In unholy-army-of-the-night news, scientists have a new way to turn swarming beasts of the sea into unreasoning killers. Nothing is safe from their merciless aggression. Not . . . even . . . you. More »

Dear god. The guys who made the extremely clever God of War-as-an-indie-movie trailer are back, with an outright brilliant Legend of Zelda movie trailer, as if it had been made in the '80s by John Hughes at the height of his powers. These guys perfectly, and I mean perfectly mesh the Zelda games with The Breakfast Club and Say Anything and more -- even the film stock looks appropriately VHS. It almost hurts that this isn't a real movie, that's how good it is. Infinite thanks to Strangways for the tip.

Chrome: We love tweaking Gmail to our liking with extensions like Minimalist Gmail, but if you've wanted to do the same to Google Calendar, Minimalist for Google Calendar will let you remove links, tweak buttons, and change the colors of your Calendar. More »

James McAvoy explains how his portrayal of lead mutant Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class is different from Patrick Stewart's. Zack Snyder explains what Christopher Nolan has brought to the latest Superman movie that was missing from the previous ones. Plus the worlds of Harry Potter and Twilight collide in futuristic prison movie Incarceron, the new Red Sonja has found its director and maybe its star, the latest Battlestar Galactica prequel starts filming, and the minds behind Fringe reveal what's next for the craziest love triangle in history. More »

Building a PC is great, but Linux users have always had to do the extra legwork of finding out which components were Linux-friendly. Now, Ubuntu developers Canonical have released a comprehensive list of hardware certified to work with Linux. More »

​Each new Final Fantasy game sticks to certain rules. One of those rules is "Change enough to piss off half the fans who liked the previous game," but Final Fantasies still have many common sights. There'll be a band of heroes striving to overthrow some dark and mystic force. There'll be an airship or two. There'll be a weird mixture of technology and medieval trappings. There'll be a tragic sacrifice. There'll be chicken-ostrich Chocobos and all-important crystals. And there'll be at least one highly appealing character who the story neglects.

Final Fantasy games like to irritate you by introducing exceptionally cool characters, perhaps even sticking them in the player-controlled party for a while. Then they're yanked away by some plot device or an untimely demise. And you'll never get them back. You'll just spend the rest of the game wishing you could play as a nerd revolutionary or a besuited corporate thug instead of some annoying robot cat riding a stuffed moogle. We're here today to recognize these underused and often underappreciated supporting characters from the Final Fantasy series. We're also here to spoil a bunch of story twists along the way, so be warned. Continue reading "10 Coolest Underused Final Fantasy Characters" >

That you can hold a phone up to music these days and identify it is amazing. But which smartphone song-finding app is more amazing? We researched and road-tested the two most popular song ID apps to see which was a better install. More »

Plug-ins can open vulnerabilities in even relatively secure browsers like Chrome. Even coders, like Jeff Atwood, can fall victim. Here's how to reign in plug-ins like Java, or disable them entirely, in Google Chrome. More »

Today we got our first glimpse of the X-Men: First Class trailer, an elegant, retro-thriller about the origins of the mutant superhero team. And we can't stop thinking about it. More »

We have so few examples of female military leaders on Earth that only science fiction offers a glimpse of what it will be like when women are leaders during wartime. And that's one of the many reasons you'll get sucked into Lois McMaster Bujold's classic novels Shards of Honor and Barrayar (now collected into one volume from Baen called Cordelia's Honor). They're a realistic picture of a woman, Cordelia Naismith, who becomes a military leader - and who has to juggle that responsibility with her ethics, as well as a burgeoning love affair and eventual marriage to a man who is her planet's sworn enemy. Oh and just to make things more complicated, Cordelia's husband Aral Vorkosigan comes from planet Barrayar, whose culture does not welcome female leaders of any sort. More »

For our last lesson, we're going to take a look at how to use Photoshop to layout and mock up a web design from scratch. More »

Mac OS X: Gmail has a lot of great productivity features, but sadly, most desktop clients don't play nicely with it. Minimalist email client Sparrow changes all that, including some of Gmail's best features for a native, desktop Gmail experience. More »

Big reboot news! Warner Bros is busy trying to bring Ryan Gosling and his frequent collaborator, director Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Drive), together for the Logan's Run remake. Which means, this reboot might actually have a snowball's chance in hell at being awesome. More »

You've seen the amazing trailer for X-Men: First Class — now pore over every mutant detail, with our insane roundup of 75 screencaps. Welcome to the first meeting of our school for gifted mutants... whose mutant power is over-analyzing screencaps. Shall we begin? More »

Hunter is a short Sci-Fi story set in a dark and desperate world. It is just about 2500 words, which is about the length of a story you'd read in a magazine. I'm not really sure what the appropriate cost is, so I'm experimenting with the Pay What You Want model that seems to be working really well for a lot of artists I respect and admire.

If I sold Hunter to a magazine, I'd probably get around $125 or so (assuming I could get the SFWA professional rate of five cents a word. I figure that at least 125 people will want to read this, so if all of them donated a dollar, I'd feel really good about this, and I'd be able to do it again in the future. If you're interested (and I hope you are) you can download Hunter and pay what you want (even the low low price of NOTHING AT ALL) at Wil Wheaton Books dot Com.

A couple of FAQs:

Is this about the amazing 80s cop drama HUNTER starring Fred Dryer?

No, it's an original work of fiction set in a world I made up. 

Where could I find out more about HUNTER and Fred Dryer?

Oh, I bet Wikipedia will help you with the show and its star.

Don't you mean "it's"?

No, I don't. This rhyme from Strongbad has served me well: "If you want to be possessive, it's just I-T-S ... if you want to use an apostrophe, it's I-T-APOSTROPHE-S!"

Can I use something other than PayPal to give you filthy money?

Not at the moment, no.

But PayPal is evil!

I know. Luckily, you can stick it to me and PayPal at the same time, if you want. Yay!

What about Google Checkout?

I'm working on it. Well slap my fanny, I figured out how to use it. Yes, you can use Google Checkout. The only thing is, I couldn't find an option that lets you set your price, so I set it at $2.00, which seems to be the average people are choosing to pay.

Can I download the artwork and use it for the cover?

Yes! I tried to embed the neat image Will Hindmarch designed into the files, but apparently I haven't unlocked that skill yet.

Are you going to expand this story?

Maybe. I know a lot about the world and other stuff that would be spoilery, because I've thought about it a lot, but I don't know if I'm ready to expand this particular story much more. I think I'll be revisiting [spoiler] at some point, though, because it's very intriguing to me.

So I've decided to pay for this. What do you suggest?

A billon dollars seems about right to me, but most people are choosing between 1 and 5 bucks.

Can I print out the PDF?

Yes.

I bought the [mobi | pdf | epub] but now I want [some other format] do I have to pay you again?

Of course not, but thank you for asking. You're a good guy or girl.

Can I give my copy to a friend?

Yes, but I'd prefer you link them to the Hunter page at Wil Wheaton Books dot Com where they can download their own copy. I hope that this will introduce new readers to my work, and if they're at my virtual bookshelf, maybe they'll check out my other work.

Are you doing an audio version?

I don't know. Maybe in the future.

Isn't Wall of Voodoo an amazing band?

Hell yes! I've been listening to The Index Masters pretty much non-stop for three days.

Will you put this in the Amazon or iBooks store?

Probably not. I'd like to keep it DRM-free and pay-what-you-want.

Okay, that just about covers it. If you like this, please tell your friends.

Policy-makers discuss 'Do Not Track' proposals for the web, Bing aims to make your searches more personal, and MapQuest adds walking and public transit directions. More »

New research following more than 4,000 children has shown that a high junk food diet before the age of 3 led to a significantly lower IQ later in life, regardless of later diets. Conversely, a healthy diet as an infant gave an IQ increase, but after that it didn't make a difference. Of course, the study only tracked the children until the age of 8, so that's not a license to start gorging on chocolate-covered potato chips after eating only salad until the age of 18. More »

If you're smart, the first thing that comes to mind when you think about visiting other universes or traveling through time is "file a ton of patents." After all, just because someone else invented something, doesn't mean you can't patent it, if you get there first. Reverse-engineering is still a kind of engineering, right? More »

NICE JEANS, LADY! My mom circa 1984 wants to know where you got 'em! Holton Rowler (not to be confused with Thurston Howell III) creates paintings by pouring store-brand coffee cups full of paint on top of boxes to create trippy, drippy designs. I'd argue the process is even more beautiful than the final result, not unlike lovemakin'. Just kidding, nobody likes hearing a grown man cry for six-straight minutes. Or do they? They don't. But even a man clad in a bedsheet wiping his tears away with the last scrap of toilet paper still glued to the tube is beautiful compared to raising a kid for 18-years. 18-YEARS! That's older than I am emotionally. Huh? Oh good one -- AND mentally. *coyly eats booger* Hit the jump to get your trip on (also available in full-HD).

First of all, all this bullshit about putting the trailer exclusively on the Facebook page and then Fox goes ahead and posts a YouTube version on Facebook anyways? Someone fucked up.

Second, the trailer -- man, I don't know. Nothing blew me away, but I wonder if I'm still feeling burned from X-Men 3 and Wolverine and knowing there's not an iota of continuity between this flick and anything we've seen before. I'm also kind of weirded out by the suggestion that the X-Men solved the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, I'm digging the uniforms, MacAvoy and Fassbender seem great (especially Fassbender, but no surprise there) and with Matthew Vaughn directing, the movie should at least be comprehensible. Overall, I give the trailer a B. What do you guys think?

(Oh, that awesome a capella '90s X-Men cartoon theme song and the original post are both after the jump.)
Continue reading "This Is Actually the X-Men: First Class Trailer (Updated)" >