Airbag Prank Fail

Everyone’s seen the airbag prank made famous from the movie Neighbors. You place an undeployed airbag under a seat cushion, or in this case a tire, then fix the switch to a power source. You get a willing friend to sit on it. When it launches, it sends them into the air a good 10 feet. Fun for everyone, right? Well not if you’re this guy who makes the mistake of landing right on his tailbone!Source===

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Take The Craziest Downhill Mountain Biking Ride With World Champion Gee Atherton

Take The Craziest Downhill Mountain Biking Ride With World Champion Gee AthertonSource==G===

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Jimmy Kimmel Hands People First Generation iPhone And Tells Them It's The New iPhone 6S

Jimmy Kimmel Hands People First Generation iPhone And Tells Them It's The

.source==G==ew iPhone 6S

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Windows 10 is sneaking onto Windows 7 and 8 installs without permission

Microsoft is downloading Windows 10 to Windows 7 and 8 machines, even if the user hasn’t expressed permission. A reader of The Inquirer saw that the ~BT Windows 10 folder had appeared on his system even though he hadn’t reserved a copy. He only noticed after spotting a number of failed ‘Upgrade to Windows 10’ messages in his Windows Update history. Microsoft has confirmed this is happening to The Inquirer, as well as VentureBeat and PCWorld when reached for a statement.
Users have been able to opt-in to the free Windows 10 upgrade if they're running Windows 7 or 8, but apparently even if they don't, the files are being downloaded anyway. It's happening on devices which have automatic updates allowed, which we'd generally recommend to catch the latest security and stability updates for Windows.
When asked about this issue, Microsoft responded by saying “For individuals who have chosen to receive automatic updates through Windows Update, we help upgradable devices get ready for Windows 10 by downloading the files they’ll need if they decide to upgrade. When the upgrade is ready, the customer will be prompted to install Windows 10 on the device.” Convenient, if you're installing Windows 7 or 8 specifically to upgrade to Windows 10. Otherwise, not so much.
The automatic download takes up between 3.5 and 6GB of storage space, which may not sound like a lot, but it’s not an insignificant amount for some users. Windows tablets with smaller hard drives are affected, and people with data caps on their Internet connections certainly don’t want that amount of data coming in without permission. The background download could affect people with poor Internet connections too, without them being aware that they're downloading unnecessary files.
Since launch, over 75 million devices have made the upgrade to Windows 10, and some sources say that the number is closer to 100 million.Source===pcgamer

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The World's First 3D-Printed Titanium Rib Cage Is a Medical Marvel

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We can rebuild him, better, stronger, faster

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Okay I’m sure the surgeon and designers thought of this but ..... aren’t these a bit narrow?

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It sounds like something straight out of a comic book, but after losing his sternum and part of his rib cage to cancer, a 54-year-old Spanish man received the world’s first 3D-printed chest prosthetic made from lightweight, but incredibly strong, titanium.

Titanium implants aren’t new, but replacing large sections of the rib cage is tricky. Titanium prosthetics are usually built from various plate components, and over time they can come loose creating future complications.

Surgeons at the Salamanca University Hospital in Spain decided that a custom-designed titanium prosthetic would better replicate the portions of the patient’s chest that had been removed, and in the long term would be a safer option.

Using high-resolution 3D CT scans of the patient’s chest, the surgeons determined what areas needed to be replaced, and then turned to a Melbourne, Australia-based company called Anatomics to design and build the replacement sternum and rib cage.

As impressive as home 3D printers like the MakerBot are, printing with titanium requires a higher level of expertise and equipment. Anatomics actually used a $1.3 million electron beam Arcam 3D printer to produce the prosthetic, the first of its kind in the world, which was then flown to Spain and surgically implanted in the patient.

Just 12 days after their final surgery, the patient, who is now probably the closest thing the world has to Marvel’s Wolverine, was discharged and is recovering well. And 3D printing takes another important step forward to becoming one of the most important technologies of the 21st century.Source===G

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The Apple iPad Pro event: A good, sad day for Microsoft

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

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But it's nothing like a stylus, right? CNET

The graybeards who've adored Apple ever since Steve Jobs was a lad must have looked at this and winced.
Or might they have thought it the ultimate in scalding irony?
Here was Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Office division, wandering onto the stage of an Apple event. Not because he had lost his temper and wanted to berate Apple CEO Tim Cook, but because there's now a certain level of nice (and need) between the two companies.
Think, though, what he and his company had to endure on Wednesday. Koenigsbauer was at the event to discuss the role Microsoft Office plays on Apple's new 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which when you put all the pieces together might pass as a lookalike for the Microsoft Surface at a casting session.
There, too, was Apple lauding the same thing of which Cook had once said, "Our competition is confused. They're turning tablets into PCs and PCs into tablets."
Those clouds of confusion parted more quickly than a shower on a December day in St. Lucia. Suddenly, it all makes sense and it all looks good. Apple good.
As if, though, to apply a touch of albumen foundation before adding a little yolk mascara to Redmond's face, Apple produced a stylus.
"Who wants a stylus?" Jobs famously said at Macworld in 2007. "You have to get them and put them away and you lose them. Yeuch. Nobody wants a stylus."
Of course, Apple didn't present a stylus on Wednesday. It presented the Apple Pencil. Pencils are cool, you see. They're human. Styluses are chilly and nerdy.
It's not enough having stylus, ya gotta have style.
And there's the essence of Microsoft's cheery melancholy today. As many learn in life, being right often gets you nowhere. "That was my idea" may be honest words that some never get over.
How much worse it will be for some at Redmond if the iPad Pro is a big-screen success. How much worse if it eclipses the Surface Pro.
At the heart of it all, though, is brand.
Where Microsoft once understood that people needed to feel positively about its name and ethos, somehow Bill Gates and then Steve Ballmer let that go in favor of power, dominance and ubiquity.
Where they could have continued an ad campaign such as "Where Do You Want To Go Today?" that put people, hearts and dreams at its core, they forced Windows onto the world's laptops. Not enough people loved Microsoft for it.
Meanwhile, Apple mocked Redmond and became loved. The Mac vs. PC campaign was a manifesto for the identity that those who used Macs wanted to be associated with. It was something for them to feel a part of. It lasted and it worked. It lasted because it worked.
When Microsoft launched Surface, it had an avowedly different-looking product in its hands. It presented this product through some of the most painful advertising ever seen. You surely remember the dancing teens? Oh, they still haunt you?
The Surface product has improved, as have its sales. Microsoft had a three-year head start. But now it must watch Apple's reinterpretation of some of its ideas and wonder whether there's any justice in the world.
There's rarely justice. The best you can hope for is poetry.
In 2012, cartoonist (current project Sharksplode), writer and voice actor Joel Watson predicted that Apple would launch a Surface-like thing in 2015. He has cartoon Steve Ballmer holding a Surface and uttering these words: "In three years when Apple copies this, you cockwads will think it's genius."

This was created in 2012 by Joel Watson, who makes online comics and is a voice actor for Cyanide and Happiness. Hijinksensue.com (With Permission.)

The excellent part for anyone at Microsoft must be that it employs people who do see the future and see it clearly. The galling part must lie in seeing Apple potentially gaining the most from that vision.
So many deep, rational, righteous thinkers decry Cupertino for its alleged distortion field and the supposed reliance on that deadly nonsense known as marketing. But the company has always stopped to think about how to delight humans. This doesn't mean it always gets it right. It does mean that it goes out of its way to try.
How Microsoft wished it had found a way to be held to human bosoms, rather than be kept at arm's length.
Of course, it could be that the iPad Pro will be a failure. I fancy, though, that aside of its more rational business uses, there will be plenty of people who will be only too delighted to be seen with the vast new Apple screen.
In some bars around Washington state on Wednesday night, there will have been more than a few muttering into their glasses of fizzy rosé: "Apple Pencil, my a**."Source===cnet

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Metal Gear Solid 5's best secret: You can play the campaign as a woman

Much has been written about the juvenile design of Quiet, the improbably naked sidekick in the Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. But, for all the justifiable anger about her character, almost nothing has been written about the secret new female protagonist in Metal Gear.

I’m calling her FemSnake.
FemSnake is awesome. She’s on the title screen. Soldiers stop dead in their tracks and sharply salute her. "Thanks for saving those kids, Boss," they say.
Revolver Ocelot speaks to her in reverent tones, reporting on mission outcomes. When she interrogates a prisoner, she demands "Out with it!" and my heart skips a beat.

FemSnake stands in ironic contrast to Quiet. FemSnake wears full military armor, form-fitting, but tough and realistic. Everything about her demands to be treated like a professional and not a sex object. Accompanying her is a sexist train wreck of a design, a woman designed to be ogled while never speaking a word. Quiet is a capable soldier who looks like anything but.
Some people will tell me FemSnake is not really Snake, and it’s true. She’s a prisoner you rescue on a mission, but you do get to play almost every mission as her. She can be your protagonist, and is included in many of the cutscenes. She runs Mother Base. She commands the game’s soldiers. She is fully voiced, and her acting is even more menacing than Kiefer Sutherland’s. This is my title screen, featuring my game's hero:

I’ll tell you how to unlock her. But first, let’s back up. Let’s look at some of the design decisions in Metal Gear Solid V that are meant to make most gamers feel like they’re Snake — including gamers that are not white.

A silent protagonist

I was confused when David Hayter tweeted that he wouldn’t be returning as Snake. As a hardcore fan of the series, I couldn’t imagine long codec monologues with anyone but Hayter. Now that I’m 30 hours in, this design decision makes total sense.
Wanting to capture a wider audience, Metal Gear has gone the Portal route with Snake — our now near-silent protagonist. The story happens around him, with imaginative characters like Ocelot, Master Miller and Skull Face providing much of the personality and voice acting. Snake watches everything unfold around him.

Goodbye, long discussions about nuclear disarmament. Hello, adrenaline-filled setpieces and systems that hint towards for-pay DLC. Just like the Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Call of Duty franchises, Metal Gear is going for a more mainstream appeal. For that to happen, the angst-ridden, talkative version of Snake had to go.
In fact, Snake himself barely even matters in this version of Metal Gear. That’s why the game teases you with changing Snake’s character’s race and face in the opening, a feature that delighted my Asian husband. As the online component comes next month, players will represent themselves as their custom avatar. The technical term for this in gamedev parlance is "player agency," giving you control over your game world.
FemSnake is a design compromise to allow female players to play as a woman. And make no mistake, including her was a feature that took quite a bit of development resources from the Metal Gear team. They had to alter the game’s armor implementation to work with her different body proportions. They had to bring in a voice actress. They had to code scenes so Sutherland’s line reads would appear as captions and not voiceover in many scenes. What they did to make this happen across so much content was neither quick nor easy. Someone cared about this feature.

How to make this happen

How do you unlock FemSnake? Go to Prisoner Extraction 02 in Side Ops, which seems to always spawn the otherwise extremely rare woman prisoners. This unlocked my FemSnake, who was assigned the random codename "Obsidian Mole."
Then, when choosing a mission, go to Character and you’ll be able to play the rest of the game as her. Her combat stats rise as you play, primarily affecting your health pool — but any other differences between Snake and FemSnake were not perceptible to me.
After you’ve selected your new character, you’ll see them in everything but fully-voiced cutscenes for the remainder of the game, including the title screen. This trick can also be used with any rescued prisoner you’d like to represent you instead of Snake, including those of different races.

This is a nice step forward

Metal Gear fans are used to duality in how the series treats women. I was astonished by the excellent portayal of Meryl Silverburgh when Metal Gear Solid came out in 1998. You felt her emotions, you understood her as a person and cared about her. And then, you burst in on her in the bathroom, creepily staring at her butt and watching her change from her uniform.
That’s how I feel playing this latest Metal Gear. I’m both elated and troubled. In researching this piece, I saw hundreds of articles critiquing Quiet’s design. But I didn’t see a single article praising Konami for including an inclusive design compromise that boosts my own enjoyment of the game. You can play through almost the entirety of the game as a woman hero! Or a person of color! This is great news, and needs to be celebrated.
So, to all the team and Kojima Productions, I want to say thank you for this inclusive game design. FemSnake is a huge step forward for the series. None of the core Metal Gear console games have had a female protagonist, and even Metal Gear Online omitted women.
We can’t just critique the steps backwards, we need to notice the steps forward. FemSnake Source==polygon

salutes you.

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