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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 10:07 am

I'm wearing these for Geek Pride Day.

I'm polishing up my "Battlestar Galactica" dog tags. I'm digging out my "Star Trek" insignia and IDIC necklace. I'm getting ready for Geek Pride Day on Saturday.

I'm not the only one getting into this. "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fans are pulling their favorite towels out of the dryer. Stormtroopers are spit-shining their armor. "Star Wars" cookie cutters are getting pressed into overtime duty. For me, every day is an exercise in geek pride, but I don't mind having a special day to get extra freaky with the geeky.

Not everybody is onboard with Geek Pride Day. Some geeks prefer to keep their profiles low. Others rebel against the notion of it being a manufactured holiday, though I don't recall seeing any "Happy Geek Pride Day" cards in the Hallmark aisle.

Last year, geeks reported celebration activities ranging from Dungeons & Dragons games to cleaning up e-mail inboxes. Way to geek out, people!

Is Geek Pride Day on your list of legitimate holidays? Vote in our poll and talk it out in the comments. If you're not celebrating Geek Pride Day, we want to know why. If you are, we want to know how.

Since we know you'll be taking lots of photos of your geek exploi... [Read more]

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Posted on 24 May 2013 | 5:26 pm

Those of you eyeing an iPad Mini or fourth-generation iPad can now save a bit more money on refurbished models courtesy of Apple.

As of Friday, Apple is offering 15 percent to 17 percent discounts on all flavors of refurbished units of the iPad Mini and the iPad 4.

The 16GB Wi-Fi-only iPad Mini is selling for $279, 15 percent off the usual price. The 32GB Wi-Fi Mini is available for $359, 16 percent off the full price. And the 64GB Wi-Fi Mini can be had for $439, 17 percent off the regular price.

The 16GB Wi-Fi version of the fourth-gen iPad is going for $419, a 16 percent discount. The 32GB Wi-Fi model is on sale for $499, also 16 percent off the usual price. And the 64GB Wi-Fi edition is selling for $579, a hefty 17 percent cut in price.

Apple fully tests and certifies all of its refurbished products. Equipped with a new battery and outer shell, the units come with a one-year warranty.

(Via MacRumors)

Posted on 24 May 2013 | 4:33 pm

George Takei and some Amazon products.

Amusing Amazon reviews are an art form. They are delicate flowers of funny that need to be carefully nurtured in order to strike the right balance between absurdity, plausibility, and humor.

George Takei, known as Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek" and Mr. Internet anywhere social media resides, has the magic formula down.

Only slight sleuthing is needed to determine that the "George Takei" leaving reviews on Amazon is the real deal. He also cross-posts them to his official Facebook page. So far, he's only racked up six reviews, but they're good ones. He has tackled products as diverse as the "Best of David Hasselhoff" CD to the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable.

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Takei's most recent review covers the Accoutrements Yodeling Pickle, a toy pickle that yodels. He gives it one star ... [Read more]

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Posted on 24 May 2013 | 4:32 pm

Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET's Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Friday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Here's every Low Latency comic so far. [Read more]

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Posted on 24 May 2013 | 3:44 pm

Microsoft's Xbox One

Microsoft's policy concerning used Xbox One games has proven a bit confusing, but a new report may have spilled more concrete details.

Citing information from "retail sources," gaming news site MCV claims that Microsoft and gaming publishers will take a bite out of the sale of each used Xbox One game. In the process of selling a used game, original owners would also see the game wiped from their online accounts so they no longer can play it.

Microsoft has already confirmed that Xbox One users who install a game on the console's hard drive will no longer need the disc as the game is then tied to their online accounts.

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  Posted on 24 May 2013 | 12:40 pm

The innovative nebulizer turns salt water into deep-penetrating aerosol mist.

In a seemingly random but nevertheless important discovery, scientists watching surfers with cystic fibrosis in Australia several years ago found that inhaling sea water mist reduced lung problems associated with the inherited disease.

So Cambridge Consultants in the U.K. paired with pharma firm Parion to develop and design a type of aerosol delivery systemt, called trans-nasal pulmonary aerosol delivery (tPAD), that brings the benefits of salt water treatment to the comfort of patients' homes, working overnight while they sleep.

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  Posted on 24 May 2013 | 7:43 am

An outdoorsy Boombotix Boombot Rex relaxing on a rock. You'll have your choice of black, white, blue, or green.

Congrats to John D. of Fruitland Park, Fla., for winning a Crucial M500 SSD and copy of Iolo System Mechanic in last week's giveaway. This week, I asked you for help deciding whether to give away a mini action cam, a waterproof iPhone 5 case, or an ultraportable speaker. The speaker won by a few tweets, so here you go, readers. Ask and ye shall receive (and don't worry; those other prizes will be coming soon).

We're giving away a pocket-size Boombotix Boombot Rex, which connects via Bluetooth to smartphones, tablets, laptops, and any other device with a 1/8-inch standard headphone jack. It's got built-in voice control so you can ask the time, dial a contact, or play a song, all while keeping your handheld device in your pocket. How you'll look talking to your speaker? Well, that's your business.

The cute little water-resistant 2.1 sound system, which sells for $119.99, measures about 3x3x2 inches and weighs less than a pound. It packs custom-tuned, 36-millimeter full-range drivers and a matching tuned bass woofer and you'll get 6 to 8 hours of battery life per charge.

After a ... [Read more]

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Posted on 24 May 2013 | 7:00 am

In our philosophy class today, we will be discussing this existential question: What is the opposite of a Genius Bar?

In Jon Stewart's view, it's a group of senators attempting to fawn all over Apple CEO Tim Cook, instead of heating him up next to their goat steak and their veal sausages.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that Stewart might have an observation or two about Cook's odd appearance in front of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. (I say "odd appearance" because he was wearing a tie.)

The "Daily Show" host was most taken by how utterly fanpersonish so many of the senators appeared.

Instead of giving Cook an earful these senators seemed to express: "I want to iF*** you."

The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

"Apparently there is nothing Apple can do to get us mad at them. They're dodging taxes. They've got suicide prevention nets outside their hell factories," mused Stewart.

Indeed, as far as ... [Read more]

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Posted on 24 May 2013 | 2:59 am

A celestial conjunction viewed on December 3, 2009: the moon, Venus and Jupiter, captured at the ESO's VLT observatory at Paranal, Chile.

Triple planetary conjunctions are relatively rare in the night sky, but astronomers are about to be in for a real treat.

The three brightest planets in our solar system as seen from Earth -- Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus -- will be coming together in the sky, "dancing" around each other over the course of several nights, starting Friday, May 24.

If we're lucky, we see a triple conjunction once every two years or so. The most recent was in May 2011; the next won't be until October 2015.

Because the planets in this conjunction are so bright, the dance will be visible to the naked eye, even in densely populated areas. But if you have access to a telescope or binoculars, so much the better.

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  Posted on 23 May 2013 | 10:40 pm

The brain surgery patient undergoes testing.

UCLA Health isn't the first hospital to live-tweet a brain surgery, but it may be the first to employ 6-second video medium Vine as part of the proceedings. Surgeons on Thursday implanted a brain pacemaker to counteract the effects of Parkinson's disease in a patient and sent out Twitter updates using both Instagram and Vine.

The procedure has generated such memorable tweets as "Removing the skin and drilling through the skull for electrode placement." and "Electrode is prepared for implantation. Patient is being woken up at this time."

Brain surgery patient plays guitar in OR during operation.@uclahealth #UCLAORLive vine.co/v/bVBYe5n1Y3q

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  Posted on 23 May 2013 | 9:33 pm

There's big, then there's really big, and then there's colossal, which might be a good word to use when describing a near 46,000-pound Lego X-Wing that made a triumphant debut Thursday in New York's Times Square.

The full-size replica, about 42 times the size of the Lego "Star Wars" X-Wing (#9493) set available on store shelves, celebrates the debut of Cartoon Network's "The Yoda Chronicles," which premieres on May 29 at 8 p.m.

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It took a small army of 32 Lego master builders, housed in a facility in the Czech Republic, to build the 45,980-pound, or 23-ton, Lego ship. It stands 11 feet high and 43 feet long, and contains more than 5 million Lego pieces.

Massive Lego X-Wing touches down in Times Square (pictures)

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  Posted on 23 May 2013 | 8:54 pm

Based on its face-rec API released last year, Lambda Labs' Google Glass Face Recognition API could help you recognize people who are less famous than Tiger Woods.

Amid questions to Google from Congress about privacy concerns related to Google Glass, a San Francisco startup is preparing an API to recognize faces with the controversial gadget.

The Google Glass Face Recognition API (application programming interface) from Lambda Labs will be available to developers within a week, TechCrunch tells us, quoting co-founder Stephen Balaban.

Lambda Labs released its open-source Face API last year, and it's apparently being used by 1,000 developers including large companies.

The Glass app would be based on that. It would let users recognize faces in a crowd as well as remember faces by storing data from personal encounters. That's great if you're terrible with names and faces -- not so great if you care about privacy.

Beyond being a mnemonic tool, the app could show you who shares your interests. By looking up people's faces at a gathe... [Read more]

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 8:44 pm

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Amazon's Kindle Worlds will pay writers to write fan fiction.

- Hire your favorite musician to write you a song .

- And now a reading from the worst fan fiction I've ever read.

- Follow Russ Frushtick on Twitter.

Ep. 1274: Where Microsoft makes the same mistakes

Episode 1,274

Subscribe:

... [Read more]

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 8:00 pm

In the wake of the colossal tornado that rampaged through 17 miles of central Oklahoma, plans for storm-chasing UAVs are taking on new significance.

Students at Oklahoma State University have been working on "storm-penetrating air vehicles" that could help cope with deadly tornadoes.

The aircraft are "designed to penetrate thunderstorms, including the supercells that spawn tornadoes" to gather data used to predict storms and warn people about them, the university said in a release.

The three vehicles designed by engineering students could also be used to build better predictive models of tornado-spawning storms.

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Storm chasers, who put themselves at risk gathering storm and tornado data, could benefit from the use of UAVs, too.

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 7:23 pm

Tim Berners-Lee in 1994 at CERN.

The first draft of the World Wide Web has gone missing, with perhaps one of the only copies of the very first Web site floating around the world's drawers or attics on a floppy disk somewhere.

Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first version of the very first Web page back in 1990 as a way for scientists to share information at CERN -- the European nuclear physics lab and particle accelerator site on the border of Switzerland and France. But it wasn't until 1992 that he actually saved a copy of that early CERN page.

"I took a copy of the entire Web site in a floppy disk on my machine so that I could demonstrate it locally just to show people what it was like. And I ended up keeping a copy of that floppy disk," Berners-Lee told NPR.

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  Posted on 23 May 2013 | 6:10 pm

Mia is a comic book whiz kid.

Mia's dad posted a video of his daughter tossing off answers like "Loki" and "vibranium" as if they were answers to questions about her favorite color or what she likes to eat. The young comic book fan has managed to build up quite a store of superhero knowledge, no doubt thanks to some quality geek parenting.

On his blog, Mia's dad introduces the video with, "This is my daughter. She is a little me. By that I mean she has what would appear to be an encyclopedic knowledge of things she loves." One of those things she loves just happens to be comic books.

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 5:44 pm

Microsoft's Kinect sensor in action.

Microsoft will finally deliver a Kinect sensor for Windows sometime next year.

The company announced Thursday that the Kinect for Windows sensor will use the same set of technologies key to the new Kinect sensor for the Xbox One, both of which will allow people to issue commands using voice and gestures.

The sensor will include a high-definition color camera and a noise-isolating multi-microphone array. Also part of the system will be a technology called Time-of-Flight, which measures how long it takes for photons to bounce off a person or object. Combined, these features promise greater accuracy and precision in detecting your movements and voice commands.

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 5:20 pm

A younger Kaiba Gionfriddo, with mom April. The child suffers from tracheobronchomalacia, a rare respiratory condition.

A 3D printer saved the life of a baby boy with a rare disease that kept him from breathing properly, doctors are reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The boy, Kaiba Gionfriddo of Ohio, had been diagnosed with severe tracheobronchomalacia, a rare respiratory condition that caused his airways to collapse, blocking the flow of air to his lungs daily.

About 1 in 2,200 babies are born with the condition, but only 10 percent of them have cases as severe as Kaiba's, according to his doctors. The boy's parents, April and Brian, learned something was wrong when he was 6 weeks old and the infant turned blue while the family was out to eat.

By the age of 2 months, Kaiba had to be intubated to breathe. Despite the breathing tube and a ventilator he also required, his breathing could not be maintained sufficiently. He needed to be resuscitated on a daily basis.

"Quite a few doctors said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive," April Gionfriddo, mother of the now 20-month old Kaiba, said in a ... [Read more]

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 5:07 pm

"Coming Home"

A picture depicting a girl's reunion with her father returning from war has won the top award in a Google Doodle contest.

On display Thursday at Google's home page, "Coming Home" is a simple but powerful piece of art that portrays a young girl holding an American flag and running to reunite with her father. The returning soldier appears. They exchange a glance. And finally they fall into a deep embrace as they treasure their moment together again.

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 2:52 pm

Devs have already gotten to the bottom of the Verizon Galaxy S4.

Modders and ROMmers rejoice, almost as soon as it reached the hands of consumers, Verizon's Galaxy S4 has been rooted.

Instructions for rooting Big Red's S4 were posted on the xdadevelopers forum this week, allowing folks who want to take full control of all that sweet new hardware to do so and get the thrill of voiding their warranty at the same time.

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Just a few short years ago, it seemed like a major milestone when each of these new Android devices were rooted for the first time. Now, directions for gaining root access comes almost automatically thanks to an army of developers and plenty of misgivings about the shackles placed on the operating system by carriers and manufacturers.

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 1:29 pm

A mockup of the PS4.

When Sony has a secret up its sleeve, the company loves to tease. If you missed last week's video enigma, Sony revealed very brief pictures of the mysterious PlayStation 4 hardware, leaving gamers in the dark about what the highly anticipated gaming console will look like.

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Luckily, graphics guru Andy Gilleand has the imagination (and skills) to piece together Sony's puzzle, and created a general conceptual rendering of the PlayStation 4.

While Gilleand's interpretation will have most Sony purists crying foul, the render does align with the general shape and accents seen in the official teaser videos. It's widely expected that Sony will finally show off the PlayStation 4 during a company press event at E3 2013 on June 10.

Posted on 23 May 2013 | 3:31 am

Oh, this hurts.

Microsoft isn't bothering to merely flex its muscles these days.

It's opening fire in all directions, because what is there to lose? Oh, perhaps money. But apart from that.

It's gone after Google in a quite chilling manner. It's gone after the Apple-Samsung phone feud.

So, in a further escalation of hostilities, a new Windows 8 ad sees Microsoft take Siri hostage, tie her up in a chair, and make her tell the truth.

The truth as Microsoft sees it, that is.

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  Posted on 23 May 2013 | 1:34 am

A Craigslist ad is perhaps not the most subtle of ways to go about doing things, and that includes selling your Google Glass.

A photo from the Craigslist ad. Those sure look like Google Glass...

One Craigslister, based in San Francisco's East Bay according to the ad, is selling his or her pair of Google Glass Explorer Edition, something that's expressly forbidden by the Glass Terms of Sale.

Violating a product's sale terms is practically a rite of passage, from ripping the safety tag off a mattress to ripping CDs and DVDs. What makes this case unusual is that the Craigslister is clearly trying to make a buck: this pair of Glass, perhaps more valuable because of its rarity on Craigslist, is going for four times the market cost of $1,500.

A Google representative told CNET that the company wants Glass owners to use them as they see fit and that Google doesn't "plan on bricking any Explorer's device."

With photos of the box and bagged Glass, the offering appears to be real. What's not clear is whether the Glass are functional. This could also be a scam, aiming to reel in someone who just can't wait for next year's expected commercial release date for Glass.

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 12:45 am

The popular LifeProof case joins the OtterBox family.

If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

OtterBox, which struggled for months to bring a waterproof iPhone case to market, has acquired rival LifeProof, which makes one of the best -- and best-selling -- tough iPhone cases.

Colorado-based OtterBox has been a leading case manufacturer for a variety of smartphones and tablets and has quickly grown to employ 650 people worldwide. LifeProof, based in San Diego and founded in 2009 by Australian Gary Rayner, employees 250 people.

OtterBox says those 250 employees are now "members of the OtterBox family and will remain in their San Diego location for the foreseeable future." Over the next 30 days, OtterBox will begin incorporating the LifeProof brand into that OtterBox family.

LifeProof just unveiled a waterproof iPad Mini case at the CTIA trade show in Las Vegas (it's expected to ship in June for $99.99), and a LifeProof case for the Samsung Galaxy S4 is expected to ship by mid summer.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but it was likely in the tens of millions of dollars and perhaps even more. In 2012, OtterBox had approximately $600 million in revenues. That was up from $10.8 million in 2008. [Read more]

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Posted on 23 May 2013 | 12:24 am

A diagram from Bob Metcalfe's original memo explaining how Ethernet works.

Most people probably associate Ethernet with a simple cable cinched with phone-like jacks. But, Ethernet is so much more.

It is the foundation for global Internet access and undoubtedly the world's most-used connectivity technology. In the annals of "techdom," Ethernet is a very big deal.

"Ethernet ranks highly among those technologies that impact day-to-day life on a global basis," IEEE Standards Association writes on its Web site. "Data center networks, PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and now the smart grid, smart meters, personal medical devices, the Internet of Things, connected cars, and more -- Ethernet touches them all in one way or another."

It was 40 years ago today that inventor Bob Metcalfe passed around a memo explaining just how Ethernet would work -- connecting multiple computers to one another to exchange messages over increasingly busy networks.

The Ethernet that Metcalfe, along with inventor David Boggs, came up with wasn't the first of such network protocols -- some precede... [Read more]

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Posted on 22 May 2013 | 11:25 pm