Half-Life is the game that put Valve on the map. The last full game in the franchise was Half-Life 2 way back in October 2007. Ever since that launch, fans have been clamoring for the next installment in the franchise – presumably called Half-Life 3. Recently, a trademark filing surfaced at a European trademark registration site leading to jubilation among fans.
That filing put fans of the franchise in a tizzy thinking a new game was in the works. It turns out that the trademark filing was likely a hoax according to reports floating around the web. The original filing looked legitimate, but it is now nowhere to be found.
There are a couple theories circulating explaining what has happened with one being that Valve is trying to hide the trademark approval now that it’s been given. That does make a lot of sense considering that Valve US has reportedly held the trademark on Half-Life 3 for a while. Another equally plausible theory is that the original filing was simply a hoax. If that’s the case, I like to believe there’s a special place in hell for whoever tricked us.
Regardless of the state of the trademark, there’s a reasonable chance that Valve is working on the game for next-gen consoles – but they’ll only tell us when they’re good and ready,
[via Hot Hardware, image: EspionageDB7]
Online hoaxes are a dime a dozen these days. A pretty cruel one recently made the news. It was in the form of a Facebook hoax that alarmed a mother and made her relatives think that her seven-year-old son had passed away.
However, the reality was that Javier Quintana was alive and kicking and standing right in front of her. Unfortunately, friends and family members didn’t know that and were devastated at the ‘news.’
Pictures, videos, and stories about Javier were posted online on a Facebook memorial page that was dedicated to Javier. His mother Patricia was beyond angry and has since filed a report with the local police.
Authorities looked into the matter and discovered that two teenagers were behind the whole thing. A 14-year-old girl was joking to a 13-year old boy about Javier’s death (which doesn’t sound like much of a joke), when the boy took things too far and created the memorial page. The girl asked him to take it down but by then, messages of grief were already pouring on the page.
No charges have been filed, and Javier, who was confused about the whole fiasco, was quick to assure friends and family: “I am alive and I’m fine… I don’t know why they put it, but I just feel bad for that.”
So guys, just avoid the whole mess and don’t make jokes about death because they really aren’t funny at all.
[Daily Mail via Softpedia]
This story should serve as a warning to all the fun-loving pranksters out there. While I have nothing against pranks, I do think it’s not a very wise thing to take things too far.
Image credit: U.S. Army Materiel Command; Associated Press
The image above is actually of a soldier in a Ghillie suit. While some think that the suits make people look like Bigfoot, I certainly don’t, but maybe that opinion might change when it’s dark out.
Anyway, a Montana jokester named Randy Lee Tenley donned a Ghillie suit recently so he can scare up some people by pretending to be Bigfoot. He allegedly darted out into the middle of the road (while roaring, I bet) – but his prank went horribly wrong when two cars hit him in the darkness of the night.
Montana Highway Patrol Lt. Col. Butch Huseby told the Los Angeles Times: “What we know so far is that we had a couple of guys out, allegedly trying to prompt a sighting of Bigfoot. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Really.”
The incident is still under investigation though. And while our sympathies go out to Tenley’s family, let’s hope future pranksters will take this as a warning sign and not take the jokes too far.
[via LA Times]
If you're one of those people who actually believes that Facebook is going to start charging users tomorrow, you're probably going to want to skip this post. LazyTruth is working on a Gmail widget -- something that could've easily been borne out of Google Labs -- that will automatically vet your messages and determine if they're full of viral misinformation. When it detects specific unique phrases that are consistent with known fallacies, it immediately circles back to Snopes.com and Factcheck.org (a pair of myth busting portals, if you couldn't guess) to provide original source links and even rebuttals. It seems like it could be a great way to make us all even lazier more efficient when it comes to debunking some of the wilder rumors that tend to affect our most gullible friends. Of course, given that there's no set release date just yet, perhaps the source link could use a scrubbing itself. We kid... we think.
Email widget takes on viral rumors, fact checks for you originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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