R. A. Montgomery, Creator of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" Books, Dead At 78

Dave Knott writes Raymond Almiran Montgomery, original publisher and author of the incredibly popular “Choose Your Own Adventure” book series for children, the 4th bestselling children’s series of all time, has died at the age of 78. In 1975, Montgomery founded a small press and when, in 1977, Ed Packard submitted an innovative book for young readers, “Sugarcane Island”, Montgomery immediately saw it for what it was: a role-playing game in book form. He leapt at the chance to publish it, and launched a series, writing the second book, “Journey Under The Sea”, himself. When Montgomery went through a divorce and sold his stake in the press to his ex-wife, he took the series, renamed as “Choose Your Own Adventure”, to Bantam. The books went on to sell more than 250 million copies across 230 titles in 40 languages. Montgomery’s interests also extended to new technology, adapting the series to the Atari console in 1984. He was also responsible for the Comic Creator software on Apple’s Macintosh computers. Montgomery died on November 9th. The cause of death was not disclosed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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R. A. Montgomery, Creator of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" Books, Dead At 78

Firefox’s New "Forget" Button Will Erase Just Enough of Your History

There are many reasons why you might want to switch on the private browsing mode offered up by your browser, especially when you’re on a shared computer or borrowing someone else’s laptop. If you forget to activate the private mode before you go surfing then the latest version of Firefox has a feature that can help you out. Read more…

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Firefox’s New "Forget" Button Will Erase Just Enough of Your History

If you’re a Google Play Music All Access subscriber, you’ll get access to the new YouTube Music Key

If you’re a Google Play Music All Access subscriber, you’ll get access to the new YouTube Music Key service next week. If you’re not, you can sign up for the beta here . Read more…

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If you’re a Google Play Music All Access subscriber, you’ll get access to the new YouTube Music Key

Researchers Forecast the Spread of Diseases Using Wikipedia

An anonymous reader writes Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory have used Wikipedia logs as a data source for forecasting disease spread. The team was able to successfully monitor influenza in the United States, Poland, Japan, and Thailand, dengue fever in Brazil and Thailand, and tuberculosis in China and Thailand. The team was also able to forecast all but one of these, tuberculosis in China, at least 28 days in advance. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Forecast the Spread of Diseases Using Wikipedia

Android 5.0 ‘Lollipop’ vs. iOS 8: More Similar Than Ever

Nerval’s Lobster writes With the debut of Android 5.0 (also known as Lollipop, in keeping with Google’s habit of naming each major OS upgrade after a dessert), it’s worth taking a moment to break down how the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system matches up against Apple’s iOS 8. After years of battle, the two are remarkably similar. So while nobody would ever confuse Android and iOS, both Google and Apple seem determined to go “flatter” (and more brightly colored) than ever. Whether or not you agree with their choices, they’re the cutting edge of mobile UX design. The perpetual tit-for-tat over features has reached a climax of sorts with Lollipop and iOS 8: both offer their own version of an NFC-powered e-wallet (Apple Pay vs. Google Wallet), a health app (Apple’s Health app vs. Google Fit), car-dashboard control (Android Auto vs. CarPlay), and home automation. That’s not to say that the operating systems are mirror images of one another, but in terms of aesthetics and functionality, they’ll be at near-parity for most users, albeit not for those users who enjoy customizing Android and hate Apple’s “walled garden.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Android 5.0 ‘Lollipop’ vs. iOS 8: More Similar Than Ever

What the characters from South Park look like in real life

If you ever wondered what the characters of South Park looked like in real life in the minds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, wonder no more. Last night’s crazy episode revealed what Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny would look like if they weren’t just cartoons made of shapes and circles but actual humans instead. Read more…

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What the characters from South Park look like in real life

Samsung Project Beyond: A 360° Camera For Streaming Virtual Reality

Samsung’s serious about virtual reality , and not just with a fancy headset accessory for the Note 4. The company’s also built its own lightweight 360-degree camera, dubbed Project Beyond. Read more…

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Samsung Project Beyond: A 360° Camera For Streaming Virtual Reality

Hope You Enjoyed Today’s Ad-Free Internet, Thanks to a Google Glitch

A bug in the service that delivers Google ads to thousands of websites went down this morning, producing acres of blank pixels where banner ads once resided . It was a little ad-vacation. Read more…

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Hope You Enjoyed Today’s Ad-Free Internet, Thanks to a Google Glitch

SpaceShipTwo’s Surviving Pilot Ejected Into -70 Degree Air at 50,000 Feet

Investigators are still trying to figure out exactly what went wrong in with the tragic crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo . While the National Transportation Safety Board has been looking into an issue with the braking system , the agency has released details from surviving pilot Peter Siebold about how he managed to escape the exploding spacecraft. Read more…

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SpaceShipTwo’s Surviving Pilot Ejected Into -70 Degree Air at 50,000 Feet

Researchers Demonstrate Electrically Activated Micro-Muscles

mpicpp sends news of research at the University of Michigan in which a self-assembling chain of particles can be used as tiny, electrically-activated muscles. The team started with particles similar to those found in paint, with diameters of about a hundredth the width of a strand of hair. They stretched these particles into football shapes and coated one side of each football with gold. The gilded halves attracted one another in slightly salty water—ideally about half the salt concentration in the sports drink Powerade. The more salt in the water, the stronger the attraction. Left to their own devices, the particles formed short chains of overlapping pairs, averaging around 50 or 60 particles to a chain. When exposed to an alternating electric field, the chains seemed to add new particles indefinitely. But the real excitement was in the way that the chains stretched. … While the force generated by the fibers is about 1, 000 times weaker than human muscle tissue per unit area, it may be enough for microbots. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Demonstrate Electrically Activated Micro-Muscles