One Texas man has taken the “I look freakishly like my pet” thing to a whole new level.
Reddit user sydneyowen made internet waves this week when he posted a picture of his “buddy” Todd’s driver’s license and debit card. Todd is apparently either a very financially savvy feline or a scruffy Texas redhead who really loves his cat:
Fabien Beckers of San Francisco is one of dozens of entrepreneurs traveling to Washington this month to press for legislation that would grant visas to immigrants starting businesses in the U.S.
The Startup Act 3.0, a bipartisan Senate bill expected to be introduced this week, aims to get 75,000 new “entrepreneur visas” every year to founders who raise $100,000 for new ventures that hire at least two employees within a year and at least five in the following three years
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More on Opportunity: What Is Working
WASHINGTON — Campaign finance reformers and government watchdogs were disappointed Tuesday night when President Barack Obama failed to include any messages around money in politics in his 2013 State of the Union address. Advocates were hoping to hear about a range of issues, from money in politics to transparency to lobbying.
This was actually the first of Obama’s State of the Union addresses where the president did not mention any steps that reformers have championed to reduce the influence of big money or lobbyists in the political system.
“Historically, President Obama has spoken forcefully about his commitment to addressing the money in politics crisis, but has failed to follow through with anything of substance,” said Josh Silver, president of campaign finance and lobbying reform organization United Republic and the director of Represent.us, an effort to pass a campaign finance reform bill. “This week he abandoned even the pretense of leading reform.”
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More on Campaign Finance
JOHANNESBURG — Chrysler Group LLC says its CEO in South Africa was shot in the abdomen during a robbery in the country and is responding to medical treatment.
Chrysler spokesman Richard Sloman said Wednesday that CEO Trent Barcroft was shot Saturday during a robbery outside of Johannesburg. Sloman said that Barcroft, a United States citizen, was still in intensive care at a hospital Wednesday but was responding well to treatment.
Running shoes are a touchy subject. Some people like minimal cushioning to promote good form, others prefer something more engineered. Adidas’s new Energy Running push comes down on the latter side of the argument in an impressive way. Maybe even too impressive. More »
Smartphones may be invading pockets and purses across the world, but AOptix may soon bring those mobile devices to some far-flung war zones. The Campbell, Calif.-based company announced earlier today that it (along with government-centric IT partner CACI) nabbed a $3 million research contract from the U.S. Department of Defense to bring its “Smart Mobile Identity” concept to fruition.
The company kept coy about what that actually means in its release, but Wired has the full story — the big goal is o create an accessory of sorts capable of attaching to a commercially-available smartphone that can capture high-quality biometric data— think a subject’s thumb prints, face/eye scans, and voice recordings.
At first glance, it really doesn’t sound like that tall an order — smartphones are substantially more powerful than they were just a few years ago, and that’s the sort of trend that isn’t going to be bucked anytime soon. That continual improvement in terms of horsepower certainly can’t hurt considering how much data the smartphone+sensor combo is going to have to continually collect and transmit, and the company confirmed to Wired that the end product will feature an “intuitive interface” that should ensure that any soldier who’s owned a modern phone should be able to pick it up very quickly.
AOptix hasn’t publicly committed to one mobile platform over another just yet, but building a sensor device to interface with an Android device seems to be likely option at this point. After all, the U.S. Department of Defense is no stranger to Google’s mobile OS — it gave Dell’s rather awful Streak 5 tablet the go-ahead for governmental use back in late 2011. More recent reports have shown that the DoD is has also responded favorably to the notion of iPhones being used around the Pentagon, but I suspect that acquiring a fleet of Android devices for use in the field wouldn’t be quite as expensive as buying iDevices en masse. Couple the cost-argument with the highly open nature of Android development (something that could come in handy when crafting the sort of software necessary to power this whole thing).
If the notion of the DoD moving to embrace consumer tech is a little surprising though, you may just have to get used to it. Deputy CIO Major General Robert Wheeler noted in an address at this year’s CTIA MobileCon that the Defense Department’s mobile strategy involves sourcing innovative, mass-market solutions to existing issues so expect to hear more of these sorts of deals in the months and years to come.
You may have seen the announcement earlier today that AOL is acquiring gdgt and that Ryan Block and I are going to be rejoining the company. A lot of you may have no idea who I am, but I’m the guy who created Engadget and for a while there was the only person who wrote for it.
When we left Engadget in 2008 to start gdgt we left on exceptionally good terms. AOL even invested in our new company. But even though the relationship has been good all these years, I never honestly expected we’d have the chance to return, and I can say that it feels good to be part of the family again. I’m insanely proud of the work that Tim Stevens and the Engadget team have done to grow the site into a tech news powerhouse that it is today. The Engadget of 2013 far exceeds anything I could have hoped for it when it launched back in 2004.
Microsoft only launched the Surface Pro tablet a few days ago. It didn’t take long for the guys over at iFixit to get their hands on one of the tablets and proceed to take it apart. iFixit does this to show how repairable the tablet is if you should happen to damage it, or want to expand or modify it – and because they’re just as curious as you are about what it looks like inside.
I think we all know it’s just cool to see the parts that are on the inside of some the most desirable gadgets on the market. Unfortunately, cracking the Surface open required the removal of a veritable crapton of screws (90 to be exact) and a heat gun to melt the copious amounts of adhesive used to hold the tablet together. In fact, it took them over an hour to figure out how to get the screen out of the tablet. iFixit said, “We are starting to miss the old Surface, as we find a metric duckload of adhesive holding the screen in place.” The battery is also glued into place, behind the motherboard.
Removing the screen appears to have been the most difficult part of the delicate operation. After the screen was removed, all of the hardware on the inside can be seen, which is surprisingly minimal. Highlights include a Intel Core i5-3317U Processor, the Intel Mobile HM77 Express Chipset, 3x Atmel MXT154E Touchscreen Controllers, 4GB of Micron RAM, a teeny tiny 1.8″ Micron RealSSD unit, and a Wacom W9002 chip for pen-based input. It also features two of the tiniest cooling fans you’ll ever see:
Overall, the Surface Pro tablet scored a miserable repairability rating of just 1 out of 10. That means if you break it, you probably just need to buy a new one. You can check out the detailed teardown over on iFixit.
Even as the Northeast digs out after Nor’easter Nemo, New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority isn’t worried about maintaining service along its northern New Haven Line. That’s thanks to a fleet of turbine-powered, slush-slinging, jet trains. More »
The rise of Steam and other digital distribution services have certainly been hurting the physical media sales of PC games, and the online retailers are slowly sucking the life out of brick-and-mortar stores, especially video game specialty shops like GameStop. The company announced today that they will close down 250 locations this year, but will open up 60-70 new stores during the same time period.
GameStop CFO Rob Lloyd spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference today and announced the news that the company would be opening and closing various stores around the world, 200 of which will be shut down in the US alone. Plus, Lloyd also announced that GameStop has acquired 40 shut-down GAME stores in France.
According to Lloyd, GameStop will make more money by closing unprofitable stores and moving customers to other nearby stores that have potential of more foot traffic and sales. Overall, GameStop expects to see a reduction of 2% to its physical store locations after it’s all said and done, which isn’t a huge at all.
While GameStop expects to close down a number of stores, it doesn’t seem too bad considering that they plan to open up new stores in other locations. Granted, they’ll only be opening 60-70 new stores, as opposed to shutting down 250 of them, but it seems that the company is experimenting with ways to keep itself afloat, which could either pay off in the future, or turn out to be bad news at some point.
[via CVG]
GameStop to close 250 stores, will open 60-70 new stores this year is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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