Stuart Freeborn, a makeup artist best known for his work on George Lucas' "Star Wars" movies as well as Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," has died in London at the age of 98.

Born in 1914 in Leytonstone, England, Freeborn was largely self-taught. Some of his most recognizable creations include the apes from the "Dawn of man" sequence in "2001: A Space Odyssey," as well as Yoda and Chewbacca from "Star Wars".

He also worked as a makeup supervisor on the "Superman" films, as well as Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove".

"Stuart was already a makeup legend when he started on Star Wars," said George Lucas in a statement.

"He brought with him not only decades of experience, but bou…
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Want to see something cool? How about a full 12 minutes of beautiful imagery to start your day? We've found just the right video for you.

Titled "This is what the Internet was made for 2012 Edition HD," the video is a compilation of some of the most memorable stunts and, simply, incredible moments we've seen on the internet throughout 2012. It was created by YouTube user MiamiViceStyle who promises more such videos in the future.

For the most part, the video focuses on extreme sports, but it also features bits from some popular viral videos, such as the Real life Fruit ninja and Epic Meal Time.

Warning: some parts of the video are slightly NSFW.

Check out the video above a…
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Tumblr-famous Menswear Dog sauntered his way to the Mashable offices on Wednesday for what started as a typical fashion dish on skinny ties and cardigans.

After swigging a few glasses of whisky, the interview plunged into the type of debauchery typically reserved for Air Bud shindigs. Not that we're complaining about Menswear Dog's antics -- we managed to snap the first, world exclusive naked photos of the stylish Shiba Inu.

Let's just do this whole thing TMZ-style for full effect:

Menswear Dog's rep is on Lindsay Lohan-style damage control after the typically dapper doggie was caught naked outside the Chateau Marmont. Sources tell MSH that the Internet sensation may spend up t…
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More About: cute animals, dogs, memes, Watercooler

The National Academy of Sciences unsuccessfully recommended the federal government establish an independent agency for advancing forensic science similar to one in the Netherlands that recently helped authorities conduct a DNA sweep to nab a rapist who in 1999 murdered a 16-year-old.

The academy in 2009 advised the U.S. government to spin off forensic DNA research and development from the Justice Department into an independent National Institute of Forensic Science. Justice's priorities inherently are at odds with advancing the discipline, concluded an academy report.

"What is needed to support and oversee the forensic science community is a new, strong and independent entity" t…
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More About: crime, DNA, Netherlands, Science, US Government

Small children, grown ups, pets, guys, aliens and basically everyone else, avert your eyes. What is about to transpire in this video is not pretty.

It's downright awful. It's Justin Bieber macking on a mannequin head. That has to be illegal in at least nine states.

SEE ALSO: Justin Bieber's Bare Butt Gets 100,000 Likes on Instagram

The teen idol was on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," playing a game which involved throwing objects into a net. He decided to instead forfeit the game and smooch this lifeless piece of plastic.

Oh yeah, he used tongue.

He must really miss Selena.

Video and image courtesy of YouTube, FeelPostGood

More About: jimmy fallon, justin beiber

Your bank calls you to verify your recent $750 bill at an out-of-state Taco Bell, but you haven’t left town in weeks. You quickly contest the charge and request a new credit card, but when you check your wallet the compromised card is still there. You try to think of shady ATMs or recent cashiers, but nothing comes to mind. Nothing, except the online purchase you made while browsing the Internet at your local coffee shop.

The number of free public Wi-Fi hotspots is growing, but not every hotspot can provide the protection of a private home network. Your notebook, tablet or smartphone’s default settings and firewalls may not be enough to keep you safe from prying eyes while on…
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More About: free wifi, privacy, security, wifi

Justin Timberlake unleashed interactive art for his forthcoming "The 20/20 Experience" album and track listing on image-tagging startup Stipple's website. Timberlake is an investor of Stipple.

More About: Entertainment, justin timberlake, Music, Startups, stipple

And on the eighth day, to quote a famous speech, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker."

So God, to paraphrase said speech, made Kai.

That's Kai the hitchhiker. Kai the hatchet-wielding saver of lives. Kai the longhaired viral sensation who's become known around the globe despite an off-the-grid lifestyle that's left him apparently oblivious to his burgeoning fame.

See, last Friday, down in Fresno, Calif., Kai helped save a man and a woman. He helped save them from an epithet-spewing, Jesus-invoking mountain of a man hell-bent on violence and destruction. The man had purposely ran his car into an African American utility worker then attacked th…
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More About: Social Media, viral videos, YouTube

When Bianca Giaever asked a six-year-old what her movie should be she got an earful.

And she turned that earful into a piece of simple wonderment.

The movie, called the Scared is scared, tells the tale of a bear, a mouse, swimming pools, sleepovers, friendship, pizza and life. It's excitement, fear, joy and bewilderment wrapped up into a story full of heart and humor that only a six-year-old's imagination could provide.

SEE ALSO: Watch the Best Pep Talk Ever — Given by a Kid

Finally, a movie with a plot we can get on board with. Academy, take note.

Images and video courtesy of Vimeo, Bianca Giaever

More About: indie films, Oscars

Scientists built a 3D printer that can handle human stem cells, making tiny structures that could one day be used to build organs.

More About: 3D, 3D printers, medical science, Science

It's not exactly the most thrilling document George Lucas has ever put his pen to. The Star Wars creator filed prospectus form S-3 with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday -- one that basically allows him to sell off the $2 billion he got in Disney stock as part of the sale of Lucasfilm.

But is Lucas, who became Disney's second largest shareholder after the estate of Steve Jobs, really prepping to sell his entire stake? That would be a profoundly un-Jedi-like decision, not to mention a dumb investment move.

Lucas' Disney shares are numerous enough -- 37,076,679 of them, to be precise -- that selling them all at once would likely trigger a run on the stock. It would send…
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More About: disney, George Lucas, Star Wars

Poolhouse announced an update for Dogbook for iOS Wednesday, making the dog-only social network a little more like Foursquare.

Now your favorite furball can check in to his favorite spots, ultimately earning the coveted "King" status for his most-frequented haunts. The app's at its best when there are other dogs around; Fido's friends can get push notifications, for instance, when he checks in to the local dog park so they can come play together.

Posse not around? The app also has a new Meet Friends feature your canine can use to scope out other dogs in the area and find potential friends. If he's on the search for a new crew, a search function in the app can also help him find…
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More About: App, Dogbook, Facebook, iphone

A girl from Boston is taking a break from Facebook -- and she's got a written contract to prove it.

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Some 10 billion business cards are printed in the U.S. every year, and yet 88% of them are discarded one week after they're handed to a business contact, according to StatisticBrain. In response, developers have released apps, like Bump, that enable users to exchange information more seamlessly by tapping their phones. Still others have sought to make traditional business cards more effective by making them more engaging, emblazoning them with QR codes and embedding them with NFC chips to achieve a number of effects, such as smartphone-activated augmented reality displays.

One of the latest additions to the novelty category is CallingCube, a 3D business card that comes in the shape of a s…
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More About: 3d printing, business cards

Last month a fan stormed the field to hug Lionel Messi, the world's greatest soccer player. But that fan has nothing on this guy, it seems.

More About: soccer, Sports, Watercooler

That's right, even Queen B can photobomb.

But when Beyonce photobombs, it's not just some awkward selfie or boring landscape shot -- she only photobombs the best. Like here, with Baltimore Ravens defensive end Haloti Ngata just after he WON the Super Bowl.

SEE ALSO: Beyonce's Super Bowl Show in 10 Fierce Photos

Redditor ralstyr009 called the picture out and notes that Ngata is holding a movie featuring Ravens teammate Terrell Suggs.

We didn't think it was possible but Beyonce just got cooler.

H/T Reddit; Photo courtesy of Imgur

More About: beyonce, photobomb, Super Bowl 2013, Watercooler

Fanhood puts a social twist on virtual sports betting, but it's not the only startup looking to do so. Find out what the company says sets it apart.

More About: Sports, Startups

If you're on popular social networking sites, you can probably group friends into categories based on their online behavior. But where do you fit in?

More About: Facebook, Mobile, Social Media, Twitter

Looking for a roommate? So is Jonathan Mann. Give him a call with inquiries -- he'll probably sing you a song, too.

More About: songs, videos, Watercooler, YouTube

It's been 50 glorious, action-packed years of gun-wielding James Bond sexiness on the big screen.

Sometimes you get caught up in all the train-dodging, British-accented fun and don't realize just how you actually got somewhere, plot wise. It's ok to step back and ask, "What just happened here?"

Luckily, Honest Trailers isn't letting Daniel Craig, the cast of Inception, and the director of Dark Knight Rises off that easily. It's doing a deep investigative look into Skyfall to really blow the roof off this whole thing (pun kind of intended).

SEE ALSO: This 'Lord of the Rings' Trailer Reveals the Hobbit-Tickling Truth

So, sit back, relax and put an end to whatever belief you h…
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More About: James Bond, Skyfall, Watercooler

Google on Wednesday upgraded its AdWords program to let advertisers customize their placements on mobile by such factors as type of device, time of day and geographic proximity.

The upgrade, called Enhanced Campaigns, will let business owners build a campaign while taking those factors into consideration. However, Google promises that you'll be able to manage it all in a single place.

The company offered a few examples of how Enhanced Campaigns will work. For instance:

A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for "coffee" or "breakfast" on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20…
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More About: Advertising, Google, google adwords, Mobile

LED Lamp of the Future!

Notice the bluish tint of the light -- here the lamp is on "Study Mode," its brightest setting, most resembling daylight. Photo by Mashable/Charlie White

Click here to view this gallery.

Plenty of LED desk lamps are either in the prototype stage or newly available for sale. This one, by a company called Satechi, is a high-quality, versatile product at a fair price ($100). It includes innovative features we haven't seen anywhere else. Let's take a close look.

What's so great about LEDs, anyway? Their most attractive attribute: energy savings. This 11-Watt LED desk lamp can give you as much light as a 75-Watt incandescent light bulb. That lets you illuminate your desk or nightstand for about 1/7th the energy you're probably using now. And since the 27 LEDs in this lamp each last more than 40,000 hours, it's likely you won't ever need to change them.

The downside of LEDs…
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More About: future tech, LEDs, lighting

In a poetic moment, filmmaker Neels Castillon captured this stunning image of hundreds of birds ebbing and flowing in the wind. He calls it the "Bird Ballet."

These birds, known as starlings, float throughout the sky above Marseille, France, forming, dissolving and reforming into brilliant patterns.

SEE ALSO: Rare 'Dolphin Stampede' Captured in Breathtaking Viral Video

According to BBC Nature, starlings are known for "these wonderful swirling aerial displays, done at dusk as they get ready to roost for the winter."

The video shows the true grace and beauty that nature can provide when it's least expected.

Video and image courtesy of Vimeo, Neels Castillon

More About: nature, Vimeo

In time for New York Fashion Week, PETA has released a short video that imagines if the runway roles of humans and animals were reversed -- that is, a fashion show in which animals, functioning as models, donned human skin and hair on the runway, rather than the other way around.

The results are strange rather than grotesque, until the camera moves backstage, revealing human skins (computer-generated, of course) slung casually over runway racks, a bloodied corpse and, finally, a Chinese girl huddled in a cage, shivering, frightened.

The spot, created by the Beijing office of ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, isn't just aimed at Fashion Week designers and attendees. According to PETA spoke…
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More About: china, fashion, nyfw, peta

When BlackBerry launched its new line of smartphones last week, the country most interested was Indonesia, a new Twitter-based study has found. That country alone accounted for 15% of the Twitter users who tweeted about the launch, the most from any nation.

The study examined 900,000 tweets between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2 (the launch was on Jan. 30) and was conducted by Salorix, a social media marketing company. Indonesia was the top country for tweets, followed by the U.S. and then Canada (where BlackBerry is based). BlackBerry said its launch of the Z10 smartphone in Canada on Feb. 5 produced its "best day ever" for that country.

Indonesia, however, is clearly an important market for Blac…
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More About: blackberry, BlackBerry 10, Twitter

J.J. Abrams is working on becoming the geek's favorite director; Abrams and Valve Software's CEO announced the two were collaborating on making Half Life and Portal into movies, among other projects.

Abrams and Valve's Gabe Newell held a joint talk at the DICE conference in Las Vegas Wednesday on the subject of "Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?". According to Wired, the pair made the announcement they were working together at the end of their keynote, which kicked off the games industry conference.

Newell and Abrams would also collaborate on a game produced by Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, who will also head up the production of…
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More About: Gaming, half-life, jj abrams, portal, valve software

Tenacity: if you don't have it, online dating isn't for you. Though match-making websites may seem like a quick alternative to meeting your one true love at a bar, perusing pages of potential dates calls for some dedication. And if you have a deep appreciation for spreadsheets, that helps, too.

Armed with charts, lists and formulas, Amy Webb used what she knew best to outsmart the online dating algorithms: math. Repeated failures at meeting her match spurred the digital strategy expert to crack the code, leading straight to her future husband.

Webb, CEO of WebbMedia Group, spent a month crunching numbers and analyzing key words to optimize her JDate profile. She chronicles her journe…
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More About: algorithms, amy webb, data, online dating, valentine's day

Microsoft and Symantec joined forces to shut down a botnet controlling hundreds of thousands of computers on Wednesday, according to a report.

Between 300,000 and 600,000 computers were freed from botnet control when technicians and U.S. federal marshals seized a server in Weekhawken, N.J., and got another operator to disable a server in the Netherlands on Wednesday, reports Reuters.

The raid's target was the Bamital botnet, a click-fraud operation that first surfaced in 2010.

Users infected with Bamital malware had their search results unknowingly redirected to websites that profited from advertising impressions made by the visitors. The botnet's controllers may have also instruct…
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More About: cybersecurity, microsoft, Symantec, US

Microsoft could be moving forward with an Internet-based business model for its next Xbox game console, which has been code-named "Durango."

More About: electronic arts, microsoft, video games, xbox

Microsoft will officially launch the Surface Pro -- the larger, more powerful version of its Surface tablet -- on Feb. 9. The reviews are already in, though, and if there's one consistent knock against the device it's battery life, which lasts only a few hours. However, Microsoft's engineering team has revealed that external batteries may be in the works.

The Surface engineering team hosted an AMA (ask me anything) about the Surface Pro on Reddit Wednesday afternoon, and one redditor asked if any kind of keyboard accessory with a built-in battery -- which is the norm for other companies' Windows tablets such as the Samsung Series 7 -- was in the works.

One of the multiple Microsoft eng…
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More About: microsoft, reddit, Surface Pro, surface tablet