Author: Zach Walton

After his very public divorce in 2010, Tiger Woods started to go out with Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn early this year. Vonn, who had just recently come out of her own divorce, decided to spend some quality time with Woods and his kids on a jet skiing trip this past weekend.

E! Online reports that Woods and Vonn were jet skiing with his kids over the weekend in Florida. It’s said that the jet ski trip shows that Vonn is starting to become more comfortable with Woods’ kids. It was only recently that Vonn wouldn’t be seen in public with the kids, but now she seems to have no problem with it.

Vonn had only just divorced her former husband, U.S. Ski Team member Thomas Vonn, in January of this year. It was revealed that she was dating Woods after she appeared at many of his golf tournaments. Now it appears that the two are spending more time together in public.

Of course, the big question now is whether or not Woods and Vonn are going to get married. Some would say it’s a little too soon for that as both are coming out of divorces. That being said, Woods making sure Vonn is comfortable with his kids could be a sign that he’s getting serious.

How could Notch and his team at Mojang possibly follow up the incredibly successful Minecraft? I’m not so sure myself, but Notch has a few ideas. One of those ideas is a trading card game called Scrolls and its open beta will soon be available.

Mojang announced on Monday that Scrolls will be available to purchase starting June 3. Like Minecraft before it, those who buy early get locked in at a lower price while getting all future updates for free. For gamers based in the U.S., buying into the open beta will cost $20.

If you want to know more about Scrolls, check out this mini-guide in preparation for the game’s open beta next week. You’re gonna need all the help you can get as you take on players all around the world in card fights.

Scrolls will be available on PC and Mac come June 3. There’s no mention of when it will exit open beta, or if it will be coming to other platforms at this time.

Much of the controversy surrounding the Xbox One thus far has been focused on its vague used game policy. Now another controversy may be brewing in countries with strong privacy laws.

Gamasutra reports that both Germany and Australia have expressed concern over the new Kinect camera in the Xbox One. It’s been confirmed that the camera must be connected for the Xbox One to operate, and some fear this will lead to snooping for marketing purposes. Microsoft, of course, says it won’t be using it to violate privacy, but some aren’t so sure.

Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Peter Schaar says that he needs to know if the Xbox One’s Kinect can store user information, and whether or not Microsoft can share that information with third parties. He goes so far to call the Xbox One and its potential to spy on living rooms a “twisted nightmare.” [Update: In the comments, Kenny tells us the statement from Schaar, when translated, merely says that he isn’t concerned about Microsoft spying on people via Kinect.]

Civil Liberties Australia Director Tim Vines says that the Xbox One’s Kinect is a surveillance device under Australian law. As such, Microsoft will have to come forward and tell users who can access the information it collects. He also encourages Australians to skip out on the Xbox One if Microsoft doesn’t give users an option to turn off the Kinect camera.

Germany and Australia aren’t exactly huge game markets, but it does show that people are uncomfortable with the idea of constantly being watched. Sony’s PS4 isn’t much better as it ships with its own camera, but the Japanese company hasn’t outlined an Orwellian surveillance regime in a patent application either.

Opera made a big stink a few months ago when it was announced it was ditching its own Presto Web rendering engine in favor of Webkit. After Google announced it was ditching Webkit in favor of its own forked version called Blink, Opera followed suit saying it would be using Blink as well. Now the Blink-powered Opera is finally here.

Opera Software announced today that it has launched what it’s calling Opera Next. You can think of it as a beta release, but this is the version of Opera that everybody’s been talking about. It’s a completely redesigned Opera that’s faster and more feature rich.

Finally available on desktop, Opera Next comes with a number of new or rethought features. For instance, the shortcuts start page has been transformed into what Opera calls “Speed Dial:”

Speed Dial shortcuts can now be gathered in folders and easily filtered. Drag and drop one Speed Dial entry on top of another to create a folder, or use the new Speed Dial search field to experience the power of visual Speed Dial entries combined with the flexibility and organization of a classic bookmark folder.

Another two new features are called Discover and Stash. With Discover, think of it as a smart RSS feed built right into the browser. It will collect news articles from your country of origin and feed you the content without having to navigate to any particular Web site.

As for Stash, this feature allows users to easily compare Web sites when shopping online:

Simply hit the heart icon in the address bar to collect the websites you want to compare easily while shopping, or to keep your travel research on hotels, sights and flights at your fingertips. Scan your Stash by resizable page preview, or search what you’ve saved, with keywords.

On top of all the new features, Opera’s UI has been completely redesigned from the grou up to look “modern and sleek.”

Of course, the biggest change is the move to the Webkit/Blink Web rendering engine:

With the Chromium engine, users get a standards-compliant and high-performance browser. Opera’s Off-Road mode, previously called Opera Turbo, now supports SPDY protocol and enables loading webpages faster, even in the toughest of network conditions.

The new Chromium-powered Opera is available for both desktop and mobile. You can grab Opera 15 for desktop here and Opera 14 for Android here. It may be hard to let Presto go, but a faster, standard-compliant Opera can only be a good thing, right?

As you may know, Chris Brown was involved in a traffic accident last week when he rear-ended a Mercedes in his Range Rover. Now the woman driving the Mercedes says it was a hit-and-run as she accuses Brown of not handing over his correct insurance information.

TMZ reports that the LAPD is currently investigating whether or not Brown refused to hand over his driver license number to the woman driving the Mercedes. It’s also alleged that he gave her the incorrect insurance information.

In a followup report, TMZ reports that sources close to Brown say that he gave all the necessary information to the woman after the accident. After the accusations of a hit-and-run came out, he had his lawyer try to contact the woman, but she has apparently been avoiding any and all phone calls from Brown’s lawyer.

It looks like a case of he said/she said at this point in time, but we won’t know anything for sure until the LAPD wraps up its investigation. That may be a while away, however, as the police have not contacted Brown or his lawyer yet. He had better hope the investigation comes out in his favor though as any law breaking under his current probation would send Brown to four years in prison.

Falling asleep at the wheel is dangerous for an adult. For a kid driving a toy car, it’s kind of adorable. With the added music, it becomes adorable and hilarious.

Let’s just hope he learns to not fall asleep at the wheel when he gets older.

[SoilyOily via Reddit]

A much smaller Powerball worth $50M has been split between 3 winning tickets.

The AP reports that a Florida resident is the third winner of the latest $50M Powerball award. The other two winners were from Louisiana and Delaware. The three winners will split $50 million over 20 years, of a lump sum of $31.1 million.

This is the second time this month that somebody from Florida has won the lottery. An unnamed winner on May 20 won the Powerball jackpot worth $590.5 million. The state said at the time that Florida is the state with the most Powerball winners of any state. This latest win only further cements Florida as being full of lottery winners.

Speaking of records, the three-way split of the latest Powerball is not the highest split. A 2001 $295 million Powerball was split four ways.

The next Powerball jackpot will only be worth $40 million. For most, that’s still quite enough money.

Danica Patrick’s boyfriend, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., was the cause of a wreck that took out Patrick and Brad Keselowski during this weekend’s Coca-Cola 600.

Fox Sports reports that Stenhouse wrecked Patrick on lap 319 of this weekend’s race. He bumped into Patrick’s back end and her car then hit Keselowski’s car. By the end, there was a three-car wide wreck.

The wreck wasn’t Keselowski’s fault, but he still took responsibility when speaking to the press:

“I was three-wide with Danica and didn’t know it and I cut her off and wrecked her and myself. I feel bad for her and I send my apologies to her. It’s just a long night for the Miller Lite Ford.”

Keselowski retired at the 32nd position after starting in the 20th position. Patrick retired at 29th place. Stenhouse was able to finish the race.

A Texas shooting spree over the weekend has left two people, including the shooter, dead.

NBC News reports that a 23-year-old North Carolina resident went on a two-county shooting spree through Texas over the weekend. Authorities chased the man, who was driving a pickup truck, for two hours.

Police are just starting to piece together the events that led to the two hour chase that left five injured and two dead. The gunman first shot a woman in her car at 4:30 a.m. She is still at the hospital. He then shot and injured two people at a gas station, but both were quickly treated and released. He shot and injured another when he headed back to where he came from. Responding to reports of shots fired, police found Alicia Torres, the only person to have died, in her car.

The police soon caught up with the shooter and engaged him in a firefight. During the shootout, the shooter was shot and killed. It was later found that the shooter had an assault rifle, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

No concrete details have been released just yet, but police are investigating all the events to find a cause behind the violence.

In other news, Chicago was also the center of multiple shootings over the weekend that left six people dead.

It’s rare to see snow in May, but New York received 3 feet of snow over the Memorial Day weekend.

The AP reports that Whiteface Moutain, a ski mountain on the New York border with Vermont, was hit with 3 feet of snow over the weekend. All the snow has forced the authorities to close the highway that leads up to the mountain.

Now, 3 feet of snow is not going to break any records, but it does came very late in the season. It’s said that the 13.2 inches that fell on Sunday was the first time that more than a foot of snow has fallen this late in the season.

Once the roads clear up, Whiteface Moutain will open again to its summer activities in June. The gondola rides open on June 14.

[Image: Whiteface Moutain/flickr]

Adrian Peterson of Minnesota Vikings recently gave his opinion on gay marriage during a radio interview.

Fox News reports that Peterson was on a Sirius XM radio interview when the hosts asked what he thought about gay marriage. In short, he personally doesn’t believe in gay marriage, but he’s not going to stand in the way either. He also says that he has no ill will towards gays as some people in his family identify as such. He says that he loves them all the same:

“To each his own, (but) I’m not with it. I have relatives that are gay. I’m not bias towards them. I still treat them the same. I love them. But, again, I’m not with that. That’s not something I believe in. But to each his own.”

The question originally came up in response to former Vikings teammate Chris Kluwe’s outspoken views on gay marriage. Kluwe is adamantly for gay marriage and made his opinion vocally known via numerous media outlets. He was later let go from the Vikings and many thought his political views were the reason. The official stance is that Kluwe wasn’t let go for his political views, and Peterson confirms that as well. He did say, however, that he was sad to see him go even if they had radically different political views.

Chicago police are reporting that 6 people are dead as a result of shootings over the weekend.

The AP reports that 6 people were killed and another 11 wounded in a string of gun violence that took place over the weekend in Chicago. On Friday, a 17-year-old and a 22-year-old were both killed in separate shootings. Then an 18-year-old and a 29-year-old were killed as a result of gun violence.

After two days of gun violence resulting in deaths, Chicago still couldn’t breathe easy. On Sunday morning, a 42-year-old man was shot in the head after a vehicle crash. The woman in his vehicle was taken to a hospital. In a separate event, a man in his late 20s was shot in the armpit and later pronounced dead at a hospital.

It should be noted that none of these deaths are likely related. If anything, Chicago found itself with an incredibly violent weekend. Unfortunately, it’s not anything new for residents of Chicago as people are sometimes killed by stray bullets from gang wars. The most recent being a 6-month-old child that was shot and killed by such a stray bullet.

Elisabeth Moss slammed her former Broadway co-star Jeremy Piven over what she was “highly unprofessional” behavior.

During an appearance on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, Moss spoke on her time working with Piven during the production of Speed-The-Plow. The official story is that Piven left the production after coming down with mercury poisoning from his predominantly fish-based diet. Moss says that it was just an excuse.

Moss says Piven didn’t look like somebody who was suffering from mercury poisoning when she saw him a month after he quit the production. She says that he was “being highly unprofessional” when he just didn’t show up one day.

In the same interview, she talked about fellow Mad Men co-star Jon Hamm’s “ham.” She said that she’s seen the picture, but that’s all she knows.

Moss can currently be seen on television in the sixth season of Mad Men. The next season will be the show’s last so it’s anybody’s guess where she’ll end up afterwards.

[h/t: Daily Mail]

Rob Kardashian was looking good on Saturday after his weight loss plan proved to be a success.

The Kardashian brother said that he gained 40 pounds after splitting with Rito Ora. It was apparent that he had lost that weight when he showed up at the unveiling for his new Robert George by Rob Kardashian sock collection in Las Vegas.

Of course, he’s not done with losing weight just yet. He says that he still has to lose between 40 to 50 pounds. He hopes to lose that weight within the next six months.

So, how is he going to do it? He’s training with his brother-in-law Lamar Odin’s trainer. He’s also trying to indulge in healthier habits. In particular, he says that he won’t be drinking while he’s in Las Vegas.

Rob was in the news earlier this month after he was charged with battery and theft. As expected, he pleaded not guilty. The photographer he allegedly stole from has sued him as well.

[h/t: Access Hollywood]

Brad Pitt may have face blindness and he says the disorder is impacting his social life.

In a recent Esquire interview, Pitt says that he thinks he has prosopagnosia – a disorder that makes it impossible for the affected to remember faces. He told the magazine that the disorder makes it hard for him to meet new people as he won’t remember their faces the next time he meets them. This makes it seem like he’s being rude, and people tend to not like him as a result.

He says that some people are helpful by providing him some context over how they met, but most people think he’s being egotistical. He says that’s not the case. As a result, he says that he’s limiting his time outside so as not to accidentally offend anybody.

Of course, Pitt only thinks he suffers from face blindness, and has not received an official diagnosis. To that end, Carnegie-Mellon University has offered to perform a free brain scan on Pitt to find out if he suffers from face blindness. He has yet to take them up on the offer.

The revelation that Pitt may suffer from face blindness isn’t the first juicy bit of info to come out of his recent interview with Esquire. The star also commented on his former marriage to Jennifer Aniston saying he was a drifter during those years.

[OMG]

The iconic I Dream Of Jeannie costume was donned by Barbara Eden during a charity event over the weekend.

People reports that Eden wore her now-famous I Dream of Jeannie costume at the Life Ball charity event in Vienna over the weekend. Eden, 78, still looked great in the costume that made her a household name in 1965. She hung out on stage in costume with former president Bill Clinton. There’s got to be a weird cross over fan-fiction in there somewhere, but we’ll save that for another time.

I Dream Of Jeannie hasn’t been on the air since it was canceled in 1970 after five years of fulfilling America’s wishes. Eden did, however, reprise her role as Jeannie for two made-for-TV films in I Dream Of Jeannie: 15 Years Later and I Still Dream Of Jeannie. With Eden adorning her Jeannie costume after more than 20 years, fans will undoubtedly request that she star in a third film. At best, we’ll probably get a film reboot with a younger star while Eden cameos.

Either way, Eden reprising her role as Jeannie surely raised plenty of money at Europe’s largest charity event dedicated to AIDS and HIV research.

Jay-Z is under investigation by the NFL after it was found that he may have gotten too close to a recruit during the recruitment process.

Jay-Z, who owns Roc Nation Sports Agency, may have been personally involved with the recruitment of Geno Smith for the New York Jets. According to NFL rules, only NFLPA-certified agents can be involved in the recruiting process. Jay-Z does not have this certification as he only owns Roc Nation while having agents handle the recruitment process.

So, what happened in this particular case? Smith’s recruitment was handled by Roc Nation agent Kim Miale, but the NFL investigation suggests that Jay-Z was directly involved in the recruiting process. For one, an Instagram photo showed Jay-Z and Smith together before it was announced that Smith had signed with Roc Nation. Another piece of evidence from Smith’s adviser, John Thorton, says that Jay-Z and Smith had met for meetings.

The NFL has just begun its investigation, and it might be a while before we have a verdict. For now, Smith is still signed with Roc Nation.

[h/t: NFL.com]

Pope Francis, who recently made some controversial statements about atheists, has now targeted the Italian mafia.

Reuters reports that the Pope urged members of the mafia to repent this week after he beatified Giuseppe Puglisi. Puglisi was a Sicilian priest that became known for his vocal statements against organized crime families in Italy. He ultimately paid for his statements with his life as he was shot to death outside of his home in 1993.

After the service, the Pope spoke out against many of the crimes committed by Italian mafias:

“My thoughts are with the suffering of women, men and also children who are exploited by the many mafias who make them slaves, through prostitution, through many social pressures. They cannot do this, they cannot make our brothers slaves, we must pray to the Lord to make these mafiosi convert to God.”

Pope Francis made headlines earlier this week when he said that atheists will be redeemed as long as they are good. As you can expect, the statement was met with controversy. His latest statements regarding the mafia will undoubtedly be met with less resistance.

A lesbian love story film titled Blue is the Warmest Color has won the highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival.

News.com reports that director Abdellatif Kechiche and the two leading stars – Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux – were awarded the Golden Palm award. The film was chosen for the festival’s highest honor by an all-star panel comprised of Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman and others.

Kechiche, who is French-Tunisian, dedicated the award to the youth of both France and Tunisia. He put a special emphasis on Tunisia as he referenced the youth protest movement in the country. He said that the youth of the country should have the right to “live free, to express themselves freely and to love in full freedom.”

Here’s a scene from the film:

The film to take the second-highest prize – the Grand Prix – was the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis.

We’ve already ascertained that the Oculus Rift is pretty awesome. The virtual reality headset has transported a grandmother to the Tuscan countryside in one demo while another has given people a taste of the French Revolution. Now it’s freaking out an “Irish mammy” with a roller coaster simulator.

It’s apparent once again that virtual reality has finally reached the point to where it actually feels pretty real. Now we might not be so far away from a Lawnmower Man-like future.

[h/t: lleti via Reddit]