Infrastructure is something that people are used to not thinking about. It is normally associated with roads, water, electricity, and telecommunications. Things it takes for a society to function. People just want infrastructure to work when they need it. When roads are being repaired, when the waterline breaks, when the power is out, and the Internet is down — that’s when people pay attention to infrastructure. Most would assume that the Infrastructure for IoT should be the same just like the rest of information technology (IT).

In IT, search, email, finance, social networks are the infrastructure for being connected. When people talk about infrastructure for IT they think of security, availability, scalability, and reliability, as the key capabilities to focus on. Whenever there is a security breach or services go down, teams scramble to remedy the situation. The internet of things is being driven by many of the same technology…

As of last week week users of Google(s goog) Compute Engine could opt to use CoreOS, a Linux variant designed for huge server deployments and to make OS updates as easy as possible .  GCE users already had access to Debian, Red Hat(s rhat) and Suse Linux and CentOS. (In the non-Linux realm, Windows Server support was added in March.)

Toys R Us are doing a great deal for those of you looking to purchase Mario Kart 8 this Friday. If you decide to purchase the game from Toys R Us then you’re entitled to forty percent off any Wii U game that’s lesser or equal value to Mario Kart 8. Toys R Us are selling the game for $59.99.

Thanks, Simon and Rusty

There’s a lot going on in X-Men: Days of Future Past, which jumps around from the 1970s to the present day to nine years in the future. In each timeline, mutants familiar and new (at least to movies-only fans) try desperately to save themselves from diabolical mutant-hunting robots called sentinels.

But fortunately for you, super speed or telekinetic powers aren’t needed to keep track of all the new X-Men. Just use this handy guide.

Roberto de Costs (aka Sunspot)

• Absorbs and channels solar power.

Lucas Bishop (aka Bishop)

• Absorbs and releases ambient energy

Pietro Maximoff (aka Quicksilver)

• Super speed

Clarice Ferguson (aka Blink)

• Portals and teleportation

James Proudstar (aka Warpath)

• Superhuman physical ability

Peter Rasputin (aka Colossus)

• Organic steel skin

Google(s goog) is working with Wi-Fi equipment maker Ruckus Wireless(s rkus) to build a large-scale Wi-Fi network in the cloud off of which any business could hang its wireless routers, according to a source familiar with the project who asked not to be named.

Google’s plans to supply Wi-Fi services to small and medium-sized businesses was first reported by The Information on Wednesday. But I have gotten more details on what its network would look like and how it would be rolled out. Google has been working closely with Ruckus, trialing a new software-based wireless controller that virtualizes the management functions of the Wi-Fi network in the cloud, according to my source. The end result would be a nationwide — or even global — network that any business could join and any Google customer could access.

Both Google and Ruckus declined to comment.

Photo: Flickr / Affiliate

In any large-scale Wi-Fi network, such as…

Facebook (s fb) director of product Mike Hudack lit the fuse on a massive powder-keg of emotion on Thursday, when he posted a rant about the current state of the media. In Hudack’s view, too much of what currently passes for journalism is shallow click-bait. Almost immediately, you could hear journalists across the country popping blood vessels: After all, isn’t the fact that click-bait reigns supreme at least partly Facebook’s fault?

In his post, Hudack says that CNN has become “the network of kidnapped white girls” and that the nation’s newspapers have been mostly “hollowed out” and are “ghosts in a shell.” Meanwhile, BuzzFeed gets criticized for being mostly listicles, and Vox gets slammed for not providing the kind of serious journalism that the Facebook product manager says he was hoping for:

“Personally I hoped that we would find a new home for serious journalism in a format that…

At least that’s Alex Cornell, a videographer known for some of his provocative videos, thinks. Cornell released this guide to a potentially worrying trend: group texts destroying weekend plans. The inspiration for the video? Cornell couldn’t say exactly when he spoke to Mashable. “Honestly, it’s every text conversation I ever have these days,” he said.

[Mashable]

As a culture, we go through phases with our diet preferences — low-fat gave way to low-carb, dairy-free begat gluten-free, and eggs (poor eggs) are either omega-rich wunderkinds or insidious cholesterol bombs depending on the current political climate and whether or not Mercury’s in retrograde. Yet, there are some out-there diet myths that we simply can’t seem to shake. Over the course of The Anti-Diet Project I’ve struggled to dislodge these false beliefs from my own diet-addled brain, but it’s not easy. When I’ve believed for 10 years that a potato is four points, it’s really hard to see it as a potato again. I still struggle with eating dinner, even when I’m hungry, and I’m fairly convinced it’ll take years of couples counseling for me to ever trust bananas again. We’ll get there one day, bananas.

Considering that I’m clearly bonkers when it comes to food, it helps to…

Feeling achy from a running injury? “Given time, your body will usually start to heal on its own,” says Lisa Callahan, MD, co-director of the Women’s Sports Medicine Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery, in New York City.

If the pain lasts for more than 10 to 14 days, or if it’s very sudden or severe (meaning you can’t walk without pain or it’s noticeably swollen), it’s time to visit a doctor. In the meantime, here are a few things you can do to help speed your recovery.

(Health.com:11 Fitness Foods to Help You Get in Shape Faster)

Ice

Most injuries start with inflammation, so icing right away can help. Keep cooling sessions to no more than 20 minutes at a time to prevent frostbite or other skin damage.

(Health.com: 7 Running Injuries and How to Avoid Them)

Heat

If you’re still hurting…

Popular online gaming publication IGN has awarded Super Mario Galaxy with the acclaimed accolade as game of the last generation. IGN says that the Wii classic redefined the platforming genre and gave players a smart and refreshing challenge. They concluded by saying that it was ultimately the game worth owning a Wii for.

“Super Mario Galaxy wasn’t just the latest and greatest 3D Mario game when it released in 2007 — it redefined the platforming genre. Again. Nintendo’s best designers rebounded from the excellent but still somewhat underwhelming Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube and unleashed Galaxy, a meaty, deep adventure that married Mario’s traditional fireballs and Koopaling knockouts with a healthy dose of M.C. Escher. Its game design is as smart and challenging as it is refreshing, and, Wii Sports be damned, it was and is worth owning a Wii for all on its own.”

Thanks, jcnba28

Respected technology analysis site Digital Foundry has delivered their final verdict on the well-received Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U. The publication says that Nintendo’s latest kart racer is 720p native, which goes against some of the rumours stating that its native 1080p. Nintendo also aimed to have the game run at a constant 60 frames per second, but the game generally dips to 59 frames per second. Here’s some extracts from the definitive analysis.

Starting from the top, then, there has been a surprising amount of confusion surrounding the resolution of the game with some sources even suggesting a native 1080p presentation. We can finally put that rumour to rest right here and confirm that Mario Kart 8 instead operates at what is effectively the console’s standard 1280×720. Of course, considering the quality of the visuals, this can hardly be considered a disappointment especially when other developers are…

Sip up and slim down. Quick and easy to prepare, these smoothie recipes are packed with refreshing fruits and MUFAs (monounsaturated fatty acids)—the Flat Belly Diet powerhouse ingredient that specifically targets belly fat. These 10 filling, creamy smoothies are perfect for breakfast, lunch, or a snack.

Get more recipes and weight loss tips when you join the Flat Belly Diet online!

Mango Smoothie Surprise

SERVINGS: 1

¼ c mango cubes

¼ c mashed ripe avocado (MUFA)

½ c mango juice

¼ c fat-free vanilla yogurt

1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice

1 Tbsp sugar

6 ice cubes

COMBINE all ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Pour into a tall glass. Garnish with sliced mango or strawberry, if desired, and serve.

NUTRITION (per serving) 298 cal, 5 g pro, 55 g carb, 5 g fiber, 47 g sugar, 9 g fat, 1.5 g sat fat, 54 mg sodium

More…

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is as old as virtualization technology. VMware announced VDI alliance way back in 2006. While IaaS, PaaS and SaaS became synonymous with cloud, it took a long time for desktops to show up there. VDI has always been confined to the data center or at most to an MSP-owned infrastructure. But that seems to be changing fast with Amazon, VMware, Citrix and Microsoft battling it out to win the Desktop as a Service or DaaS war.

It all started with AWS announcing Amazon WorkSpaces at its annual re:Invent conference last year. Although it has a long way to go in terms of feature set, Amazon should be credited for bringing desktops to the public cloud. Having strengthened the end-user computing group with the new leadership team, VMware was quick to announce Horizon DaaS on its vCHS platform a week before the general availability of Amazon WorkSpaces…

Kim Kardashian, 33, and Kanye West, 36, got married at Fort di Belvedere in Florence, Italy, on Saturday after almost a week-long celebration in Paris, PEOPLE reports.

Rich Wilkerson Jr., a pastor from North Miami, performed at the wedding, which counted many of the Kardashian family members and their celebrity friends as guests.

According to one guest PEOPLE spoke to, West “was the typical nervous groom, swigging obsessively from a bottle of water and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.”

“It was funny how nervous he was,” the source said. “He clearly knew the gravity of what he was about to do. This morning he was all smiles, but as it got closer, you could see that the nerves were kicking in.”

As rumors suggested, pop siren Lana Del Rey performed three songs at the lavish pre-wedding festivities in Paris, E! reports. But the couple chose to…

Expect Labs has amped up the capabilities of its MindMeld API for building Siri-like applications for smartphones, browsers or pretty much any device. New features include support for seven new languages, SDKs for Android, iOS and JavaScript, and cross-platform speech recognition.

The company released the API publicly in February, promising to power apps that listen to speech commands or questions and deliver meaningful content based on relevance and context. Expect Labs’ first product, an “anticipatory computing” app called MindMeld, uses the API to listen to voice conversations and surface relevant web content as users speak — sometimes predicting what they’ll say next.

The flow a MindMeld application.

The MindMeld API is one of a number of recent, and varying, attempts to put artificial intelligence in the hands of mobile developers. Others include IBM’s Watson cognitive computing API, AlchemyAPI’s natural-language processing and computer vision services, and Jetpac’s DeepBelief neural…

New Facebook users will start out with tighter privacy settings, Facebook announced Thursday in a post that laid out out several privacy-related updates. This reverses the social network’s 2009 decision to make the default setting “Public,” which allowed everyone on the Internet, not just individual users’ friends, to view users’ content.

Existing users will be offered a “privacy checkup,” a pop-up which reminds them of their current privacy settings and shows them how to select a specific audience before posting content.

“We recognize that it is much worse for someone to accidentally share with everyone when they actually meant to share just with friends, compared with the reverse,” said the company in a post.

The company has previously been criticized by privacy advocates for making its settings too complicated, and is currently under scrutiny by European and U.S. privacy officials. Facebook previously settled privacy claims with the Federal Trade…

Pre-orders for the first Asus Chromebook have begun with Amazon(s amzn) charging $249 for the Chrome OS laptop and shipments expected on June 26. The C200 is an 11.6-inch Chromebook that uses the newer Intel(s intc) BayTrail-M processor instead of the fairly standard Haswell-based Celeron chip found in most current Chromebooks. That’s likely a step-down in performance but with the benefit of even more battery life: Asus says you can expect 10 to 11 hours of runtime from the 2.5 pound laptop. The C200 supplements the already available $179 Asus Chromebox and a larger C300 Chromebook coming soon.

Actor Ryan Gosling has fueled rumors he and Eva Mendes could be close to ending their relationship. Gosling, who is at the Cannes Film Festival to promote his directorial debut Lost River, hasn’t been photographed with Mendes since November 2013. He was instead seen on the red carpet with one of the movie’s stars, Christina Hendricks.

Gosling and Mendes have been together since they met on the set of the 2012 drama The Place Beyond The Pines, a film also directed by Gosling’s Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance.

“Horii-san mentioned that smartphone games are currently mainstream because they can be played when you have a bit of spare time, but he wants to develop something bigger. That’s why he wants to be “more aggressive” with the next Dragon Quest and he doesn’t intend to make it for smartphones.”

Last week, Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Crimea, giving a controversial speech that posited Russia’s annexation of the peninsula as part of historical tradition. In March, when Crimea first voted to become a part of Russia, TED Fellow Ed Ou was there. He shared what he saw on the ground—Russian flags being hoisted over a military base—during a Skype conversation with Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, makers of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Square; Bahia Shehab, Egyptian street artist and TED Fellow; Anwar Dafa-Alla, the organizer of TEDxKhartoum; and Brian Ries, Mashable’s real-time news editor.

Above, watch this fascinating conversation in the lobby of TED2014, about how social media shifts the power dynamics of social movements, allowing individuals to tell their own stories above and beyond what the government and traditional media have to say.