Every child wants to be a superhero at some point, but few actually get the opportunity to do it. Kye of Arlington, Texas, who suffers from leukemia, had the distinct good fortune of getting to be the caped crusader for a day and bringing two villains to justice. The stunt was organized by the nonprofit organization A Wish With Wings, which helped wrangle up some camera men, and the local police, who helped little Batman wrangle some baddies.

Mojang, indie-superstar turned up-and-coming publisher sweetheart, has just increased its numbers by four after absorbing the main developers of Bukkit, an extremely popular Minecraft server mod. Bukkit sprung up in early 2011 largely because the server implementation in vanilla Minecraft was, and for the moment still is, lacking at best. On top of that, mod implementation (particularly multiplayer mod implementation) is practically impossible in vanilla Minecraft. Minecrafters, your crazy server problems are not long for this world.

Back when I was a kid, I thought that cars should have a variety of different honks. I know you can honk differently, but I mean completely different honks devoted to things like “thanks” and “sorry, my bad” in addition to the standard “AHHHH!” I’ll admit it’s a pretty inelegant solution compared to Gagandeep‘s questionably legal, back window LED matrix, although his intention was to be more specific with his criticism of other drivers.

The matrix, which is spaced such that it does not actually obscure the drivers view (when it’s off anyways), 40 x 16 grid of LED lights. The grid itself is somewhat fragile, the cost of its transparency, but it appears to work just fine, and shouldn’t have to really  be moved for any reason. At the moment, it just displays hardcoded text, but Gagandeep has aspirations of modifying it to update by text message. This should definitely allow him to be more scathingly critical than a plain old horn.

Pictures after the jump.

It seems like a pretty simple bet, right? That is, until Twitter goes all Twitter on the thing and the tweet gets hundreds upon hundreds of retweets. After tweeting the above message, the man operating the Twitter account for Poultry Keeper went home for the weekend and came back to find about 23,000 retweets and that the tweet had made it into Twitter’s top 100. Do a little math (and conversion) and you’ll find that this guy’s boss technically owes him about £11,000 or or $17,000. Needless to say, the boss is chickening out.

Of course, who would really demand that their boss fork over that kind of money over a friendly bet. Maybe demand a few free lunches, 20 bucks, but not the whole kit and kaboodle. Besides, while it proves that a tweet like this can go viral, and fast, it remains to be seen whether or not Poultry Keeper will actually benefit from this viral outbreak. I know I’ll go to Poultry Keeper next time I need whatever they offer (don’t ask me what that is) but it’s possible this tweet just got their name out there and will be forgotten by the time everyone needs poultry. Still, the moral of the story: Never make bets where your payout is variable and always make bets when the other person’s is.

(via The Next Web)

The group Exit Deutschland, which aims to help youths escape the Neo-Nazi subculture in Germany, has found a new and subtle way of communicating with their target audience. At a recent rock concert targeted at right-wing extremists, the group anonymously disseminated 250 black t-shirts emblazoned with skull and crossbones and the moto “Hardcore Rebels – National and Free.” However, once the shirts were laundered they underwent a surprising transformation.

The skull motiff completely vanished in the wash, replaced by, “Was Dein T-Shirt Kann, Kannst Du Auch.” This translates to, “What your t-shirt can do, so can you” with information on contacting the Exit Deutschland organization. Exit-Deutschland’s co-founder Bernd Wagner said that goal was to communicate with youths at home, when they are alone.

To date, the group has helped 400 young people escape the Neo-Nazi subculture, but Wagner says that wasn’t necessarily the goal behind the shirts. Instead, Wagner aims to simply present an offer that he hopes people will remember if they have a change of heart.

(Spiegel Online via Slashdot, image via hypervocal)

Pioneer Electronics, makers of high tech audio gear from car radios to DJ equipment, recently teamed up with a bunch of urban artists for the Pioneer DJ Art Mix Tour. Artists participating in the tour use the Pioneer CDJ-2000 Digital Music Player as a canvas for their creativity. So far, the resulting art has been pretty interesting, but there was one piece in particular that sent our geek hearts a-flutter.

Jesse Dean Designs made a LEGO version of the CDJ-2000 Digital Music Player. The LEGO music player is fully functional, and it’s pretty safe to say its awesomeness has been increased exponentially. To see the music player in action, check out the video below.

Clearly, those of us out there who imbibe video games on a regular basis have reason to be giddy; the Supreme Court of the United States has recognized that video games do receive First Amendment protection just like other mediums. Among other more minor things, this guarantees protected speech for video games until the Supreme Court rules otherwise. Given that this kind of case isn’t often revisited seriously, don’t expect to see a reversal on this, well, ever.

For all those rooting for video games, this definitely smacks of victory.

Ladies and Gentlemen, but mostly Gentlemen, it’s here. It’s finally here. The super snazzy and slammin’ Steam’s Summer Camp sale shopping spree will be going on from June 30th to July 10th. As usual, Steam has taken the liberty of marking down games and collections to ludicrously low prices this summer so that you can get excited about purchasing a couple dozen games that you desperately need to download but never actual install. But who cares, because it’s awesome. I won’t go into the whole list so you can experience the joy of discovery on your own, but suffice it to say, there is at least one fantastic collection of 15 or so games going for less than the standard price of one.

It’s not all fun and games though. Well, it is all games and it’s mostly fun, but point is that there’s some strategy to maximizing your savings. If you see that something you want is a “Daily Deal” snag it right away. But for anything that’s not, try to hold out until it is a daily deal or until the end of the sale, because the price is likely to drop. Or just be impatient, buy everything immediately, throw your hands in the air and run around screaming. Thats a completely valid choice if you can afford it. Thanks to Reddit for the strategy tips. Happy shopping.

(via Reddit)

Basically a staple in modern multiplayer gaming, Team Fortress 2 will be relaunched as a free-to-play title. Lately, many games are going free-to-play — generally MMOs that can’t stay afloat using a subscription model in the face of World of Warcraft’s dominance over the market — to much success, making their money via microtransactions, which is oddly a market strategy that most of the gaming world looks down upon. Why is it weird that TF2 is going free-to-play, then? Because it doesn’t operate under any kind of subscription model — it was purchased like any other game, then customers played it online. Yep, that means TF2, though old, is becoming a totally free game.

As anyone who knows TF2 can guess, Valve plans to continue making money off the game via microtransactions — you know, the much-maligned hats. That’s right, TF2 fans! Those hats you all hate but secretly bought a few of? They’re literally going to support your game. So, now you can go be the Medic and get blamed for whenever your teammates die for free. Check out an interview with TF2′s patriarch, Robin Walker, regarding the move to free-to-play.

(via Joystiq)

A few months ago, we reported that Civilization IV was the first video game to ever be nominated for a Grammy, with Christopher Tin’s “Babu Yetu,” otherwise known as the game’s title menu screen song that you’re always trying to sing along to but don’t know the words because it’s in Swahili. Well, Christopher Tin and Civilization IV Menu were made proud last night, when “Babu Yetu” won a grammy for “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists,” making it the first ever piece of video game music to bring home a gramophone-based trophy.