geekosystem

Don't let the children's songs and sweet treats fool you -- it turns out that ice cream truck drivers can be just as cutthroat as the rest of us. Police in Gloversville, New York, have filed charges against two ice cream truck drivers there for harassing and stalking a third ice cream man working for a competitor.

Between traffic, crowds, and inane drive-time DJs, you might think nothing could make your commute worse. Think again. According to an officer of the New York subway system, a planned train line extension in the city could be plagued by an unexpected menace -- electric eels. Just how the eels would get to New York from their mostly tropical homes remains a mystery, but as someone who rides the New York subway every day, I can confirm that it wouldn't really surprise anyone.

36-year-old Matthew Matagrano, pictured above, is a convicted sex offender. That's not what got him in his latest legal trouble, though, as he was arrested last month for impersonating a corrections officer so he could be back in the place he loved the most -- Rikers Island, where he posed as an employee at the jail for at least a week. It looks like Matagrano, who has expressed a desire to return to jail,  will get his wish, as the DA prosecuting his case is seeking to have Matagrano locked up for at least a decade. Sounds like a win-win to us.

Crimes related to the theft of pharmaceuticals are a growing problem in and around New York City. Have no fear, though -- the city's police department has the answer, and it's only mostly a George Orwell wet dream. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced today that the NYPD would take the unprecedented step of attaching GPS tags to prescription pill bottles, allowing the bottles -- and the person they're with -- to be tracked in the event that the drugs are stolen.

As sure as day passes into night, it seems that the rich get...well, not richer, exactly, but in New York today, plenty of them got word that they would be able to drop at least one bill. That's because the city's Chelsea neighborhood -- home to some of the cities highest-end shopping and most expensive apartments -- is about to get free Wi-Fi courtesy of Google, whose New York headquarters are in the neighborhood. With this move, Google has raised getting public relations credit for doing what amounts to absolutely nothing to an art form.

The Staten Island Advance is reporting that a pony and a zebra are at large on the island, just strolling around the borough like they own the place, and the paper has the grainy cell phone video to prove it. The horses have been at large since at least this morning, when a resident witnessed them running through a parking lot. Keep reading for the most adorable footage of a Staten Island parking lot you're likely to see ever.

We rounded up our favorite things from this weekend's Maker Faire yesterday, and now it's time for some photos of the event. Take a look at some of the more awesome things we saw in the flesh. Well, okay, technically the metal and plastic, mostly. Still, enjoy!

Ants do all sorts of things we think of as human activities. Some of them are kind of endearing, like keeping farms of aphids. Others remind us of our ugly side, and none more so than the work of Protomognathus americanus, the American slavemaker ant, which has evolved to stop foraging for food, and instead steal larvae from the colonies of other ant species, and then raise them as slaves. A recent study demonstrated that, unlike some newscasters we know, enslaved ants don't take life in captivity lying down, instead working to destroy the slavemaker colony and killing up to three out of four of their captors' children.

Any New York State-based sex offenders who are into online gaming are about to get an unpleasant surprise when they discover their accounts on Xbox Live and a number of other online gaming services have been terminated. As part of Operation: Game Over, NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has announced that over 3,500 accounts tied to sex offenders in New York have been terminated. Xbox Live is the only service mentioned by name in the press release, but the companies Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Disney, Warner Bros. and Sony are all lumped in as well. They are responsible for other online gaming services like PlayStation Network, Origin, and Battle.net between them.

Back in January of last year, Hudson Urban Bicycles proposed a bold experiment: Leave a locked-up bike on the streets of New York's SoHo neighborhood and take a photograph of it every day. Like the crumbling of a mountain side from eons of erosion, the bike vanished bit by bit as it was stripped of its parts. It takes nearly six months before the first act of larceny occurs -- the theft of the bike's water bottle -- and it's all downhill from there. By day 270, the bike is completely gone.

When school teacher Eric Schneider bought his Manhattan apartment in 2005, had achieved what, for most, is an unachievable dream. However, the realities of life in the big city can be daunting: His apartment was a mere 450 square-feet, and consisted of a single room with an attached kitchen. That's when architects Michael Chen and Kari Anderson at Normal Projects designed an amazing transforming cabinet that turned his studio into four room home. Read on after the break, and see how this tiny apartment unfolds into an amazing living space.

If you're anywhere on the East Coast, you may have felt a little shaking. We did too. A 5.9 magnitude quake in Virginia was felt all up and down the east coast around 2:00pm EST today. According to early Twitter and social media accounts, the shaking was felt everywhere from Virginia up to New York City. It's worth noting that the last time NYC experienced anything that could even be loosely considered an earthquake was way back in August of 1884, so even just a little wobble is pretty weird. I figured I was just a little dizzy, and then that maybe everyone was just a little dizzy, and then that there was some kind of earthquake going on.

Following the strongest Colorado earthquake in a century, it kind of makes you wonder what kind of party is going on in our earthy basement. Maybe that 2012 date was a little off. Or if you're from the West Coast, maybe it makes you wonder if New Yorkers will freak out about anything.

The graph below puts the magnitude into perspective.

Josh Owens' time lapse video of New York has confirmed that I will never, ever, get sick of time lapse videos. This one is particularly fun, since it captures the little details: Buildings blink like 1950s computer mainframes, an office party blunders onward, and elevators bounce like pogo sticks. Watch and enjoy. (via Laughing Squid)

Yesterday, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYC chief digital officer Rachel Sterne unveiled an ambitious set of proposals for becoming the #1 digital city in America. Following a 90-day review of the city's current place and progress in digital initiatives, here's the ambitious set of objectives they've come up with:

As every observational comic who lives in New York knows, MTA buses are slow. Not content to merely proclaim this fact for the laughs of a knowing audience, comedian Mark Malkoff actually tested this hypothesis out, mounting a Big Wheel kids' tricycle and racing a bus a mile from 10th Avenue to Madison Avenue. Without spoiling the outcome, MTA buses really are slow. The race begins at the 50-second mark, though the setup is worth watching. (My Damn Channel via Neatorama)