At 9pm on February 1st in the Taiwanese city of Xinbei, a 23-year-old gamer named Chen Rongyou was found dead in his seat at an internet cafe, after buying two-eight hour sessions of online time. When discovered by police, he was stiff with rigor mortis, and his arms remained outstretched in front of him, with one hand reaching for the keyboard and another hand reaching for the mouse. more ›

As part of a measure to curb internet addiction (or further restrict the populace from even a fettered internet, depending on whom you ask), China's tightened its restrictions on cybercafes. Now establishments that admit three or more underage patrons (under 18) will have their licenses revoked. Thankfully, most of us now just have home computers, but boy am I glad these rulings didn't come down back when I was in high school. Ironically, back then the most subversive thing I was searching for was a good LAN party. more ›

Ah, this takes us back to when we were just wee High School kids running amok in Shanghai. After a night of partying, one of our crew realized he had nowhere to go back to, since the person whose house he was supposed to be “sleeping over” at had left hours ago. The rest of us being female and 17 (with somewhat conservative parents), couldn't offer him our couches. more ›