By The Editors 5/10 5:11pm

shameless rumormongering

The picture of despair.

Rumor Roundup: Dave McClure Calls Big Omaha Attendee a ‘Lying Bitch’ and Zynga Employees Run Into Traffic

Lying Bitches 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, known for his rather dirty mouth, made a big slip-up at the Nebraska-based thinkfluencer festival Big Omaha today. According to Valleywag, Mr. McClure was giving a talk at the conference when he asked someone how good her iPhone battery life was. When she responded with a presumably positive answer, Mr. McClure called her a “lying bitch.” On stage. In front of tons of people. Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/10 12:11pm

Friday Fun

(Screencap: wpxi.com)

Mountain Dew Truck Does Kickflip, Spill Automatically Transforms Freeway Into Chill Skatepark

Yesterday morning, a truck carrying America’s greatest export, Mountain Dew, turned over on freeway I-70 in Pennsylvania, causing hundreds of bottles of the deliciously caffeinated nectar to clutter the road and back traffic up for hours. As if out of nowhere, hundreds of skateboarders descended on the scene, just to chill and practice their ollies. Xbox scores across the Northeast region of the U.S. plummeted to terrifying lows as gamers everywhere learned the devastating news and flocked to stores to begin to hoard Mountain Dew. Or at least that’s how we like to imagine it.

The highway has since been reopened and no major injuries were reported.

Rumor has it that the X Games will take place on highway I-70 next year.

By Jordan Valinsky 4/23 9:39am

Play Your Video Games

Art. (Photo: Polygon)

Goodbye Cruel World: You Can Now Order Pizza Hut From Your Xbox

The future is finally here: Microsoft and Pizza Hut have launched a new app for Xbox Live that lets users order the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza (and other assorted items!) straight from their Xbox 360.  Users link their Xbox Live and Pizza Hut accounts (who has a Pizza Hut account?) and then purchases can be made via the game controller, voice input or Kinect gestures, which totally counts as exercise. Read More

By Jessica Roy 4/04 7:57am

Linkages

(Photo: Angelfire)

Booting Up: Zuck’s First Website Was Just as Embarrassing as Yours

Digital music licensing revenues surpassed those from radio for the first time ever, mostly thanks to Google Play and Xbox. [The Guardian]

If this really is Mark Zuckerberg’s first ever Angelfire page, it’s just as mortifying as yours was. [Gizmodo]

Q1 of 2013 yielded a strangely low number of IPOs: only eight companies went public in the three-month period. [Silicon Valley Business Journal]

Not to be eclipsed by Microsoft, Samsung is getting its own brick and mortar stores, but with a twist: they’ll exist solely inside Best Buys. Guess they really like the Geek Squad? [AllThingsD]

The Facebook phone is expected to be announced today. Yay? [New York Times]

By Jessica Roy 2/19 4:42pm

Play Your Video Games

(Photo: Old Ass Gamers)

Older Gamers Create Their Own Communities So They Don’t Have to Lose to ’12-Year-Old Girls from Japan’

Anyone who has ever logged onto Xbox Live is well aware of the fact that the community is littered with rage-filled tweens who think shouting homophobic epithets at unsuspecting competitors is the very height of trash talking. It’s enough to make you play all local games, especially as a woman, lest you be subjected to a slew of unimaginative insults every time you use your microphone or make a good kill. Read More

By Jessica Roy 11/06/12 9:13am

Patently Absurd

I'm watching you... (Photo: Game Informer)

Microsoft Wants to Build a Creepy ‘Consumer Detector’ That Charges for Content Based on How Many People Are in a Room

The Kinect add-on for Microsoft’s Xbox, which allows users to play fully-immersive games as the Kinect tracks your movements and translates them to the screen, is a fun alternative to typical couch potato gaming. But did you know it can also help corporations spy on you? America!

Back in 2011, Microsoft applied for a patent that would allow cameras and sensors, much like the ones embedded in the Kinect, to track how many people are in a room. Developed by Microsoft’s “incubation team,” which is where they test new approaches to hardware, the patent was recently made public. They’re calling the invention a “consumer detector” and it’s just as frightening as it sounds. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 10/15/12 8:35am

Linkages

Rise and shine! (Photo: flickr.com/katerha)

Booting Up: Peter Thiel Wants YOU for the ’20 Under 20′

“You don’t want your analytical efforts to be obvious because voters get creeped out.” Data mining in politics is harder than it looks. [New York Times]

It’s “20 under 20″ time once more! If you’ve just gotten to freshman year and you absolutely hate it and you’ve already got a good idea for something you’d like to do instead, the Peter Thiel Foundation probably wants to see your application. [TNW]

Late Friday afternoon, Gawker’s Adrian Chen released the results of his epic trollhunt: “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez.” You’ll no doubt be shocked to learn that he’s pretty much as expected. [Gawker]

It sounds like the whole matter has been one long headache for Reddit HQ, but it doesn’t seem to have made so much as a dent in Alexis Ohanian’s confidence in the world-improving powers of the Internet.  [The Verge]

Sprint has agreed to sell a majority stake to Japanese telecom SoftBank–pending regulatory approval, of course. [Dealbook]

Has Microsoft finally stumbled onto a good idea? The company is launching Xbox Music, a streaming music offering 30 million songs strong. [New York Timess]