Hey everyone. I apologize in
advance if this iteration of This Week in Geekdom is a little sparse or
disjointed, as my teammates and I are recovering from yesterday's marathon
gaming session on behalf of Extra Life 2013. At this point it feels as though
we flew non-stop from Beijing to Boston; we're dehydrated, unsteady on our
feet, and unsure as to what time it should be, but ecstatic to have arrived at
our destination. Despite the frailties of our human forms and not one, not two,
but four DDoS attacks on the datacenter used by Extra Life, gamers around the
world managed to raise over $3.4 million USD for the Children's Miracle Network.
Major kudos to everyone who participated, donated, and otherwise supported the
gamers!
Games
On Friday, developer Bethesda announced
that there will be a Skyrim mash-up
will soon be available on the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft. Visit Bethesda's blog for the complete details about
this latest offering.
Science/Technology
These weekly posts have featured
the musings and eccentricities of one Elon Musk (a.k.a. Tony Stark and/or a Bond villain in the making) a few times now and already there are new developments
to follow. Patricia Galloway, the first female president of the American
Society of Civil Engineers, has founded a new company, Hyperloop Transportation
Technologies Inc., to make Musk's high-speed mass transit dreams a reality. Check out Galloway's ideas to accomplish this here.
Google may be taking a cue from
the unorthodox tactics of Mr. Musk with these enormous seaworthy 'party boats'
that the company is likely using as a way to control access to the
much-discussed forthcoming Google Glass.
Most of us are extremely familiar
with the phenomenon: lots of energy in the morning followed by an afternoon
bereft of energy and rife with crankiness. Turns out, that post-midday slump
extends beyond your willingness to get things done and permeates your moral compass. This week's edition of Psychological Science details the joint study by
researchers at Harvard University and the University of Utah that pinpoints
just why humans tend to stray from their core beliefs in the afternoon hours.
Anyone who has spent more than a
few minutes with a dog can pick up on just what's being connoted with a wagging
tail. However, researchers at the University of Trento have been able to
discern that this simple motion may be indicative of more complex interaction
in the two halves of the canine brain. The current issue of the journal Biology and this summary from the BBC
have the complete details on this work.
In a blending of academic
discipline and technology that would have elicited squeals of delight from
5-year-old Kel, scientists at the University of Manchester successfully utilized the SGI High Performance Computing Cluster (a.k.a. Polaris) to determine
how Argentinosaurus, the largest animal to have ever walked the Earth, actually
moved. Short answer: very, very slowly.
This upcoming Tuesday may be the
single most anticipated date in the history of the Indian space program. The ISRO is planning to launch their first inter-planetary craft, an unmanned
orbiting vessel bound for Mars, early Tuesday morning.
On Friday the Royal Astronomical
Society of Canada confirmed that a 10-year-old Nova Scotian boy discovered this incredible supernova.
Ever wanted a really good look at the Andromeda
galaxy? Well, wait no more.
Tuesday was the dawn of a
potential new era in banking as the world's first Bitcoin ATM went into service in Vancouver, British Colombia. The machine requires a full palm scan in order
for patrons to interact with it, which is a decent enough start to securing
this infamously untraceable economic unit.
NASA announced on Wednesday that
it had glimpsed what appears to be an Earth-like planet, notwithstanding the
2,000+ degree (1093.33 Celsius, 1366.483 K) surface temperature.
It has been three months since
scientists at the Homestake Gold Mine have started using the Large Underground
xenon dark matter detector in order to gain insight on this highly elusive
substance. So far, their work has turned up...nothing.
General Awesomeness/Feats of
Nerdery
Between Comikaze and Halloween there were
brilliant costumes a'plenty this week, but perhaps the Grand Champion of them
all, were we to crown one, is this insanely accurate Khal Drogo who appeared at
Blizzard's annual contest. Watch this amusing video of the contestant's
in-character entry.
File this one under Things We
Wish Previous Owners Had Done. One Reddit user got a fun surprise when taking
up the carpets in his home: this room-sized version of a Monopoly board.
There is a real-life Captain Kirk
and he is to command the most technologically advanced vessel in the US navy.
Using a YouTube video, a Google
Plus community, and their own ingenuity, this clever 12-year-old and his father programmed a 3D printer to create a fully functional prosthetic to replace the
child's left hand.
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