Andy Sternberg

Andrew Hyde gets around. The iPhone Tracker app confirms this. (Photo via flickr). Andrew Hyde sold all of his worldly possessions last August and began a trip around the world. He makes no secret of this -- its detailed on his website. We're well aware that personal information becomes vulnerable whenever we agree to the terms of service of yet another fun geo-location mobile app as it typically utilizes information from the phone's positioning...

As if the traffic situation isn't about to be a nightmare IRL with President Obama arriving at LAX around 2:30 p.m., an outage affecting web apps and services dependent on Amazon's EC2 servers has crashed many of our favorite online procrastinatory tools and destinations. What does this mean? We haven't been able to monitor our social networks with Hootsuite, check in on Foursquare, ask questions on Quora, or check in on the real news of the day at Reddit for... going on twelve hours!

USC is probably the last school in town at which you'd expect to find a student body actively engaged in administrative injustices and campus policy but that may be starting to change. "The tide is beginning to turn as USC continues to upset certain members of its community," said Max Hoiland, one of the student organizers behind the march and rally, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Thursday in the United University Church parking lot.

Tim Hetherington image via Twitter Academy-Award nominated film director and war photographer Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya Wednesday along with award-winning Getty photographer Chris Hondros, according to Business Insider and ABC News. UPDATE: Later reports indicated that Hetherington was killed in the attack while Hondros and at least one other journalist were seriously wounded. Hondros later died of his wounds at the hospital. Hetherington was last heard from via Twitter on Tuesday: "In...

Today in Extra, Extra if McDonalds isn't good enough for you, Hooters is hiring! A coach is fired and baseball season is cut short at a high school in Burbank. Also, we've got bad news for Charlie Sheen, good news in Silver Lake, a couple celebrity deaths and news about cemeteries. Plus: Keep up with us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter: @LAist @LAistFood @LAistSports.

The Medical Kush Doctor marijuana dispensary is raided on 4/20 (photo via Venice 311. No better day for a tour of beachfront dispensaries than April 20th, or 4/20, the date/time a bunch of stoners once decided to use as code for smoking the pot. But to walk into a marijuana dispensary, one must have a medical marijuana ID card administered by a county health official (thanks to, yep -- CA Senate Bill 420). But...

Terror in the U.S. no longer sees any color. After nearly a decade, the sun has finally set on the Department of Homeland Security's rainbow of terror color-coded alert system. In the near future, terror as we've feared it will no longer be expressed in terms of the more shocking shades in the spectrum as the department's brand new National Terror Advisory System (NTAS) public guide (pdf) is introduced. "We've been 'orange' since 2006,"...

Ai Weiwei, Untitled (Divine Proportion), 2006, is one of eight new acquisitions by LACMA (courtesy LACMA blog) The LA County Museum of Art added eight pieces to its collection last weekend, including Christian Marclay's widely-acclaimed 24-hour video "The Clock," according to the LA Times. A 24-hour-long meditation on the nature and artifice of time, "The Clock" consists of thousands of film (and to a lesser degree television) clips that feature clocks and watch faces,...

Part of the sky, as seen by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) NASA's Pasadena-based (Caltech) Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) left us all a little gift this week -- the first batch of data and images collected by an infrared satellite that captured the most detailed scan of the whole sky. Data and images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) during the first three months of 2010 can now be pored over...

!!! gets the Coachella webcast off to a sweaty start on the Outdoor Theater stage Whether you missed out on tickets to Coachella this year, prefer kickin' it by the pool, or just dislike crowds (but love music), you'll be enlightened to know that the festival is comin' atcha live. On three channels, starting now. Barring any technical difficulties, the Coachella livestream will bring about 60 live performances to your computer or mobile device...

Record Store Day exclusives seen in the Coachella tent, 2009 (Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist) This weekend is all about music and you don't even need to venture out to the Coachella Valley to take part. April 16th is the fifth annual (fourth global) Record Store Day and it is being celebrated at more independent record stores around L.A. than we even knew existed. The limited-edition special releases and in-store parties and performances begin at...

Homer gets a break this April 15th (photo by jpmatth via flickr. ...The deadline for filing taxes is Monday, April 18th this year! In January the IRS announced an extension from the typical April 15th tax deadline to the 18th in keeping with the traditional Coachella Friday -- er -- Emancipation Day holiday, observed only in DC and equating to one celebratory day of liberation from filing taxes. If you're not filing via the...