Reality Bites
When Frank Buckles enlisted in 1917, he was only 16. But he fudged his age and served in both world wars, surviving three years as a POW in the Philippines. He died of natural causes at his home in Charles Town, W. Va. at age 110.
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Saskatchewan’s Amber Holland ends the reign of Team Canada’s Jennifer Jones at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts with an 8-7 win over the four-time champion.
If you’ve got a working Gmail account, you might want to back it up every so often — as many as 500,000 Gmail users lost access to their inboxes this morn, and some of them are reporting (via Twitter and support forums) that years worth of messages, attachments and Google Chat logs had vanished by the time they were finally able to log on. While we haven’t experienced the issue personally, we’re hearing that the bug effectively reset some accounts, treating their owners as new users complete with welcome messages. For its part, Google says that the issue “affects less than .29% of the Google Mail userbase,” engineers are working to fix the issue right now, and that missing messages will be restored as soon as possible. We’ll soon see if this is a momentary setback… or a lengthy wakeup call.
Update: No fix yet, but Google’s revised its estimate as to how many users might have been affected by the issue — “less than 0.08%” — which means we’re probably looking at closer to 150,000 individuals, rather than 500,000. We’re assuming that the revised estimate means that the initial count wasn’t precise, and not that customers are ditching Gmail in droves.
Update 2: Google’s provided promising but terribly vague guidance on when the situation will be resolved: “Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.”
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Gmail accidentally resetting accounts, years of correspondence vanish into the cloud? (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 18:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As far-fetched as it may seem, rumors that RIM is working on some sort of Android app support for its QNX-based PlayBook tablet have persisted in various forms for months now — and they’ve turned up once again in a video posted by development community MobileMonday’s Rio chapter taken at MWC earlier this month, where a RIM rep seemingly says “we will also support Android apps” after talking about Java-based offerings. Of course, this could’ve been staged by some rabble rousers or a rep could’ve simply been echoing back the rumors he’s seen on the interwebs — but regardless, it adds fuel to the fire. Follow the break to see the video of that.
But it gets weirder. ShopSavvy — which makes versions of its app for iOS and Android — has started turning up a couple of older BlackBerry devices in its Android build’s usage statistics on Flurry: the Curve 8300 and 8520, to be specific, along with an 8600 model that doesn’t exist (at least, not yet). The 8300, in particular, is pretty ancient at this point and we’re having a hard time wrapping our brain around RIM’s game plan in porting Dalvik (or a Dalvik-like) VM and associated libraries over to it; if anything, Flurry could be confused. Then again, a next-generation full-touch BlackBerry that just happens to run a full suite of Android apps in a sandbox could be a pretty compelling product, indeed.
[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]
PlayBook Android app support mentioned during demo at MWC, old BlackBerrys show up in ShopSavvy’s Android logs originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 17:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Located some hundred million light-years from here, these colorful galaxies can be seen behind the stars that make up the constellation of Pisces. We don’t know exactly how these galaxies got here…but they’re certainly amazing sights to look at now. More »
Sirens! Nothing new. Ubiquitous on city streets. Even small towns have, to some degree, grown accustomed to their shrill warnings. That’s kind of a problem! Enter the Rumbler. You literally feel it coming. Updated. More »
From the air, a pilot tells his passengers to look out the right-hand side of the aircraft. What they saw next was caught on camera.
It doesn’t move and it certainly doesn’t transform, but we’re still not sure we’d stand anywhere near this jagged metal contraption ripped right out of the silver screen. The giant Megatron tank replica from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen not only looks like it’d grind us up like so much beef beneath its spiky treads, it reportedly weighs five tons and stands eight feet tall. It’s allegedly constructed entirely out of scrap metal by a designer known as “Steel Legend” — a honorific that we imagine few will dare question now. If only it could take on junkyard Optimus Prime in a Beijing Battle Royale. More pics of the tank at our source links below!
[Thanks, leungxd]
Chinese designer makes Megatron tank a steel-toothed reality originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In a sign that hackers, like everyone else, are taking an interest in everything Apple, researchers at Sophos say they’ve spotted a new Trojan horse program…
Continue reading Archos Arnova 8 and 10 tablets hit the bargain bin (video)
Archos Arnova 8 and 10 tablets hit the bargain bin (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Philiana Ng
“Fringe” may have settled down in the ratings on Friday nights — but with the rollercoaster its…
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It’s been a busy months for solar flares. On Thursday, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed this billowing plasma tower they’ve dubbed a “monster prominence.” For 90 minutes, this flare twisted on the Sun’s surface before collapsing and emitting material into space. More »
Filed in things I never knew: early Monopoly boards were circular! Filed in things I should have known: Monopoly street names all hail from Atlantic City. More »
Last night’s Fringe episode may have pulled off something that’s never been done before: a lengthy flashback about events that nobody remembers. We weren’t delving into the memories of any particular character, because they’ve all blotted it from their minds. More »
Leave it to Microsoft Research to show off some cool stuff that may or may not actually happen on any thing you ever actually buy. Check out the video after the break to see the latest, Director of Microsoft Applied Sciences Steven “Stevie B” Bathiche showing off a variety of interesting interfaces. It all starts with gesture controls that take you well beyond the touchscreen, relying on a retro-reflective sash and a camera to detect hand position. But, things quickly progress to a flat lens called a wedge that can enable holographic-like imagery. Pair that with a Kinect and perspective shifts come into play, tracking your face to enable you to peer around like looking out a window. It’s all just waiting for you below — and maybe IRL sometime in the future.
Microsoft Research shows off next-generation gesture interfaces, Kinect integration, other neato stuff (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 23:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Ottawa police have launched an internal investigation after a video posted online shows an officer throwing several punches during an arrest.
![Click here to read Is alien invasion movie "Battle: Los Angeles" actually based in fact?](http://betacache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2011/02/small_factorfiction.jpg "Click here to read Is alien invasion movie "Battle: Los Angeles" actually based in fact?")
In next month’s Battle: Los Angeles, invading aliens go to war with the American military. It’s science fiction…except that a panel of UFO experts claims it’s factual. At a recent Sony Pictures press conference, the studio emphasized the movie’s “based in fact” premise by giving us a chance to chat with a pair of ufologists and two retired military officers who both claim to have had encounters with UFOs during their service. More »
We all know that women like funny guys (how else do you explain Woody Allen’s love life?), but empirical evidence for this phenomenon has been sorely lacking. Fortunately, in a recent study in the journal Psychological Reports, a French scientist took up the challenge of testing whether humor helps men pick up women. More »
Dear Lifehacker,
We’re about to replace our old HDTV. We’re considering a projector for our home theater system. What do we need to consider, and what kind of issues will we run into setting up a projector in our home? Is it worth it? More »
