Giffords vows to be 'tougher' (CNN)

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Three LulzSec hackers plead guilty to attacking U.S., U.K. websites

By Larry Fine AUGUSTA, Georgia (Reuters) - The Masters is widening the weekend field for this week's tournament and granting automatic entry next year to more PGA Tour winners, Augusta National chairman Billy Payne said on Wednesday. The cut for the 93-player field will be expanded by six to the top 50 and ties, along with those within 10 strokes of the lead, to include more players in the final two rounds of the year's first major championship. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/three-lulzsec-hackers-plead-guilty-attacking-u-u-012152264.html

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Roku passes 5 million players sold in the US, shows off with a few more stats

Five years after the original Roku launched and just weeks after the release of the Roku 3, the company has announced lifetime US sales of 5 million units. The proclamation comes attached to a detailed infographic (linked below) that breaks down its last five years of progress, plus stats like where it's most popular (Lexington, KY) and the most minutes streamed by one player in one week (10,080.) That's quite a marathon session -- Lost plus House of Cards doesn't even get you halfway -- but its stats claim 25 percent of players stream more than 35 hours per week.

The last time we checked in on Roku sales, it was chasing the million unit mark alongside Apple's hobby. The Apple TV has since risen to 5 million sold in the last fiscal year, buoyed by the AirPlay feature that makes it an attractive accessory for the company's other devices. To Roku's favor, it claims 43 percent of owners say it's their preferred source of video for their TV. It's come a long way from its start as a Netflix Player with more than 750 channels available including Time Warner Cable and HBO Go, which makes CEO Anthony Wood's claim that the "future of TV is streaming" look closer than ever.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Roku Blog, Roku 5 Million

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/aNWqVf0kJ3I/

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Burner, The One-Click Disposable Phone Number App, Comes To Android

Sometimes you just need a disposable phone number. Why? Maybe you're not too sure about that dude you just met, but you want to give him a chance. Maybe you don't want weirdos from Craigslist calling you once your couch is gone. Last August, an app called Burner came along that popularized the idea of disposable numbers at the push of a button. After 9 months as an iOS-only app, Burner is today launching on Android.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/v1uqo86xBxs/

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High levels of lead detected in rice imported from certain countries

Apr. 10, 2013 ? Rice imported from certain countries contains high levels of lead that could pose health risks, particularly for infants and children, who are especially sensitive to lead's effects, and adults of Asian heritage who consume large amounts of rice, scientists said in New Orleans on April 10. Their research, which found some of the highest lead levels in baby food, was among almost 12,000 reports scheduled for the 245^th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, Ph.D., who headed the analysis of rice imported from Asia, Europe and South America, pointed out that imports account for only 7 percent of the rice consumed in the United States. With vast rice fields in Louisiana, California, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi, the U.S. is a major producer and exporter of the grain. However, imports of rice and rice flour are increasing ? by more than 200 percent since 1999 ? and rice is the staple food for 3 billion people worldwide, he added.

"Such findings present a situation that is particularly worrisome given that infants and children are especially vulnerable to the effects of lead poisoning," Tongesayi said. "For infants and children, the daily exposure levels from eating the rice products analyzed in this study would be 30-60 times higher than the FDA's provisional total tolerable intake (PTTI) levels. Asians consume more rice, and for these infants and children, exposures would be 60-120 times higher. For adults, the daily exposure levels were 20-40 times higher than the PTTI levels."

The research was part of a symposium titled "Food and Its Environment: What Is In What We Eat?"

Tongesayi's team, which is with Monmouth University in N.J., found that levels of lead in rice imported into the United States ranged from 6 to 12 milligrams/kilogram. From those numbers, they calculated the daily exposure levels for various populations and then made comparisons with the FDA's PTTI levels for lead. They detected the highest amounts of lead in rice from Taiwan and China. Samples from the Czech Republic, Bhutan, Italy, India and Thailand had significantly high levels of lead as well. Analysis of rice samples from Pakistan, Brazil and other countries were still underway.

Because of the increase in rice imports into the United States, Tongesayi said that rice from other nations has made its way into a wide variety of grocery stores, large supermarket chains and restaurants, as well as ethnic specialty markets and restaurants.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/qPiHCEdUtMc/130410201824.htm

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Cancer, The Video Game

I look around; Ryan Green has already slipped out of the room. I hesitate, then nod. I take my seat at the rickety desk and put on a pair of expensive noise-canceling headphones.

The game is called That Dragon, Cancer. The desk ? I wish we?d had a better desk for them, actually ? is located on the first floor of Unwinnable?s furnished, three-story mansion, which we?ve rented for this year?s Game Developers Conference. Tonight every room is full of developers and their games. We?ve given That Dragon, Cancer its own entire bedroom. It?s the largest bedroom on the first floor; it even has its own couch. I am surprised. I didn?t have much to do with organizing this event (I?m not much of an organizer), so everything surprises me.

More than one colleague has told me to come to this room. One told me to come to this room first, another told me to visit it last. I am about to become very, very surprised.

???

I am searching the screen with my cursor when I remember the demo is supposed to end with the words ?thank you.? And I realize I?ve just heard these words, and I take my hand away from the mouse and squirm out of the expensive noise-canceling headphones, and now I am staring at Josh Larson.

Josh is here ? was he always here? ? with a clipboard and pen. He?s going to take my feedback. I think he?s been taking my feedback.

How long have I been sitting here?

?Okay,? I tell him. I wrack my brain. ?I? don?t think I?ve ever played a videogame that takes place in the ICU before.?

I give Josh Larson my design notes. I am clinical with my thoughts and suggestions. I answer Josh?s questions.

Now Josh has another question for me. ?Did you understand that the game is supposed to be hopeful??

I answer yes, and I am explaining why, and this is when it finally catches up with me. I burst into tears.

S

I don?t think I?ve ever played a videogame that takes place in an ICU before. Actually, do you know, for a few years and right up until six months ago, I spent a lot of meaningful time in the ICU.

And wow, you really got every detail right! I can?t believe it! There?s the armchair. And it is! It is always too small! And rubbery. Here?s the phone right next to it, of course. The bed is over there. The bathroom is a room attached to this one, and then there?s another sink counter way over here, where you religiously wash and sanitize your hands. There?s the salmon-pink, kidney-shaped basin sitting on the counter just to the sink?s left: maybe it?s supposed to be a bedpan, but we always used it for vomit instead. Everything is just right, just the way I remember it.

And then there are those great big windows ? there are always those great big windows ? and if it weren?t for those big picture windows, you?d never know the time of day, since the ICU is always so dark. That moment really struck me, seeing out those windows and realizing it?s still daylight.

Oh. Have you ever heard of something called ?ICU psychosis?? Write that down, look it up later. But okay, it happens to not only the patients themselves, but also to their loved ones. You not only lose track of what time of day it is, but also what day it is, what week it is. Time doesn?t work right anymore. There are audio and visual hallucinations, too, sometimes. You know that whiteboard, where they write down what day it is and the nurses? hours? That isn?t really for the nurses, you know. It?s for you. Oh, that?s something you left out, the whiteboard.

Something else struck me ? sorry, I?m kind of harping on this one moment. Okay. So when I?d click on the windows, the camera would whirl, and suddenly it leaves the first-person vantage, and the camera swoops around outside the window to stare into the building back at me, and I?m standing there looking out the window, and it?s a real Portal moment, you know, where you see yourself for the first time? So when I look in at myself, I see Ryan Green standing there instead ? Ryan, the man who was only just here in the room with us ? and I can see his shape and form and his glasses and his beard.

And then, and only then, I remember I am supposed to be Ryan.

???

Later I was describing that Portal moment to Ryan Green ? this convergence of game and cinema and prose and autobiography ? and just how meaningful that moment really was, and I said something like ?it proves there really are some stories that can only be told through the medium of games.? Then I added, ?I think you?ve really achieved something here,? and I said that last thing out loud and I felt so, so sick.

???

In the game, you click through the ICU, feeling around with your cursor for any sort of narrative relief. Sometimes relief does arrive, in the form of a white scrawl, an almost-handwritten prose-poem scribbling itself against the ICU. Sometimes, though, it seems you?ve finally run out of options.

Your son is crying out in pain. There is nothing you can do.

That Dragon, Cancer positions itself as an adventure game, which by design implies all the flaws and failings built into a point-and-click adventure game. You fall into these cyclic, helpless loops of action, clicking on this hotspot and that one, fumbling for anything to alleviate your, Ryan?s, son?s cries ? cries that start out gut-wrenching, then quickly turn into something more persistently awful, something you?ve got to quell as quickly as possible. It hurts on every level.

To get to all the hotspots on one side of the room, you have to repeatedly seat yourself in the too-small armchair near your ? Ryan?s ? son?s bed. And, ah, that?s how it actually goes. You keep sitting down and surveying the room, looking for just one new thing to try to do. That?s how it really, really went.

And at some point the game stops cold. Now there is only one parser command on the screen.

Pray.

This is how it really, really went.

S

Ryan tells us, in an early in-game voice over, how at first this whole medical odyssey was ?an adventure.? He was, he imagined, ?a hero.? I heard him say that, and I thought how brave it was to just come right out and say that, and my stomach folded in on itself.

The very first time, my mother was supposed to die. She was supposed to die, and we succeeded instead. She survived several times after. For just under a year I was needlessly cavalier. I do remember what it felt like to be the hero. I also remember what it felt like to get so, so tired, which was a long time after I?d stopped being afraid.

Ryan Green told me he?d wanted to include some sort of prose refrain. The game, in many ways, is a hymn, a song of praise, but I told him a refrain might be overkill. I told him players will always fumble at the same couple of objects in the room, and those objects can always respond with the same piece of text, and in a way, that could become the refrain, if you could just anticipate what the player will reach for. No, I told him, you don?t need to artificially include a refrain. Maybe. I don?t know.

I told Ryan I have limited experience with cancer. I told him about my mother, who died of something else, but it, you know, it took a long time. Then Ryan asked me what my favorite thing about my mother was.

?Oh,? I said to him. And then I told him something. It was a pretty big something.

And I concluded, ?I?ve never told anyone that before,? and that was true, and it is still true.

???

Josh Larson is holding a clipboard. He has a question for me. ?Did you? understand that the game itself is supposed to be hopeful??

?Yes,? I tell him reluctantly. ?Yes, because even when you?re trapped on certain narrative circuits ? ?

He?s still alive.

? ? there?s this perpetual forward motion, a momentum, where you aren?t really trapped, there?s always, uh ? ?

He?s still alive.

I tell Josh I tried to make a game once, in Twine, and I only ever showed it to a few people, but in it there is no narrative direction; the player just circles hopelessly. There is no narrative hope.

?But with something like this,? I tell Josh Larson, ?you dedicate years of your life, and the person, ah ? ?

He?s still alive.

I sob.

? ? the person still dies, no matter how long you take, no matter what you do.? I barely manage to work these words out.

This isn?t constructive criticism at all. It is hopelessness, hopelessness in the face of Josh Larson and Ryan Green?s hope.

???

Still, I keep thinking about my favorite thing about my mother ? a weird thing to love, just some human failing, a secret I kept for her ? and I suddenly remember I had two or three extra years with her, and

He?s still alive.

and she?s gone, she?s gone, and now I have all this love and no place to put it.

S

I carefully take the headphones from around my neck and set them in front of me.

?Well,? Josh Larson says to me, sighing deeply but smiling, ?I?m glad we could give you twenty minutes of peace.?

I look at him, and then I stare down at my lap, and I realize he?s right. For twenty minutes I?ve been in another place ? in its own fucked way it was safe there ? and now I?m back. I nod.

???

This is admittedly a pretty audacious effort, to invent an entire game narrative about this one event that ? how can I say this in a gracious way ? hasn?t transpired yet. Yet.

This is an ugly truth, but look. This is probably coming. I?m sorry. This is a game about something that is only inevitably coming.

But it?s coming for all of us.

And that is the loveliest thing about That Dragon, Cancer: we will all meet this thing, or have already met it. Maybe that should be scary, but That Dragon, Cancer is about sustaining the hope and joy of life for just as long as we can.

I like poetry. That Dragon, Cancer is entirely made up of poetry. An old poetry professor of mine is waiting to die of some rare blood cancer. The wonderful thing about his certain-death cancer is, he could die tomorrow, or he could die at ninety. ?Certain death? is incredibly silly that way.

What was it e.e. cummings said? It was some line of poetry. How did it go? It went something like, ?for life?s not a paragraph. And death I think is no parenthesis.? I have no idea what it means; I just like it.

???

I was confused. Wasn?t there anything else to do? I scanned my cursor across the ICU.

I wasn?t sure I?d found the demo?s end, and then I remembered those strange words: ?Thank you.?

I nodded and took the headphones off, and then I looked for Josh.

???

Jenn Frank is Unwinnable's editorial director. Her writing has also appeared at 1UP, Vice Motherboard, GameSetWatch, Jezebel, the New York Times, and in Kill Screen Magazine. She lives with a miniature schnauzer. Follow her on Twitter @Jennatar.

Learn more about That Dragon, Cancer at its development blog.

This post was republished with permission.

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Source: http://kotaku.com/cancer-the-video-game-471333034

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Steep Apple, Samsung price cuts blast rivals across the globe

Smartphones

A string of recent iPhone and Galaxy price cuts has rocked the phone markets from Europe to Brazil to India. This is the season for price cuts from Apple (AAPL) and Samsung (005930), and we see the same thing every year. But this time around, the cuts are more severe than we have ever seen before. Some pricing on Galaxy S models in Asia have dropped by nearly 50% as Samsung battles back against the insurgency of upstart brands like Micromax and Karbonn. The Galaxy S III?s price in Europe has plunged by nearly 40% from June 2012 as Samsung prepares to debut the Galaxy S4. Apple?s iPhone 4 has dipped to just $270 in Brazil. In India, Apple now offers to pay 7,000 rupees?for old smartphones from consumers who trade them in towards an iPhone 4 ? probably the most aggressive promotion Apple has ever launched over there.

[More from BGR: Google Fiber has cost less than $100 million to launch so far]

The impact of these moves is already becoming evident in Europe. The widely followed USwitch smartphone sales tracker now shows five Samsung models and three Apple models in the U.K.?s top-10 chart. Discounted models from the two giants have knocked out all of BlackBerry (BBRY), LG (066570) and Nokia?s (NOK) handsets, which still showed up in the January-February charts. Back in January, no fewer than four Nokia models made the top-10 list.

[More from BGR: Apple?s vision of a tablet-laptop hybrid finally comes into focus]

In the spring of 2012, both Samsung and Apple were still enjoying strong volume growth and market share gains practically across the globe. But by Christmas 2012, Apple?s global smartphone volume growth cooled to 29%, below the industry average; and Samsung?s market share had started slipping a notch in India. Both Apple and Samsung are now getting a lot more aggressive with pricing and promotions. The overall smartphone volume growth has dropped from 50%-plus in January 2012 to around 35% in Q1 2013.

The impact on smaller rivals in Q2 2013 could be profound. As relatively fresh high-end models like the Samsung Galaxy Note II suddenly drop to the medium price bracket, they put a lot of pressure on HTC (2498), LG, Nokia and BlackBerry ? brands that are trying to recover from extremely weak performances in 2012. Apple?s notable April aggression in emerging markets like India and Brazil may be a sign that it plans to get far rougher on budget rivals in 2013 than it has ever been before.

It could well be that the second quarter?this year will be one of those watershed quarters when market shares swing sharply after a period of slower change. As mobile handset vendors prepare to report their Q1 2012 numbers, it makes sense to pay particular attention to the spring guidance; the game is now changing radically from the January-March period.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/steep-apple-samsung-price-cuts-blast-rivals-across-153003084.html

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