The plan will be announced by New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at Bill Clinton's Health Matters Conference today. In addition to the high-tech tracking, the cops are also providing individual consulting on security measures to the 6,000-odd pharmacies in New York City. [AP/WaPo via Betabeat]
Image via jordache/ Shutterstock.com
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5975060/if-you-dont-think-4k-is-freaking-awesome-theres-something-wrong-with-you
The entirety of CES was both an ornate celebration and obnoxious whine-fest about 4K television. The charges are simple:
Ergo, 4K sucks and is irrelevant. CES sucks! This sucks!
That attitude couldn't be less appropriate, or more disheartening. There's no doubt that 4K is all of these bad things right now, and out of reach. But it's also, retina for retina, one of the most amazing things my eyes have observed, ever. It's technology that makes you smile because of how impressive it is. It's technology that doesn't seem possible—looking at Sony's OLED 4K was almost giggle-inducing, it seemed so fantastic compared to what we have now. Colors aren't supposed to look like that! You're not supposed to be able to see the details in someone's hair this way! But you can—or rather, you will, as soon these televisions are put on shelves with price tags that align themselves with our actual livelihoods.
And it will. I promise you, it will. I know because the exact same thing already transpired in the history of technology. The exact same thing. We're quick to sink into forgetfulness and cynicism, but turn your clocks back to 1998 if you can, the year in which the New York Times published this article: HDTV: High Definition, High in Price
AFTER more than a decade of research and political debate, most of the world's consumer-electronics manufacturers have announced their plans and prices for the new high-definition television sets that go on sale in September. And talk about sticker shock: the least expensive ones will cost $8,000.
That $8,000 number is almost $12,000 in today's inflated dollars, and keep in mind the enormity of these impending 4K sets, which dwarf any early HDTV predecessors. The display technology is also massively more sophisticated, too. Still: the most impressive, amazingly vivid picture anyone had ever seen was something almost nobody could afford. At first. And why bother? Everyone was still renting VHS movies anyway. It's almost as if we were faced with a brand new technology of unprecedented visual amazement that cost too much, didn't have any available content, and seemed entirely impractical.
Now department stores try to liquidate this same technology every Black Friday.
This cycle will repeat. You will be able to afford something absolutely mesmerizing to replace the TV you have now—a TV that'll make watching Chinatown, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, and Downton Abbey more enjoyable than it's ever been. A TV that'll make viewing your huge DSLR photos more gratifying than they've ever been. A dazzling, bright screen for doing dazzling video things that haven't even been invented yet. And how can anyone be anything but thrilled for that? Are any of you so cynical that you'd rather throw up your hands and tilt your nose back at a technology that hasn't even had a chance yet? This is science fiction stuff—screens that approach reality! Kick yourself in the ass if that's not something that makes you grin, even if it'll only make sense in 2022.
Until then, let yourself be amazed and excited. This isn't some bullshit buzz melange, a better cloud or faster stream or bigger screen. This is a genuine leap forward toward a big rectangle that will sit in your house and stimulate your brain's pleasure areas. The bleeding tip of tech has always been a little aspirational, so let's let it be. We shouldn't spend the years between us and 4K as drooling, ogling consumers, but we shouldn't spend them as eye-rolling skeptics, either. Let's just smile, wait, and let our geeky corneas sizzle in anticipation. It'll be worth it—I promise you.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5976114/the-x-house-isnt-not-a-trance-album-but-its-incredible
Designed by Spanish architecture firm Cadaval & Solà-Morales, the awe-inspiring pad is basically two intersecting rectangular structures with four triangular recesses. One on the side avoids a tree, the other gives a view of neighboring houses, the back one is home to the garage, and the front—the pièce de résistance—is made entirely of windows for an incredible view of the hills below. Whether they're classic Gaudí creations or modern structures like this one, the buildings in Barcelona are consistently incredible. The X House is no exception. The owners better have awesome parties. [Dezeen]
Facebook's search has been convoluted and weak for years until now—it's hard to expect what you get when you type anything in, even if it's your best friend's name. People, pages, maybe places. Boring and often broken. But with today's search monster, Zuckerberg isn't just offering you a way to find your friends (or college frenemies). And it's beyond just some attempt at a Google replacement. It's an attempt to do what Google failed at doing—pulling all the information that matters to you within the context of your social life, skipping the results that are popular to The Internet, in favor of the results that are popular within a group you actually give a damn about. Not a horde of strangers. Everyone you know uses Facebook, and now those people are going to work for you when you search.
For example: searching for a sushi restaurant won't just bring up a well-linked list a la Google. Instead, your restaurant query will be answered with a little help from your friends, presenting you with suggestions based on where your relations have checked in. Or if you're looking for music, the recent selections of your pals will inform the results. For any occasion, the answer doesn't lie with some invisible algorithm pointed out toward the web void, but at the people you know, who are doing or have done the thing you're talking about. Your friends' experiences will give you answers to what you're wondering. At least that's the idea. And if it works, we'll have all the reason to skip opening a new tab headed to Google.com—an enormous victory for Facebook, and a profound change in how we all use the Internet every single day.
Graph Search is a live, constantly updating list of results, triggered from a nice thick search box at the top left of the page. It changes as you type, a la Google's autocomplete queries.
As you start typing, say, "photos of my friends," results will pop up. If you add "taken in 2008," you'll get those photos.
Searches are built using simple, natural language searches. "Friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter." "What music do my friends like?" Even more complicated questions, like "People named Brian who went to Princeton and like Star Wars."
It looks incredibly fast, and allows for the kind of spastic hopping around that's become natural on Facebook. Every piece of data you share on Facebook, now searchable, will be privacy aware—meaning it's only available to the friends you want it to be available to, not the web. You won't be dumped into some Internet database.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5976140/rezhound-will-fetch-you-a-table-at-[insert-exclusive-restaurant]-anytime
![Rezhound Will Fetch You a Table at [Insert Exclusive Restaurant] Anytime](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18bl8492fs0jfpng/original.png "Rezhound Will Fetch You a Table at [Insert Exclusive Restaurant] Anytime")
Pick your region, then pick the restaurant you want to go to, the size of your party, and the time and date you want to go. Give Rezhound your email, and they'll let you know when that exclusive restaurant you've been dying to get into for months has a table for you. Magic. Delicious, ingenious magic. [h/t Twitter]
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