We’re all hardcore fans of Tetris, here at Gizmodo. Or so I thought, until I played this remake of the classic NES version. It’s called First Person Tetris, and it will make you sick.
Or maybe not. It made me sick. A little. In the inside. Now I have a headache, after forcing myself to get up one level. Let’s see if you can stomach it. For more than two minutes. [First Person Tetris via Steve Lin via Ángel Jiménez]
Apple has indirectly confirmed the existence of their rumored Tablet after Valleywag started a scavenger hunt for evidence, offering up to $100,000 for photos, videos, or a chance to play with it.
The proof, while arguably thin, was enough to win the letter’s author a consolation prize: zune passes and a DVD of Legally Blonde 2. Congrats!
Sure, it could be a note protesting the scavenger hunt in principle, speaking to any and all confidential knowledge of any unreleased Apple product, but this scavenger hunt is purely for Tablet evidence. And, do companies send C&Ds for non existent devices? Not in our experience.
Here’s what their lawyers sent:
While Apple values and appreciates vibrant public commentary about its products, we believe you and your company have crossed the line by offering a bounty for the theft of Apple’s trade secrets. Such an offer is illegal and Apple insists that you immediately discontinue the Scavenger Hunt.
[…]The information you are willing to pay for, such as photos of a yet-to-be released product, constitutes Apple trade secrets.
[…]
Apple has maintained the types of information and things you are soliciting—”how it’ll work, its size, the name, the software,” as well as any possible details about the product’s appearance, features, and physical samples—in strict confidence.”
Those are the words of Michael Spillner, from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, representing their client, Apple Inc. The letter arrived today to Gawker Media’s headquarters in New York. Their final line was quite menacing:
Oh well, you have to do what you have to do: The offer still stands.
Just don’t do anything illegal to get any of the evidence, and use an anonymous mail when sending your picts or video to Gabriel at Gawker. [Gawker]
This one comes from the Patent Office, Department of Obvious Things that Seem Like a Must-Have, Office of iPhone OS 4.0 Potential Features: Apple thinks that adding contacts to the iPhone’s home screen is a great idea. I wholeheartedly agree.
The contact icon won’t only bring contact information. It would be able to do much more:
The icon can also be used to invoke one or more applications that are personalized to the contact. The icon can be modified to display information related to the contact. In one aspect, an icon associated with an entity can be temporarily displayed on the mobile device based on the proximity of the mobile device to the entity.
Anything that could save a click seems good to me. [Redmond Pie]
I don’t know if this Cornucopia food printer—an MIT project that assembles ingredients in layers—will ever be a reality, but I’m sure lab cuisine chefs like Ferran Adrià are already lining up just based on the description:
Cornucopia’s cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food.
Marcelo Coelho and Amit Zoran, the students behind the project at MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group, say that this printer will give “ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.” It will also make it look and feel like crap, I’m sure. But it’s ok, because there’s one layered food that can be synthesized without trouble with this thing: Bacon.
I’m sold. [MIT via Shapeways via Makezine]
It’s not only that this yacht has been designed by an Egyptian naval architecture house, it’s that it reminds me of the Egyptian ships of old, rolling up and down the Nile. Except that this 197-foot vessel runs on hydrogen.
Its hydrogen diesel-electric engine can, in theory, give it a range of 13,000 nautical miles at 10 knots—which is mind blowing for a yacht with these features. The axe bow gives it lower resistance. And its general design makes it look like it can kick any other yacht ass. Or a cheese knife. Or a kick yatch ass cheese knife. [JamesList]
Science visualization doesn’t get much awesomerer and old school than this. We should put a bunch of these together near the North Pole, to keep the Russians from stealing it. [Caleb Charland courtesy of Michael Mazzeo Gallery—Thanks David ]
Back in November, former TBWA\Chiat\Day creative Ken Segal said that Steve Jobs‘ original name for the iMac would “curdle your blood.” I guessed Macternet, but according to this account, that wasn’t blood-curdling enough. Jobs’ alleged proposal was a lot worse:
Our sources claim that the name that Steve Jobs wanted was… MacMan. At the time, the name was being used by another company, called Midiman. They manufactured the MacMan, a serial-to-MIDI adapter with one input, three outputs, a serial passthrough switch, and MIDI indicator LEDs. According to this account, Apple came to them with an offer for the name, but Midiman’s owner thought they didn’t offered enough ruby rupees. He declined Apple’s offer.
If this is true—and it rings real to me—I’m glad the owner declined. Just imagine if they called that bondi blob the MacMan. We would still be hearing the echoes of the worldwide laughter.
For the same reasons, I hope they don’t go with Apple iSlate (Apple Is Late?). It’s not as bad as MacMan, but it’s almost there.
I like the sleep suit, because can’t not like anything that allows me to sleep anywhere I want, and has holes for people to poke their hands inside.
The suit is designed for siestas—four 30 minutes ones taken over 24 hours periods—, with holes that allow “human contact.” I don’t know about the contact, but I can tell you that people from any country who actually practice siestas, would just prefer a sofa and a boring nature TV program to fall sleep for an hour or two. [Blogitecture via Presurfer via New Launches]
Valleywag is offering up to $100,000—yes, One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars—to anyone who can provide them with pictures or video or one hour of touching and licking with the Apple Tablet. Here’s the juicy menu:
• $10,000 for bona fide pictures.
• $20,000 for video of one in action.
• $50,000 for pictures or video of Steve Jobs holding one.
• $100,000 to let us play with one for an hour.
The money will be paid after the tablet is revealed and the material is proven to be the real McCoy.
I’ve to say that we are all pretty excited at the idea of any Bothan spy breaking the Cupertino blockade and running away with one of the prototypes. [Valleywag]
Kolelinia—a system that allows you to ride your bike above the traffic—looks like a crazy idea until you check out the engineering behind it. Then you will realize that it’s not only cool, but it can work too.
Here’s how it works.
Kolelinia has two elements, a half-pipe—this is where your bike’s wheels run—and a cable above that pipe. The cable is at the same height as your bike’s handles, and it provides stability and safety while you fly over the cars. The cable connects to the bike’s handle using a special hooking device. This divoce also has a hole for a carabiner, so you can use a harness and safety line for extra safety.
On first sight, it looks like the props for a circus act. But unlike in the circus, Kolelinia doesn’t involve any risk thanks to the safety cable system. It may seem convoluted, but it’s actually quite simple, and a much better and safer option than having to deal with the dangers of traffic, or flying with stranded extra-terrestrial beings. [Kolelinia via ArchDaily]
Remember Craig “Lazie” Lynch, the British criminal who escaped prison last September, and then spent months taunting the police via Facebook? The assclown has been caught by Scotland Yard. [Fox News]
Dark energy Peeping Toms rejoice, because Fermilab has created the gadget to catch it: A $35 million, car-sized digital camera, with 74 CCD sensors in it. It will take 570-megapixel photos of the Universe.
The resulting sensor is one meter in diameter, covering a 2.2-degree field of view. The images are so big that, even with an ultra-fast data recording system, each photo will take 17 seconds to acquire.
The camera won’t photograph the dark energy itself, however. It will just provide with ultra-detailed shots of the cosmos—tracking 300 million galaxies over the course of five years—which may bring evidence about the existence of this veiled intergalactic power. Which is too bad, because I bet she looks sexy in her undies. [Dark Energy Survey via Wired]
Ever wondered how a beast like the Hindenburg zeppelin—a gigantic 803 feet in length and 130 feet in diameter structure—was built in the 1930s? Here’s the answer: With the biggest ladders you can possibly imagine. [Thanks David Keyes]
Stop motion? Slow motion? I would call this morph motion. Or weird motion. Whatever it is, the results are strangely beautiful and eerie. [Likecool]
Although this is how I imagine it, this is not a macro shot of my skin after a night packed with deliciously fatty foods and good whiskey. But even after knowing what it is, I find it just as gross.
According to the HiRISE Operations Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson, these are dunes on Mars, which apparently are covered with mold and populated by slimy creatures.
In the winter, a layer of carbon dioxide ice covers the dunes, and in the spring as the sun warms the ice it evaporates. This is a very active process, and sand dislodged from the crests of the dunes cascades down, forming dark streaks.
Not everything in space is breathtakingly beautiful. [HiRISE via Discover]
Bing, Microsoft’s dedicated web searcher, must be deleted from the iTunes App Store at once. Why? Its image browsing mode can be set to watch hardcore porn. If Apple wants to follow their own absurd rules, Bing must be obliterated.
Seriously, why is Bing still in the Apple store? Its image search engine is perfect to browse porn. Just go into preferences, turn off the adult content filter—one click—and boom, instant hardcore porn browser. And a very sleek one at that, too.
Would Apple delete Bing, which does what ForChan does but much easier and with much more explicit and unlimited results? My guess is that they won’t, because Microsoft is Microsoft, not a no-name app developer.
They should, however, just to be consistent with their stupid “no-porn” policy. And if we are at it, let’s delete the Camera and Photo album app too, because I can use them to take photos of my naked fiancee. Let’s delete any app that can be used to record and transmit porn images online. Let’s ban the sale of iPhones and MacBooks too.
Or maybe they should do the right thing, because all of this is just stupid: Stop censoring, let people decide what to do with their gadgets and software. At least when it comes to the content that we decide to store or access through our cellphones or computers.
It’s a well known fact that Safari’s CSS engine runs on rainbows, unicorns, and sugar, or that Internet Explorer 7 HTML renderer uses copious amount of babies’ blood. However, very few people know that Chrome runs on goats.
Exactly, 12,000 goats are teleported every second after a fresh reboot. TWELVE THOUSAND GOATS, people. That’s a lot of greek yogurt. Like, at least five thousand yogurts per second. Or ten. I’m not sure. Depends on the goat being african or european. Or if they are about to be roasted. So leave those poor goats, alone, Google, they have enough problems on their own.
It took only a few hours: Apple has banned ForChan from iTunes, a perfectly innocent, web-based, dedicated image browser for the iPhone. Its only sin: It could display porn. Well done, Apple. Let’s delete Safari now.
ForChan could connect to any image board web page and show pictures. Photos of dogs, cats, birds, food, cars, planes, flowers, scenes of summer, winter, and fall, or anything in between. Anything including boobs and buttocks:
It didn’t promote porn in any way. It didn’t have any ads for porn. Its icon was plain. Its explanatory text was perfectly innocent. And yes, while the developer mentions that it could be used to browse pictures of fully naked girls—and has some boards with that kind of pictures—the app itself is not a “porn app.” Actually, you had to click a few times in the web before getting to the smut. There was no magic “Show me the tits” button.
In fact, ForChan only has two options: Browse page after page of images, or enter a new URL to access a new web server containing different images.
Sounds familiar?
Yes, exactly the same as Safari. Enter any porn web site address in your Safari URL field, and you will instantly get connected to porn. Hardcore picture after hardcore picture, wet video after wet video, all the perversions imaginable, no niche left untouched.
So why is Safari in the iPhone? Is it because web-browser porn browsing is socially accepted, leaving the ultimate responsibility in the individual using the web browser—often with a convenient privacy mode?
If that’s the case, why delete ForChan from the iTunes Store? It’s a web browser too, no matter how image oriented it is. Apple is not selling porn in the Store when somebody purchases ForChan. They are selling a generic browser, just like the built-in Safari is. One that can only display images, any kind of images, just like the built-in Safari does.
Apple includes Safari with no restrictions because, at the end of the day, it is your responsibility to use your web browser according to your own set of moral and social rules. You can write a new web address and access Fleshbot instead of Gawker. Your action, your choice. Nobody is going to go to Apple and accuse them of selling a porn app because I can access porn online. And nobody can accuse Apple of selling porn by making ForChan available in their app store.
So why retire it? Just because we highlighted that it can be used to browse porn. So here’s a hint, Apple:
Time to delete Safari.
Wet computers—devices made of lipid-covered cells that handle chemical reactions similarly to neurons—are the key to machines with the processing power of the human brain. But for now, they may deliver drugs in a better way:
The type of wet information technology we are working towards will not find its near-term application in running business software, but it will open up application domains where current IT does not offer any solutions – controlling molecular robots, fine-grained control of chemical assembly, and intelligent drugs that process the chemical signals of the human body and act according to the local biochemical state of the cell.
That’s what University of Southampton’s Klaus-Peter Zauner says, pointing out that the molecular computer they are working on is a “a very crude abstraction of what neurons do.” When the lipid-covered cells contact each other, a passage opens between them so chemical reactions can pass from one to the next. Inside the cells, a reaction—called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky or B-Z—happens, triggered by other cells. This reaction can pass from one cell to the next, or can be contained within the cell, allowing for cell networking, which is key to form these wet processors.
Did you get any of that? Good. I just like the idea of my processors getting wet. [BBC]
This is what $170 will get you: One small black box that clones 2.5 and 3.5-inch SATA I and II drives at 72MB/sec, inner peace, and multiple digital lives. Thanks, you Aleratec HDD Copy Cruiser Mini you. [