geekosystem

A study released this week finds that not all aggression associated with gaming is created equal. Reporting their findings in the latest issue of the journal Mass Communication and Society, researchers from the University of Connecticut found that games in which the villains are clearly human may make players more aggressive than those where the player is battling hordes of inhuman monsters.

Tomorrow is Microsoft's big Xbox event, so to try and steal their thunder Sony released a sneak peek of the PS4 hardware. It's a blurry wide shot of the box cut, with quick flashes of close ups. If they showed the box itself we'd be excited. Instead we're just disappointed -- again. Sony, if you want to steal someone's thunder by showing your junk -- you need to show your junk. Let's break down this failure frame by frame.

Since I'm a rational, right-thinking person, it should come as no surprise that the last two Batman games -- Arkham Asylum and Arkham City -- rank among my favorite video game offerings in recent memory. With Rockstar giving up development duties for the series, though, my excitement for Arkham Origins has been tempered. The fact that one of my favorite DCU villains -- the assassin and Dark Knight arch-rival Deathstroke -- will be playable in the upcoming title, could change that. All of a sudden, that teaser vid for the title we were so excited about makes way more sense, so congratulations, Arkham Origins: I am officially psyched for you to come out.

If you haven't played Team Fortress 2, you should really go do that. The team-based shooter video game's found a kind of longevity that publishers and developers that aren't Valve dream about. TF2's received numerous updates over the years, dropped to being a free-to-play game, and even added a third faction of robotic enemies. Community-made items have appeared in various packs over time, but their latest update is the first that's been 100% made by the community.

While being fitted for an ankle monitor -- the must-have spring accessory for any fashion forward petty criminal -- a 16-year-old burglar in the United Kingdom had a brainstorm, taking off for a brisk run around his block before returning. The young convict wasn't trying to escape his captors, though -- just irk them. By taking a dash around the neighborhood while his ankle monitor was being set, the hoodlum expanded the range of his own captivity.

During the Balkan wars in the 1990's, an estimated 90,000 land mines were deployed in the region. They were mostly deployed at random without a map of their location, so finding them is a difficult and serious problem. To help find the remaining mines, Croatian professor Nikola Kezic and his team are training honeybees to sniff out explosives.

Summer is on its way, which means it's just about time to start converting your sick leave into three day weekends for the coming months. How to make sure your boss doesn't call your bluff, though? Well, today brings us a small good thing -- a veritable litany of excuses not to use when taking a sick day. A British healthcare provider's survey of 1,000 employers and 1,000 employees has turned up some of the world's lamest excuses for not being able to come into work, including gems like "My fish is sick" and the just-vague-enough-to-be-troubling "I've injured myself during sex." 

Using just LEGO and Bionicle pieces, builder Robiwan Kenobi has crafted the LEGO answer to any problem -- the LEGO Swiss Army knife. The contraption features a LEGO blade, saw, toothpick and what looks to be a screwdriver arm, all of which fold in and out of the body, just like a real Swiss Army knife. The only thing it won't do is actually cut anything, but come one -- how often do you use a Swiss Army knife for that?

The news broke yesterday that Yahoo will pay $1.1 billion for the Internet's foremost source for cat GIFs and teenage poetry, Tumblr. Not everyone is taking the news well, but Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has stated that she promises "not to screw it up." Then she outlined a plan to feature more ads on Tumblr. That sounds a lot like screwing up Tumblr.

Yahoo is holding a big media event in New York tomorrow, at which everyone was expecting them to announce they would be buying Tumblr. Instead of waiting for the big event, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo's board has approved the Tumblr purchase and its $1.1 billion price tag, which will be paid in cash.

We don't know a lot about the Google-built media player, other than the fact that Google made it, and it's a media player, but the device's FCC filing does reveal one interesting tidbit: The model number is H2G2-42. Yeah, you're not seeing things, it's absolutely a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Someone has a sense of humor, or we're getting a really awesome media player at some point.

Last night, National Review Online writer Kevin Williamson lived out our collective dreams and tossed the phone of a fellow audience member into the wings of a small outdoor theater. Part of us wants to call Williamson a hero, but polity brings us up short on that point. The cure for rudeness shouldn't be more rudeness, and grabbing someone's phone is likely to land you in some legal trouble or a fistfight, depending on the demeanor of the person whose phone you just threw. It's just bad behavior all the way around, and though it's tempting to, we can't condone any of it.

Chris Hadfield had us riveted with his stream of updates from the International Space Station. We learned so much about life in space, not just from someone who had been there, but from someone while they were still there. We were a little sad to see Hadfield leave the ISS earlier this month, but we're glad he's back safely, and that he's still tweeting about every step of the readjustment process.

If you weren't already aware, the Sun's been seeing a whole lot of action of late. Like, it's still being the Sun, but it's also putting out incredible X-class solar flares, complete with coronal mass ejections. The latter doesn't necessarily require the former, though, and that's where we find ourselves at currently. Thanks to a couple of coronal mass ejections yesterday, there's a good chance we're going to get some geomagnetic storm activity over the next few days.

With all the hubbub surrounding the landing of the Curiosity rover, folks tend to forget that it's not the only device operating on the planet. The Opportunity rover's still kicking up there, for example, and it's hauling butt to get the job done. It's been hauling so much butt, in fact, that on Thursday it broke NASA's 40-year-old record for total distance traveled on a world other than Earth.

Today at 12:00 PM EDT J.J. Abrams and the cast of Star Trek Into Darkness will have a Google Hangout with astronauts, including Chris Cassidy, one of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station who recently went on a space walk to fix an ammonia leak on the station. You can watch the whole thing right here, and we even have the details on how you can try to get a question in.

Okay, so, don't freak out or anything, but Earth's atmosphere is escaping. Ridiculously slowly, I should say, and there's no concern that it'll happen at any point soon. We're talking billions of years before it's gone. MinuteEarth breaks it all down in this handy video, but it's pretty much a problem of our hydrogen and helium trying to get the heck out of here whenever they can.

I'm a big fan of "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer. You might not know the name, though you really should, but you've likely heard the song at some point. It's literally just Lehrer singing the elements on the periodic table while playing the piano. It's great, and no other song about the periodic table has ever come close to dislodging it from the cockles of my heart. Enter AsapSCIENCE's new periodic table song.

If you're not great at doing math in your head, you're in pretty good company around these parts. In general, too -- an estimated 20% of otherwise healthy adults regularly struggle to do basic arithmetic without showing their work. Don't give up hope, though! A new treatment being studied at Oxford University could make you better at doing math in your head for up to six months at a time -- and all you have to do is put on what looks like a steampunk gimp mask and let someone deliver electrical shocks to your brain!

On a recent expedition, researchers from Imperial College London discovered an ancient fossil from Earth's cambrian period that had never been seen before. The long lost relative of animals like lobsters and scorpions had one clear connection to both of those animals -- a set of arms ending in scissor-like pincers. The appendages instantly reminded team members of the iconic character of Edward Scissorhands, and thus, Kooteninchela deppi -- the first fossil creature named in honor of actor Johnny Depp -- was born.

Last night was the finale of this season of Doctor Who and we're now left wanting until the 50th Anniversary special airs on November 23rd. That's going to be a long six months for fans of the show, but thankfully the BBC seems to be dribbling out bits of information about the 50th. They've even released some behind-the-scenes stuff like this clip of Matt Smith and David Tennant having a chat about what it's like to be The Doctor.

Hollywood and the film industry at large are notoriously wary of spilling the beans about, well, anything. They'd rather not confirm anything. Teasing up until the very last minute is more their style, as everyone that follows entertainment news is well aware. The further away from release, the more likely this kind of winking is to happen. These guidelines apparently do not apply to Joss Whedon.

One of the issues that people have with J.J. Abrams on both Star Wars and Star Trek is the idea that he's going to end up confusing the two somehow. What, exactly, does that mean? It's hard to say, but Official Comedy's taken a stab at what they think must be going on with J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Wars.

It wouldn't be an inaccurate statement to say that the prospect of a Zombieland show over at Amazon initially piqued the interest of pretty much everyone here. Like, the movie, but a show? Sign us up! Or so we once foolishly thought. That was before the pilot dropped and shattered every dream we had about seeing Columbus and the gang in a new series. Amazon Studios apparently agreed, as they've officially passed on the show.