Geek Gestalt

For years, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were known for one thing: being the "MythBusters."

But now, the two have launched a new show, Discovery Channel's "Unchained Reaction," "a new six-part series that pits two teams of varying backgrounds against each other to build an elaborate chain-reaction contraption."

Think giant Rube Goldberg machines--balls falling and knocking things into other things. Seesaws going up and throwing things into the air, each step in the process impacting the next, with each team vying to build the most impressive contraption in five tension-packed days. The … Read more

Sometimes, it pays to protest.

In the aftermath of fans of the BioWare game Mass Effect 3 nearly rioting over their displeasure about the game's conclusion, the publisher appears to be willing to consider new endings.

According to CNET sister site GameSpot, fans were unhappy with the game's ending, and its initial downloadable content, known as From Ashes.

"Members of the Mass Effect community even formed a charity petition called the Retake Mass Effect Chipin fund, collecting PayPal donations for the Child's Play charity as a way of encouraging BioWare to make alternate Mass Effect 3 endings," GameSpot wrote. "The fund has [now] amassed over $75,000." … Read more

It took just 18 minutes for Twitter to go from family-friendly to potty-mouth.

At 12:50 p.m. on March 21, 2006, then-Odeo employee Jack Dorsey upended publishing forever when he posted these fateful words: "just setting up my twttr."

Political movements would never be the same. Local news would forever be scooped on earthquakes. Cat videos would speed around the world at lightspeed. Serious forward progress had been made.

And at 1:08 p.m., it all went downhill with this (probably NSFW) tweet from @jeremy: "Oh, s--t, I just twittered a little."

In all … Read more

If you go to one of the sites that tell you how long a Twitter account has existed, and ask about @jack, @ev, and @biz, you'll find something interesting: All three accounts were registered on March 21, 2006.

For those keeping score at home, that's exactly six years ago. And that makes a lot of sense since those three accounts belong to Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone.

Indeed, today is Twitter's sixth birthday, a number that seems impossibly large. Could it really be that long since then-Odeo employee (and now Square founder and … Read more

Not long ago, word leaked of a plan that could take anyone with an extra $150 million on a trip around the moon. So SpaceX founder Elon Musk's assertion today that he hopes to be able to take people on a round-trip to Mars for $500,000 signals a much better deal.

Musk told the BBC that he expects to unveil details of his plans sometime later this year or in early 2013. Essentially, though, Musk believes that with its Falcon 9 launcher and Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX may already have the base infrastructure in place that could get paying … Read more

Picking up where Square (and possibly PayPal) left off, the increasingly popular ticketing company Eventbrite said today it is releasing a payments dongle for iPad that could make it simple for event organizers to quickly sell tickets and merchandise.

Eventbrite said its At the Door box office package--which includes both the dongle and an iPad app--is potentially the "final nail in Ticketmaster's coffin," given that the new system should make it easy for organizers to sell tickets to just about any event, as well as to get what vice president of marketing Tamara Mendelsohn called a "… Read more

If you're a local fan of digital art, there's a good chance you spent at least part of your weekend at the Creators Project, a celebration of the art form that drew thousands to see a diverse collection of interactive installations here in San Francisco.

From 40-foot-tall latticework cubes filled with LEDs (see video below) to huge triptychs that converted people's body images into flights of fancy, the project showcased some of the best--and worst--digital art around. It also gave visitors access to a collection of films on the topic, and the chance to listen to a number of musicians, including the hit group, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Despite the success of Spotify and its competitors, music sharing still hasn't caught up to what Napster offered before being neutered by the courts, that service's founders, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, said today.

During a on-stage discussion at South by Southwest here, Parker and Fanning argued that though new technologies and licensing models finally allow music lovers to legally access and discover vast collections of songs online, even the best new services are still philosophically behind what Napster originally offered its users.

Parker, who appeared earlier this week alongside former U.S. vice president Al Gore … Read more

Happy 10th birthday, SpaceX.

On March 14, 2002, entrepreneur Elon Musk, one of the so-called "PayPal Mafia" members, launched his new company with a modest goal: to become a world leader in private space exploration.

Ten years later, SpaceX has achieved just that, especially after inking the 2008 deal that gave its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft the exclusive rights to take NASA's cargo to and from the International Space Station after the end of the Space Shuttle program.

But the company has had plenty of other noteworthy milestones, including its 2006 deal with NASA to … Read more