An anonymous reader writes "Stainless Games has been fundraising for Carmageddon: Reincarnation, a modern day remake of the classic Carmageddon racing games, on Kickstarter for weeks. Stainless said that if they hit $600,000 in pledges before time runs out, they would commit themselves to creating a Linux port of the game, as well as a MacOS port. Today they made it official: the fundraising has come so close to netting $600K overall, with a few more hours left to go, that they are officially committing themselves to creating a Linux port of the new game. PC gamers will get to play Carmageddon 4 first, with a February 2013 release date. The MacOS & Linux versions will follow the PC version later in 2013."
sciencehabit writes "What if you could read much of your child's medical future while it was still in the womb? Taking a major step toward that goal, one fraught with therapeutic potential and ethical questions, scientists have now accurately predicted almost the whole genome of an unborn child by sequencing DNA from the mother's blood and DNA from the father's saliva (abstract)."
MojoKid writes "E3 is well underway in Los Angeles, and Microsoft has already made a major splash with its 'SmartGlass' technology, game demos, and its announcement that a Kinect-powered version of Internet Explorer will debut on the Xbox 360. This is a marked change from last year, when Kinect was the unquestioned centerpiece of Microsoft's display and the company's demos focused on how Kinect-powered games used your full body as a controller. Kinect is in the interesting position of having sold extremely well while failing to move the bar forward in any of the ways Microsoft projected in the run up to its launch. Scroll through the ratings on Kinect-required titles, and the percentages are abysmal. Kinect's biggest problem is rooted in ergonomics. Gamepads with buttons may be crude approximations of real life, but they're simple and intuitive. They're also flexible — a great many games have conditional scenarios that allow the same button to perform different functions depending on what's going on within the game. Pure Kinect games don't have a simple mechanism to incorporate these features, and there's no easy way around them. The motion-controller's most enduring features may ultimately be its capabilities outside the gaming sphere."
MassDosage writes "Having developed software for nearly fifteen years, I remember the dark days before testing was all the rage and the large number of bugs that had to be arduously found and fixed manually. The next step was nervously releasing the code without the safety net of a test bed and having no idea if one had introduced regressions or new bugs. When I first came across unit testing I ardently embraced it and am a huge fan of testing of various forms — from automated to smoke tests to performance and load tests to end user and exploratory testing. So it was with much enthusiasm that I picked up How Google Tests Software — written by some of the big names in testing at Google. I was hoping it would give me fresh insights into testing software at "Google Scale" as promised on the back cover, hopefully coupled with some innovative new techniques and tips. While partially succeeding on these fronts, the book as a whole didn't quite live up to my expectations and feels like a missed opportunity." Read below for the rest of MassDosage's review.
eldavojohn writes "Scientists have long been criticized of their inability to communicate complex ideas adequately to the rest of society. Similar to his questions on PBS' Scientific American Frontiers, actor Alan Alda wrote to the journal Science with a proposition called The Flame Challenge (PDF). Contestants would have to explain a flame to an eleven-year-old kid, and the entries would be judged by thousands of children across the country. The winner of The Flame Challenge is quantum physics grad student Ben Ames, whose animated video covers concepts like pyrolysis, chemiluminescence, oxidation and incandescence boiled into a humorous video, complete with song. Now they are asking children age 10-12 to suggest the next question for the Flame Challenge. Kids out there, what would you like scientists to explain?"
An anonymous reader writes "John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, is using his spare time to develop a modern virtual reality headset. After purchasing such a device last year, Carmack became frustrated with how slowly the technology has progressed over the past twenty years. So, he decided to push it forward himself. PCGamer reports that he's been showing off his prototype behind closed doors at E3 this year, and has an interview with him about the problems with VR and the technical challenges he needs to overcome. They even get a look at the prototype itself, which is currently held together with duct tape."
An anonymous reader writes "Slashdotters may remember the Solar Impulse — the world's first 100% solar-powered airplane — from last year when it made its public debut. Today the airplane made news again as it successfully completed the world's first solar-powered intercontinental flight — a pivotal step that paves the way for the plane's first trip around the world in 2014."
An anonymous reader writes "In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone. This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts. This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time."
An anonymous reader writes "Those cups of coffee that you drink every day to keep alert appear to have an extra perk — especially if you're an older adult. A recent study monitoring the memory and thinking processes of people older than 65 found that all those with higher blood caffeine levels avoided the onset of Alzheimer's disease in the two-to-four years of study follow-up. Moreover, coffee appeared to be the major or only source of caffeine for these individuals."
v3rgEz writes "The FBI files of noted physicist, esteemed author and all-around geek Richard Feynman have been released. Feynman and the FBI had an extended encounter after the Bureau discovered he had been invited to speak at the USSR, which set off a flurry of investigations into his loyalty — even as he pestered the State Department for guidance on whether he should or shouldn't go, guidance they only gave belatedly. Of particular interest to the FBI was his avid devotion to the art of lock picking, his high school membership in a socialism club (for social reasons, he swore), and the fact that he was a godless scientist who loved his bongo drums. Original documents are available. One other element? A seven-page letter detailing a conspiracy theory that Feynman was a sleeper agent for enemies unknown, but probably communist ones."
dsinc was the first to note, but an anonymous reader writes "Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, the dystopian novel about the logical conclusion of many trends in modern society, and many other works that have inspired fans of speculative fiction for decades, has died at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, California, Tuesday night, June 5th, 2012. No details on how he died were released, but I suspect it may have had something to do with the Earth orbiting the sun over 90 times since he was born. I guess we'll have to wait to be sure."
*See, "projection mapping" really is some kind of "augmented reality," just like I always said. Furthermore, this video has the AntiVJ label in it: the awesomest French guys in Britain./ A short documentary by Dane Luttik // Mapping projects by AntiVJ 0.14 3Destruct (AntiVJ 2011) 1.16 Nuits sonores (AntiVJ 2009) 1.20 M?caniques Discursives (Legoman ...
Could human activity push Earth's biological systems to a planet-wide tipping point, causing changes as radical as the ice age's end -- but with less pleasant results, and with billions of people along for a bumpy ride?
High resolution screens like that of the new iPad make ordinary web graphics look blurry and jagged. Creative web developers have turned to icon fonts and SVG images to create beautiful graphics that scale to any screen.
The Obama administration is set to urge a federal appeals court to reinstate a $1.5 million music filing-sharing verdict a jury levied against a Minnesota woman for sharing two dozen songs on Kazaa.
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6012/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-bradbury(...)INTERVIEWERThat?s the character who makes a brief appearance in Something Wicked This Way Comes, right? And you?ve often spoken of a real-life Mr. Electrico, though no scholar has ever been able to confirm his existence. The story has taken on a kind of mythic stature?the director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies calls the ...
Ray Bradbury was a man of words. Some he spoke, some he wrote, and many of them burned with a passion for big ideas and the power of language itself.
Ray Bradbury, one of the most legendary science fiction authors of the 20th century, died Tuesday night at age 91. But he left behind much more than a stack of amazing sci-fi books.
Google's Maps team introduced three new technologies on Wednesday -- advanced 3D models of entire cities, right down down to trees in front of buildings in Google Earth; a new Android-controlled Street View Trekker backpack for capturing images where bikes, cars and planes can't go; and the ability to save offline maps in the Android Maps app.
Not only will Windows Phone outshine BlackBerry in the worldwide smartphone market, it'll surpass iOS and become the second most popular smartphone platform by 2016, according to a forecast report released by IDC on Wednesday.
A small Massachusetts software company has sued Google, claiming that the search giant?s brand-new Google Drive infringes one of its patents.
"This kind of single-player first-person shooter is rare," 4A Games' Huw Beynon said at an event prior to E3. "There are probably only a few in development right now."
While the tech world waits for Oracle chief Larry Ellison to tweet -- for the first time -- about his company's new cloud initiatives, more focus has been paid the the tweet than the cloud news.
HBO GO is available now for the Kindle Fire. Get all your Game of Thrones and True Blood fixes before other Android tablet owners.
A federal judge blocked a landmark state law requiring online companies to verify the ages of people in ads offering "adult services" such as escorts or even prostitution.
Fresh off the news that beleaguered magazine is reinventing itself as an off-brand Reddit for the social good, Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic Tech has announced a pivot of his own.
Bookshelves are one of those problems that never quite gets solved. We always need more of them and they could always be better -- more modular, more stackable, less wall-destroying.
More than three-quarters of the U.S. government's satellite images don't come from government satellites. They're provided by two companies, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. So alarms began to ring in Washington in February, when those two companies started talk to become one, forming a monopoly in space and radically altering the economics of the commercial satellite industry and how we see the Earth from above.
This must-see video from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the transit of Venus from space, taken in many different wavelengths. Other images show the transit from the International Space Station as well as here on Earth.
Following a report in the last Friday quoting U.S. government sources saying that the U.S. was behind the release of the Stuxnet worm, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has called for Capitol Hill hearings about the leaks as news reports indicate that the FBI has already launched a probe.
Spotify and Rdio rival MOG has only hooked up with BMW and sister brand Mini, but soon the streaming music service will be offered on several 2012 Ford vehicles with the Sync system, which already includes Pandora as part of its AppLink platform.
In a move sure to be seen as the next chapter in the cloud office wars, the battlefield has moved to mobile with Google buying mobile Microsoft Office-compatible app maker Quickoffice.
A leaked parts list for Apple products to go on sale in Australia suggests that Apple may not be pussyfooting around with hardware announcements at WWDC.
Hackathons, those energy-drink-fueled all-nighters, can have business purposes that have absolutely nothing to do with hacking.
Players who became anonymous dictators in a simple online game showed unexpected benevolence toward their subjects, giving away more of their own money than previous, real-life experiments predicted.
Video interview for , a new strategy game shown at E3.
Publishers in South Korea are set to remove examples of evolution from school textbooks following a petition driven by an independent body called the Society for Textbook Revise.
Nearly three years ago, when the first iPad was announced, many jeered. Tech journos impugned it as "just a big iPod Touch." Others lamented that it was just a content-consumption device and wished it allowed people to create things. How wrong they were.
LinkedIn is investigating claims by a Russian hacker that he broke into the company's network and stole nearly 4.5 million password hashes for user accounts, according to a Twitter message the company sent out on Wednesday.
The keynote of Apple's World Wide Developers Conference is always one of the most important tech events of the year -- and in 2012 it looks like we'll be seeing a host of big announcements concerning operating systems, Mac computers, and even the future of television.
CSS Filters give web developers access to powerful photo filters, but there's a high performance price to be paid for your web-based Instagram efforts. Fortunately there's some hope on the horizon, Google's Chrome browser will soon feature faster, hardware accelerated CSS Filters.