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Apple-Samsung Judge Longs for “Global Peace” Between the Two

Judge Lucy Koh is getting into the Christmas spirit early. In the courtroom yesterday, while presiding over the eternal Apple-Samsung case, she called for “global peace” between the two companies. Perhaps understandably, the statement reportedly caused its fair share of laughter in the court room. But Lucy Koh, she doesn’t take any shit. She quickly…

Amazon’s Silk Browser Can Be Hacked to Provide Free Grid Computing

Cloud computing is big business. Companies and individual users rent bandwidth from large cloud services to perform all manner of tasks, from hosting small websites to churning through large, computing-intensive tasks like modelling new drug compounds. But what if you could gain access to all that computing power for free? It turns out that you…

The FCC’s Nationwide 911 Texting Service Could Save Yr Life

The four major US carriers have joined forces and agreed to create a nationwide 911 texting service. It will allow their customers to send a text message in the case of emergency rather than making a voice call. The FCC has announced that AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have signed up to a “text-to-911” plan,…

FCC to FAA: C’mon, Let People Use Electronic Devices During Takeoff

The FAA has been mulling the idea of allowing the use of electronic devices during takeoff for a little while now. The FCC, however, is getting impatient—and its chairman is now urging the FAA to get a move on. https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-seriously-thinking-about-letting-you-use-ele-5938308 The FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wrote a letter—people still do that!—to Michael Huerta, the acting…

If your business was planning to migrate to Google Apps, bad news: now your have to pay for the privilege. [Google]

How to Annoy a Web Developer

Sometimes there’s nothing better than a gratuitously geeky joke to raise a smile. Today’s XKCD certainly provides just that. As if the set-up, above, wasn’t funny enough, the punchline is hidden in XKCD’s al-text: : Like this.  If that makes you laugh, great! If it riles you, sorry! And if you don’t get it, learn…

480GB Ultrabook SSDs Will Arrive in 2013

If 256GB just isn’t enough for your ultrabook-toting needs, things are set to change. Mushkin has announced what it claims to be the “world’s first” 480GB mSTATA SSD—and it will be available in January. Slim laptops—we’re talking ultrabooks—don’t have room for even a standard 2.5-inch SATA SSD, so use a smaller form factor known as…

Rumor has it the Washington Post will put up a paywall in 2013. Gorge on free news while you can. [Wall Street Journal]

Here Is the Official Color of 2013

Pantone, the hoity toity decision council for everything we’re allowed to see, has announced the color of the year for 2013: green. Or well fine, emerald. It’s unclear what scientific process Pantone goes through to determine what the COTY is (other than complete arbitrariness) but hey, emerald’s a nice color. Last year’s color of the…

The Stoner Channel: Corporate Weed, Blamestorms, and a Tale of a Country Doctor

Former Microsoft Exec Trades in the Board Room for Bong Rips Michael Shively is living the dream. A corporate strategy manager for Microsoft from 2003 to 2009 (and great-grandson of Diego Pellicer, the number one pot producer of the 19th century), Shively recently announce that he’s currently developing a premium cannabis retail business in Washington…

Watch Tim Cook in His First TV Interview Since Becoming Apple CEO

It’s been about a year since Tim Cook took the helm at Apple, and he has apparently decided now is a good time to start talking to people. Brian Williams got first dibs, interviewing Cook earlier tonight on NBC’s Rock Center. It was a pretty standard issue CEO interview—laden with vague answers and lofty corporate…

Every Single Mental Thing Ian McShane Screams as American Horror Story’s Santa, in One Video

I thought I had seen an unhinged Ian McShane — I mean, I’ve seen Deadwood. But I had no idea what would happen when McShane stepped onto a truly crazy show: basically, no rules. American Horror Story gave McShane a Santa suit and let him off the leash. We’ve rounded up some of the best…

How Photoshop Would Work in Real Life

Imagine if you had the powers of photoshop in real life. You could fix any blemish, smudge any color and brighten any situation with a quick drop down menu. How would it work? Photographer and graphic designer Flora Borsi imagined a life version of photoshop in a photo series called, “Photoshop in Real Life”. Check…

What Color Means to Blind People

Tommy Edison, the wonderful blind film critic who once showed us how he used an iPhone, has a new video describing something nearly impossible for blind people to understand: color. What’s great is that even though Edison doesn’t understand the concept of color, colors still have meaning to him. Watch him describe what red, blue,…

How to Say Google in Different Languages

Google, the word not the company, has become such a common word for anyone who uses a computer (other than the yahoos who still use Yahoo, I guess) that it’s surprising to learn that other languages have a different word for it. Like Italians say Googlare. Or that the Portugese say Googlar. It gets weirder.…

Famous Photos Taken As Selfies Are So Damn Hilarious

Selfies are hilarious photographs people take of themselves. It’s a close cousin to the MySpace mirror shot and birthed from the proliferation of smartphones and point and shoots and really, there’s nothing more awkward than catching someone in the process of taking a selfie. So when you take these famous photographs and repurpose them as…

On Supernatural, it’s Benny vs. Amelia. Guess who wins?

OK, I lied. As much as I would like to see a smackdown between Benny and Amelia, in which one broods beardily and one delivers fragile pouts, these two characters didn’t actually meet in last night’s episode. But their plotlines looped around each other as Sam and Dean confronted what it means to have their…

When dinosaurs team up with lasers, you’re basically screwed

This is my favorite scene from the Roger Corman film Raptor — which is basically an ultra-cheap Jurassic Park rip-off starring Eric Roberts and a bunch of people you’ve never heard of. In this scene, a researcher working on a project to breed dinosaurs has lost sight of the mission — so he has to…

M83: Wait

M83’s album Hurry Up We’re Dreaming came out last October. Doesn’t that seem like forever ago? And yet, here we are at the end of 2012, with the last of the album’s beautiful visuals for “Wait.” It’s the conclusion of a trilogy that was a collaboration between M83 and Fleur & Manu for the album.…

I Want to Eat This Awesomely Yummy 3,000 GummyBear Lamp So Badly

Fortunately, this gummy bear lamp is not actually made of real gummy bears, but 3,000 cast acrylic GummiBears. Not because of security concerns—imagine all those poor bears melting and causing a disaster—but because I would eat the whole thing. Designed and handmade by Jellio via Kevin Champeny, you can buy them in two sizes: 18…