Super Bowl XLIX: Mashable is live-blogging the ads during the Big Game

For the past three years, Mashable has assembled a crack team of ad execs to live blog and critique the often sorry crop of Super Bowl ads that are foisted on the American public. This year is no exception

It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. The 2015 crew is more than up to the task. The Expendables-style all-start team this year includes Lee Garfinkel, CEO of FCB Garfinkel; Allen Adamson, chairman North America for Landor Associates; Lucy Farey-Jones, executive strategy director at Venables Bell & Partners; Jamie Barrett, partner and chief creative officer at BarrettSF; Arwa Mahdawi, partner and chief strategy and innovation officer at Cummins & Partners; Patrick Godfrey, managing partner for GodfreyQ; Alex Amado, Senior Director of Creative and Media at Adobe, and Mike Tittel, executive creative director at Read more...

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The Pirate Bay is back online after nearly 2 months of downtime

Nearly two months after it went offline following a police raid in Sweden, torrent-indexing site The Pirate Bay is back online

The comeback is hardly surprising. Following a period of complete unavailability, the site was resurrected in December, with an image of a phoenix replacing its standard pirate-ship logo. The Pirate Bay was not immediately functional, but it featured a timer indicating that the site would resume operations some time around Feb. 1

See also: The Pirate Bay cofounder: I don't care if the site stays down

The Pirate Bay's current owners have not yet made an official announcement about its return. However, a Saturday report from TorrentFreak said there may be some friction between former and current staff members, with some even planning to launch another version of the site Read more...

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Pilots in helium-filled balloon land in Mexico after record-setting Pacific Ocean flight

The two men hoping to set a new world record for traveling in a helium-filled balloon safely executed a water landing on the Baja coast near La Poza Grande in Mexico on Saturday

After traveling roughly 7,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, the team, consisting of pilots Troy Bradley and Leonid Tiukhtyaev, have now broken two long-standing records for ballooning.

See also: Balloon pilots burst records with transpacific flight

As of this writing, after spending almost a full week in the air, the two pilots were being retrieved by a fishing boat, with initial reports confirming that they're both now safe after the challenging journey. The mayor of Albuquerque tweeted the good news, offering personal updates on the crew's status Read more...

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Drag queens in China dazzle in light of acceptance

As views on sexuality slowly evolve in China, some have found expression in the reform with a whole lot of sequins.

Chunai 98, a drag club in Guangxi Province presents a rare showcase of performances by a small group of cross-dressing men. Over time, the club has slowly gained some acceptance among locals

See also: Cross-dressers break the mold of traditional Pakistan

Many of the performers come from small cities in other provinces, having left their families in search of acceptance, employment and a sense of communityKevin Frayer, a photographer with Getty Images, was able to capture the closeness that accompanies China's vibrant and venereal drag community. Read more...

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Cure your dry skin with these 6 steamy hacks

Nobody likes a flake. That goes for flaky skin, too.

If you're one of the many people affected by the moisture-sucking winter air, you're probably suffering with ashy skin, chapped lips and a dry throat.

See also: 13 Plane Confessions From the People Running Your Flight

What's a dry human to do? You could purchase a humidifier, which emits vapor to make your indoors more humid, but those can range from $20 to over $100. And if you're not careful, your humidifier could become a disease-ridden hub of mold and bacteria, and cause respiratory problems

Instead, try some of these simple hacks to boost the moisture in the air — without boosting your credit card bill. Read more...

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World's first cuddling convention is so Portland

With Valentine's Day coming around the bend, people across the globe are gearing up to snuggle in pairs. Or are they?

Not according to professional cuddler Samantha Hess, who calls 2015 the year of taking back the cuddle. The affectionate act has gone commercial thanks to Hess, who has hosted hundreds of these nuzzling sessions. As the owner of Portland, Oregon's first snuggling storefront Cuddle Up To Me, she's bringing attention to platonic cuddling by helping to host the world's only cuddling convention — aptly named Cuddle Con.

See also: 21 Inspirational Yearbook Quotes That Prove the Children Are Our Future Read more...

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African Union agrees to send 7,500 troops to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

DDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — African leaders have agreed to send 7,500 troops to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria, an African Union official said Saturday.

The move came after the council urged heads of state to endorse the deployment of troops from five West African countries to fight the extremist group, according to Samil Chergui, head of the African Union's Peace and Security Council.

See also: Is Robert Mugabe fit for African Union leadership?

African leaders, who are members of the 54-nation African Union, are meeting in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa for a two-day summit that ends Saturday. Read more...

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10 simple ways to make time for reading in 2015

Are unread books piling up on the nightstand? It might be time to rethink your approach to reading.

It can be tough to get back to regular reading when the rest of one's day is stretched thin with responsibility. In early 2014, Pew Research Center reported that nearly a quarter of Americans hadn't cracked open a book in the previous year — and those who did read, on average, only five books

See also: 13 wintry books to keep you cozy during a snowstorm

For those who'd like to increase their book consumption in 2015, small changes to one's schedule can make a noticeable difference. Amazon's book editors shared their tips for getting out of a reading rut Read more...

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Rhino poaching curbed by drones and satellite data

In 2014, 1,215 rhinos were killed in South Africa for their horns, which end up in Asia as supposed cures for a variety of ailments. An estimated 30,000 African elephants were slaughtered last year for their tusks to be turned into trinkets. The world loses three rhinos a day and an elephant every 15 minutes. Simply stated, this is an unsustainable situation.

Our team at the University of Maryland's Institute for Advanced Computer Studies has created a new multifaceted approach to combat poaching in Africa and Asia. We devise analytical models of how animals, poachers and rangers simultaneously move through space and time by combining high resolution satellite imagery with loads of big data — everything from moon phases, to weather, to previous poaching locations, to info from rhinos' satellite ankle trackers — and then applying our own algorithms. We can predict where the key players are likely to be, so we can get smart about where to deploy rangers to best protect animals and thwart poachers. Read more...

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8 lip-smacking chicken wing recipes

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Family-friendly savings tools for busy parents

With three kids, never ending monthly expenses and the loom of college tuitions in our future, saving money is a top priority. As much as I make an effort though (and it does take effort), it’s easy to default to whatever is convenient, so I doubly appreciate any tech tools or apps that make saving money even easier

So whether you have a few of those (very expensive) kids of your own, want to ensure an early retirement or just have a New Year’s resolution to be more responsible with money, here are a few of my favorite tech helpers for saving extra cash:

See also: Photographer captures the beautiful chaos of parenting Read more...

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10 ways Facebook has ruined your life

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How to get rid of that song stuck in your head

It will ruin your concentration, kill your productivity and drive you to absolute distraction. When you get a song stuck in your head it can really affect your mental state and ruin your mood

We take a look at the what, how and why of "earworms," and ask, "Is there a cure?"

See also: The science behind brain farts

Can you get a stubborn song "unstuck" from your brain? Find out below.

What is an earworm?

An "earworm" is the common term for having a tune, or part of a tune, stuck on loop in your head. The scientific name is "involuntary musical imagery," abbreviated to INMI. You can also call it "stuck-song syndrome," but "earworm" really does seem to sum up the condition. The term comes from the German word "ohrwurm" which has no direct English translation — hence its bastardization. Read more...

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'First!' The people battling for celebrity attention on social media

Right now in Kent, England, Anthony is almost certainly checking actor Jamie Dornan's Twitter feed. The 22-year-old French teaching assistant has probably also got one eye on Dornan's Instagram stream, although the actor posts there less frequently, and Facebook page

Anthony relentlessly follows and checks (and then re-checks) virtually every action the 50 Shades of Grey star takes online. He spends up to 15 hours per day keeping tabs on Dornan's social media activity

In the quest to be first to Like, comment or respond to Dornan's online activity, and to bring news to Dornan's other fans via the Jamie Dornan Online fan site, Anthony is a social media monitoring machine. In France, Anthony's "co web," Laura, a 25-year-old childcare worker, puts in the same kind of hours in pursuit of reaching Dornan's posts first Read more...

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Health officials on high alert as Disneyland measles outbreak spreads

A measles outbreak linked to Disneyland continues to spread and while California remains the hardest hit state, health officials in Arizona are on high alert ahead of the Super Bowl.

Authorities have confirmed at least 109 cases, 91 of which are in California, according to a Friday update from the California Department of Public Health. That's up from 78 cases reported on Jan. 23. Seven Arizona residents have been infected, but at least 1,000 people in three counties in the Grand Canyon state have also been exposed to the highly contagious airborne disease,

"This is a critical point in this outbreak," the director of Arizona Department of Health Services, Will Humble, wrote in a blog post Read more...

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