Hasta La Gadget!

When I first looked at these, I thought about where they’d go. Immediately I thought of decorating a child’s room. But, honestly, even though it’s ancient graphic art, I still think a giant mean-looking gorilla doesn’t seem like the perfect thing for a kid to wake up to every morning. Instead, I realized this wasn’t going to go in a kid’s room. This is for a grown man who’s proud of his nerd culture. This is for the geeks out there who have the rare privilege of their own corner of an apartment or house they can decorate without fear. It’s a place for Lego contraptions, Iron Man suits and really fast Internet. This 67% off Donkey Kong Wall Art is for you, nerds of the world. More »

During the Olympic ceremonies, the stadiums glow with the spirit of excitement as tourists pour into temporary sites. But what becomes of these locales after the thrill of the games has passed? The exhibition titled, “The Post-Olympic City” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York revisits former Olympic host cities and explores their lives following the transformative games.

Photographers Gary Hustwit and Jon Pack visited former Olympic homes Athens, Barcelona, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Montreal, Lake Placid, Rome, and Sarajevo, collecting videos, images and other materials along the way.

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The NSA director, General Keith Alexander, is coming under scrutiny after he told a crowd gathered at the Def Con hacker conference that the spy agency “absolutely” does not collect data from and maintain files on American citizens. A former official stopped just shy of calling Alexander a liar, accusing him of playing a “word game.” William Binney left the department in late 2001, when it became apparent to him that it planned to use the terrorist attacks on September 11th as an “excuse” to launch a data collection program that was already in the planning stages. Alexander for his part maintains that any data, be it web searches, Twitter posts or emails, collected from American citizens is merely incidental, and associated with intelligence gathering on foreign entities.

Of course, Binney rejects this claim and testimony from Qwest CEO James Nacchio regarding the NSA’s wiretapping program would seem to contradict it. ACLU attorney Alex Abdo, who was on the panel with Alexander, cast further doubt on the director’s denial. He noted that loopholes in the law allow the NSA collect vast amounts of information on Americans, without them being the “target” of the surveillance. Since the agency can hold on to any data collected, it can retroactively build dossiers on citizens, should they eventually become the focus of an investigation. For a few more details, hit up the source link.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Former NSA official says agency collects Americans’ web data, director denies charges originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The day has finally arrived for Apple and Samsung to face off in court. After a year of dueling with cuts and bruises here and there, the two tech titans will be settling the issue once and for all in California today. To ensure a fair and orderly trial, lawyers from both sides have already begun picking 10 people that will make up the jury and those who will be likely picked are the ones without previous connections to the two companies. After the jury selection, Apple and Samsung are expected to proceed with their opening arguments.

U.S. Judge Lucy Koh has allotted a limited time for both parties to present and also narrowed down the fight to core disputes. The historical trial that starts today will continue until August. Last week, Apple said that it was entitled to a $2.52 billion payout from Samsung, saying that Samsung owed them a substantial monetary payment for damages caused. Samsung fired back saying that Apple could not have sold a single iPhone without benefiting its patented technology. Either way, it all boils down to the trial that we are about to witness beginning today. Stay tuned for more updates.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Best Buy customers allegedly returned Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets because they thought it was the iPad, Google and others reportedly warned Samsung that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was “too similar” to the iPad,

While search engines have made it extremely efficient for us to find what we need on the internet, there are times when we just can’t uncover what we need. Instead of having to sift through tons of irrelevant results and promoted pages that make their way to the top – sometimes a recommendation from a friend is all we need. Well, as of today, Bing has made it easier for us to ask our friends when we’re performing a search.

Bing announced today that Bing users can easily tag their Facebook friends when searching. All you have to do is use Bing’s social sidebar and select “Choose friends to notify”. You can then add up to five friends from Facebook to tag in the query, and with your permission Bing will post the search on your Facebook wall, tagging your friends in the process. This way, you and your will be notified and can pitch in to help you what you’re looking for. Who knows, some of you friends could even learn something new from each other. A pretty useful feature if you ask me. Just head over to Bing and start searching today. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Bing New Architecture: Introducing Snapshot and Social Sidebar, Bing introduces enhanced Social Search,