Geek culture

Nothing lasts forever in the tech industry, and Nintendo's upcoming Wii U, the Sony PlayStation Vita, and all other one-trick portable gaming consoles are next in line to get the axe! At least that's what Jeff hypothesizes, although the trolls in his CNET editorial have opposing opinions.

After we sort through all the hate mail, we turn to a story about Internet domain squatters taking advantage of the #OccupyWallStreet trend to make money off the protesters.

And in the same way that Bacolicio.us set the veganism movement back several years, a new site called OccupyTheURL is turning the 99 percent into an online gimmick. Type in any Web site--the 404 homepage works--and your page will soon be flooded with graphic pop-ups of protesters blocking your access. We'd rather have bacon.… Read more

Are you a fan of first-person shooters? Check out this video of an astounding setup that immerses players in the action of Battlefield 3 unlike any other rig you've seen.

The gaming simulator, created by Channel 5's The Gadget Show, combines a jaw-dropping number of sensors and inputs for a highly realistic experience. The cost of the hardware alone was more than $650,000.… Read more

What would you do if you happened to be walking along a beach and discovered a man lying there, looking the worse for wear?

What if the man was 8 feet tall and made of Legos? You might think it was you who was the worse for wear. However, a giant Lego man did appear on a beach in Sarasota, Fla., and he was helped to his feet by public-spirited passersby.

As often happens with the discovery of giant Lego men, no one seems sure where he might have come from. News crews have, naturally, found locals who speculate that he might have dropped from a spaceship.

Suspicions immediately fell upon the folks at the recently opened Legoland Florida.

However, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office released a statement from Legoland, one that was brimming with amusement.

It read: "This activity is in no way sponsored or endorsed by The LEGO Group or Merlin Entertainments, who run LEGOLAND attractions. Hope you've given Mr. LEGO Imposter his one phone call and an attorney!" … Read more

More apps and coded solutions are coming to the aid of the 99 percent "occupying" the streets from Manhattan to Oakland and worldwide.

A few weeks ago we told you about a nifty app designed with the Occupy Wall Street and elsewhere protests in mind that notifies your comrades in the event you get cuffed by the cops.

It turns out that mobile apps are helping protesters surmount other hurdles to their freedom of expression. An example: Shouty, which circumvents the ban on megaphones and other forms of amplification around New York's Zuccotti Park.

Shouty is basically a live-streaming app along the lines of UStream and others that broadcasts whatever is being picked up by the microphone as an MP3 stream available to whoever wants to connect. It's the work of coder Nathan Hamblen and others at the "social coding" site Github, where the app is available for download for Android--it's not to be confused with the iOS app by the same name, which is basically a Twitter client.… Read more

You willingly succumb to the seductive siren call of coffee, but all that bean shopping, grinding, and espresso machine twiddling is getting tiresome.

Never fear. Your morning pick-me-up is about to get a lot more portable when the caffeine-packing AeroShot hits the market in a few months.

Each AeroShot is about the size of a tube of lipstick and contains 100 milligrams of caffeine in the form of a fine powder. You can get between six and eight lime-flavored puffs from each cartridge. It's a little bit of molecular gastronomy in your pocket.

David Edwards, a professor at Harvard … Read more

I know enough French to order two croissants and buy a bottle of wine. That successfully got me through a week in Paris, but I could improve my skills astronomically if I got a French Digital Kitchen.

Newcastle University in England has installed this kitchen, which is designed to helps students learn a language and gain some cooking skills at the same time. PBS should be all over this.

Everything from the mixing bowls to the peelers to the flour and sugar have embedded sensors that work under the same concept as a Nintendo Wii. The computer knows where the tools are and what motions are being made.

The computer gives you instructions in French and tracks your progress as you work your way through a recipe. It's like a GPS for making crepes and Croque Monsieur.… Read more

What's an 8-foot-tall Lego man doing on the beaches of Siesta Key Village, Florida? We don't have the answer, but it's the third one that's washed ashore in the last three years--similar occurances were reported three years ago in Brighton, England, and Zandvoort, Holland; each bearing the same cryptic messaging: "NO REAL THAN YOU ARE."

Yahoo News did the dirty work and inquired about the phenomenon to Lego's assistant brand relations manager, who vehemently denied, on record, any affiliation with the stunt, eliminating the possibility of it being a viral stunt. Who knows, maybe it was printed on a 3D imaging device by the folks at MakerBot!… Read more

Everywhere you turn, it's Siri this and Siri that. Now Siri can help make all that Siri news go down smoother with a frosty cold brewski, poured just for you.

Advertising agency Redpepper wanted to spice up Siri's skill set. Naturally, the tinkerers turned to a monster truck toy and a can of Dale's Pale Ale. Hence, Beeri was born.

Beeri is an RC truck that has been modified to check the Twitter account @beeribot over Wi-Fi for new tweets with the "pour" command.

The makers achieved this by using an onboard open-source Arduino physical computing platform (as did this tweet-printing toilet paper dispenser). Beeri also has an unopened beer can strapped to the front bumper.

Redpepper created the @beeribot account and assigned a contact to it on the iPhone 4S. The soon-to-be-beer-drinker tells Siri to tweet, "Could you pour me a beer?" to @beeribot.

The truck picks up the word, revs itself up, and smashes into a sharp object to pierce the beer can. The frothy beverage flows down through a hole and into a pint glass below. … Read more

Bitcoins aren't just an abstract financial instrument living somewhere in the digital ether anymore. They're now a physical currency capable of taking a ride in your pocket or scratching off your lottery tickets.

The physical Bitcoins, called Casascius Bitcoins and created by a guy in Utah named Mike Caldwell, are made of brass, with gold electroplating on the 25 Bitcoin denomination. And, of course, they're tied to the peer-to-peer, open-source digital currency that's been exchanged on the Internet for a while now.

Each coin has a unique Bitcoin address and a redeemable "private key" under a hologram on the coin. That key can be used to redeem the value of the Bitcoins online, but the hologram sticker leaves a honeycomb mark when peeled back, so you'll know if your Bitcoins have been tampered with.

The coins play a function similar to a gift card or certificate with a magnetic strip or bar code. In other words, it provides a tangible means of carrying around the digital key that contains the actual value. There's just one problem--the physical Bitcoins may well be illegal. … Read more