Geek culture

The 404 886: Where we'll see you in the meatspace (podcast)

Russ Frushtick from MTV's Multiplayer Blog joins us on the show today to chat about which upcoming releases are earning his favor, including Dead Island, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham city, Gears of War 3, and Uncharted 3.

We also want to talk about Scott Stein's recent Crave article about the lack of backward-compatibility on modern consoles, but we'll spend the first half of the show on HP's double-whammy announcement about acquiring U.K. software company Autonomy while simultaneously dropping out of the PC hardware business.

The 404 Digest for Episode 886

'Dead Island' gameplay videos--15 more minutes of zombie carnage. HP bidding adieu to WebOS, PC biz. Game consoles and the death of backward-compatibility: Why we don't care. Add Russ Frushtick on Twitter. 90 percent of people don't know how to use Ctrl-F. Penny auctions cost plenty.

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The 404 885: Where we weeze the juice (podcast)

"Woot" joins "jeggings," "mankini," "noob," and 400 other new definitions in the 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary published today, but what happened to "glamazon," "hangry," and "retrosexual"?

Along with our suggestions for new slang to be added, we're also warning everyone about a privacy breach called juice-hacking and a virtual hit-man service that charges $10 an hour for DDoS attacks. And we talk about whether it's necessary to reboot or shut down your computer at night.

This, plus a handful of Calls From the Public on today's episode--enjoy!

The 404 Digest for Episode 885

'Woot' is officially a thing, according to Oxford English Dictionary. Beware of juice-hacking. Russians outsource DDoS attacks for $10 per hour. Is it necessary to restart or shutdown your laptop every night? Congratulations to Sir Ron for completing the maze we featured on yesterday's show!

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Toyota aims little 2012 Yaris at the young

CULVER CITY, Calif.--With the 2012 Yaris, Toyota is promoting an image as much as a car. The automaker is gearing up to target the four-cylinder at entry-level buyers as likely to spend their money on video games and MP3s as they are a new set of wheels. ("Yaris! It's a car!" reads a cutesy little ad campaign with bright, cheery letters).

The youth-centric campaign is primarily marketing hype, as the Yaris is no more or less appealing to someone in a Captain America T-shirt in San Francisco as it is to a middle-class family in Milwaukee. An inexpensive car that saves you money on gas can sell itself in this repressed economy if it's put together correctly. And the Yaris is a fun, unassuming ride that falls a little short of adjectives like zippy or thrilling. It doesn't feel as cool as a Fiat 500, as powerful as a Volkswagen Golf, or as substantial as a Ford Fiesta, but for $14,115 to $17,200 (depending on the setup) it's close enough for young drivers entering the market. … Read more

'Woot' is officially a thing, according to Oxford English Dictionary

August marks the 100th anniversary of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED), the smaller but most widely recognized derivative of the official Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. To celebrate, the lexicon published its 12th edition today that adds more than 400 new entries--many of which reflect the technological pervasiveness of modern society, like "woot," "mankini," and "jeggings."

COED Editor Angus Stevenson heads up a small team at the Oxford University Press's academic cabinet tasked with choosing the next words for inclusion, and the process involves keying popular words into a database that shows frequency of use in print and online.

Since publishing its first edition back in 1911, the COED's evolution shows the tremendous effects of social media and instant-access technology on language, creating new words but also modifying existing definitions of words like "follower."

What once meant "a person who imitates or copies" now earns a second and more widely used meaning: "someone who is tracking a particular person, group, etc., on a social networking site." Another example that's a little unsettling is the general term "friend" that loses gravity in its new form: "a contact on a social networking Web site."… Read more

Meet Connor, a 7-year-old iPhone app developer

While other kids were out selling glasses of lemonade, 7-year-old Connor Zamary was starting his own app company. Toaster Pop, an iPhone game that involves slathering spreads on toast, is his first creation.

Connor isn't just a figurehead with a first-grade education. He's a fully fledged technology entrepreneur. "He pitched investors, made his own PowerPoint, filled out the paperwork for his LLC all by himself, has done conference calls with the West Coast developers," father Craig Zamary tells CNET in an e-mail interview.

Connor vetted and selected a developer to build the app and took feedback from friends and family into account during the development process.

One perk Connor isn't allowed yet is his own e-mail account. He uses his father's to conduct company business. He answered a few questions from CNET, including where his app idea came from.

"My dad was telling me about an old fashion toaster since I never saw one before. Then it just came to me to create an app, where toast would pop out of the toaster, land on a plate and you would have to butter it with butter," Connor writes.

That sums up the 99-cent Toaster Pop app pretty well. It's a family-friendly game designed with kids in mind. It starts with butter, moves up through jams, and then mixes it up with a spread called "The Works." Connor's personal favorite toast condiment is butter.… Read more

The 404 884: Where there are no words (podcast)

If you've ever wondered what Playboy looks like in Braille, you'll want to check out this 404 podcast. Today, the Internet Archives is showing us how it's endeavoring to scan all books and magazines (including Playboy) for posterity.

Before we get to that story, however, we begin with Jalopnik's hunt for the hottest TV traffic reporter. It includes one of Jeff's childhood friends from summer camp who somehow ties into Justin's morning routine.

After that, we have a couple of tips on how to avoid in-person conversations with the help of your phone. Then we move onto a strange study that profiles the drinking, eating, and social habits of Android vs. iPhone users, a mysterious prototype MacBook Pro with 3G spotted on eBay, and a handful of Calls from the Public!

The 404 Digest for Episode 884

Android users versus iPhone users. What it's like to read Playboy in Braille. OMG, it's happening again: Prototype MacBook Pro with 3G spotted on eBay. Ever faked a cell phone call? You're not alone. Who's the hottest TV traffic reporter? Video voicemail from Marshall's dancing girlfriend.

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Internet cat star Maru to grace the printed page

Some people like reading fiction. Some people like reading biographies of historical figures. The new biography book, "I am Maru," should cover both bases.

The book, which originally came out in Japan in 2009, is finally arriving in the U.S. this month. As with most cool Japanese things, it took awhile.

In case you've actually been working and don't know about Maru, I'll give you a primer. Maru is a pudgy Japanese cat who likes to jump into boxes. I know that doesn't sound like much, but you have to see him in YouTube action to understand the appeal. Maru regularly racks up 500,000 to 2 million hits per video.… Read more

Craction: A fantasy-football tool for the rest of us?

The PR flacks for Craction, a new online football game, deserve a little credit for getting one point of their rollout publicity campaign correct: it's more or less impossible to have a fully functional life while aggressively competing in an online fantasy-football league.

Dedicated fantasy-football participants--the type of people who spend hours neglecting their jobs and families to pore over player stat sheets looking for the best punter--often sacrifice their maturity and dignity in an obsessive pursuit of a statistically perfect virtual NFL football team.

Craction looks to offer football competition without "all the fantasy-sports commitment." The game launched online this month, but Scott Schmidt developed it in 2000 when he was a business student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"I wanted to stay connected with my friends who were spread out at colleges across the country," Schmidt said during Craction's debut. "NFL football was something we could all relate to, but I knew I'd have trouble getting people to commit to fantasy football because it requires so much time. So I just invented a better game." … Read more

Dog Wars app for Android is Trojanized

An older version of a controversial Android app called "Dog Wars" has been modified to include a Trojan horse that takes actions without the device owner knowing it, according to security firm Symantec.

The app sends a text message to everyone in the contact list that says, "I take pleasure in hurting small animals, just thought you should know that," and signs United States-based devices up for a text alert service operated by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Irfan Asrar wrote in a post on the Symantec blog.

"We have no reason to believe that PETA had anything to do with this app, and that it is most likely the work of someone attempting to associate the app with PETA," he writes.

A PETA representative provided this statement when asked for comment: "We don't know who created this version of the app, but we think it is ingenious. When someone creates a game that glorifies animal abuse, you can bet that people will come up with clever, smart ways to take action against it." … Read more