geekosystem

There are some things we've always just assumed about the Internet that we never bothered to look into too thoroughly. We know the Internet likes cats, we know people on Instagram think their food is super-interesting, and we know that the things people say on Twitter don't accurately reflect the popular opinion of society. Don't worry, though. Pew Research went ahead and double-checked that last one with a year-long study.

We felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of geek voices suddenly cried out in terror and suddenly went where no man has gone before. Because in the world of Presidential speech flubs -- and yes, that's a whole universe -- today's was pretty good. We geeks must set aside our differences, commiserate, and laugh together at the fact that President Obama just conflated Star Wars and Star Trek. But even the White House laughs with us.

In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama made several mentions of a commitment to science that caught our attention. Now it seems some details about those plans are surfacing. One area of study he mentioned in his speech was that scientists are working to map the human brain, and it's now being reported that the President wants to launch a decade-long program to create the most detailed map of the active human brain to date.

Patent trolls are the worst, and that's coming straight from the top. President Obama on Thursday answered a question about patent trolls during his Google+ Fireside Hangout, and he didn't have anything nice to say about them. The President didn't exactly call trolls "the worst," but his comments were not far off.

Was the State of the Union earlier this week fun, but just not enough President for you? Well, good news -- Obama is doing a Google Hangout, and we'll have the live stream right here. This isn't Obama's first "Fireside Hangout" -- he did one about a year ago -- but it's the first one of his second term, and hopefully a sign that these will be a habit going forward. Yes, it's going to be at least a little canned and PR-ish, but hey, it's the damn President, nothing's not at least sort of planned. Still, it's a fun way to be interactive that doesn't make anyone leave the office, and that works for us. Plus, you might get an answer for why the hell we still make pennies, and wouldn't that be nice?

In last night's State of the Union Address, President Obama called for... well, a lot of things. It's the State of The Union, it covers a lot of ground. One item high on the agenda, though, was improving cybersecurity around the nation. It was a timely concern, considering that Anonymous members were threatening to disrupt the online broadcast of the President's speech, a threat they failed to follow through on. Before he took the stage though, Obama had already signed an executive order in the hopes of strengthening America's infrastructure -- things like power grids and air traffic control systems -- against cyber attacks. While well meaning, though, the order is largely toothless.

Which are you more afraid of: Internet anarchists or Big Brother? Tonight, the live Internet feed of President Obama's State of the Union address may just get blocked by Anonymous, who've declared they would do so. Check the Internet tonight at 9PM Eastern Standard Time to find out if it really happens, but read on to find out why.

Not too long ago, the Obama administration offered a weak, but still welcome criticism of everyone's favorite cybersecurity bill CISPA. While the announcement then neither mentioned CISPA by name nor bring up the word "veto," there's been a follow-up announcement that does both. Yes, the Obama administration has issued a formal veto threat against CISPA, as is. In the coming days before the vote, CISPA does face some amendments, and I'd also like to remind you that a veto threat is worth as much as the paper it's printed on. In this case it's an email, but it's still better than an endorsement, right?

Artist Ron English gives us a glimpse at what happens when you make Obama angry. Weird thing is though, we like that he made Obama angry. And vascular. Sadly, the figure isn't purchasable, as English created the sculpture to be used in a currently undisclosed later work.

In the coming months, the Obama administration is planning on passing a new proposal, the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, to the U.S. Commerce Department regarding a national "cybersecurity measure" that will aim to give each U.S. citizen their own unique Internet ID, but U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke assures us, "We are not talking about a national ID card." Head on past the break to see if Locke can assuage your fears of Big Brother watching your every cyber-move.

Over the next 10 years, the White House said it will be nearly doubling the federal and commercial wireless spectrum in order to keep up with the explosive demand for smartphone and other wireless Internet device communications. President Barack Obama is expected to sign a memorandum today committing the federal government to auction off 500MHz of federal and commercial spectrum. National Economic Council director Lawrence H. Summers, who is to give a speech outlining the policy later today at Washington think tank New America Foundation, said: "This initiative will catalyze private sector investment, contribute to economic growth and help to create hundreds of thousands of jobs."

This is not an Onion headline: a geometry teacher in Alabama taught his students about parallel lines and angles using the charming example of assassinating President Obama.

The geometry teacher, who has not been named, was investigated by the Secret Service after word of his lesson got out, but the superintendent at the school where the teacher works, Corner High School, says that while the Obama assassination example showed "extremely poor judgment" on the teacher's part, there are no plans to fire him.

This afternoon, President Obama will be tasked with selling his new vision for American space exploration and the future of NASA, amidst a flurry of criticism from those who brought us into the Space Age. Even as he will be the first sitting president to speak at Kennedy Space Center since the Clinton Administration, he faces tough opposition. Apollo-era commanders Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and Eugene Cernan have released an open letter to the president, slamming the decisions to cancel the previous administration's Constellation moon mission and rocket development in favor of relying on private companies for future travel to the international space station and beyond.

President Obama has been historically a bit down on video games, readily associating them with bad parenting.  In spit of this, Joystiq reports today that Obama's fiscal commission has been communicating with Microsoft about creating a budget balancing game.

That is: Not a game that would teach people to balance their own budgets, but a game that would let others attempt to balance the federal budget, to promote public awareness of how difficult it is.  Commission co-chair Erskine Bowles said: "What you could get is support among the populace for the exceptionally unpopular things you need to do to solve this problem... [the game could] go viral."

Joystiq points out that it wouldn't be the first game built around balancing the United States federal budget, nor would it be the first game that tried to educate you about something decidedly un-game-like.  We list ten of the best, worst, and weirdest, after the jump.  Some of them you can even play in your browser: like, right now!

Barack Obama -- the same president who is a huge Spider-Man fan, casually drops references to dilithium crystals, and may or may not have made an "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" reference -- further fortified his geek cred yesterday, when he bought Matt Reinhart's Star Wars: a Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy as a gift for his press secretary's son.