Watson Swearing Robot Seal "Ze Bike Crank!"

Teaser medium

New law allows Netflix to help users spam movies to FB, Ze Frank is in Santa Cruz, Watson is introduced to Urban Dictionary, Amazon lets you get mp3s from CDs you purchased, and more Geeky news from Lindsey, Ben, and Lyle.

Drinking Mirror

Drinking Mirror app shows how long-term drinking can effect your facial appearance.

How much would you pay to send a FB message to someone famous?

In trying to decrease ‘spam’, Facebook is testing a feature on select users that would require a payment to send a message to another high-profile user.

Amazon offering free MP3s for CDs you bought.

If you purchased a CD from Amazon since 1998, you can now get an MP3 copy of that Album from the Amazon web site in 256-bit quality. They secured digital rights from the record companies, and launched a program called AutoRip to provide the downloads to users.

New video law lets you share your Netflix viewing on Facebook

This week Obama signed an amendment to a 1988 Law which allows you to share your Netflix viewing with Facebook. It allows consume opt-in and opt-out electronically – unlike the original law which required written consent.

Banks turn to NSA for help with DDoS attacks

A second wave of DDoS attacks has been bombarding the web servers of large US banks the past 2 weeks. The original wave was in September. Now the banks are turning to the NSA for help.

Verizon’s implementation of the 6-strikes piracy laws

For your first and second strike, Verizon will email you and leave you a voicemail informing you that your account is involved in copyright infringement. For your third and fourth strikes, the ISP will automatically redirect your browser to a page that requires you to acknowledge receiving the alerts. They’ll also play a video about the dangers of infringement. For your fifth and sixth strikes, they give you three options: massively throttle your connection for a few days, wait two weeks and then throttle your connection, or file an appeal with an arbitration service for $35. TorrentFreak points out that the MPAA and RIAA can obtain the connection information of repeat infringers, with which they can then take legal action.

Crowd Funding For Crank Physics Bike Crank

A new design for bicycle cranks violates basic principles of physics, but that’s not stopping the inventor of Z-Torque cranks from trying to raise thousands in start-up capital through crowd funding.

Paro Robot Seal

Ahh – is that a robot seal?

IBM's Watson Gets A 'Swear Filter' After Learning The Urban Dictionary

…..even with the help of human editors, the Urban Dictionary still turns out to be a rather profane place on the Web. The Urban Dictionary even defines itself as "a place formerly used to find out about slang, and now a place that teens with no life use as a burn book to whine about celebrities, their friends, etc., let out their sexual frustrations, show off their racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-(insert religion here) opinions, troll, and babble about things they know nothing about.

Being a bit more Private with Disconnect.me

Browser plugin that says Don’t let Facebook, Google, or Twitter follow you around the web. – and even one that shows you what is what.

And also see what they have to say about your security, not just your privacy Widgetjacking- Why more social widgets mean less secure Wi-Fi