The Icelandic Met Office raises its aviation warning level near the Bardarbunga volcano to red after an eruption began overnight.

Five hundred global citizens frustrated at the stalemate over climate policy will learn today if they have won the chance to vent their anger at world leaders.

Preparations are being made on the Liberia-Ivory Coast border to prevent Ebola spreading

The RSPCA is calling for a ban on keeping primates as pets after a rise in the number of calls to its cruelty and advice line concerning animals such as monkeys and marmosets.

Waves as high as 20ft (6m) in southern California have damaged waterfront homes, knocked out pier pilings and attracted scores of surfers.

An extremely rare Galapagos tortoise thought to be 100 years old has been given a new home at a zoo in Ohio.

Version:next-20140829 (linux-next) Released:2014-08-29

Police in northern Brazil say they are in the process of dismantling one of the country's biggest environmental criminal gangs.

Google / The Atlantic

On Thursday, Google unveiled its latest project: a product delivery service powered entirely by drone aircraft. Coming from the same Google X teams that developed the likes of self-driving cars and Google Glass, the drone program, currently dubbed Project Wing, received a feature-length reveal in The Atlantic.

The article's video showed a prototype drone dropping a package at an apparent height of dozens of feet, which was guided to the ground by a combination of a wire and an attached "egg" that slowed the drop to a near-halt just before reaching the ground and releasing a box. MIT roboticist Nick Roy received the lion's share of credit for putting the machine together during his two-year stint with Google X; he came to the project with experience in helping Navy drones navigate through zones that lacked GPS signals.

In particular, Roy pushed for Google to employ a hybrid design, combining fixed-wing and helicopter elements, so that it could take off vertically in tail-sitter configuration. Google did not confirm that it will settle on this design for any final model. However, the wired "egg-drop" configuration will probably remain for the sake of both wind factors and safety concerns. Speaking of safety, Roy admitted the drones' detect-and-avoid system is far off, and this, among other concerns, has added years to Google's Project Wing time expectations.

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William Close is the inventor of the 'Earth Harp', a musical instrument which makes use of the architecture around it to create its sound.

Dozens of Syrian army soldiers appear to have been killed by Jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS), activists say.

In The New Forty-Niners, photographer Sarina Finkelstein documents a new wave of gold seekers in California, more than 160 years after the Gold Rush.

A screenshot of a domestic abuse scene from Watch Dogs used as an example in Anita Sarkeesian's "Women vs. Tropes in Video Games" series. Feminist Frequency

"Oh, Anita, you're so beautiful and sexy, you know that?" was the nicest terrible thing a random Twitter user said to Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the Tropes vs.Women in Video Games series, as he peppered her with threats of rape, death, and the address of her home and that of her parents following the posting of her latest video on Monday. The video, which would be right at home on PBS in tone if not content, suggested that many mainstream games represent women as accessories and shorthand rather than as humans, a viewpoint that generated swift and unrelenting rage.

The attack on Sarkeesian was among a number of incidents in the last few weeks that exposed some of the ugly (yet familiar) attitudes and prejudices that remain deeply ingrained in the gaming culture. This time, those sentiments have gotten tied up in ethical arguments in an attempt to highlight the toxic behavior.

A lie gets halfway around the world

The tide of abuse first surged over Zoe Quinn, creator of the game Depression Quest, who got a deluge of negative attention, abuse, threats, and harassment over a blog post written about her by an ex-boyfriend that was published August 16. The post, composed of narcissistic analysis mixed in with screenshots of several online conversations, exposed many personal details about Quinn irrelevant to her profession or professional conduct.

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Poor Robocallman just wants to make a friend. Kordite

On Thursday the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the winners of a robocall-defeating contest that the commission held at DefCon in early August. Three groups of contestants each won $3,133.70, and two runners-up each won $1,337 (for being just that elite). The FTC says it receives 150,000 robocall complaints each month, down from 200,000 per month one year ago.

The contest was called “Zapping Rachel,” for the well-known scam in which a pre-recorded woman's voice tells an unsuspecting phone answerer, “Hi this is Rachel at cardholder services." The FTC separated the contestants into Creator, Attacker, and Detective categories—Creator entrants were asked to build a honeypot to lure robocallers, Detective entrants were given the honeypot data and asked to analyze it, and Attacker entrants were tasked with finding honeypot vulnerabilities. Contestants were given between 24 and 48 hours to submit their entries, depending on the category they entered.

For the Creator category, Jon Olawski, who is a software engineering director for an Internet marketing company by day, won the prize. He built a honeypot that used “an audio captcha filter, call detail analysis, and recording and transcription analysis” to automatically rate an incoming call as to whether it came from a robocaller or not. In an e-mail to Ars, Olawski described his idea as “a 10-point 'strike' system,” and if a caller hits a certain number of strikes, that number is known to be a robocaller and can be placed on a blacklist.

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A philanthropist couple have launched what they say is the world's first privately funded boat to help migrants in trouble at sea.

It is the end of August already, which means two things. School is back, and Xbox Games with Gold has released the upcoming games for September. On the Xbox One, as usual, there are two games for the entire month but unfortunately one of the games is carried over from last month. The Xbox 360, with its much larger catalogue of games has two new games to the program though, but as is standard with the Xbox 360, one game is for the first half of the month, and the second game is for the latter half of the month.

Xbox One Crimson Dragon

“Available Sep. 1-30, Crimson Dragon, originally an Xbox One launch title, and acts as a spiritual successor to the much-beloved Panzer Dragoon saga. It’s a fast-paced rail shooter set in a beautiful fantasy world, where you can join with up to three other players for online co-op battles. You have a half-dozen majestic draconian steeds to choose from, and they level up as you progress through the game’s epic story. Crimson Dragon also features a killer soundtrack, courtesy of Panzer Dragoon composer Saori Kobayashi.”

This is the carryover game from last month. The game is set in a science fiction universe where humans have recently colonized a planet inhabited by dragons, which can be befriended and controlled. The game is a spiritual successor to the Panzer Dragoon series, however critical and user reviews of the game have been mixed. The game scores a 56/100 on Metacritic and 6.6 for the User score. Crimson Dragon normally sells for $19.99.

Super Time Force

“Super Time Force is an action-packed platformer with a time-travelling twist! You’re in control of time itself, bending and stretching it to your advantage on the battlefield. Rewind time and choose when to jump back into the action, teaming-up with your past selves in a unique single-player co-op experience! Take control of up to 16 unique characters, and battle across 6 different time periods, from the long-ago past to the far-away future.”

Super Time Force is from the developer Capybara Games, and was originally released May 14th, 2014. This unique take on the side scroller allows the player to rewind their timestream when they die or if they choose in order to play as a previous character. It has a Metascore of 81 from Metacritic, and a 6.6 user score. Super Time Force normally sells for $14.99.

Xbox 360 Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine

“Assemble a crack team of thieves and execute the perfect crime. Sneak, steal, and run for your lives in single player or with up to four friends in local or online co-op. Find out why it won the 2010 IGF Grand Prize and has been described by Rev3Games' Anthony Carboni as "quite possible the best co-op ever."

The first game for the Xbox 360 is available starting September 1st, and comes from developer Pocketwatch Games. Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine is a stealth action game where you can play single player or co-operatively with up to four players that plays out on a top down perspective, but you can only see what is in your character’s line of site. The game scored an 81 Metascore with a 7.2 User Score on Metacritic, and normally retails for $14.99.

Halo: Reach

“Halo: Reach,” developed exclusively for Xbox 360, is theblockbuster prequel to the landmark “Halo” video game franchise and is the biggest game yet in the Halo series.“Halo” is one of the biggest video game series in history, and is the top selling franchise on Xbox. It has defined a generation of gamers and changed how people view video games.

“Halo: Reach” tells the tragic and heroic story of Noble Team, a group of Spartans, who through great sacrifice and courage saved countless lives in the face of impossible odds. The planet Reach is humanity’s last line of defense between the encroaching Covenant and their ultimate goal, the destruction of Earth. If it falls, humanity will be perched on the brink of destruction.”

The second game for the Xbox 360 is Halo: Reach by Bungie. On September 16th, Xbox 360 owners with Xbox Live Gold will have access to the prequel to the biggest Xbox franchise ever – Halo. This game got an outstanding 91 Metascore and 7.8 User Score on Metacritic, so if you have not played it this is a great chance to try it out. Halo: Reach normally retails for $24.99.

As seems to be the norm, the Xbox 360 lineup appears quite a bit stronger than the Games with Gold for the Xbox One, but that is not hard to understand with eight years of titles to choose from. If you happened to miss last month’s games, you still have a couple of days to grab them so pick them up soon before they are gone.

 

 

The raid and its aftermath start at the 6:30 mark.

Police in Littleton, Colorado are investigating a prank call on Thursday that led a SWAT team to raid an online video gamer's office. Heavily armed officers forced a well-known gamer to the ground in what is believed to be a case of "swatting" by an unknown rival gamer.

"This is not a game. It's not an online game. We have real guns and real bullets. There's some potential there for tragedy," Littleton Police Department Chief Doug Stephens told local media.

Nearby schools and businesses were immediately closed and sealed off after a 911 caller said he had shot at least two coworkers and was holding others hostage at the local gaming facility on Wednesday.

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The United States and Nato accuse Russia of stoking violence in eastern Ukraine.

The Windows Store has come under fire recently for its sheer amount of misleading apps. Scam apps that claim to offer downloads or training for other applications are abundant, and these bogus programs routinely abuse others' trademarks.

This situation doesn't sit well with an app store that's supposed to be curated and vetted to avoid scams.

Similar complaints have been made practically since the Windows Store's inception, and it appears that Microsoft has at least responded. Stricter rules on application naming and icons have been introduced and are being retroactively applied to existing apps.

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Photograph by langleyo

While controversy still swirls over whether the Internal Revenue Service has backup tapes with the “lost” e-mails of former IRS executive Lois Lerner, an IRS attorney confirmed that the agency had disposed of Lerner’s government-issued BlackBerry in June of 2012.

That would mean that the destruction of the data on the phone—including e-mails that may have been part of the missing messages both Congress and the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch have sought from the agency—happened after congressional staffers had begun asking her about the alleged targeting of conservative nonprofit groups. But it was over a year after the loss of e-mails on Lerner’s personal computer due to a reported hard drive crash.

In a declaration by the IRS in response to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, IRS Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel Thomas Kane wrote that the BlackBerry phone had been “removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.”

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