Game of Thrones News of the Day

Game of Thrones News of the Day: Game of Thrones fansite Winter-is-Coming reports that HBO may be planning to order seasons 3 and 4 of the show and film them back-to-back.

That would make sense, considering that the show’s creators have already acknowledged that book three in the series, A Storm of Swords, isn’t going to fit into a single season. The back-to-back plan would carry them through the entire book.

The show’s film crew in Northern Ireland has reportedly been told to expect 9 months of filming in 2012.

[winter-is-coming]

Vernünftiges aus Bern

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/digital/urheberrecht_schweiz_piraterie_raubkopien_1.13465896.html

Statt für eine CD zahlen die Konsumenten einfach vermehrt für Konzerte, Kinobesuche oder Merchandising, wie es im Bericht heisst. Von dieser Entwicklung seien vor allem die grossen ausländischen Produktionsfirmen betroffen. Diese müssten sich anpassen. Das «nationale Kulturschaffen» werde nicht tangiert. Aus diesen Gründen verzichtet der Bundesrat darauf, das Urheberrecht anzupassen. 

Schade für die Piratenpartei in der Schweiz. Hier gibt es kaum Nährboden für deren Parteiprogramm.

The Tale of the Twins

hmm...

Visualized: Sweden's Dreamhack in pictures

What does a legion of Swedish LAN party-goers and a 120Gbps internet connection look like? Something like this. Dreamhack, officially (by Guinness Book of Records, no less) the world's largest LAN party, offered up all sorts of gaming thrills along the lines of StarCraft II and Counter-Strike to the 12,000 attendees. It looks like the air was thick with excitement, perspiration -- and hopefully a little air freshener.

Kriminologie: Das Rätsel der kopflosen Leichen

Kriminologie: Das Rätsel der kopflosen Leichen: Immer wieder entdecken Polizisten Tote in deren eigenen Wohnungen, denen Kopf und Genitalien fehlen. Untersuchungen zeigen, dass die Verstümmelten eines natürlichen Todes starben.

Naturwissenschaften: Faszinierende Vogelintelligenz

Naturwissenschaften: Faszinierende Vogelintelligenz: „Schau Dir das mal an“ - diese Botschaft vermitteln Raben offenbar Artgenossen durch Zeige-Gesten mit ihren Schnäbeln. Das geht aus Beobachtungen deutscher und österreichischer Biologen hervor. Die cleveren Vögel setzen demnach ihre Schnäbel ähnlich wie Menschen ihre Hände ein, um Objekte hochzuhalten und einander zu zeigen. Ähnliches Verhalten war bisher nur von Menschenaffen ...

M Thru F: Whatever Floats Your Urinal Cake, I Guess

M Thru F: Whatever Floats Your Urinal Cake, I Guess:

Sperm-Nuking Laptop Wi-Fi of the Day

Sperm-Nuking Laptop Wi-Fi of the Day: Laptops with Wi-Fi may have a damaging effect on male reproductive health, according to a new study by Argentinian scientists, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

In the study, the scientists collected semen samples from 29 healthy men and placed them under a laptop with an active Wi-Fi connection for four hours.

The result: a quarter of the sperm had stopped swimming, versus only 14 percent in semen stored at room temperature. 9% of the laptop-cooked sperm also showed DNA damage, which is three times the normal rate.

The scientists blame the results on electromagnetic radiation generated during wireless communication. A separate test using a laptop without Wi-Fi found almost no radiation.

Dr. Robert Oates, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology, says the study doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t use a laptop.

“This is not real-life biology, this is a completely artificial setting,” he said. “It is scientifically interesting, but to me it doesn’t have any human biological relevance.”

And, as Oates also noted, who actually uses a laptop on their lap, anyway?

[msnbc]

Reuters - my love

Best Reuters Pictures of 2011. Part 1. (20 pics) Reuters has started to publish a selection of the best images taken in 2011. Within days, we'll show you the most dramatic and... more

Parenting Fail alabonör!

Water You, Stupid, Part 5:

(Restaurant | California, USA)

Customer: “I’d like a kid’s bean and cheese burrito.”

Me: “Alright, would you like a fountain drink, juice, or milk?”

Customer: *turns to her child* “Okay, do you want soda or juice?”

Customer’s daughter: “I just want water.”

Customer: “But soda’s better for you!”

Interview: HuskyStarcraft, professional e-sports commentator

After wrapping up my glimpse into the world of pro StarCraft II, I took a trip the MLG Providence last weekend, where the year-end MLG e-sports finals were held. I spotted some great games, and met some sweet gamers, but I was majorly starstruck by my original StarCraft crush, HuskyStarcraft (or "Mike Lamond," to his parents). Husky's YouTube channel turned me onto watching StarCraft II instead of just playing, and has offered countless hours of entertainment since then. He's been making a living from YouTube ads and tournament gigs for a while now, "shout casting" video games with breathless play-by-play commentary, and has developed a huge following. At an event like MLG he's a superstar, and is constantly hounded for mousepad...

Continue reading…

A Geek Girl’s Guide to Holiday Shopping

by Meredith Placko

While millions of Americans fought tooth, nail, and pepper spray to get their hands on some mighty deals, this geek girl somehow managed to avoid the annual contact sport known as Black Friday. While sitting in my office, pouring over YouTube videos of people at their very best in Holiday cheer (and boxing), I took the time to reflect on what is most important this season: presents (/sarcasm). And how to acquire them for the people most important to me.

Now I don’t know about you, but my friends range in a wide and varied sort. Some are gadget geeks, others are Otaku, then there are those who simply freak out over sports. Whatever your flair is, there has got to be a gift for the die hard fan we all know and love.

LomoKino 35mm Movie Camera – $79.00 from Lomography.com

For the Hipster Geek, you can’t go wrong with the LomoKino 35mm movie camera. Even Hipstamatic doesn’t have an app for this yet!

Get ready to have your world turned upside down! The LomoKino, Lomography’s very own 35mm movie camera, is set to revolutionize the analogue landscape forever. Forget about the rules and direct your own stunning short films – with this handy camera, all you need is a 35mm roll and your creativity!

Air Swimmers Flying R/C Sea Life – $39.00 from The Neatoshop

Do you have a friend who always wanted to be a Marine Biologist? Now’s your chance to fulfill his dreams and get him his own flying fish (or shark!). Okay, it really has nothing to do with marine biology, but imagine how cool you’ll be if you give out one of these in the Secret Santa exchange. Way better than that singing fish. Also, a good gift for Dr. Who fans who may want to recreate the man-eating, flying fish scene from A Christmas Carol.

• Hours of flying sea creature fun for the whole family
• Durable, high-quality nylon material will stay inflated for weeks
• Remote functions: Climb, descend, and tail fin control for turning

Click Watches – $149.00 from Watchismo

You know that old pal of yours who liked to build computers in his garage? He might have gone on to build one of the most successful electronic companies in history. But if he’s anything like my dad, he may be a whiz with a punch card, but is horrible with showing up on time for lunch! Ooh and aah your tech savvy friends with these nifty time pieces from Watchismo.

If you look at the circuit boards of an 80′s arcade game, you’d find these Dip Switches. This type of switch is designed to be used on a printed circuit board along with other electronic components and is commonly used to customize the behavior of an electronic device for specific situations. Each switch activates a different function of the watch as seen in the diagram below. Functions ranging from bar graph metered time display, 12 hour and 24 hour digital time display, month, date, day of week and backlight.

Custom Body Pillow – $60 – $120 from Dakimakura Pillow

Do you have a friend who suffers from the “forever alone” syndrome? It’s hard getting out there, meeting new people and finding things in common to talk about. Don’t let your best bud go alone this holiday, you can get him (or her!) a custom body pillow printed with their favorite anime character, western movie star or comfort food.

Dakimakura is a hug pillow: over-sized pillows designed to be extremely huggable. These are security objects and usually never leave the grasp of sleeping Japanese children. So addictive is the comfort provided that many older men and women still use them.

Star Wars Themed Kitchen Goods – $9.99 – $29.99 from Williams-Sonoma

For the baking geek who also likes to walk on the Dark Side, Williams-Sonoma has an array of cookie cutters, stencils, even sandwich cutters that you can take a bite out of the Rebels (or the Empire, if you lean that way) every time you cook!

Marvel Comics Digital Subscription – $59.88 from Marvel.com

What do you get the discriminating comic fan who owns every #1 issue ever printed? Since they probably won’t be taking those books out any time soon, they can still enjoy what’s inside without getting grease on the pages with a digital subscription to Marvel Comics!

• Access to over 10,000 New and Classic Titles
• Exclusive New Issues Available Online First
• Stories Featuring Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Hulk & More!

Little Printer serves up a personalized receipt-sized newspaper, twice daily

It happens to all of us: you wake up in the morning and awkwardly clutch your cellphone, swiping through tweets, emails, weather, and news. You know it's a good day when you manage not to drop the phone on your face while doing it. BERG's new Little Printer plans to change that with a receipt-sized collection of personalized material that's no longer than 10 inches in length, twice daily. With backup from a service called Berg Cloud, it offers material like top headlines, weather reports, Sudoku puzzles, to-do lists, bite-sized info on a range of topics, upcoming birthdays, word of the day, Nike+ workout reminders, and recent Foursquare check-ins are provided in paper form. Launch partners include Foursquare, The Guardian, Google,...

Continue reading…

Straight Sets: Federer Wins on Court but Not at Polls (Not That He Was Interested)

Fans of Roger Federer campaigned unsuccessfully to have the tennis star elected to office in Switzerland.

US road fatalities mapped, 9 years

For The Guardian, ITO World maps about 370,000 road-related deaths from 2001 through 2009, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association. The map is kind of rough around the edges, but it gets the job done. Easily zoom in to the location of choice either by clicking buttons, or type in the area you want in the search box. Zoom in all the way, and you'll notice each accident is represented by an icon indicating type of accident, the age of the person who died, and year of crash.

As you might expect, accidents are more concentrated at city centers and on highways. What I didn't expect was all the pedestrians involved.

[Guardian and ITO World]

Hobbit Set New Zealand

Hobbit Set Pics of the Day: Ain’t It Cool News’s Quint has filed a couple of new reports from the New Zealand set of the Hobbit, and they include some new pics taken as Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves leave Hobbiton for Trollshaw, the home of the Stone Trolls.
At the new shooting location, down New Zealand’s North Island from the Hobbiton set, our heroes loot a troll treasure stash, recovering some well-known weapons, including Bilbo’s sword, Sting (which has already appeared in the Lord of the Rings films).
Check out more set pics after the jump.










[mtv]

the beauty of one second

The 2012 budget planning

The 2012 federal discretionary budget: Military gets the lion’s share of spending, while social priorities fall by the wayside.

Underwater Camera of the Day

Underwater Camera of the Day: Google+ user Markus Thompson was scuba diving in Vancouver, BC’s Deep Bay and found a bit of sunken treasure in the form of a Canon EOS 1000D camera.

Although the camera itself wasn’t in working order, Thompson was able to pull the SD card and recover a collection of family vacation photos.

Judging by the timestamps on the images, the camera had been underwater for more than a year. Thompson posted about it on Google+ anyway, asking if anybody knew the camera’s owner, a firefighter from somewhere in British Columbia.

Turns out, someone did, and Thompson was able to return the photos to their rightful home.

Pity about the camera, though.

[verge]

No White Christmas for Most of the World

Ah, winter. A smoker’s worst nightmare. As those of us poor nicotine addicted folks shiver out in the cold, frantically puffing our cancer sticks as the wind chaps our faces, and as the rest of the world huddles warmly around a fire or a well-powered heating system, we all hold out one hope (well, maybe not all of us): that there will be some of that awesome powdery precipitation, that our landscapes will be blanketed in beautiful white, that our runny noses and numb fingers might not all be for nothing. Snow is beautiful, one of the greatest things in the world, I think. Snowmen, snow angels, I’m a big fan of all of it. Which is why this picture both shocks and saddens me. While the parts of the map do get some snow, there’s not much. Most of the world has to deal with the miserable cold without that awesome return. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to put my beanie on and brave the cold. Time to finish my smoke.

Superhero Snuggies

Superhero Snuggies of the Day: Licensed superhero Snuggies, including Batman, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man versions, are apparently a thing now.

Technically, they’re “comfy throw blankets with sleeves,” but a Snuggie by any other name is just as warm and Cheeto-dust absorbent.

This may be setting the bar for superheroism a bit low.

More pics after the jump.

[geeksaresexy]

Educational TV

I love charts