geekosystem

Last night, SNL sent up CBS' reality show Undercover Boss with the inevitable Undercover Celebrity Boss, in which celebrity bosses go undercover at their own companies, to comedic result. Steve Jobs, we learn, just can't stop pitching stuff: even as a janitor, as played by Fred Armisen, he hawks the revolutionary "iTrash," which plays music (even when it doesn't), as well as the iTrash Shuffle. Richard Branson, for his part, blows his cover by flying into work on a space shuttle. Also: shouting "I'm Richard Branson." (h/t Gawker.tv)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has posted a striking visualization of the energy dissipated by the earthquake in Chile.

As you can see from the picture, almost the entire Pacific Ocean felt some effects from the quake. Note that the red reappears on coastlines as far as Alaska's.

Earlier this month, we featured a couple of steampunk inspired weapons crafted by the Colorado based artist Jonathan Alberico.  Alberico now has two more devices to share, a shoulder-mounted hand-cranked lantern (pictured above), and a lightning gun, painted by Jamie Walborn. Both are available on eBay.

Videos after the jump. 

This has been a great week for conspiracy theorists as the U.S. Defense Department unveiled their new logo for their missiles system. Pictured on the left there, you can see how it bears a resemblance to President Barack Obama's campaign design. But also, the Islamic crescent symbol and the Iranian Space logo.

We could have seen this coming based on past tragedies like the Haiti earthquake last month, but that doesn't make it any less wrong: hackers are already exploiting the widespread concern over the earthquake in Chile and the threat of tsunamis to infect people's computers with malware and viruses.

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

Warning: Sam O'Hare's movie is not what it seems. It is not a stop motion film using miniatures. It is time lapse footage of New York City put together from tilt-shifted photographs. Enjoy.

Meet Robo Thespian, a robot actor who would love to come to your science center or museum in order to educate and interact with your customers. As he explains in one of the videos on his website, RoboThespian.com, he is powered by a great number of servos and pneumatic tubes, allowing even such detailed operations as individual finger movement. He is equipped with the latest Anti-Uncanny-Valley technology: big, expressive eyes and exaggerated facial features. He is programmable by his user in fifteen languages (because what I really need is a Robo Thespian who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators). Video of him monologuing after the jump.

Within minutes of the earthquake just off of Chile's coast early this morning, the US Geological Survey had it pegged - an 8+ on the Richter scale, ten times as strong as Haiti's 7.0.

A short time later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presented a map of expected energy distribution throughout the Pacific Ocean. In other words, where one could expect tsunamis. Hawaii, it appeared, was well within the danger zone.

The state moved into action, sounding tsunami warning alarms before sunrise, evacuating beaches and low-lying areas, sending boats out of harbors and into the open sea, where surges of high water posed no harm. KHON Fox 2 in Honolulu went on the air, exploring possible ramifications and providing updates.

Then someone put a camera in front of his TV, aimed it at KHON, and put it on Ustream.tv. At its peak, the stream had over 80,000 viewers.

Neill Cameron, the British artist behind Bulldog Empire and Classical Comics' Henry V, gave himself an artistic challenge last summer. Over 26 days, he would make 26 drawings, one for each letter of the alphabet. For his daily subject, he would use suggestions given to him through his blog, twitter, and a Facebook group set up for the project.

The criteria? That the suggestion be awesome.

Sherlock Holmes is a strange literary phenomenon; inspiring one of the very first examples of what today we would consider fandom. If you have not read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, there are two things you must know about the Great Detective that are usually (not always, but usually) ignored when he is repackaged for a mainstream audience.

• He was addicted to cocaine.
• He faked his own death and disappeared for three years.

If this sounds good to you, Neatorama has a handy guide (an excerpt from Ransom Riggs' The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: The Methods and Mysteries of the World's Greatest Detective) to faking your death the Sherlock Holmes way, even going as far as to suggest some improvements on his method.

Nintendo held its Q1 Media Summit on Wednesday, and, while it announced release dates for Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M, it remained mum on one of its other beloved franchises: Legend of Zelda. In an interview with Cammie Dunaway, the executive vice president of Nintendo of America, Wired has managed to confirm that a new Legend of Zelda will be coming out this year, thus completing a powerful three sided something-or-other of gaming bliss. Hmm. There's something else Zelda-related that's triangular, isn't there? Arg. We just can't remember. Anyway, Wired's Chris Kholer admits that he owes somebody a steak dinner.

It's been declared a state of emergency in Hawaii, where officials have started to plan for the possible tsunami caused by yesterday's earthquake in Chile. The first waves are expected to hit at 4:19 EST this afternoon. Sirens blare to alert residents in the coastal areas to instruct them to evacuate, even as Hilo International Airport has been shut down and the planes grounded. American officials are prepared to visit both Chile and Hawaii, according to a Washington Post report.

This wicked looking scythe of a rotor blade belongs to Eurocopter's new initiative to create a quieter, less noise polluting helicopter. Called the Blue Edge, its distinctive shape makes a helicopter quieter by 3 or 4 decibels (remember that the decibel scale is a logarithmic one, so this is a bigger difference than it might seem). Eurocopter's new blades also use flaps on their trailing edges that pulse 15 to 40 times a second.

Wired says:

Both of these technologies are able to reduce noise by minimizing the blade-vortex interaction of the main rotor on a helicopter. Blade-vortex interaction is the source of the pulsating sound most of us are familiar with when helicopters fly overhead. The noise is created when a rotor blade hits the wake vortex left behind from the blade in front of it.

Earlier this week, 2K Games announced that they are in development of Civilization V, promising that this fall a lot of gamers will loose several months of their lives to hexagons and world domination. Just one more turn, right? 2k Games has since released the first trailer for the new Sid Meier game, embedded after the jump, for your convenience.

Gray goo is totally on the way, guys -- the boffins at the University of Bath have developed a 3D printer that can create copies of itself. Soon, your collection of hand-painted Warhammer 40K figurines will be worthless, drowned in a sea of cheaply auto-molded replicas! (Maybe.)