streaming rights from us because all the publicity after Whitney Houston’s passing there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies. So they’re going to pull all the streaming titles we have of Whitney Houston so they can make more money off the DVD sales of her movies.”

The emphasis is mine. You probably didn’t need it, but I couldn’t quite help myself. I think it’s pretty clear already, but it bears mentioning that this isn’t Netflix’s fault, and I respect them for being so upfront about it. That being said, if the whole “The Ultimate Collection” thing got you upset, now might be a good time to remember to take a deep breath.

The move, while unfortunately predictable as a business maneuver, is almost unbelievably bold in that they straight-up told Netflix “Yeah. We want some cash on this one.” Granted, it is their right to do what they did, but that doesn’t make it any less tasteless, manipulative, and flat-out disrespectful.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t point out that this is an excellent illustration of why pirated copies of a thing should not be counted as a loss. There are plenty of people who would have watched The Bodyguard on Netflix had it still been there and many of them may proceed to pirate it; it would be insane to count those instances of piracy as losses like everyone was going to trot out to the store to pick up a DVD copy just because the rightsholder decided that the consumer was due for a good milking.

This kind of behavior shows the extent to which rightsholders care about money, not creative content or even basic decency. The fact that the manipulation centers around someone’s death just throws that much more salt into the wound. Just remember this the next time the MPAA complains that creators are getting screwed, even if they are, they certainly aren’t the only ones.

Update: Dan McDermott has posted a follow-up Google+ post addressing Netflix’s claims that reports of a removal in conjunction with Whitney Houston’s death are untrue. McDermott asserts that his quote from the Netflix representative is 100% accurate but that it’s become clear that The Bodyguard was removed from Netflix streaming as of January 1, 2012, prior to Houston’s death.

(via TechDirt)

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(the Internet is weird, guys)

You guys like shirts, right? You know, that thing you drape over the back of your chair because you only wore it for four hours that day and really can’t warrant throwing it in the laundry already? But then you just leave it draped over your chair for days and keep leaning against it because you use your chair quite frequently, and the it eventually gets wrinkled and dirty enough to the point where you just decide to throw it in the laundry anyway? You want a free one? T-shirts.com was awesome enough to provide us with five t-shirt giveaways, just for you! All you have to do is create a caption for the above picture and drop it into the comment section of this post, and we’ll choose the winner, judging the caption on a combination of creativity and relevance to the picture. They have some nice shirts over there, including these superhero t-shirts, so you should take the minute and try your hand at a caption.

As mentioned above, we’ll be choosing winners based on caption creativity, but also the caption’s relevance to the picture. So, while it may be creative to write about how aliens are hovering out of the scene above the lady and are planning world domination, that’s not particularly relevant to the picture.

In order for us to choose the winners, you’ll need to provide us with a way to contact you, so using one of the available commenter accounts that our comment system provides that has an attached email address would be ideal. If not, we can just reply to your comment, and you’ll have to check back to see if you’ve won and leave us an email address afterward.

Winners are U.S. only, due to shipping concerns. We’ll let it run for a week or so then contact the winners. Good luck!

Thanks to T-shirts.com for the giveaway!

The Pirate Bay has been sailing on some stormy seas lately, and things don’t look to be getting any better. U.K. high court recently ruled that the site ”authorizes” and encourages users to infringe on copyrights as opposed to merely “enabling” or “assisting,” a distinction which puts The Pirate Bay in the position of being decidedly illegal in the U.K.. That being the case, it’s possible that the site could be blocked outright by ISPs; they wouldn’t be the first.

Last year, a similar ruling compelled ISPs to block a similar website Newzbin2, due to copyright infringment concerns. The block obliged ISPs to block any and all “IP address or URL whose sole or predominant purpose is to enable or facilitate access to the Newzbin[2] website” in order to block any attempts to get around the ban. The block also stated the studio’s bringing the lawsuit would not have to come back to court in order to obtain orders to block each additional IP that was found. Those would be blocked out and out.

Now it looks like The Pirate Bay may be headed towards the same fate, in the U.K. at least. Mr. Justice Arnold, the same judge who laid down the Newzbin2 decision, ruled Pirate Bay users and operators as guilty of copyright infringement in part due to allegations that The Pirate Bay refused to comply with requests to remove links to torrents of copyrighted content. While the illegality of The Pirate Bay has now been confirmed, the decision as to whether or not it should be blocked by ISPs is expected to take place sometime this June.

Among the messy little details of this decision and  – let’s face it —  the impending block, is the fact that ISPs are the ones who have to foot the bill for the actual implementation of any blocking. At least, they did in the Newzbin2 decision, and there’s no reason to expect that this should be any different. In addition, Internet users have no recourse to sue for breach of contract due to the fact that said contract contains a handy little bit of language that prohibits copyright infringment. Again, this is a detail from the Newzbin2 precedent, but nothing has really changed on that front.

Considering the whole Newzbin2 affair, things do not look good for The Pirate Bay, and if this second block goes through (which it probably will) the U.K. will have established a pretty straightforward legal process for blocking access to websites it has decided promote copyright infringement. Whether or not that will actually do anything to curb piracy has yet to be seen.

(via The Guardian 1, and 2)

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The even will be taking place at the Hammersmith Apollo theatre in London. Tickets are already available, and the proceeds of the show will go to two of Adams’ favorite charities: The Environmental Investigation Agency and Save the Rhino. Careful readers will recall Adams’ interest in endangered species (See: Last Chance to See) and how the author once walked up a mountain in a rhino suit for said charity.

If snag tickets for the event, you’ll have quite the night of entertainment ahead of you.

• Brian Cox will be a leading lecturer joined by the stage group the Uncaged Monkeys
• Pythonite, historia, nude organist, and Adams co-author Terry Jones will be onstage with Clive Anderson
• John Lloyd, who worked with Adams on two Liff books and created the television series QI, will discuss the hilarity of common place names
• A revival of Adams’ stage plays from college, including original cast members

And a musical performance by Adams’ dream band, which performed at the late authors memorial service and was outlined by Adams himself:

My absolute dream rock band no longer exists because their rhythm guitarist was shot. On vocals I’d have Gary Brooker, the greatest soul voice of British rock and roll and a hell of a piano player. Two lead guitarists (they can take turns to play rhythm): Dave Gilmour, whom I’ve always wanted to hear play with Gary Brooker because they share a taste for huge drama and soaring melody lines; and Robbie McIntosh who is both a great blues rocker and an exquisite acoustic guitar picker. By the time you’ve got a band this size you more or less have to have maestro Ray Cooper in it as well, on percussion, though it would also be very tempting to include the incredible woman percussionist Jodi Linscott from Van Morrison’s band. Strings? Brass section? Royal Philharmonic? A New Orleans jazz band? For all that you’d need synth wizard Paul ‘Wix’ Wickens. And a very large truck.

Joining this supergroup will be vocalist Margo Buchanan, bassist Dave Bronze and drummer Paul Beavis.

All in all, it sounds like one hell of a night.

(via Stephen Fry)

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Pretty much anything can happen on the Internet, so a gallery of bikini models posing with dinosaur paraphernalia probably isn’t completely out of left field, but that doesn’t make it any less strange. But let’s walk it back a little, shall we? Don Glut is a writer, actor, director, and amateur paleontologist. I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard the name, but he was a writer for things like “Dink, The Little Dinosaur,” penned the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back, and produced a documentary called Dinosaur Movies. Clearly he’s a man of many talents, with a thing for dinosaurs.

Considering his interest in those mammoth reptiles of the ancient past, he’s amassed quite the collection of memoribilia, everything from dinosaur statues, to claws, to skull-casts, to pretty much anything else you could think of. Sounds interesting, right? Like something you might want to see? That’s exactly why Glut set up a little cyber-tour of his house, with pictures featuring pretty much all of his dinosaur related treasures. The twist is that he also hired a small army of bikini models to show them off and the results are amusing to say the least. As you might expect, some of the models are a little bit perplexed by the job, and it shows.

That being said, Glut sure has a lot of neat stuff even if he has a really weird way of showing it off. And besides that, the spectacle somewhat unenthusiastic models showcasing all sorts of dinosaur trinkets like they’re part of a weird Wheel of Fortune showcase is something worth seeing in and of itself, even if (or especially because) it is a bit surreal.

A few pictures are included below but just a heads up, they might be NSFW if you couldnt get away with, say, looking at pictures of girls in bikinis holding dinosaur models.

You can find literally a hundred more on Glut’s website. Fair warning, they get significantly weirder and more risqué.

(via io9)

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