Andrew Scott Reise, co-founder and developer for the virtual reality company Oculus VR, which makes the VR headset Oculus Rift, was killed in a police chase in Santa Ana, Calif., ABC reports

Reisse was not involved in the incident; he was a bystander who got hit by a car at a crosswalk during the chase Thursday

The police stopped to investigate suspicious activity a couple of blocks away. A fight broke out, shots were fired, and Victor Sanchez, 21, with two other suspects, tried to flee the police in a white Dodge Charger. Their car hit several other cars and went through multiple red lights, ultimately strucking and killing Reisse Read more...

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The weather outside may be warming up for some, but if you're looking for a somewhat warm and geeky addition to your wardrobe, check out this do-it-yourself scarf that changes colors via LED lights.

The DIY electronics site Adafruit has a tutorial for this LED-studded scarf. You'll need your own fabric, as well as Adafruit's Flora circuitry to make it all work, as explained in the video above. You might need to be a bit of a techie for this project (or recruit a techie friend), since you'll need to work with circuitry and coding.

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Empty threat or a spoiler alert about your future?

"I'll see you in hell" is a phrase often uttered in anger, but in this comic by Josh Mecouch of Formal Sweatpants, we see that it can also work as a way to figure out who you'll be hanging out with for eternity

Comic illustration by Josh Mecouch, Formal Sweatpants. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

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The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Cookening

One-Liner Pitch: Cookening is like an Airbnb for home-cooked meals.

Why It's Taking Off: Cookening offers a unique opportunity for travelers to eat fresh meals in the homes of locals in whatever city they're visiting.

Two years ago, Cédric Giorgi decided to stay at an Airbnb location for the first time while he was traveling in California. Although he loved the idea of Airbnb, he realized it was similar to “Tables d'hôtes” in France, which are shared dinners at French bed and breakfasts that are cooked by the hosting family. Read more...

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Joanna Rohrback uploaded the video you see above to YouTube back in December, but it received the social web's full viral attention this week. The clip, introducing a form of exercise called "Prancercise," shot up from just over 10,000 views at the beginning of the week to more than 2.7 million as of Friday evening

There's just one problem, however: Much of the attention has been negative, full of snark and mocking Rohrback's unique workout regimen.

Rohrback describes Prancercise as "a springy, rhythmic way of moving forward, similar to a horse's gait and is ideally induced by elation." She's also got a Facebook Page set up now and available book on Amazon Read more...

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When Victor Diaz Zapanta was featured on Mashable for his Facebook account's creative timeline design, he was excited. But that sweet feeling soon soured slightly when the 29-year-old designer's account was parodied by impostors claiming to be him.

It happened at least four times, and at one point Facebook even suspended his profile, forcing the Washington, D.C., resident to verify his account way before Facebook introduced its new page and profile verification on Wednesday.

"I've been playing whack-a-mole with reporting fake profiles on Facebook every couple months," he says. "I'm guessing people were into the Facebook timeline I made and just don't think it's a big deal to impersonate someone." Read more...

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To commemorate a true innovator, a California company wants to get a statue of Nikola Telsa erected in Silicon Valley.

Tesla discovered various innovations in sectors including electromagnetics, electricity and earthquake machinery. In honor of Tesla, Silicon Valley company Northern Imagination is trying to raise $123,000 on Kickstarter to make the statue a reality.

The proposed statue would be built in Palo Alto, Calif., home to many tech companies, startups and near Stanford University. The statue rendering depicts Tesla holding a lightbulb, demonstrating a wireless electricity concept.

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A new app aims to make finding missing children in the most populated country in the world a little bit easier and more of a collective effort.

Advertising agency JWT China and missing children site Baby Back Home have jointly developed an app in China that utilizes facial-recognition technology to help identify missing or kidnapped kids, Creativity Online reported. The organizations say that, with a population reaching approximately 1.4 billion, everyone can be a search volunteer.

Users of the app can take a photo of a child they think is lost on their phone. The app then uses facial-recognition technology to identify matches with a missing persons database. If a match is found, the family is notified. Within one week of the app's launch, there were 20,000 downloads and two children were reunited with their families, according to JWT. Read more...

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These days, your Facebook Timeline can serve as a digital scrapbook of your life: birthdays, graduations, weddings, trips to Disneyland and, yes, the time you got a puppy. A new service wants to help Facebook users move those memories from the cloud into a permanent, physical keepsake.

Likebooks will convert content from your Facebook Timeline and print it in a physical book, as shown in the video above. Your status updates, photos and comments from friends can be printed in your custom book. Content is either pulled from a specific date range or an entire year (as far back as 2007)

Depending on how much content you choose to archive, a Likebook can cost from $12 to $137 and can range from 25 to 500 pages. They even come in soft or hardcover. Read more...

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Kerényi Zoltán has turned his camera into a time machine. The Hungarian photographer and architect uses vintage photos to create a bridge between the Budapest of the past and the Budapest of the present

In the series "Ablak a Múltra" (translating to "Window to the Past"), Zoltán overlays black and white images from the website Fortepan onto his own images with a modern backdrop.

The subjects of the images vary from kids and parents playing in the street to transportation, managing to seamlessly fill present-day stadiums with the ghosts of history and restructure broken-down buildings to their glory of the past Read more...

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By now, you've probably seen the incredible YouTube footage from a track and field meet in Kenya. To the backdrop of bouncy music, two contestants — one of them barefoot — take turns gaining momentum before clearing an impossibly tall high jump bar then landing without mats in front of a cheering crowd

In the aptly-titled "Kenyan High School High Jump," the combination of athleticism, unglamorous surroundings and mystery is pretty awe-inspiring. The video has garnered more than 2 million views in eight days online and been featured on sports and news sites worldwide. Here's how it reached your computer screen Read more...

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A California judge has rejected Google's petition to dismiss more than a dozen secretive Federal Bureau of Investigation requests for users' data. The requests, called National Security Letters (NSL), come without a judge's warrant and usually include a gag order preventing recipients from discussing them publicly.

In its case, Google argued that 19 NSLs it has received from the FBI are unconstitutional and should be dismissed. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston dismissed 17 of Google's challenges because she considered the company's arguments too vague and because the constitutionality of NSLs are being decided in a separate ongoing case. She reserved judgement on two others until the government provided more information about them. Read more...

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Samuel L. Jackson followed through with his promise on Friday, after asking Reddit users to submit a 300-word monologue for him to read out loud.

But not without punking the Internet in the process. Here's the beginning of his much-anticipated monologue:

Hi, I'm Samuel L. Jackson. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Reddit, but I've decided to break the rules of my own competition, and I will not be reading a user-submitted entry as my monologue. Instead, I'd like to speak to you all from my own heart, in my own words; honestly and openly. I've been waiting to reveal something for a long, long, time and... well, here it is: I am quitting acting and pursuing a life of vigilantism. Read more...

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Tumblr's creative director and fifth employee, Jacob Bijani, has left the company less than two weeks after it was acquired by Yahoo.

In a post to his personal Tumblr, Bijani writes that he plans to take some time off "to digest the last few years" and that he has "about a dozen different projects planned" — projects, we assume, he'll want to get started after that break.

Bijani's post, in full:

Today was my last day at Tumblr.

Five years ago I joined a team of four as Tumblr’s first designer, creative director, and product engineer. That team has since grown to 182 of the most wonderful and talented people around.

I’m so proud of what we’ve all created together, and it’s been a privilege to contribute to something beloved by so many. I can’t wait to see what’s next for the product; I’m sure it will be nothing short of incredible.

There’s still a lot more I want to accomplish, and I’m really excited about this next chapter. For now, I’m going to take some time off to digest the last few years. I have about a dozen different projects planned, so expect more from me soon! Read more...

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President Barack Obama has a Follow Friday suggestion for all you Twitter users out there: environmental/bird appreciation group The Audubon Society.

#FF: @audubonsociety

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 31, 2013

What's up with this #FF? It's a playful response to a recent slideshow from satirical news outlet The Onion, "19 Tweets From The Audubon Society/Barack Obama Twitter Feud" (warning: language).

OK, the @BarackObama account isn't really the president anymore. Rather, it's controlled by Organizing for Action (OFA), a grassroots organization set up to support Obama's legislative goals. While that sounds like semantics, it's actually an important distinction for a couple of reasons Read more...

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Twitter has now made it even easier to upload a new profile picture, header image or background image to your profile.

You can edit profile photos by clicking the “Edit Profile” button at the top of your Twitter profile page, which will allow you to click and edit individual parts of your profile –- such as the profile picture, background image and even your personal description.

For profile photos, access the forward-facing camera on your computer and snap a quick profile pic. For header and background images, just drag and drop photos from your computer and make quick, on-the-fly adjustments Read more...

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Every famous painting has a good muse. Sometimes, when the muse is a person, an abstract version might appear on canvas.

So what would the models of Picasso paintings look like in real life? Hungarian artist Flóra Borsi conceptualized classic paintings by digitally manipulating the compositions

"Nowadays, almost every photographer uses graphics software to complete the picture, like many painters used 'original versions' in the past," Borsi said.

SEE ALSO: Artist Creates Real Clouds Indoors

Take a look at the paintings below and decide for yourself if they could be the real-life models. Read more...

1. "Fool’s Hat – Narrenhut" by Rudolf Hausner

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Hulu has rolled out a new interface for Hulu Plus on Roku, select Samsung TV and Blu-ray players and the Nintendo Wii.

The update mirrors changes made to the PlayStation 3 Hulu Plus interface last fall and this spring's Apple TV redesign.

The update is more living room-centric, with a focus on larger artwork, an easier way to scroll through recommendations and improved search. It also brings the Hulu Kids section into the living room.

Roku users should get the update now, as should 2012 and 2013 Samsung TV and Blu-ray owners. The update will hit the Wii soon.

At least five companies are reportedly bidding on Hulu — including Yahoo. While Hulu's top traffic draw is its free website, the more than 4 million paying Hulu Plus subscribers are the key to the company's future. Read more...

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Little Luiz Antonio didn't want to eat his octopus. Not because he was being a typical toddler with a picky palate — he explained to his mother that "these animals ... you gotta take care of them ... and not eat them."

Luiz's mother teared up as she answered questions about how animals end up on the dinner table

The original YouTube video of Luiz sharing his new found food preferences has more than a million viewsYouTuber Raffaella Ciavatta has translated the Portuguese in the first video — with permission from Luiz's mom — and added English subtitles Read more...

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They say there's no such thing as a free meal but, if you're beautiful, you can eat for free at this Brazilian chain of fast food restaurants

It may sound like an offensive concept at first, but it's actually quite the opposite. The restaurant Spoleto told every female customer she didn't have to pay for her meal as long as she could affirmatively answer the question, "Are you beautiful?"

The customers were handed mirrors by cashiers who hoped every woman would admit to her beauty — serving as a self-esteem booster for the day. The gimmick was the restaurant's way of celebrating International Women's Day on March 8, but the ad that accompanied it was only recently posted to YouTube. Read more...

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Bill Nye the Science Guy is firing back at conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who last week on his show proclaimed Nye is nothing more than a talking head on television.

"Bill Nye is not a science guy; that's why he's a TV personality," Limbaugh said after Nye appeared on Piers Morgan Live to discuss tornadoes. "Bill Nye is not a scientist. Bill Nye can explain to kids things like surface tension, why you can fill a glass above the rim and it won't fall over if it's just the right amount. He explains things like that, surface tension. He's not a scientist. He knows it, and everybody else knows it. Doesn't matter." Read more...

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Razer has announced its new Blade gaming laptop, the thinnest and lightest laptop it has ever produced, and the thinnest machine available for serious gamers.

The company, which started as a high-end gaming accessory creator, only joined the laptop game in the last two years. Its new Blade, the third of Razer's laptops to carry that name, is a 14-inch, aluminum-bodied laptop packed with Intel's newest Haswell processor. Razer says this is the most compact gaming laptop ever; the Blade is 0.66 inches tall when closed and weighs four pounds

Along with the Haswell processor, the Blade includes Nvidia's GeForce GTX 765M graphics card with 2 gigs of GDDR5 video memory, 8 gigs of DDR3 memory and a 128gb SSD standard. It also has dual-band Wi-Fi from Qualcomm, three USB 3.0 ports and a hi-def 720p webcam. Read more...

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Just more than a week after Twitter introduced two-step verification, LinkedIn has followed suit.

LinkedIn announced in a blog post Friday that users on the social network for professionals now have the option to enable two-step verification via SMS text message to protect their accounts.

"All LinkedIn accounts are already protected by a series of automatic checks that are designed to thwart unauthorized sign-in attempts," the company said in the blog post. "Now, we are introducing a new optional feature that adds another layer of security to your LinkedIn sign-in: two-step verification."

LinkedIn suffered from a massive hacking attack a year ago, in which a Russian hacker stole more than 6 million encrypted passwords. More recently, several prominent accounts have been hacked on Twitter, including The Associated Press and The Onion. Read more...

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Say meow-llo to Freida the Throw Away Kitty

The tiny feline might sound unwanted, but she's quickly becoming "the most awww-triggering cat on the Internet." Freida was rescued from a ditch in rural Maine on April 10, her long hair painfully matted to her emaciated 2-pound body. Frieda's wide, golden eyes told her story: she needed help and fast.

Pam Hansberry of Forgotten Feline's of Maine took Freida in, outfitting her in stylish sweaters after a fresh haircut and addressing her medical needs with a veterinarian. After extensive testing, the vet diagnosed Freida with multifocal portal venule hypoplasia, reduplication and mild bile ductular hyperplasia. Quite the mouthful of issues for such a little kitty. Read more...

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Ever wonder what it would look like to plot every single geotagged tweet since 2009 on a map? Twitter has done just that.

Twitter posted these maps of Europe, New York City, Tokyo and Istanbul on its blog Friday. They use billions of geotagged tweets: Every dot represents a tweet, with the brighter colors showing a higher concentration of tweets. It's pretty amazing how the mapped-out tweets clearly match with population centers, highways and the like — though perhaps that's obvious.

1. Europe

2. New York City

3. Istanbul

4. Tokyo

More of Twitter's geotagged maps are available on Flickr. What do these maps reveal to you? Share in the comments. Read more...

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Former Microsoft Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky talked about some of the thinking behind the creation of Windows 8 during a public interview Thursday. During AllThingsD's D11 conference, Sinofsky said it was impossible to predict what the public's reaction would be to Windows 8, but said he knew some early adopters probably wouldn't like it.

"All the pre-release testing in the world doesn't necessarily help a product that's going in a different direction," Sinofsky said in response to a question about the "disruptive" nature of the Windows 8 experience.

SEE ALSO: Can Windows 8.1 Make My Wife Love Windows Again? Read more...

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Police in Istanbul unleashed tear gas and water cannons Friday in an effort to disperse thousands of protestors demonstrating against the government. One onlooker captured the chaos from a vantage point above the fray and uploaded the footage to YouTube, seen above.

At least 100 people were injured in Friday's clashes, per Reuters. Hundreds of peaceful protesters flocked to Istanbul's historic Gezi Park to protect it from demolition four days ago. The demonstrations have now escalated in size and scope, with thousands of protestors airing a wide array of grievances against Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Read more...

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Is there a government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrial beings? Can the government make a town disappear? What if your family was in on a mysterious plot?

If these questions intrigue you, 2K Games is betting you'll want to help unravel the mystery of a cryptic trunk in an alternate reality game tied to the upcoming release of the third-person strategy title The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.

An alternate reality game — better known as an ARG — introduces players to a narrative set in the real world that uses interactive media, including video, audio and websites, to move the story along. ARGs have a long history of video game tie-ins. For game developers and publishers, ARGs serve as tools to deepen the gaming experience by providing more insight into the story and creating excitement before launch. Read more...

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Apple CEO Tim Cook made some news this week during the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference when he announced that the company has "several more game changers" up its sleeve. Cook also revealed that Apple has purchased nine companies since October, and sold more than 13 million Apple TVs.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also used the conference to announce a "dramatic acceleration" of the Tesla Supercharger network that should enable Tesla drivers to drive cross country by the end of 2013, and Google unveiled an unlocked HTC One smartphone.

To recap some of the biggest news from this week's D11 conference, we will be hosting a Google+ Hangout today at 11:15 a.m. ET on the Mashable Google+ page. Join Tech Editor Pete Pachal, Senior Tech Analyst Christina Warren and Business Reporter Seth Fiegerman as they discuss what this week's news means for Apple, Tesla, Google — and you. Read more...

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In the long, hard-fought legal battle between Kim Dotcom and the United States and New Zealand authorities, Dotcom scored another small victory on Friday

The New Zealand High Court, which previously ruled that the warrants used to seize all his data and computers were illegal, ordered the authorities to grant Dotcom and his defense attorneys access to all evidence gathered in the police raid

Until now, the controversial file-sharing entrepreneur had no access to any of the computers, hard drives or documents that authorities confiscated in January 2012 when they raided his home in New Zealand. Dotcom argued that blocking access harmed his chances in the legal proceedings, putting him at a disadvantage in his fight against extradition. Read more...

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