It’s probably too late now, but for the last week there may have been an unusual window of opportunity in which I could have embedded something cool into the tip of my finger. I lost it recently. The tip, that is. Of my finger. It happened in a freak office chair incident at a posh Read The Full StoryRead similar

Defense Distributed's goal is to evaporate the container described by the Second Amendment, making obtaining a firearm trivial enough that even trying to place restrictions on gun manufacturing becomes useless. It may get there. But first — and not necessarily intentionally — it's leadership is in tossing 3D-printed objects into the great pool of online sharing. If you click on the "Manifesto" menu item at the group's website, you're taken, somewhat melodramatically, to an essay from the poet John Milton entitled, "Areopagitica: Plea for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing... Read similar

I am not entirely human. All of the parts of a human being are inside me, but I have a few extra bits as well, not so much floating around as firmly secured in place. In some spots, these nonhuman bits hold me together. In other spots… well, that’s a different story. I have a Read The Full StoryRead similar

Earlier this month, we wrote that High Fidelity, the virtual world startup led by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, had raised $2.4 million of a $3.4 million round, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, we didn't know who had actually made the investment — until today.Tony Conrad of True Ventures just announced that his firm led High Fidelity's Series A, and that Google Ventures and various angel investors also participated. The High Fidelity website now mentions Mitch Kapor and Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life) as investors too.Read similar

Artists often need to supplement their incomes with something a little more substantial, and that especially goes for poets. For instance, did you know that Robert Frost ran a dairy farm to earn some extra cash? Or that Maya Angelou sang calypso music in a nightclub?SEE ALSO: More Comics on MashableIn this comic, on the last day of National Poetry Month, Grant Snider of Incidental Comics shows us several other poets' day jobs. Which one surprises you the most?Snider makes a few clarifications:Wallace Stevens wasn't just any ordinary insurance salesman — he was an executive at an insuranc... Read similar

We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is from Philip, who wants to document his son's baseball adventures. If you're looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com. I'm looking for a HFR camcorder, as I like to record my son playing baseball and play it back in slow motion. The Kodak PlayFull looked like the solution, offering 120fps at 1,280 x 720 for $200, but then Kodak axed its camera businesses and it never made it to market. What other opt... Read similar

Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt put it the best in the subhead for his Apple Earnings Smackdown article this morning when he said "Apple management may have found a way to tame the wild beasts of Wall Street." What he was referring to was the fact that most Wall Street analysts were actually quite close on their estimates of how Apple performed in the second quarter of its fiscal year, thanks to new guidance rules that had been announced by CFO Peter Oppenheimer in January. The Smackdown is a quarterly roll call of analyst estimates and how well various institutional and independent analysts... Read similar

Facebook's Seattle office has a quirky piece of furniture. In a corner of the office with a beautiful view, there's a graffiti-covered hot tub. Alas, the hot tub is not filled with water. The landlord wouldn't let it happen. In fact, before Facebook could bring the hot tub into its offices, it was forced to drill a hole in the bottom of the hot tub as a prophylactic measure to ensure it's never filled with water. The hot tub was brought in ahead of one Facebook's hackathons. Hackathons are where Facebook's engineers build small new products that could eventually become something bigger. They'r... Read similar

SAN FRANCISCO, May 6 (Reuters) - Silicon Valley is taking itself a tad too seriously, and a few of its shriller residents have taken note. Recent weeks have seen the birth of a few new blogs poking fun at America's crucible of technology, among them whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com, a relaunched version of the classic Valleywag.com, and, perhaps most discussed, jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com Call it the zeitgeist. To a certain class of steely-eyed observers, Silicon Valley's overvalued startups, its kingmakers, and those who get caught up in its hyped products need taking down a peg.... Read similar

Apple's stock has been crushed the last two days, falling to $427, down from a recent high of $460. Nobody really seems to have a solid reason for what's going on here. The stock just started breaking down and people started throwing out ideas. One of the ideas thrown out by Credit Suisse and Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt is that the stock broke down after David Trainer, a "little know Nashville trader," per Elmer-DeWitt, went on a media blitz claiming that Apple is only worth $240 a share. Elmer-DeWitt says he read through Trainer's analysis, but concluded, " I couldn't make any sense of it."... Read similar