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Recommended Reading: What if there were a PBS of social networks?
The Case for a Taxpayer-Supported Version of Facebook Ethan Zuckerman, The Atlantic What if there were a publicly-funded social network open to all that provided a diverse world view rather than an echo chamber catered to one's deeply-held principles? Sounds like a great idea. The Atlantic makes the case for the PBS of social networks, including why it's needed and what it might look like.
The grandfather kings of nerdcore
In terms of popularity, nerdcore occupies a space somewhere between underground hip-hop and the end of the universe, according to rapper and educator Mega Ran. Nerdcore is a brand of hip-hop characterized by a focus on geeky things, which means its subject matter is as vast and varied as Tolkien's Encircling Sea. It's niche but limitless; visible but not known. It's big enough to support the musical careers of artists like MC Lars, MC Frontalot, Beefy and MC Chris, yet it's small enough that even the most fervent Star Wars fan may have never heard of it. Even in an age where geek chic is hot and "nerd" is no longer a vicious insult, nerdcore remains underground -- but its influence on popular culture is showing. More mainstream rappers like Childish Gambino, Danny Brown, Deltron 3030, RZA and Dr. Octagon regularly reference science fiction, astrophysics, video games and other traditionally geeky topics, at times while sampling the likes of Final Fantasy 7 and Pac-Man. Beyond the Billboard charts, Hamilton is a national phenomenon about American colonial history, and even Game of Thrones has its own mixtape.
Navy develops dubiously named secure e-reader
Somewhere in between developing seafaring lasers and electromagnetic railgun, the Navy found time to design an e-reader especially for deployed sailors. As you'd expect, it was designed with security in mind, so it runs custom firmware, has no WiFi connection, SD reader or any other means to connect to an external storage or computer. Its creators, the Navy General Library Program (NGLP) and ebook company Findaway World, even made its hardware tough to tamper with. Since users won't be able to download anything new, it already comes preloaded with a catalog of reading materials from classics to contemporary best-sellers. It might sound extremely limited, but this device gives personnel the means to carry around the Navy's library, whereas they only used to have limited access to those digital tomes. Sound great? Sure does, but its designers probably ran out of creative juices when it was time to name the device. Because that's the only reason anyone would name it NeRD, right? ...Right?
This is not a prank: ThinkGeek and the business of April Fools'
Snow was falling in the form of those soft white, potato-flake chunks you usually see in films. I'd barely finished my morning cup of coffee and without that crucial mental aid, I was having a hard time finding the entrance to ThinkGeek's ranch-style headquarters in Fairfax, Va. In the blur of 8:57 AM on a Tuesday in this winter-like spring, every window of the sprawling complex looked like a door to me. So I chose one and, miraculously, was spotted by Chris Mindel, a senior buyer for the company, who let me and my videographer inside the toy-filled halls. It was then I noticed the sign on the open door and burst out laughing. It read: "This is not the door you're looking for." I'd had Willy Wonka on the brain before, but it was clear now I needed to switch, or at least integrate, gears. This was well-informed geek territory I was treading upon -- hallowed Star Wars-quoting superfan territory -- and I'd just been granted a one-day golden ticket to explore it.
YouTube kicks off its first Geek Week on August 4th to spotlight nerdy content
The folks in Mountain View are ready to follow up YouTube's Comedy Week, and their leaning on the troves of nerdy content filling their servers to kick off Geek Week. Come August 4th, the site will spotlight more than 100 channels using highlights and new videos with the help of Nerdist in the US and Channel Flip across the pond. Six themed days including topics from gaming to superheroes will each be hosted by an American and UK channel, with Geek and Sundry, Machinima and Guinness World Records being a few among them. In addition to the fresh clips, Schmidt and Co. will be hiding easter eggs throughout the week, and will give users the chance to collect badges when they spot 'em. Over in the UK, early '90s kids show Knightmare, famed for its sketchy CG effects and sets, will return for a very welcome limited run. And if that wasn't all enough, an exclusive Thor: The Dark World trailer is slated to arrive through the event next Wednesday. If you're hankering for some extra nerdery in your diet, hit the bordering source link to stay in the loop for Geek Week. [Image credit: YouTube Geek Week]
Robot Chicken introduces the 'Nerd' class in Team Fortress 2
Sure, his resolve in battle may not be the best, but the Nerd in Team Fortress 2 has to have one of the most calculating minds we've ever seen.
Supercomputer cracks sixty-trillionth binary digit of Pi-squared, gets beaten up by normal computers
Pencils down, everyone. IBM's "BlueGene/P" supercomputer has beaten you to the sixty-trillionth binary digit of Pi-squared after only a few months -- at one quadrillion calculations per second. Running thousands of independent processors, the number-crunching monster accomplished what would have taken a single CPU 1,500 years. A cloud-computing effort last year calculated Pi itself out to the two-quadrillionth digit, but you may wonder why this all matters. "What is interesting in these computations is that until just a few years ago, it was widely believed that such mathematical objects were forever beyond the reach of human reasoning or machine computation," said one researcher, "Once again we see the utter futility in placing limits on human ingenuity and technology." So there's that. But in all the commotion no one seems to have announced whether the landmark digit was a one or a zero: all you betting on the outcome will have to dig deeper into the source link.
Gamers buck stereotypes in a recent survey
Angry at being lumped in with the stereotype of a gaming loser who can't make a friend for all the effort in the world? It turns out you probably have a right to be upset. According to a survey by Bigpoint, most gamers are actually balanced, social and fairly good-looking -- a far cry from the antisocial nerd who cannot understand this thing called "women." The Bigpoint Gamer Survey covered 6,663 gamers across the globe in its research before coming to this startling (or not-so-startling, depending on your perspective) conclusion. The survey also showed that gamers are just as active with their online friendships as those in real life. Yes, 55% of players under 20 years old said they had more online friends than offline, and a quarter of gamers mashed the two social spheres together -- 28% of those surveyed said that they eventually met their online friends in the real world. Bigpoint's Janine Griffel thinks that this survey paints a very positive picture for the gaming community: "Our study shows that online gamers are attractive individuals with healthy and active social lives. Social and casual games are very popular among our users for the reason that they emphasize being social. The trend's definitely moving away from single-player games to social-based experiences." You can read more about this fascinating survey at Game Politics.
What is the Jawbone 'Nerd Dongle'?
Aliph is a company known for producing its line of Jawbone Bluetooth headsets -- emphasis on "headsets." So when we see a product in the FCC from Aliph with Jawbone branding described as the "Nerd Dongle" and looking a whole lot like a USB stick, you can imagine that our curiosity is piqued a bit. From the test report, it seems there's a lot of testing going on in the 2.4GHz range, which would be indicative of either Bluetooth or WiFi... most likely Bluetooth, if we had to bet. Other than that, though, the possibilities are wide open -- we can't imagine this isn't anything more than a standard Bluetooth dongle, especially considering that virtually all laptops have it built-in these days. Any educated (or uneducated) guesses?
Breakfast Topic: Are you a closet nerd or a flag-waving nerd?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. We all know about the idea of the overweight, basement-dwelling virgin, the idea that gamers and comic book nerds all look like the comic book guy from The Simpsons. Many of us know that is not the case. You even see people in trade chat calling each other "nerds" and "virgins," although the inevitable response of calling someone else a nerd in WoW is laughable. In my guild alone, we have a lawyer, an author and a chef, along with many happily married people with children. Some are openly proud of their nerdiness; some try to argue they aren't nerds over Vent. My girlfriend hides her geek from a lot of her friends. She watches anime, is a gamer and even dresses up for our local comic book convention, but many of her friends and work associates have no idea about this side of her. Me, on the other hand -- I let the geek flag fly. I wear my gamer T-shirts. I talk openly about WoW and other games with my friends. I still complain about the fact Firefly never got a second season.
Shocker: Geeks more likely to be bullied
Sadly, a review of scientific literature shows things don't quite play out as per the picture above. Analyzing 153 studies, researchers at two universities noted that bullies and their victims actually have a few things in common -- namely, poor social coping skills and negative attitudes -- it was the children with poor academic performance who were more likely to beat up on their nerdy brethren down the road. Still, we suppose it never hurts to double-check your firewall, eh?
Fear Of A Nerd Planet: A Hip Hop Retrospective (update)
Hip Hop has always been a conspiracy between music and technology. Turntables? Gadgets. Samplers? Ditto. From the very beginning, the music was suffused with a sort of science fiction aura, and by 1982 (when Afrika Bambaataa dropped Planet Rock) it could safely be said that "nerdliness" (the state or condition of being a nerd) was embedded in the genre's DNA. Perhaps that's the reason that gadget fans love to compose their own rap videos, celebrating everything from the trackball of the G1 to Best Buy's supremacy over CompUSA. After one popped up today celebrating the Tesla electric car we thought it was a good time to offer you a retrospective of some of our favorite rappin' nerds. Check 'em out for yourself (and annoy your co-workers in the process) after the break. Do you have any that we might have overlooked? Drop 'em into the comments!
Apple contemplates head-mounted iPhone display, America cringes
We're pretty sure this isn't an April Fool's joke, and we're pretty sure that it could be. Essentially an iPhone dock that sits on your face like a pair of glasses, "Head-Mounted Display Apparatus for Retaining a Portable Electronic Device with Display" details a headset that contains a stereo display and either a camera or a window for your phone's camera. Also included in the patent application is a microphone, speaker, batteries, and an accelerometer for detecting the user's head movements. Something like this would be great for augmented reality applications -- and something like this would make ever getting a date that much more difficult. We'll let you know if this one ever makes it past the drawing board, folks.
Giant Android eclair delivered to Google by even bigger nerds (video)
By now you should be familiar with Google's confectionary codenames for its Google Android OS: version 1.5 (Cupcake), 1.6 (Donut), 2.0 (Eclair) and version x.x (Flan). What you probably didn't know is that Google honors each release by dropping a steaming hot foam facsimile onto its front lawn. Historically, the arrival of the giant Donut at the GooglePlex was followed by the 1.6 developer release of Android just a few days later. Don't get too excited though, last we heard Eclair wouldn't arrive until Q2 of 2010 for consumers. Video and another view of the nerds "gone wild" just after the break.[Via TechCrunch]
Celebrity Nerds: Lil' Wayne's got a modded Xbox
Celebrity Nerds confirms what you always knew, deep in your heart of hearts: that stars are nerds like us. Send in your own confirmations of this fact right here. Now, we don't have photographic evidence of this one, so Wayne, if you happen to be a reader, feel free to snap a pic of yourself with the console. Either way, we have enough proof to proudly classify Lil' Wayne a... you know, nerd. GTR has published a video of the New Orleans-born rapper having a conversation with KRS-One during which he says he's got an "Xbox that has every game from A-Z, Atari, Nintendo, pong, movies & even porn." Whoa. Where can we get one of those? Wayne claims that the Xbox was a gift... but we bet he hacked it himself. Video is embedded after the break.[Via Joystiq]
The Onion takes on Raiding
The Onion, the well-known and consistently hilarious parody news site, has turned its eyes toward World of Warcraft once again. In the past, they have introduced us to geek love in WoW and the World of World of Warcraft, and this time, they introduce us to the world of Raiding via nerd columnist Larry Groznic, who has previously written on his mastery of Quotes from Monty Python's Holy Grail and the merits of Weird Al Yankovic's Wikipedia entry.Larry's rant to an under performing guild member, while somewhat anachronistic (it focuses on a Zul'Aman raid) manages to poke fun at classic raid leader nerd rage, hilariously nonsensical guild names, perennial altoholics, and quite a few other WoW foibles. It may even hit too close to home for some of the people who might recognize some of themselves or others in Larry or his chosen victim. But hey, if we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? The Onion's done it again, and it's worth a read.
Video: Intel, we are rock stars
Advertisers have finally picked up on what we've known all along: nerds are the modern day rock stars.
Forum Post of the Day: Great Warrior literature
This thread, sent to us by reader Talmar (thanks!) is probably the best QQ thread I've ever read. Not because it's full of substantive criticism about the class, but just because it's got lots of references meant for literary nerds like me. The styles of Kafka, Shakespeare, Camus, Wilde, and Douglas Adams (who fits in that crowd, right?) all make appearances as players combine old literary quotes with the plight of Fury Warriors.And when Pynchon shows up on page 3, then the rails really go off the tracks. But it is a lot of fun. Because if you're going to QQ, you might as well do it in style, right?"Ghostcrawler believed in the perfect Fury build, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms our further... And one fine morning --So we grind on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
WoW Code: Better than a pocket protector
If you've ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, "Gee, I'd like to appear nerdier today," then do we have the story for you! Scare your real life friends and confuse even the staunchest gaming nerd. Use "WoW Code" in your forum signature!N: Sephare, M:Pa73, Mb: 3/56/5, Mr: Hu, S: Ravenholt-US-RPPvP, G: Twilight Empire, Pvp–, Pve+, Y2005.5, DC, Ori-MC/B, TBC-Kara, WLK-Nexus/B, L++, C-Wl/DK, R-Ud, RP++. :), V0.3What you see above you, besides a whole pile of utter confusion, is actually a World of Warcraft character broken down into very basic terms using the WoW Code method. Everything from name, to talent build, date joined, and player preferences are included!We'd take the time to break it down, but TyphoonAndrew at The Eye of the Storm blog has already done that in an easy to read format. Now if you could excuse us, we're going to go break out our Tandys and play some extreme World of Warcraft: The Molten Core on our Atari 2600s..
WoW Moviewatch: RFC for Free
It looks like Nyhm has a new competitor, Coma Niddy. Last month, he released an audio parody of NERD's Lapdance (Not safe for work), RFC for Free. Yesterday, he came out with the video, which does a pretty faithful job of representing the attitude of the song. Mystrana, the female voice in the chorus, submitted the video to us.Yddin, the star of the video, laments about the fact that, since he's level 70, everyone wants him to run through Ragefire Chasm. While the editing is pretty good for his first video, some of the timing and delivery of the song itself feels off. I really enjoyed it, though![Thanks, Mystrana of Demon Soul!]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
