lynx

Mac OS X 10.9 could be dubbed "Lynx," says blog site AppleScoop.

The rumor sounds plausible. It would continue Apple's trend of naming its OS after ferocious felines. Over the past few years, OS X has leaped from Leopard to Snow Leopard to Lion and then to Mountain Lion.

However, the intel is decidedly second-hand.

The information comes from a "reliable source" who claims to have talked to someone inside Apple. The person reportedly saw some internal papers that indicated Apple was finalizing the name of OS X 10.9. But the source couldn'… Read more

Testing spacecraft components is no cake walk. It's expensive and can require subjecting them to tremendous amounts of stress and wear and tear, but it's necessary. You can't just blast them up into suborbit and hope they work.

Spacecraft manufacturer XCOR decided to get a little more grounded when it came to testing out components of its new piston pump technology destined for the Lynx Suborbital Spacecraft.

XCOR modified a Triumph motorcycle with propulsion parts and sent it off on a massive road trip from Roswell, N.M., to Mojave, Calif.… Read more

Sure, the future of gaming may see the end of used games, but it's also ushering in a wave of independent and download-only titles that may not have otherwise seen the light of day.

Current-generation consoles have provided independent studios with accessible platforms like Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) and the PlayStation Network (PSN) that exposes their work to millions of gamers, similar to what the App Store has done for iOS developers.

Microsoft has even taken it a step further with its XNA initiative, ensuring that literally anyone can create a game.

The widespread embrace of these titles has encouraged others to follow suit and has paved the way for indie classics like Braid, LIMBO, Bastion, Minecraft, and most recently, Journey.… Read more

The following statement will not qualify as the biggest news scoop ever published on CNET: Older folks are often uncomfortable with modern technology and gadgets.

It's too easy to look at the senior citizens around you and roll your eyes at their techno-hostility or seeming incompetence when it comes to using gadgets or adjusting to a world seemingly ruled more by gadgets every day. But, that's unfair when you consider the ever-increasing speed of gadget evolution we see now and how hard it is to keep up if you weren't born into the techno stream.

To give you a simple example of what your senior friends are up against, what we understand as the motor car (four wheels, internal combustion engine, etc.) emerged into public view around 1888 and was destined to change the world. But, the first successful mass-produced assembly line car in the U.S. (the Model T) didn't come along until about 20 years later. So, that's about two decades for folks to get used to the idea of motorized transport.

Comparatively, the iPhone--the first big salvo in the age of elite touch-screen smartphones that changed how we communicate, work, and socialize--was released in 2007. In just four years, we've had to get caught up on the concepts of the App Store, FaceTime, airplane mode, and Angry Birds. … Read more

Canonical has published the release candidate for Ubuntu 10.04--code-named Lucid Lynx--which offers a new look, better integration with cloud infrastructure, and features designed to be more consumer-friendly.

The release on Thursday came two weeks after the beta was made available for public testing. The OS update is now more or less complete, Canonical said. "We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable and suitable for testing by any user," Ubuntu release manager Steve Langasek said in a statement.

The release leaves Canonical free to aim for more radical changes with the Ubuntu version scheduled for completion … Read more