The Radeon HD 5870, as shipped, is a very powerful graphics card—more than most people need, even, and at the very least, enough for anyone. Except, apparently, Asus.

Asus' plans for their newest Republic of Gamers (ROG) Radeon HD 5870-based card cater to a specific breed—the overclock-everything-for-the-sake-of-it PC tweakers, who are dwindling along with their gaming platform—but really, anyone can appreciate them: by default, the card's GPU is cranked from 850 to 900MHz, and doubles the RAM to RAM to 2GB of DDR5 memory.

If that's not enough, you can dial your frequencies up using included overclocking software, which saves new settings directly to the card. And if you start to notice that delicious, telltale smell of melting silicon, you don't even have to navigate software to fix things: mashing a physical button on the back of the card reverts it to stock settings. Brilliant.

The ROG 5870 doesn't have a price or North America release date yet, but word is it's already hitting the streets in China, so full release details shouldn't be far off. [Zol via Techreport via SlashGear]

A lot of people incurred the wrath of Hunter S. Thompson over his long career, and we can now add the "fools," "bastards," and "idiots" who worked at his local electronics shop to that list.

Warning, the video is NSFW if you work with old people or humorless prudes.

Take your average septuagenarian's frustration with technology and add Thompson's well-documented volatility. That will only offer a hint of how amusing this call—an expletive-ridden threat to the people who set up his new JVC DVD player—really is.

It's also reassuring to know that Thompson, who wrote a weekly column for ESPN.com at the end of his career, employs the same "do-what-I-want-or-else-I'll-write-about-it!" tactic we here at Gizmodo routinely use to keep tech support jockeys in line. Just kidding! Hilariously NSFW. [DVICE]

The latest Digital Camera Raw Compatibility 3.0 update for OS X update finally adds Canon sRAW, which until now has been pretty difficult to manipulate on Macs (without third party programs).

This update extends RAW image compatibility for Aperture 3 and iPhoto '09 for the following cameras and formats:

Canon PowerShot S90
Canon sRAW
Canon mRAW
Leica D-LUX 4
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

Grab it now from Software Update.

Though the dust has hardly started to settle after the privacy shitstorm that immediately followed the launch of Google Buzz—Google claiming it was going to untangle Buzz from Gmail and then denying that it had any such intentions didn't help matters—the Don't Be Evildoers have in fact made some tweaks to the system. Here's what's changed so far:

As of this morning, private e-mail addresses that were left out there naked for all to see in @replies are now covered up by asterisks.

Starting this week, Google will switch its auto-follow function to a suggestion-based system.

Those fixes are a good start, but at this point it's possible that Buzz's bad vibes are so pervasive that people won't be able to forgive and forget. At least not until Facebook's next privacy blunder. [TechCrunch and Business Insider]

Planning on dumping your dame (or dude) anytime soon? Make every future Valentine's Day extra special for your ex by giving them a breakup memory they'll never forget! Here are a few high tech ways to get the message across.

Based in New York City, Shane Snow is a graduate student in Digital Media at Columbia University and founder of Scordit.com. He's fascinated with all things geeky, particularly social media and shiny gadgets he'll never afford.

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.

The good people at MobileMag got a chance to review the new Addonics pocket NAS 2.0 NAS2XU2, and they report that for the price and the size, it's worthy of your attention.

You guys showed some interest when we got our first look at the NAS2XU2 back in November, and MobileMag reports that by and large it lives up to its promise. The pocketable device sports 2 USB ports and now has gigabit ethernet, improving the slow transfer speeds that plagued the first model.

MobileMag had some trouble getting the built-in media sharing system to work, but the unit supports SMB and Samba so with some tinkering it will likely do fine as a media server. As a mini FTP server, a hub for USB devices, and Bit Torrent server, however, it worked like a charm.

The NAS 2.0 NAS2XU2 is available for $59.99 from Addonics. [MobileMag]

The old videophone sci-fi concept is now portable wireless reality, and it's not just politicians and celebrities who are doing naughty things in front of cameras. Our resident love doctor explains if and when it's okay to bring it up.

Far too many people have had their sex lives exposed thanks to sex tapes—and not just the kind stored on digital cameras. Remember the Clay Aiken video chat sex-ish scandal? I do and it wasn't pretty, pasty white chest and all.

Many women and men are appropriately cautious about exposing themselves online. For your sake as well as that of your partner, I'd suggest holding off on video chat sex until you trust each other—and then some. Get to know each other well enough so that you can tell whether or not they're likely to be dishonest or if they have a strong temper. Have they tried to embarrass or shame past partners in any way? Have they tried to take revenge on former friends or exes? If so, you might want to keep your clothes on and vibrator in the drawer for the time being. Or get the Safer Sexting app for your iPhone and sext with photos for the time being.

Aside from possibly having your video chat sex on public display, there's a more personal reason to be thoughtful about your online sex. People attach different levels of meaning to being nude or sexual with others—even if just virtually. Some people will drop their pants on or off screen for just about anyone, regardless of how close they feel. Others will only do so with people they feel close to and with whom they feel safe and connected.

Should a hot and heavy game of online Scrabble tempt you to strip away your clothes and then the next day you change your mind and stop chatting or you start dating someone else and broadcasting it on your blog, it could break that person's heart. As such, I would suggest that you only suggest video chat sex when you have a sense that you can trust each other to be honest and private and when you can trust yourselves to be kind.

If both of those are true, then bring up video chat in the larger context of what turns each of you on. Dirty talk? Sultry texts? Lingerie? Vibrators? The Frucci Fleshlight video? By saying that video chat sex turns you on, you have the opportunity to ask the other person how they feel about it, whether they've ever tried it and whether they'd be open to trying it with you and under what circumstances. Oh, and whether they'd consider using the iChat roller coaster effect, which is crazy hot for sex chats.

For example, you might agree to not show faces or to promise not to take screen shots or to do some things on video (like show off your penis or vulva) but not others (like do naughty things with your iPhone). It's all about communication, boundaries and making sure your computer settings allow you to keep your screen bright even if your hands are busy doing other things.

Read more of Dr. Debby's love advice here during Gizmodo's Bad Valentine celebration.

Debby Herbenick, PhD is a Research Scientist and Associate Director of The Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute and author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction. She blogs at MySexProfessor.com.

Webcam shot from mofetos/Flickr under CC license

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.

Not a day goes by that I don't lament my inability to hook up my Blackberry to a full-size monitor and keyboard. OK, I've never actually thought that, but the REDFLY dock from Celio can pull it off regardless.

In a new demonstration video, Celio shows off their REDFLY Moab, a small box that gives you some room to stretch out in your smartphone's OS. "Why wouldn't you just send an e-mail in webmail?" you ask, and I wonder the same thing myself. But seeing the familiar Blackberry OS on a big screen is actually sort of amusing, like seeing an elephant balance on its hind legs.

It doesn't look like the REDFLY supports mouses yet, so if you were excited at the prospect of inflating your Brickbreaker high score you can forget about it. No word on when Celio will be rolling out the dock, so for the time being your smartphone input is limited to your two innermost digits. [Engadget]

Last week we saw a neat concept for a wall that employed spinning triangular panels to change its appearance. Hungarian designer István Kulinyi's Mobil Pixel Lamp employs the same general idea, except it's a lamp. And it's real.

Inspired by the pixels you're looking at right now, Kulinyi's lamp comprises a five by five grid of triangular panels framed by black bars on the top and bottom. Each panel has a side that glows red, a side that glows white, and one that is solid black, allowing for 847,288,609,443 different combinations. That should keep you busy for a while.

Though Kulinyi seems to have put together a working model of the Mobil Pixel, as of now there isn't any information on its future as a manufactured product. Hopefully some enterprising company will snap this design up soon; with almost a trillion different looks, it's bound to have something for everyone. [István Kulinyi via designboom via Unplggd]

Analog means more than digital. It's real, for one thing. Something real is maimed in the process of recording. And it's slow. Pulp doesn't teleport, like bits. If you write somebody a letter, you mean it.

Bits are circumspect, at best. They're alterable. Transient. Intangible. Destructible.

A letter that's typed is smashed onto paper, one character at a time. The ink left behind by each key is its own tiny little memory, a record of the process as it happened. There is no going back, no forgetting at the command of another key, there is only progress and memory. Holding a typed letter isn't simply grasping whatever it's reporting, it's possessing a record of the act of reporting itself.

Handwriting is for pussies. Anyone can write. Free-form and free-wheeling, instruments in unsteady hands spill ink or smear graphite in jots of uneven loops and crooked lines. The paper bears no scars, simply stains. Stains can be washed or smudged away.

A typewriter is a machine, it requires a connection. An intimacy of operation. Lines and margins and ribbons need require care. I do not know how to love them. So I do not type. Perfection is a minor miracle, or a lot of care.

It's much easier to tell a lie with a typewriter. The truth of the paper and the ink make it easy to hide lies behind it. Everything digital is already a lie.

You can burn a letter, but it leaves behind ashes.

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.

Conventional treatments are often ineffective for treating brain cancer, but scientists have developed a novel new method of destroying cancer cells in the brain: they tag them with metal nanodiscs and shake them to death with magnets.

Scientists at the University of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy have developed a process by which tiny iron-plated discs are attached to antibodies that seek out cancerous cells. Those cells end up getting tagged with the discs, and when a light magnetic field is applied, the oscillation causes the cells to self-destruct. Surrounding healthy cells are left undamaged.

The scientists working on the project emphasize that it's still in the early, experimental phases, though they hope to begin testing on animals soon. But even if it takes several years to determine if this unique approach is viable for use on humans, it's always heartening to see nanomaterials being applied to the difficult problems of today. [Science Daily via Kottke]

Wayne Coyne, frontman of the acclaimed rock band The Flaming Lips, recently renovated his Oklahoma compound, and the new space gives the group's music a run for its money in terms of psychedelic flair, playful construction, and sheer imagination.

The last we saw of Coyne, he was, naturally, sitting in a bathtub on Google Street View. If you thought that was the weirdest place he bathes, wait until you see his bathroom. Its Gaudiesque drip-castle design—Coyne refers to it as the "drug damaged, artist element of [his] home"—is certainly one of the highlights of his new pad, realized by FitzSimmons Architects.

An adjoining alcove, accessed by a glittering circular passageway, scores serious bonus points for including the Giz-featured world's most beautiful object: the Gyrofocus fireplace.

Having seen Coyne's appropriately trippy poop cave, it's got me wondering if other musicians' homes reflect their sensibilities as closely. Is John Mayer's house ordinary and forgettable on the outside but chaotically and impenetrably decorated on the inside? Does Prince's Minneapolis home have a bunch of sex swings? Yes, yes, I'm sure it does. [Fitzsimmons Architects via Design Milk via Geekosystem]

It's the worst feeling: Waking up completely wrecked from the night before, only to realize with a dull sweat that you pressed 'Send'. Fortunately for the rest of us, what you drunkenly texted is often hilarious.

And now there's even a whole website dedicated to collecting your stupidest text messages: Texts From Last Night (dot com), which has upped the ante with a book and the now obligatory iPhone app. (You can, of course, just text them.)

Here are some of our favorites.

Just because this came from California I'm not going to judge

(707) he doesn't care that i have a boyfriend so why should i?

Strategy: Indisputable; Tactics: Perhaps Less So

Are they still out there making out on the couch? How can we get them to leave? I'm gonna go stand naked in the kitchen with a knife.

Modern love is hard, but Google is not

(314) I woke up next to her this morning and couldn't remember her name. Luckily, she had written it on my hand so that I could add her on facebook.

Mooning Over My Hammies

Don't feel obligated to get back to me but I think I just fell in love with a middle-aged waitress at the Denny's in Waco. She's used but in good condition.

No, you're good. Just set your desk on fire.

She said I could do whatever I wanted to her. I pumped for 20 seconds, apologized, rolled over and passed out. I sit directly across from her at work. Awkward?

But where's the remote?

dude I woke up laying next to some guy. I don't have my bra or his name. he has a nice TV though.

Unfortunately all I ever watched was "The A-Team", so I just got in my van and drove away.

I just crawled out of a second story window using a sheet and his clothes for rope so he wouldn't wake up. I am so glad I watched MacGyver as a kid.

Finally: Everyone here wins

(949) Babe, the 4 years we've been together have been amazing. Will you marry me?

(1-949) are you seriously doing this over text message

(949) hahaha no, but i am dumping you.

Verizon has officially stated that they will be holding a joint press conference with Skype at MWC on Tuesday, and now Business Week is reporting that Verizon will announce new phones preloaded with Skype for use with their 3G network.

Well yes, that seems like a pretty reasonable guess for what the two companies will be announcing come Tuesday. Despite constant rumors of such, there's no iPhone or iPad on the Verizon horizon, and adding Skype to their stable would be an attractive option for customers who are making fewer and fewer calls but are already plunking down considerable cash for beefy data plans.

With Skype tinkering away on the 3G functionality of their iPhone app—3G Skype calls are already possible with Fring—it seems like as good a time as ever for Verizon to make a strong push for 3G data calling and the more flexible plans it will engender. [Business Week]

If you like robots or music even a little bit, you should really just go ahead and watch this video of Marv, a robotic vibraphone, playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" faster than any human ever has or ever will.*

On the vibes, at least, Marv is king. Created by three San Francisco engineers who are musicians themselves, the "MIDI Actuated Robotic Vibraphone" will be making its public debut at BarBot next week.

Thankfully, the team captured this early run-through on video, so those of us not in the Bay Area can be dazzled by Marv's performance. At first it seems like the vibraphone is playing itself, and you get that same weird, uncanny feeling when you come across a player piano. But then the camera moves closer and you can see what's really going on: instead of using two mallets to strike the bars, each note has its own tiny piston underneath which allows Marv to play pieces with wicked precision and dizzying speed.

As the team's website claims, Marv plays arrangements "far more complex than a human player could ever achieve," in part because of its ability to strike multiple notes simultaneously.

I like how at the beginning of this video one team member says, "it does something at least," as if what we're about to see is only a passable example of robovibes action. But once Marv gets going and the bumblebee is flying at full tilt, the camera pans to two of the creators who just nod their heads like, "oh Hell yeah."

Marv can be programmed to play along with humans, too, but I'm not sure I'd want to be the dude holding back this machine's incredible robo-abilities. I guess what I'm saying is, when it comes to mallet-based percussion instruments, bring on the singularity. [Robovibes via Laughing Squid]

*Some commenters rightfully directed me to this video of Tiago della Vega playing the piece even crazier fast, though I cannot verify his status as "human."

Though we've talked a lot about dumping via text message, the burning question put to our resident love doctor is: Can you ask someone out via text message? And can you do it with video?

As technology evolves, the number of ways to ask someone out on a date grows and grows until one day you get a Farmville Cupig and wonder if it's love. Or something. The way I see it, as long as the object of your affection texts and texts often, I think it's a fine way to go. Just make sure you're creative, adorable or flirtatious about asking someone on a date. If not, then you're just being lazy which is unattractive to most.

And please, for the love of the text gods, use full words rather than something like "u want 2 go 2 the movies w/me?" It only takes two more letters to write the whole word "you"! And "to" is only one more character than "2"! If you want someone to spend hours of their precious time with you when they could be dating someone else or stalking their ex's Facebook profile, then please take a few seconds to come up with the most creative text ever with which to ask them out.

If you're too nervous to call and ask them out, say so in the text—that could be flattering and endearing. A video invite would be awesome and could show off your dedication and talents; just don't do anything that would utterly embarrass yourself as too many people would show off your video invite to their 12 closest friends.

You could also create an event on Facebook (make it a secret/closed event, visible only to her) and invite her to attend. It's more modern than Evite and she can sync the event with her Outlook calendar. If you want to go old school, call her up. If she doesn't answer, sing a made-up song into her voicemail, asking her out. Does she like letters and regular old postal mail? Send her a letter asking her out. Technology allows us to innovate but it can also make it too easy to be lazy so make sure to use it to your advantage.

Make sure the medium you use shows off your best side. If you show someone what you've got and they're not into it, try to not take it as a rejection of you. It just may not be the right fit. An artist friend of mine tells the story of how he showed up with a beautiful painting as a gift for a first a date. Though past dates had been taken aback by his forwardness, this particular woman seemed touched. A few years later, they married. So I say wear your heart on your sleeve, if you can: you will likely get turned down a few times but when you come across the right person, it will be worth it.

Read more of Dr. Debby's love advice here during Gizmodo's Bad Valentine celebration.

Debby Herbenick, PhD is a Research Scientist and Associate Director of The Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute and author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction. She blogs at MySexProfessor.com.

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.

Yesterday we saw the Samsung Wave from afar, today we get our first close look at Samsung's first Bada-powered handset. The Wave is indeed the S8500, the first handset to receive Bluetooth SIG certification for the new Bluetooth 3.0 standard.

Ironically, Bluetooth was left out of the list of leaked specs but we will presume that Bluetooth 2.0 and possibly 3.0 is on board. Besides Bluetooth, the Wave will offer a 3.3 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display, five megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, 720p video, DivX support, 2GB internal memory with microSD expansion, HSDPA connectivity, Wi-Fi, 1 GHz processor, 3.5mm headphone jack, aluminum body, 1500 mAh battery, and the Bada OS with Touchwiz 3.0. The Wave has the typical appearance of a Samsung phone with two flush front buttons, a triangular four way navigational button, triangular camera and flash, and brushed metal accents. Other than the performance of the Bada OS, which will have to wait until the first hands-on video is released, all that is left to find out about this handset is its launch date and geographic availability, a not so trivial fact we hope is announced when Samsung officially unveils this handset next week at MWC. [DailyMobile.se]

BGR features the latest tech news, mobile-related content and of course, exclusive scoops.

With MWC right around the corner, all eyes are on Microsoft for the launch of Windows Phone 7. And though we heard Project Pink was in trouble, this FCC filing suggests the Sharp-made Turtle may still be on its way.

The diagram for the model PB10ZU shows a short, stout device that bears an unmistakable resemblance to the Project Pink Turtle images we saw last Fall. The filing reveals that the PB10ZU packs dual-band CDMA, EVDO, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. Sharp being the manufacturer for the Turtle is in line with what we have heard from the beginning and makes sense, as they made the original Sidekick for Danger, who was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.

A second device with the model number PB20ZU is mentioned, though considerably less detail is offered. One could surmise that this might well be the Pure, the second, more traditionally-shaped slider that we saw in our original leak.

As Engadget points out, the FCC filing's details are being withheld until March 29, just after the CTIA conference in Vegas. That conference has been rumored as a potential venue for the debut of the Zune phone. Exactly what place the Turtle will have in the Windows Phone 7 line-up remains unclear, though it has been suggested that it is not the star of the collection but rather an "evolution of the Sidekick."

Presumably some of this will come into focus in the coming days at MWC, but until then you can bet the speculation will be at an all time high. [FCC via Engadget]

Not many thermometers claim to be well-designed and booze-filled. If you're ever left in a dry house, you at least have one more option. Then again, regular thermometers can get you messed up fast too (and dead). [Unpluggd]

Forget grades of wool—the clothing of the future's going to be measured in millivolts. Researchers at UC-Berkeley have created electricity-generating nanofibers that could someday be woven into your clothing.

The fibers are about 100 times thinner than a human hair, but can generate electrical outputs of up to 30 millivolts. Even better, their piezoelectric properties allow them to mechanical stress and twisting into electricity:

Although they are still working out the exact calculations, the researchers noted that more vigorous movements, such as the kind one would create while dancing the electric boogaloo, should theoretically generate more power. "And because the nanofibers are so small, we could weave them right into clothes with no perceptible change in comfort for the user," said Lin, who is also co-director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center at UC Berkeley.

This isn't the first exploration into wearable nanogenerators, but it's the only attempt so far at using an organic material, in this case polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). It's a cheaper, more flexible solution that has a better shot at being productized. If it is, you'd conceivably be able to power your gadgets from your t-shirt. Wait... does that mean the Feel Bright Light Visor wasn't such a bad idea after all? [UC Berkeley]