In the extreme world of bacteria, stunts such as living in hot springs or without oxygen are, like, totally unimpressive. But then there are bacteria that live off electricity, feeding directly on naked electrons. Even more surprisingly, scientists are finding that these bacteria are not even that rare.
Elaine Stritch passed away today at the age of 89. While the Broadway legend had decades of iconic live performances under her belt, tonight’s a good time to celebrate her life on the small screen: As Colleen Donaghy in 30 Rock with a eulogy—The Greatest Eulogy of All Time—written and delivered by her onscreen son, Jack.
Since its beginnings, the Android platform has been known for being heavily customizable. As such, it’s not exactly a surprise to hear Google say its new smartwatch ecosystem, Android Wear, is due to support watch faces from third-party developers….
If you’re using a Chromecast one day, only to have Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up video start playing on its own, you now know who to blame. Dan Petro has posted a write up over on the Bishop Fox blog detailing the Rickmote Controller, a DIY project that your Chromecast-using friends and neighbors likely won’t find as amusing … Continue reading
If there is one thing that the iPhone’s camera lacks it would be optical image stabilization. This is extremely important in photography, especially handheld photography, as it helps to compensate for shaky hands. It is also important when it comes to videos as it allows for a more smooth and cinematic-like experience, versus the jerkiness of an amateur recording.
Well the good news is that if you wanted your iPhone to have OIS (without waiting for the iPhone 6), you will be able to get it via the Steady camera app. The app has been designed for the iPhone 5 and beyond and basically what it does is that it provides users with OIS for their iPhones. So how does it work? Well it basically relies on the iPhone’s gyroscope to know where the camera is pointing at.
From there, the app will compensate for the shakiness while you are holding the camera, thus resulting in a much smoother experience. If you’d like to check out the demo, you can do so in the video above and we have to admit that so far it looks pretty promising. The app will also allow users to edit views and create slow-mo effects.
Users will also be able to choose from square or 16:9 formats, with the former presumably for uploading onto Instagram. The app will be priced at $1.99 and if you’d like to take it for a spin, you can do so by heading on over to the iTunes App Store for the download.
Steady Camera App Brings OIS To The iPhone
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Heads up folks, it looks like Facebook has released a new app called Mentions, but there is a chance that you won’t be able to use it. Why is that? Well apparently the app is targeted at celebrities, or famous individuals who have verified Facebook accounts, i.e. official celebrity-owned Facebook pages and so on.
Why would anyone need such an app? Well some of the features of the app includes the ability to comb through a Twitter-like stream of posts that reference them or are about trending topics that could be of interest to them, which they can then use to repost on their Facebook accounts as a way of keeping their fans engaged.
For example George Takei’s Facebook account is probably one of the most popular Facebook pages around, and he is constantly sharing posts that are trending at the moment, so through the Mentions app, celebrities will be able to keep on top of things that concern them or might be worth sharing with their followers.
There also seems to be an option of holding a live Q&A session with fans, kind of like Reddit’s AMA. As it stands it seems to be limited to verified accounts in the US, so for celebrities overseas, we guess you guys will just have to wait! It should be noted that the app is only open to individuals, not brands/companies.
Facebook Launches Mentions App Aimed At Celebrities
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According to an earlier report, Microsoft had revealed that sales of the Xbox One had doubled following the price cut from $499 to $399 which saw the exclusion of the Kinect. However how does it fare against the Sony PlayStation 4? Previously the PlayStation 4 was leading in terms of sales, but with the price cut and the reported increase in interest, has the Xbox One finally caught up?
Unfortunately that answer would be no. This is according to the NPD Group who have recently released their monthly report for physical sales in the US market for the month of June. Based on their latest figures, it would seem to suggest that despite increased interest in the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 still managed to earn the title of the top-selling console in the US for that month.
It’s actually interesting that the PlayStation 4 had managed to beat out the Xbox One because it serves to highlight the gap in the number of units sold. Considering that Microsoft had boasted that they had doubled their sales, it would seem that even doubling their sales isn’t enough to dethrone the PlayStation 4.
Last we heard, Sony had managed to sell over 7 million units worldwide, while Microsoft boasted over 5 million units shipped, where shipping numbers don’t necessarily translate into sales. In any case we guess Microsoft will just have to buckle down and hope that with upcoming titles, gamers will be more inclined to get their hands on an Xbox One.
PlayStation 4 Tops NPD’s US Sales Chart For June
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A sea of late-spring dandelions outside my barn is leaning toward Cape Cod Bay in a stiff wind, a wave of yellow. I am drawn to the cluster. The dandelion — a French derivative for “dent de lion,” the tooth of a lion, with its sharp yellow leaves and believed to date back 30 million years — is born as a flower, becomes a weed, and dies slowly from the head down. Then its white, fluffy seeds, gentle blowballs, genetically identical to the parent plant, float away to pollinate the world.
And so it is with Alzheimer’s, the decay of a flowering brain, pollinating the world, and in cases like mine, genetically identical to the parent plant. I am anxious now every time I cut the lawn, trimming the lithe stalks of dandelions turned weed.
“What is a weed?” Ralph Waldo Emerson pondered in his essay “Fortune of the Republic.” “A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Perhaps Emerson, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s, was contemplating the dandelion — a free spirit of a plant, a symbol of courage and hope, with relevance in medicine, legend, and in Christianity. In medieval times, the dandelion, a bitter herb, was a symbol for the crucifixion of Christ.
The virtue of Alzheimer’s today is a hope for redemption at a darkest time. It is my hope, and the hope of millions worldwide afflicted with Alzheimer’s, along with their selfless caregivers, that this demon of a disease be stopped before it ravages further. It’s been said that in 25 years there will be two kinds of people: those with Alzheimer’s and those caring for someone with the disease.
As Baby Boomers cross the divide of the golden years, a thief prowls at will to rob memory, purpose, and sense of self. Only a collective cry from the grassroots, the base of a dandelion, will energize the world and its governments to fund a cure and better care. Our Defense Department will likely spend more in the next two weeks responding to turmoil in Iraq than Capitol Hill will spend in a year for Alzheimer’s research.
While our government defends its political and economic interests, who is defending our minds? Like a herd of elephants, our nation in rote lumbers on to the call of the planet’s wild.
Elephants are my favorite. They have documented long-term memory, coveted now by Boomers. On a shelf in my office is a small ceramic elephant holding a fishing pole. I purchased it years ago from a gallery in Santa Fe, a cerebral place of awe-inspiring natural light. The ceramic serves to remind me daily of the need for retention and focus in my fight with dementia. The artwork has a place of prominence: It is the elephant in the room.
The word “dementia” is onomatopoeia for many, a word that conjures up a sound–in this case, a howl in the night or biblical images of a demonic maniac, a portrait that no one wants to own. Dementia is derived from the Latin root word for madness, “out of one’s mind,” an irreversible cognitive dysfunction, a walking nightmare in which you can’t escape the bogeyman no matter how fast you run.
Yet you still run. If one quits, you drift back, devoured by the beast. The best of runners in life have partners. My prayer is that we partner up from Capitol Hill to California to make Alzheimer’s a fading memory.
Greg O’Brien’s latest book, On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s, will be published this summer. He is also the subject of the short film, “A Place Called Pluto,” directed by award-winning filmmaker Steve James, online at livingwithalz.org. In 2009, he was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s. His maternal grandfather and his mother died of the disease. O’Brien carries a marker gene for Alzheimer’s.
Ukraine’s intelligence agency claimed on Thursday it had intercepted phone calls that connected separatists in the country’s east to the crash of a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane.
Ukraine’s state security agency, also known as S.B.U., released an edited version of the purported audio tapes between separatist rebels and Russian military intelligence to reporters in the wake of the crash.
S.B.U. identified the callers in one part of the conversation as rebel commander Igor Bezler and Russian intelligence official Vasili Geranin. The Huffington Post could not independently verify the identity of the callers.
“Just now, just now, a plane has been shot down,” the man S.B.U. identified as Bezler says at the start of the recording, according to a HuffPost translation.
In a second conversation, which according to S.B.U. took place after rebels inspected the site of the crash, a man says that “the plane broke into pieces in the air.” He adds later that they are “100 percent sure it’s a civilian plane.”
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 went down over eastern Ukraine near the Russian border on Thursday, killing all of the nearly 300 people aboard. U.S. officials have said they believe the jet was struck by a surface-to-air missile.
Eastern Ukraine has witnessed fierce fighting between the military and Russian-backed separatists in recent weeks. The Ukrainian military, the separatists and Russia all denied responsibility for the crash on Thursday.
Watch the full audio with Huffpost translation in the video above.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Thursday that he supports the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling, just weeks after saying on national television that he wouldn’t give his opinion on it.
Christie, a potential 2016 presidential contender, offered his position on the Hobby Lobby case during a meet-and-greet event in Iowa. The Democratic super PAC American Bridge caught the exchange on video and sent it to The Huffington Post.
“Do I support the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case? I do,” said Christie, responding to a question from a man at MJ’s Restaurant in Marion, Iowa.
Late last month, the Supreme Court ruled that closely held corporations, like Hobby Lobby, cannot be required to provide contraception coverage for their employees if their owners object on religious grounds.
Thursday was the first time Christie had expressed his view on the decision. In fact, a day after the Supreme Court ruled, he told a CNBC host that he would not be sharing his opinion at all. When asked whether the court was “right” in its decision, he replied, “Who knows?“
“The fact is that when you’re an executive, your Supreme Court makes a ruling and you’ve got to live with it unless you can get the legislative body to change the law or change the Constitution. The point is: Why should I give an opinion as to whether they were right or wrong? At the end of the day, they did what they did. That’s now the law of the land,” he said.
Christie, however, has commented on Supreme Court cases in the past, such as when he blasted the justices for striking down a key portion of the Defense of Marriage Act.
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