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​There’s A Smaug Alert For This Week’s Video Releases

Yeah, I know it’s not pronounced that way. But it was either this or “It’s the Desolation of This Week’s DVD and Blu-ray releases!” and I thought this was the less awful of the two options. • The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug I don’t believe there’s any weird distribution or exclusion of extras, so…

Train for Surgery Using Immersive 3D Holograms of Corpses

Computer-generated models are starting to let researchers and students peer into the body without needing a real human stretched out before them. Virtual dissection tables have been built at places like Stanford and the University of Calgary. Now, University of Michigan computer scientists and biologists have taken the technology another step forward, using projectors, joysticks…

Silent But Deadly: The EU Wants Electric Cars to Add Sounds for Safety

Last week, the European Parliament ruled that all electric and hybrid cars must add artificial engine noise so that pedestrians can hear them coming. While the mandate is mostly to protect visually impaired pedestrians, the noise will also benefit anyone on the street who’s ever had a near-miss with a Prius. The fear that a…

Who’s The Worst Student In All Of Science Fiction And Fantasy?

You can’t enter into uncanny worlds without studying the secrets of the masters. Science fiction and fantasy are full of academies, schools, apprenticeships and other places of learning. And they’re also full of awful students, who skip classes, don’t listen and muck everything up. But who’s the worst student of them all? Please include a…

Why Are We Meeting The X-Men’s Quicksilver In This Awful Commercial?

We’re starting to think that the X-Men don’t really like Quicksilver that much. First they made him look like this, and now they are showing off his super-speed powers for the first time in a fast food commercial. Well at least it’s better than that super-sexist Mystique Ad. Quicksilver, the super-fast, super-fun new X-Man that…

Mophie Space Pack Review: All the iPhone Storage You Need (Plus Bulk)

Mophie invented the battery charging iPhone case eons ago, saving legions of email addicts from mid-day phone death. With its new Space Pack case, Mophie hopes to once again give iPhone users something they’ve never had before: Extra storage space. What is it? A 1700 mAh battery case for iPhone 5/5S that doubles as an…

Best use of Photoshop yet may find abandoned dogs a new home

Often a synonym of evil manipulation—from Iran faking missiles to Vogue faking women bodies—Photoshop’s powers can also be used to help the weak and bring happiness to the world. Take Budapest-based photographer Sarolta Bán, who has decided to turn photos of abandoned dogs into awesome images that may bring them into a new home. It’s…

Welcome To Your New Home For All Things Animation

Animation is an art-form with limitless potential. In a time before big-budget special effects, cartoons were the best medium for the unreal to come alive. Even computer generated imagery, which lets us juxtapose reality with the fantastic, is a form of animation. And since this mode of entertainment has spread to so many places in…

Charge Four Gadgets at Once, Nexus 7 with a Free Chromecast, PS+

This compact USB charger isn’t much bigger than the one that comes with your phone, except that it can charge four devices at once. It’s ideal for traveling, or just for plugging in behind your nightstand. Sabrent 4-Port Compact USB Wall Charger | $10 Playstation Plus 1-Year Memberships are 20% off on eBay (Newegg) right…

The ridiculed Comic Sans typeface gets its dignity back with Comic Neue

Craig Rozynski is an Australian designer who took upon himself to dignify the most ridiculed and beleaguered typeface in the world: Comic Sans. He turned the horrible typeface into an actually attractive typeface: Comic Neue. It’s a miracle. Here’s the Comic Neue Regular font—simple and clean, despite maintaining its primary school feel: And the Comic…

Strap On Oculus Rift Goggles And Control A Drone With Your Head

Oculus Rift enables you to escape into incredible virtual (or live-action) worlds, but strapping on the goggles is precisely that—an escape. Which is what makes this new open-source project by Diego Araos so crazy: using the goggles’ head-motion tracking feature and live video feed, you can actually navigate an AR drone with a tilt of…

Syfy Picks Up Zombie Show Z Nation And Greek Mythology Show Olympus

From the makers of Sharknado and Eureka comes a new zombie series on Syfy, Z Nation. Plus the minds behind Syfy’s actually quite decent miniseries Tinman, Alice and Neverland will be making Olympus, a god-centric drama. Yay new TV! We’re not really sure what to think of Z Nation just yet. But based on the…

AT&T is currently experiencing a nationwide blackout in U-verse service. The company says the outage is “due to a power-related issue triggered by a third-party at our video hub.” [Mashable]

The Avengers Mansion Could Be Yours For $113 Million

Inspired by the release of the Captain America sequel, a real estate expert, with the help of online fans and the Marvel Database, has scrupulously calculated how much the swank Avengers Mansion—with all of its amenities—would sell for in today’s NYC market. The Movoto Blog (“the lighter side of real estate”) arrived at the figure…

A Short Webcomic About Boy Who Loves To Pretend He’s An Evil Sorceress

A young boy feels powerful when he pretends to play the wicked sorceress in his backyard games, but the laughing of his next-door neighbor leaves him feeling powerless. Can he convince her to join in on the gender-bending fun? Jay Fuller and Manta-Man creator Chad Sell co-wrote The Sorceress Next Door, which Sell drew. It’s…

The Most Incredible Footage Of A Live Oarfish We’ve Ever Seen

During a recent Shedd Adventures trip to Baja, vacationers caught a glimpse of a rare oarfish making its way through shallow waters. Simply put, their video is our best glimpse of these elusive creatures to date. Apparently they witnessed not one, but two of these oarfish swimming in the waters. As far as I know…

Wirelessly Access Any of Your Naked Hard Drives With This Dock

Deep down you know that one day you should conglomerate that stack of hard drives full of random files into a single media server. But thanks to Thermaltake’s new BlacX Urban wireless docking station, that one day doesn’t have to be today. Just slap in any drive of your choosing and its contents instantly become…

This Typeface Makes You a More Alert Driver By Distracting You Less

Despite the grim PSAs and massive fines, plenty of us still end up reading our in-dash displays on the road, whether to navigate or change the song. Today, the type design giant Monotype unveiled a typeface designed to help you read faster and more accurately while driving. How? With a few design tweaks. The typeface…

You Might Be Talking to a Cyranoid and You’d Never Know

Did you talk to your boss today? Did you chat with someone on the bus or have a terse exchange with a barista? Maybe you did. But maybe they were cyranoids, and you were actually talking with whoever put words in their mouths. Odds are, you would never know. The Attack of the Cyranoids Even…

Here’s An Easy Way to Find Out About U.S. Government Spying Projects

A lot of the most bizarre and invasive surveillance technologies that the U.S. government uses to track its citizens are not secret. In fact, you can find out about a lot of these projects as they’re being developed, just by knowing what to search for on U.S. government websites. Over at Electronic Frontier Foundation, Dave…