If you think the products on Kickstarter were terrible, just wait until you see how Microsoft completely ruined (disrupted?) the crowdsourcing paradigm.
Introducing Chip In, a program from the computer giant that lets college students amass donations from people that go toward the purchase of a shiny, new PC. Microsoft said it will ~chip in~ 10 percent of the price on “select” (read: Acer) PCs. Read More
Trading in your twin bed for a sleepover-friendly double bed in a childhood rite of passage–one that allows you to stretch out among your pile of big girl CDs, magazines and clothes.
But tweens today may not ever know this meaningful transition, because sales for twin beds are dropping. Instead, kids are demanding double size beds early on so that they can comfortably sprawl out in bed next to their computers. Read More
What does actor Christopher Walken have in common with rap legend DMX? Apparently neither gives a single, solitary fuck about keeping up with the Internet.
Last Night, Mr. Walken appeared on the Daily Show to promote his latest flick. Noting that Mr. Walken is hard to get hold of, Jon Stewart asked whether he’s a technofile. “No, I missed all that,” the oddball actor replied. Read More
Possibly stoned NASA scientists have already conjectured that we may live inside a computer, much to the delight of Matrix fans. Now, researchers at the University of Washington–a state which just legalized recreational marijuana!–are planning the first-ever test to determine whether or not our world really is a super sophisticated computer simulation. Duuuuude.
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Twitter is blocking its first account: Tweets from the neo-Nazi group Besseres Hannover are no longer viewable in German. [Quartz]
For a company that hasn’t done a damn thing, Color Labs inspires a lot of rumor-mongering. Yesterday the talk was all about whether the startup was winding down. Today, the scuttlebutt suggests Apple might buy the ill-fated photo-sharing startup. [The Next Web]
Pour one out for the concept of “going online,” which is increasingly archaic and soon to be utterly foreign to the youngs, like cassettes and modesty. [AllThingsD]
Please share Betabeat’s delight in this collection of “wonderfully ridiculous” movie computers. Obviously, the supposedly state-of-the-art hunk of junk from the 1974 classic The Towering Inferno takes the cake. [Wired]
Silicon Valley has its very own cover band, composed of VCs and entrepreneurs. But what did you expect? We live in a world where Dennis Hopper once did an Ameriprise commercial. [Wall Street Journal]
A NASA scientist would like to legitimize that highdea you had one time in college: What if we all live inside a computer, man? How fucking trippy would that be?
Vice found the one NASA scientist who isn’t afraid to sound like a stoned kook, and we kind of want to be his best friend. Rich Terrile, director at the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argues that there’s a distinct possibility that our world could actually be a computer game generated by a programmer from the future, Matrix-style. Read More
While poking about Google Trends, Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic stumbled across a particularly eye-catching chart. It’s the visual for Google’s Computers & Electronics Index, a.k.a. how often people search for computer-related terms like Windows, Mac, HP, Dell, and Sony. Let’s just say there’s a definite trajectory here, and it sure looks like it’s towards the dustbin of history: Read More
One of the reason that Bernie Madoff was able to stay undetected for so long was that he could alternately charm and intimidate the young SEC staffers sent to investigate his firm. In the wake of that scandal, reports The Wall Street Journal, the SEC has developed a computer system that analyzes performance from thousands of hedge funds and looks for unusually good performance year-over-year that, like Mr. Madoff, seems too good to be true. Read More
