So, if you haven’t been keeping up on the Minecraft 1.9 prereleases, you’ve been missing out on a lot of crazy new features. Since 1.8.1, things like dragons, alchemy, and a whole new dimension — The End — have been added to the game piecemeal,  so there’ll be a lot to catch up on come full release on the 18th. And if all doesn’t sound wild enough, 1.9 prerelease 6 adds an ending sequence and credits. Ladies and Gentlemen: You can now beat Minecraft.

When NBC fired Conan O’Brien last year in favor of giving Jay Leno his time slot back, they worked out a deal in which O’Brien was forbidden from appearing on TV and/or disparaging the network that dangled the Tonight Show in front of him and then snatched it back. What we do know is that not long after that deal was made, O’Brien took to Twitter. What we didn’t know until now was that NBC wanted that Twitter account shut down. Because when you’ve already disappointed so many fans in the 18 to 49 demographic, why not go big or go home? Definitely go after a former employee’s Twitter account. Brilliant!

The BBC is reporting that U.K. ambulance services are having to upgrade their equipment to handle an increasing number of heavy patients. Wider and heavy-duty stretchers, lifting apparatus, and automobile reinforcements are among some of the purchases. One London-based ambulance firm has purchased two “bariatric” vehicles with a third on the way.

(more…)

We’re not particular fans of Zynga here, but we are fans of ironic coincidences.

It seems like the tides of history effect even our virtual communities, just perhaps a little slower.  2008 was the point at which more than 50% of the human race was living in cities rather than rural areas, and now,

As of today, CityVille, the new city management game by Zynga that launched last month, has over 90 million active users per month, far surpassing FarmVille’s current numbers by over 30 million.

CityVille, in its first month, has not only surpassed FarmVille’s current population, it’s surpassed FarmVille’s highest ever population, which it achieved last March.

Augmented reality refers to virtually changing a live view of something real. Essentially, reality is being bent to the will of something virtual. Generally, a lot of hacks nowadays feature new and interesting ways to augment reality with technology, but the augmenting social norms didn’t stop Michael Winston Dales from making reality bend to Minecraft’s will, rather than the other way around.

An international group of scientists are working on a project that aims to simulate everything happening on Earth, dubbed the Living Earth Simulator (LES), for the purposes of understanding–I’m not even kind of, sorta of, slightly embellishing–what is taking place on our planet. Read on past the break for details.

You know the Madden Curse? That seemingly impossible, yet oddly convincing curse that befalls players who have appeared on the covers of the Madden video game box art, in which their careers usually take a turn for the worse after appearing on said box art? Well, Electronic Arts is working on a movie about the Madden Curse. The best part about this? It’s not a documentary. Read on past the break for some comedy.

Zhang Chuanqiu, pictured above, sustained a pretty gruesome injury after he was chained to a cowshed due to a dispute with village officials regarding a loan in Hunan, China in 2005. The shackles were applied so tightly that his skin eventually grew over the chains and Zhiang is currently trying to amass the £1,000 surgeons told him the surgery would cost.

A new species of all-female lizard that reproduces via cloning has been discovered in the most unlikely of places: On the menus of small rural Vietnamese diners.

Ngo Van Tri, researcher of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, apparently first saw the lizard, now named Leiolepis ngovantrii, in tanks at a diner at which he was eating. He noticed all of the lizards were female, and contacted friend and herpetologist Dr. Lee Grismer, who then flew out to the restaurant in order to confirm the discovery. The restaurant owner said he’d keep a stash of the creatures waiting for the team.

A booklet included in the garishly-named Super Mario Collection Special Pack contains Shigeru Miyamoto’s original plans for Super Mario Bros., which included Mario flying around with the help of a rocket and having rifles and beam guns available for use.