Hugo Chavez died a few days ago, but he’s not exactly going six feet under any time soon. The late Venezuelan leader’s body is going to be on display for a week so people can pay homage. But bodies rot starting immediately, and regular old funeral home embalming only lasts a matter of hours. How do you ensure that old dead Chavez continues to resemble formerly alive Chavez for viewing purposes? More »
A new survey by Pew Research Center reveals that relying on Twitter to gauge public opinion might not be too smart: the reaction on Twitter to big national and political news seems to differ wildly from that measured by surveys. More »
The Harlem Shake, for those unfamiliar, is a video where one person starts dancing in a room full of people minding their own business, before it cuts to the break where the entire room can be seen shaking and gyrating wildly and randomly, more often than not donning ridiculous costumes in the process. Heck, the Harlem Shake got so big that even Google embedded an Easter Egg in YouTube which caused the site itself to get crazy! For the most part, the series of Harlem Shake videos are funny and light hearted, albeit a bit ridiculous, but it seems that over in Egypt, the Harlem Shake has been used by political parties within the country to antagonize each other.
In response to a video last Thursday where 70 or so protestors showed up at the Muslim Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters and performed the Harlem Shake, the Brotherhood has released their own video where the dancers in the video wore masks of the members of the opposition and did the Harlem Shake themselves. The original upload has since been removed, but since this is the internet, it has been reuploaded and is still circulating (check it out in the video above).
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Microsoft Ending Scroogled TV Campaign, CloudFlare Is Down, Taking Thousands Of Websites With It,
International diplomacy may feel like schoolyard antics, but the participants do have something a little heavier to throw at each other. After President Obama signed an executive order to improve national cyber security, the White House is now reportedly opening the box marked Trade and Diplomatic Sanctions, which it’ll lob at any country that’s found to be appropriating US trade secrets. The executive has published a report, outlining a dozen thefts from companies such as GM, Ford and DuPont, fingering China as being behind a majority of them. If the hacking persists, then James Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the White House should deny visas or access to US banks to Chinese people and corporations — making us wistful for the courtroom dramas of yore.
Update: We’ve corrected the story to correctly attribute the comments made by James Lewis.
Via: WSJ
Source: White House (.PDF)
Was Scott Brown drunk last month when he tweeted “bqhatevwr”? Whatever, the former Massachusetts senator says. It was just a classic case of a butt tweet. Really Scott Brown? We beg to differ. More »
That’s it, I’m moving to Canada. They know how to have fun. Even in politics! In Canada’s House of Commons today, there was an incredible ‘debate’ about creating an international zombie strategy “so that a zombie invasion does not turn into a zombie apocalypse.” Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird told everyone that there was nothing to worry about because even though Canada is a friendly bunch, it will “never become a safe haven for zombies EVER.” Oh, Canada. Go Canada! [Macleans Magazine via BuzzFeed] More »
This year’s State of the Union address included no less than a shout out by President Obama to Apple for bringing manufacturing jobs back to the USA. In addition to speaking about several other big companies that will be doing similar things in the near future, Obama noted the positive influence Apple’s move will have on the United States. Apple CEO Tim Cook sat in the First Lady’s box for the speech, a traditional area in which guests mentioned in the address are invited to sit.
In December of 2012 Cook confirmed that Apple would be bringing Apple product manufacturing back to the USA in 2013. One of the earlier mentions of this move was made in May of 2012 where Cook made mention of “things we can do” in the future – and here it is. Parts of the newest iMac have already bore the “Assembled in USA” mark and the Mac Mini has been tipped to be coming to the USA for manufacturing as well.
The State of the Union address spoken by President Obama noted that “after shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.” He went on to list groups like Caterpillar, Ford, and Intel who have moved (or will move soon) sets of jobs to the USA from overseas. Obama made the final mention appear most important: “And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.”
According to MacRumors, the Apple CEO was seated just one seat away diagonally from the First Lady Michelle Obama and one seat behind the Second Lady Jill Biden. UPDATE: maybe he moved seats? See image 7 of the box. You can also see the full list of seats in the box at The White House website – note also that Bobak Ferdowsi was there: you’ll remember him from the NASA Mars landing last year without a doubt!
State of the Union includes “making Macs in America” mention is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
US citizens pay more for internet access than those in many other countries—and also get worse connections for their cash. This video explains why. More »
Just in time for next week’s State of the Union address, Bing announced it’s teamed up with Fox News to launch Bing Pulse, a one-stop hub where folks can easily interact and share their thoughts with one another while President Barack Obama’s speech is taking place. The Microsoft-owned search engine says that Pulse will allow participants to vote on reactions to the event every five seconds, with the impending results being shown on the Bing Politics site. What’s more, Bing believes “this will be the largest live online poll in history,” which will be enhanced by the outfit’s new Beat “social sentiment tracker” — a service that’s set to collect and analyze data from Twitter in order to figure out what are the trendiest political topics during the speech. Folks interested in joining the Bing Pulse conversation should hit that more coverage link to get acquainted — and, of course, don’t forget to bookmark it so you’re all set come February 12th.
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Source: Bing
We thought we killed all those awful, horrible destroy the Internet-type bills in SOPA, PIPA and CISPA. We might’ve been wrong. Like a zombie looking for human blood or a sore loser demanding a rematch, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger and Rep. Mike Rogers plan to re-introduce CISPA to the House later this year. More »
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