our-joysticks-our-consoles
How Nintendo Bankrolls Guerrilla Warfare in Congo
That Nintendo Wii you got for your birthday sure is fun. But it's also built with the spoils of one of the deadliest wars the world has ever seen. Historically, "conflict minerals" like coltan, tin, tantalum and tungsten, which are pulled from mines in...
Kids Are Robbing Each Other at Gunpoint For Virtual World Cash
We learn this weekend that a 19-year-old college student is looking at 15 years in jail after robbing one of his classmates at gunpoint. He wasn't after money or jewels or anything like that, though. Humza Bajwa just wanted more "magic" coins for his...
Indiana Drones: Piloting the New Robot Archaeology Over Peruvian Ruins
It may not crack whips and fight Nazis, at least not yet. But it still sounds pretty badass: An interdisciplinary research team out of Vanderbilt University is using a semi-autonomous SUAVe - their very own micro Indiana Drone (sorry) - to map the...
How to Survive a 1,000-Pound Direct Kick to the Balls
It's an incredible sight to see _Sport Science_ star Kirby taking 1,100 lbs of force from Justice's shin on rapid-fire repeat. More incredible: he just stands there, like a _Mortal Kombat_ or _Street Fighter_ character, completely unfazed, not even...
If They Couldn't Come Back from the Moon
''Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay to rest in peace," Nixon says to the camera. "For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world...
Hack This $99 Android Game Console
Up until now, multi-billion dollar electronics companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have dominated the video game industry. With the help of hundred-person video game studios and massive marketing campaigns, they've been consistently successful...
Thanks to These Glucose-Powered Microchips, Cyborgs Are One Step Closer
If your vision of the future ever involved tiny jet-packs and blinking battery belts, then you’re dead-ass wrong, because your jet pack is probably more likely to be plugged into your spinal cord than some re-chargable battery belt pack, according to a...
Robots Can Now Beat Us at Rock-Paper-Scissors, World Domination Coming Soon
Computers can already beat us at chess and Jeopardy, so this one seems a little behind the curve. If robots couldn’t beat us in a mindless game of rock, paper, scissors by now, I don’t think we’d have to worry much about that whole singularity thing...
"I've Been Playing the Same Game of Civ II for 10 Years"
This is big on the internet today: some dude on Reddit "announced":http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/ that he'd been playing the same game of Civilization II for the past 10 years. If you're...
The Hard Science of Boners: TED Talk
Your erection news this morning comes not from your spam folder or ChatRoulette, or this awful tumblr about a man putting household items "in his foreskin":http://stuffinmydick.tumblr.com/ [NSFW], but from Diane Kelly, a zoologist at the...
Outside the Gold Ring: Notes from the First Ever Middle East Film and Comic Con
V drifts along in front of the main stage, black cape sagging, the yachts of the 0.0001 percent in the marina beyond. Alan Moore's vigilante looks happy as he vectors toward the shwarma hut. My wife's lounging on a pink beanbag in the lawn with my...
Seeing Through the Diamonds: Jason Rohrer Continues to Make Games More than Just Art
I’m really hoping to be dead and rotting by the time humanity gets sucked into the matrix. I can faintly hear the sound of ad men and bureaucrats salivating waterfalls over technology that can mind-read your dreams and contact lenses that “double as a...