Geek culture

Foiling facial recognition systems that identify people based on photographs may be as simple as wearing a special set of glasses equipped with near-infrared LEDs powered by a battery pack. The LEDs are arranged around the nose and eyes. The human eye can't pick up the near-infrared, but a camera sees it as bright light, enough to obscure the face and confuse facial recognition software.

Researchers with the National Institute of Informatics and Kogakuin University in Japan developed the special privacy visor to counteract photographs and facial recognition software that could invade privacy. Details on the glasses were released late last year, but a prototype got a public showing at a recent open house.… Read more

In 1994, while at Next, Steve Jobs gave a 20-minute interview to the Silicon Valley Historical Association (SVHA) in which he spoke about his legacy. Interestingly, at that point, he expected that he and his accomplishments would be more or less forgotten within a few decades.

A clip from that interview has just been posted to YouTube for the first time this week to help promote the SVHA's 60-minute documentary on Jobs, "Steve Jobs: Visionary Entrepreneur."

"All the work that I've done in my life will be obsolete by the time I'm 50," … Read more

Comic-Con is just a month away and Mel Hoppe definitely plans to be there. In fact, July is a busy month for the self-described cosplayer, gamer, and geek. Almost immediately after the big show in San Diego, she'll be heading up to Kintoki-Con, the Asian media and culture convention in Sacramento, Calif., where she'll be hanging out in the "Artist's Alley" under her alias, WindoftheStars.

That's because Hoppe isn't just a dedicated cosplayer, she also makes and sells her own costumes from her home base in northern Nevada. I came across the work of WindoftheStars on Google+ a few months ago and was blown away by the beauty, realism, and range of her creations (fortunately, she doesn't go as far as this real-life anime girl).

I reached out to Hoppe to learn a little more about how she got into her craft. She told me a story I'm sure many readers of Crave can relate to. It all started with a Commodore 128 and a joystick at a young age.… Read more

Are you up for a challenge? How about a Grand Challenge? NASA on Tuesday issued a Grand Challenge aimed at locating all asteroid threats to Earth and figuring out what to do about them.

It seems the asteroid threat has really picked up steam lately. We've had some close fly-bys. Some scientists have suggested nuking asteroids if they get too near. NASA has an initiative to lasso an asteroid for closer study. It's been asteroid fever around the planet lately.… Read more

On today's show we're welcoming Dan Chiappini from GameSpot Australia along with 404 veteran Scott Stein. We'll briefly recap Scott's time down at WWDC but then get right into some more E3 talk where we make Scott feel jealous about missing what was probably the biggest E3 in something like seven years. Dan think he knows why Nintendo refuses to open its "vault" of games and we all wonder how the company can rebound from a bleak E3 showing.

We're also chatting about the mundane abundance of shooters at E3, the lack of innovation, and which games actually piqued our interest.

And be sure to enter CNET's awesome "From Old School to Tech Cool" contest that's currently underway on our Facebook page!

- Follow our new buddy Dan Chiappini on Twitter.

- Make sure to do the same for 404 veteran Scott Stein.

- Catch up on Scott's and the rest of CNET's WWDC coverage.

- Give CNET's E3 2013 page one last skim.… Read more

First, flying food became a trend. Now, the hot new flying creations are flying bicycles. The latest entry in the wheeled-air-machine category comes from British company XploreAir. It's a bicycle, flying machine, and camping tent all built into one device.

The Paravelo can be taken apart and used as just a bike, or it can docked to its trailer with a flexible wing and biofuel-powered fan. Up in the air, it can go at speeds up to 25 mph for up to 3 hours and reach heights up to 4,000 feet up.… Read more

After saving (or destroying) the galaxy, what's a Jedi or Sith supposed to do in their off time? A comedic group called JesterLads came up with a hilarious trick that made many people think a mysterious hooded figure was opening elevator doors with the power of the Force seen in "Star Wars."

With a hidden camera rolling, unsuspecting people in the elevator think it's just another normal day, but suddenly change tune as a nearby man wearing a gray hoodie waves his hand to reopen the elevator door that's about to close.… Read more

We've seen some pretty creative marriage proposals, but we never would have thought of proposing via a language-learning app. Flavio Esposito, on the other hand, seems to like thinking outside the down-on-one-knee box.

The Italian man's American girlfriend was using Duolingo to learn Italian, so he got in touch with the Duolingo team to come up with a surprise.

"She's learning my own language, and she enjoys it so much that I'm wondering if I could ask you to set up an exercise for her that would lead to the big question: 'Will you marry Flavio Esposito?'" he wrote.

The team, unable to resist either the challenge or the romance, set about writing some translation exercises for Kate to be dropped into her learning program. … Read more

Unfortunately, the Large Hadron Collider is too big to bring home and put on display in your living room. Scientist Sascha Mehlhase created a 4,500-piece Lego model of the collider back in 2011 at a cost of about $2,700. That was also too big for most people.

Now, he has created a smaller model of the ATLAS experiment, a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, and put it up as a candidate for an official Lego kit.

The project is on Cuusoo, a site for Lego enthusiasts to share their models and attempt to gather 10,000 votes in order for Lego to consider making their creations as kits. Mehlhase's ATLAS currently has 5,756 supporters, so it has definitely caught the eyes of Lego builders.… Read more