A place to vent

Google CEO alludes to future of unbreakable phones.

Larry Page, the CEO and co-founder of Google has given an interview with Wired where he suggests the company may be working towards more durable devices.

Speaking about Google’s acquisition of Motorola, he says “There’s a lot of room for innovation in hardware. The phones we use now have glass that everyone worries will break if they drop the device. Five or 10 years from now, that will be different. There’s going to be a lot of change.”

Check out the full interview here at Wired.

(via 8bitfuture)

Crowdfunding push for EZ-EV open source electric kit car

Electrical engineer Gary Krysztopik has been driving his self-built, open-framed, three-wheeled electric “hotrod” on the roads and highways of San Antonio (TX) for over three years now, but folks still can’t help staring as he zooms past. While also working on gas-to-electric conversions (including a VW Bug and a Porsche Carrera), he’s been busy refining and tweaking the design for his “battery box on wheels” and is now preparing to release the EZ-EV car as open source plans, build-it-yourself kits and complete vehicles.

Mario and Link team up to fight the forces of evil in this awesome video game illustration by artist Billy Allison (aka “Bleee”). Prints, apparel, iPhone cases and more are available to purchase at Redbubble and Society6.

This piece is also a reference to one of the first sci-fi films ever made called A Trip To The Moon (1902), which was directed by Georges Méliès.

Teamwork by Billy Allison (Tumblr) (Facebook)

via Blimation | Gamefreaks

(via laughingsquid)

Morocco to change laws to outlaw rape marriages after suicide of girl forced to wed her rapist
Nearly a year after Morocco was shocked by the suicide of a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry her alleged rapist, the government has announced plans to change the penal code to outlaw the traditional practice.

Women’s rights activists on Tuesday welcomed Justice Minister Mustapha Ramid’s announcement, but said it was only a first step in reforming a penal code that doesn’t do enough to stop violence against women in this North African kingdom.

A paragraph in Article 475 of the penal code allows those convicted of “corruption” or “kidnapping” of a minor to go free if they marry their victim and the practice was encouraged by judges to spare family shame. (AP Photo/Abdeljalil Bounhar)

(via Timeline Photos)

Farewell of the Day: Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz, a computer programmer and Internet activist best known for his contributions to RSS 1.0, Reddit and Demand Progress, has passed away at age of 26. Found dead at his Crown Heights residence on January 11th, the cause of his death has been since identified as suicide by hanging. The tragic news came only months before his trial on felony hacking charges was set to begin, as Swartz had been indicted in July 2011 on federal charges of allegedly hacking into the academic paper subscription service JSTOR and downloading nearly all of its archives with intent to distribute them for free via file-sharing networks. In mourning his death, Anonymous has already launched a hacking campaign against M.I.T websites.

We Must Dig Deeper of the Day: Student Expelled For Finding Bug in School System

Ahmed Al-Khabaz, a 20-year-old computer science student at Dawson College in Montreal, Canada, was expelled last week for apparently reporting and doing a follow-up check on a major bug that he had found in the school’s student information system earlier last October. Upon initial discovery, Al-Khabaz met with the Director of Information Services and Technology François Paradis, who thanked him for his work and promised Omnivox’s distributor, Skytech, would fix the error. 

Two days after this meeting, Al-Khabaz tested Omnivox to see if the fixes had been made. Minutes later, he received a phone call from Skytech’s president who accused Al-Khabaz of orchestrating an attack against the system and threatened him with jail time if he didn’t agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement about the bug. When Al-Khabaz reluctantly signed the documents, he was promptly expelled for “unprofessional conduct,” barring him from enrollment at any other college in the region.

… what’s going on here?