Geek culture

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Yahoo confirms $1.1B Tumblr buy, promises "not to screw it up."

- WordPress: 72K blog posts exited Tumblr in one hour over Yahoo deal.

- Tumblr CEO David Karp was on the 404 almost five years ago to the date.

- Australian politician sorry for "liking" Facebook photo of teenager's genitals.

- Nintendo claims ownership over gamer fanvids on YouTube.

Bathroom break video: Smooth McGroove sings an a capella cover of the Chemical Plant Zone music from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.… Read more

It sounds like an old black-and-white monster movie. Crazy, tech-nesting ants invade America! That would make for a great matinee, but it's oh so very real. Tawny crazy ants, known scientifically as Nylanderia fulva, are marching into territories once dominated by fire ants -- and they're not being very good neighbors.

While fire ants have made their sting notorious, tawny crazy ants have a propensity to infiltrate unwelcome places en masse. They're making fire ants look positively polite. The South American native ants are attracted to electronics in particular. Once inside, they create short circuits, says University of Texas research assistant Edward LeBrun.

"When they get electrocuted, they release an alarm pheromone," he says, adding that this attracts more ants and exacerbates the problem.… Read more

It's a good thing you weren't standing on the moon's Mare Imbrium crater on March 17. You might have been ground into space dust. A meteoroid "the size of a small boulder" crashed into the lunar surface and exploded with a flash so bright, it was visible to the naked eye from Earth.

NASA has been keeping an eye on the moon for eight years, looking for explosions caused by meteoroids. The space agency has seen hundreds of detectable impacts, but none quite so spectacular as this one. "For about one second, the impact site was glowing like a fourth magnitude star," NASA says.… Read more

Disney said today that it has begun production on "Star Wars Rebels," a new animated television series. It will air in 2014, first as a one-hour special, and then will continue as a regular series.

The special will be shown on the Disney Channel, while the series will air first on Disney XD channels globally, Disney said. It will be produced by LucasFilm Animation.

The announcement that production has commenced on "Star Wars Rebels" comes just two months after Disney shut down "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," a popular and long-running cartoon series. What's unclear is whether the announcement of "Star Wars Rebels" will do anything to ease the enmity toward Disney that has sprung up in the wake of the "Clone Wars" shutdown, as well as the closure of LucasArts, the video game arm of LucasFilm. … Read more

Watch out for that stair car... and any of the other numerous running jokes from resurrected cult hit "Arrested Development."

In honor of the show's triumphant return to Netflix, with 15 new episodes set to start streaming May 26, NPR has compiled, logged, and cross-referenced all the recurring gags from the show's original three seasons to make sure you don't miss a beat.… Read more

SPOILERS AHEAD: The new "Star Trek" movies with J.J. Abrams at the helm have turned into commercial successes, but some long-time Trekkies aren't thrilled with the direction the franchise is taking. Check out the Reddit responses to Wil Wheaton's take on Abrams to get an idea of the discussion.

I, for one, am a bit in love with the reboots. Sure, I was suspicious at first. I enjoyed the 2009 "Star Trek" well enough, and thought it clever how it totally wiped out the timeline from the original series and gave itself a new universe to play in for the subsequent films. But it was seeing "Star Trek Into Darkness" yesterday that truly turned me into a fan of the new films. I'm going to tell you why.… Read more

Do you still have your original "Star Wars" action figures? Mine are tucked away in storage, but looking at Rob Burden's artwork makes me want to dig them out.

The San Francisco artist is so obsessed with his old "Star Wars" figures that he does 10-foot-tall oil paintings of them, like "The Birth of a Jedi," above. The works don't portray the characters from the series, but the actual action figures themselves.

Now he's taking his passion to new heights on Kickstarter with a $24,000 campaign to produce two enormous 10x14-foot "Star Wars" canvases. … Read more

Batman: Arkham Origins, as the name suggests, is a prequel for the other two Arkham games, set a couple of years before Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Although Origins is being made by WB Montreal rather than Rocksteady, the original studio did advise Warner Bros.' in-house team on elements of the game engine and mechanics.

Warner Bros. has said that while the combat system hasn't been greatly altered, players can expect new enemies, requiring new tactics. This very brief teaser trailer introduces Deathstroke as at least one of the villains Batman will face during the game. … Read more

This robot hand, maneuvered by an operator with a sensory glove, entertained guests at a Google I/O party this week by picking up and crushing 55-gallon drums. And you, Crave readers, entertained us by crushing our caption challenge for the above shot of said bot. Here are some of our favorites, and a big hydraulic high five to all who participated.

"Easily controlled via tablet gestures, voice, and villagers screaming for mercy." --Jason DeFoe (Thompson, N.D.)

"Wait, what's the Vulcan salute again?" --Tim Smith (San Francisco, Calif.)

"Obamacare covers carpal tunnel, right?" --Hank Prince (McKenzie, Tenn.)

… Read more