Geek culture

The dark side of the Force offers many benefits, including the power to electrocute those who oppose you. Unfortunately, force lightning remains a skill only available in the "Star Wars" universe, but YouTuber Nighthawkinlight dreamed up a static-electricity generator device that gives aspiring Emperor Palpatines the ability to shock someone (or something) with 7,500 volts through their fingers. … Read more

The Fourth of July is coming up next week. It's a good time to take stock of where the country stands in the world of technology manufacturing.

We've been hearing quite a bit lately about how feasible (or not) it is to make tech products right here at home.

Manufacturing plants in Asia pretty much have the cell phone and gadget market cornered, but there are some blips on the U.S.-made tech radar. Google has managed to design and build the Nexus Q streaming media player in America.

Is this a sign of a reboot for technology manufacturing in America?… Read more

- Rounding up Google I/O Day One: Hands on with the Nexus 7, seeing the world through Google Glasses, a closer look at the Nexus Q, and all the goodies from Google Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean."

- How major media outlets confirm celebrity deaths.

- Food porn pictures are making you fat.

- Pictures of Asians taking pictures of food.

- Back to the Future hoax separates the fans from the posers.

Video voicemail: St. Paul from Kevin brings hackers into Google's self-driving cars.… Read more

Google's latest sweet tooth obsession has been unveiled on the Google campus in the form of a giant jelly bean jar shaped like the Android mascot. It's a multicolored homage to the next rev of the Android OS -- version 4.1, Jelly Bean.

The sculpture didn't just download itself into place. It had a remarkable journey from conception as chunks of Styrofoam in New Jersey to its current spot among the pantheon of dessert-inspired Android operating system yard art.

The Jelly Bean sculpture was built by prop-building company Themendous over the course of one action-packed week during a heat wave that left workers covered in sweat as they churned out 160 individual beans to go into the Android-shaped jar. … Read more

Popular apps like Instagram spit out highly stylized images, but what do you do when you simply want a portrait to look nicer? I put Portrait Professional 10, a $39.95 automated airbrushing software package for Windows and Mac, through its paces.

I dug through my photo archives, looking for portraits in need of some TLC. My top candidate turned out to be the fortune teller animatronic from an antique machine at Tinkertown in New Mexico.

The fortune teller suffers from an overwhelming makeup job, lots of wrinkles, and a ruddy complexion with visible pores. Time for some magic.… Read more

To say that Facebook's iPhone app is slow could be considered generous. In truth, it makes the tortoise look like the hare.

It seems almost inconceivable (and yes, I do think that word means what I think it means) that a Web-focused, modern company could produce such a slow rendition of its product on the most popular mobile product on the planet.

But, not to fear, Facebook has heard the crowing (and has seen the one-star reviews) and plans to update its iPhone app, according to The New York Times.

The New York Times managed to get two unnamed engineers to reveal that the Facebook iOS app has been completely retooled and will feature the only thing that really matters in social-networking apps -- speed. … Read more

- Imagining "The Big Lebowski 2: The Dude Goes to Washington"

- Honoring Nora Ephron: When moviemaking met a natural

- A better take on self-driving cars: Ford Traffic Jam Assist.

- Rock paper scissors robot has 100 percent confidence.

Bathroom break video: Thomas Middleditch's Disgusting Dub Step Drop.… Read more

Callum Haywood, an 18-year-old developer from England, is making waves in the Facebook privacy waters. His recently launched site, We Know What You're Doing, culls embarrassing status updates and catalogs them for the world to see.

We Know What You're Doing shakes out into four categories in the form of questions: Who wants to get fired? Who's hungover? Who's taking drugs? Who's got a new phone number?

All it takes to land in the spotlight is a fitting keyword and a failure to have your Facebook privacy settings locked down. Haywood pulls all the updates directly from Facebook's Graph API. For modesty's sake, all the new phone numbers given out over public updates are partially obscured.… Read more

Oh good, I can get one second more sleep the night of June 30. In an effort to keep our extremely accurate atomic clocks in line with the more arbitrary nature of the way the world wobbles, we're getting a leap second this weekend.

Sure, it's not as dramatic as what happens during a leap year, but it's still exciting for clock aficionados, science geeks, and time lords. The leap second will be added to Coordinated Universal Time at the end of the day on June 30.… Read more