california

It doesn't take long to see that the new 250-room Legoland Hotel in Carlsbad, Calif., is a special place for fans of the iconic building toy. As visitors drive up to the colorful entrance, a Lego tower greets them with an impressive facade of giant minifigures and a 400,000-piece smoke-breathing dragon.

Once inside, the Lego experience multiplies as nearly every foot of the hotel contains brick-themed decor. Guests can choose from three types of themed rooms, including pirate, adventure, and kingdom styles. It's a bricktravaganza. … Read more

In the wild, sea lions are kept busy with hunting prey, caring for young, and swimming about in the great big ocean. In captivity, they have more time to devote to activities like sunning themselves, playing, and rocking out.

Ronan the California sea lion lives at the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California in Santa Cruz. University researchers have studied Ronan's ability to keep the beat of musical tracks by nodding her head. She seems to particularly enjoy upbeat, jazzy disco numbers.

Ronan was first trained to bob her head to a simple metronome-like sound. Once she figured that out, she was able to find and keep the beat of more complex music all on her own. Previously, this ability has only been observed in parrots and humans.… Read more

The European Union has long championed its citizens' right to submit requests for data that companies hold on them in order to ensure the information is up to date and correct. In recent years, an Austrian law student brought this "habeas data" right into the public spotlight by demanding his Facebook data from the social network.

Americans don't have this right -- and generally, relative to the EU, they have little legal protection from the state or federal government against data theft, unauthorized disclosures, and other privacy-related matters.

Though the EU and the U.S. have never … Read more

It's nice to think each of us is entirely unique, a one-of-a-kind aggregate of life experiences colliding with genes that set us apart from everyone else. And while this is true to an extent, it's also true that certain telltale blueprints exist for us, all the way down to the way we move our faces if we are, say, depressed.

So researchers at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies are developing a Kinect-driven avatar they call SimSensei to track and analyze in real time a person's facial movements, body posture, linguistic patterns, acoustics, and behaviors such as fidgeting which, taken together, signal psychological distress.… Read more

It's not as if you need one more thing to worry about, but it is the weekend.

You shower at the weekend, don't you?

So here's a tale that might make you look a touch carefully at your shower head.

Simona Wilson, 34, of Redondo Beach, Calif., started to feel ill. She was tired. She felt sick and numb. She had no idea why.

That was until the day she touched her shower head and felt electricity course through her. She had recently remodeled her shower. It had previously been elevated, so she brought it down to … Read more

California's attorney general issued long-promised guidelines on mobile privacy today. The "Privacy on the Go (PDF)" report address the varied interests in smartphone and mobile app development, including app developers, carriers, ad networks, and operating system makers.

"We are now offering this set of privacy practice recommendations to assist app developers, and others, in considering privacy early in the development process," Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote in an introduction to the guidelines.

Sarah Downey, online privacy analyst at online privacy firm Abine, agreed that it's important to get the various mobile interests focused on … Read more

Six states have officially made it illegal for employers to ask their workers for passwords to their social media accounts. As of 2013, California and Illinois have joined the ranks of Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware in passing state laws against the practice, according to Wired.

With Congress not being able to come to agreement on the Password Protection Act of 2012, individual states have taken the law into their own hands. Both California and Illinois agreed on password protection laws in 2012, but the laws didn't go into effect until yesterday.

The laws are designed to prohibit … Read more

T-Mobile announced today that it added five new metro areas to its list of U.S. cities served by 4G (HSPA+) on its faster 1900 network, including Chicago, Reno, and three regions in California.

"T-Mobile has now enhanced the network in 23 metro areas, and we have already reached 100 million people with this improved network experience," T-Mobile USA's chief technology officer Neville Ray said in a statement. "These upgrades will now provide voice and data enhancements, improved signal strength and in-building coverage for customers."

One of the devices that the carrier specifically highlighted to … Read more