One of the greatest pinball tables ever is going digital with your help

Ask pinball fans about classic tables and they’ll probably mention The Addams Family . It was widely available, well-designed and full of technological firsts, such as computer-controlled flippers. However, it hasn’t been recreated in software in its 22-year history — something FarSight Studios hopes to fix with a crowdfunding project to reproduce the table in Pinball Arcade . So long as the developer reaches its funding goal, you’ll get to play the Addams Family almost as if you’d stepped into an arcade circa 1992. The smart flippers, actors’ voices and Thing’s creepy animatronic hand should all remain intact. Thankfully, it doesn’t cost much to contribute and (hopefully) keep this vintage machine alive. Pledging $7 will get you access to the table on one of the platforms Pinball Arcade supports, including most mobile devices, consoles and PCs. It only costs more if you want more platforms or special access, including the behind-the-scenes menu (if you pay $15) or the coveted Special Collectors Gold Edition ($100). The digital Addams Family won’t arrive until February if all goes according to plan, but that’s a trivial wait if you’ve spent ages yearning for a version of the table that you can afford to take home. Filed under: Gaming Comments Source: Kickstarter

Visit site:
One of the greatest pinball tables ever is going digital with your help

Giant, Worm-Slurping Leech Filmed For The First Time

For the first time, filmmakers in the forests of Borneo’s Mount Kinabalu have documented the so-repulsive-it’s-captivating behavior of a large, red, worm-guzzling predator. While it remains unclassified by science, the animal is known to the area’s tribespeople, fittingly, as the “Giant Red Leech.” Read more…

View the original here:
Giant, Worm-Slurping Leech Filmed For The First Time

From the Maker of Arduboy: Tetris On a Bracelet

timothy writes: Kevin Bates showed off his tiny (“credit card sized”) homebrewed game-playing rig at OSCON this summer. Not content with merely wallet sized, he’s now squeezed enough display — three of them, lacking a curved display to wrap around the wrist — input sensors, and processing power (Atmega 328p) to play Tetris on a tiny, multi-segmented bracelet (video). Sure, there’s been Tetris on watches before, but from large-budget companies, not — at least not that I’ve ever seen — from hackers. Bates’ post gives some more technical details, too. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue Reading:
From the Maker of Arduboy: Tetris On a Bracelet

AT&T’s latest promo doubles your data on shared phone plans

Given the avalanche of new smartphones this fall, there’s a good chance that your data use is about spike as you put that fresh hardware through its paces. If so, AT&T might just have you covered. It’s running a promo between September 28th and October 31st that doubles the amount of data you get with its Mobile Share Value plans, whether or not you’re a new customer. Signing up for the special rates nets you up to a hefty 100GB per month of shared data at the high end. However, the starter offer is arguably the best — $130 per month (plus line fees) gets you 30GB to play with, which should hopefully accommodate your family’s Netflix viewing habits. AT&T’s deal isn’t necessarily as sweet as what you’ll get with Sprint or T-Mobile, which start at a respective $100 and $140 per month for roughly the same service. However, it’s competitive enough that it could keep you on Big Blue’s network for a little while longer. Filed under: Cellphones , Wireless , Mobile , AT&T Comments Source: AT&T

Read this article:
AT&T’s latest promo doubles your data on shared phone plans

Medievalists on Disney’s middle ages

A fascinating new scholarly essay collection, The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past , looks at Disney’s portrayal of the middle ages and reflects on how these are inextricably linked to other Disney settings, from Tomorrowland to Frontierland, and how the “Americanized” medieval narrative has played out over the decades. Read the rest

More:
Medievalists on Disney’s middle ages

The Best Alternative for Every Pre-Loaded iPhone App

The iPhone comes with a bunch of apps you never use. Some of them are poorly implemented. Others are lacking important features. Fortunately, there’s a whole world of developers offering some very viable third-party alternatives. You still can’t delete the apps your iPhone comes with, but here are some alternatives that will free you from their boring grips. Read more…

Taken from:
The Best Alternative for Every Pre-Loaded iPhone App

Obsessed Engineer Devises The Perfect Scooper for Rock Hard Ice Cream

Ice cream is a dish best served cold, but liberating it from its carton is an exercise in bent spoons and throbbing wrists. Kickstarter’s Michael Chou spent years striving for the perfect solution, and here it is: The Midnight Scoop , shaped to engage your most powerful arm muscles in the quest for deliciousness. Read more…

Read More:
Obsessed Engineer Devises The Perfect Scooper for Rock Hard Ice Cream

Why Would Walmart Make Continuous 53-Foot-Long Carbon Fiber Panels? For Their Supertruck Prototype

Everyone loves to bash corporations, but few talk about how much good they can do in this world. Their immense fortunes and longevity means they can undertake radical, expensive experiments that smaller outfits simply couldn’t sustain. A good case in point is Walmart and their Advanced Vehicle Experience concept truck . Built earlier this year as a testbed for their fleet efficiency program, it features a 53-foot trailer whose roof and sidewalls are made from single-piece 53-foot-long panels of carbon fiber. This confers a weight savings of some 4, 000 pounds, meaning it can carry an extra 4, 000 in cargo to burn the same amount of fuel, or carry the same weight of cargo as before and save a tremendous amount of fuel. Creating carbon fiber panels of that length is fiendishly expensive, and a company would have to ship a lot of cargo indeed before they’d make their money back on fuel costs. In other words, you’d need a Walmart to do something like this. With 6, 000 trucks crawling our continent and logging millions of miles, the overall, long-term impact would be substantial. (more…)

Read the original post:
Why Would Walmart Make Continuous 53-Foot-Long Carbon Fiber Panels? For Their Supertruck Prototype