March 2010
Engadget Says It’ll Be Named ‘iPhone HD’ →
I hadn’t heard anything about a name, but “HD” makes sense given the 960 × 640 display. If they’re going to call it the HD, then perhaps the main camera will shoot HD video, too? I don’t see how a…
Permute - The slickest video converter for the Mac →
Very recently I reviewed a bunch of video converters, each of which had its own unique mix of features and user interface. But my conclusion was confused. I couldn’t decide, because none…
HDR Photos of Tokyo →
Gorgeous. (Via John Nack.)
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Permute - The slickest video converter for the Mac →
Very recently I reviewed a bunch of video converters, each of which had its own unique mix of features and user interface. But my conclusion was confused. I couldn’t decide, because none…
Reeder 2.0: Finally, An Awesome iPhone Feed Reader... →
One of about a half dozen tabs that I always have open in my web browser on my desktop or laptop is Google Reader. Even though other sources such as Twitter and Facebook are now better at…
The Rage Is Not About Health Care →
Frank Rich: The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing…
Victorinox Secure Pro USB drive is 'un-hackable,'... →
This isn’t the first USB drive / Swiss army knife we’ve seen from Victorinox, but the company’s new Secure Pro drive is the first that is supposedly “un-hackable.” To put that claim to…
Extra Ordinary Digital Artworks of Japanese Artist... →
Kagaya is Japanese digital fine artist created artworks relating to the universe including CG animation pictures, digital prints, posters, illustrations for astronomical books and magazines
Sony accuses Beyonce of piracy for putting her... →
Sony Entertainment has shut down Beyonce’s official YouTube site. Congrats to Sony Entertainment for wisely spending its legal dollars and working on behalf of its artists. Truly, you deserve…
Former militiaman unapologetic for calls to... →
Smells like Tea Spirit: Mike Vanderboegh, the anti-health-care Libertarian blogger who urged people to vandalize Democratic offices around the country lives on federal government disability checks.
Secret copyright treaty will sideline the UN and... →
Ever since the full text of the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) leaked earlier this week, scholars and activists have been poring over the document, finding the buried bodies….
Sony accuses Beyonce of piracy for putting her... →
Sony Entertainment has shut down Beyonce’s official YouTube site. Congrats to Sony Entertainment for wisely spending its legal dollars and working on behalf of its artists. Truly, you deserve…
ACTA Raising Serious Constitutional Questions →
One of the talking points from ACTA supporters was always that it wasn’t a “treaty” but an “executive agreement,” claiming that this meant something different. However, as we discussed back in…
Pwn2Own 2010: Google Chrome is the last man... →
Filed under: Security, Browsers
Pwn2Own 2010 is under way, and after day one of the annual security showdown the results are darn near an exact replica of last year’s. Safari was the…
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Gawker Publishes Pro-Flash Comments From Anonymous... →
It’s a simple choice: do something other than Flash and get your content on the iPad, or stick with Flash and ignore the iPad. Complaining about the iPad’s lack of Flash doesn’t constitute a…
Former militiaman unapologetic for calls to... →
Smells like Tea Spirit: Mike Vanderboegh, the anti-health-care Libertarian blogger who urged people to vandalize Democratic offices around the country lives on federal government disability checks.
Secret copyright treaty will sideline the UN and... →
Ever since the full text of the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) leaked earlier this week, scholars and activists have been poring over the document, finding the buried bodies….
High-fructose corn syrup linked to obesity →
Researchers at Princeton have shown that if you keep the number of calories the same, rats eating high-fructose corn syrup “gained significantly more weight” than rats who ate table sugar. Some…
Supersizing The Last Supper →
In paintings of the Last Supper done over the past 1000 years, the portion sizes of the food depicted have increased by 69%. From the 52 paintings, which date between 1000 and 2000 A.D., the…
New paper →
My latest paper, co-authored with Sid Stamm, is now online: Certified Lies: Detecting and Defeating Government Interception Attacks Against SSL The abstract: This paper introduces a new…
Consumerist solicits your "Worst Company in... →
Consumerist is hosting its 5th annual March-Madness-style “Worst Company In America” contest. The first smackdown? Bank of America vs Citibank. Winner gets a “Golden Poop” award. In 2008, the…
A new species of extinct human relatives? →
DNA taken from a finger bone found in a Siberian cave suggests that the finger’s owner—who lived between 48-and-30 thousand years ago—was neither a modern human, nor a Neanderthal, but some…
The ACTA agreement has been leaked →
Big news today, if you’ve been following Cory’s excellent ongoing coverage of the “secret copyright treaty”—The Pirate Bay is hosting a leaked copy of the entire ACTA agreement. Download it while…
Princeton Researchers Link High-Fructose Corn... →
Princeton: A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly…
danger →
PDF the Most Common Malware Vector →
MS Word has been dethroned: Files based on Reader were exploited in almost 49 per cent of the targeted attacks of 2009, compared with about 39 per cent that took aim at Microsoft Word. By…
The Story of Bottled Water →
The makers of The Story of Stuff have a new video about the “manufactured demand” of expensive bottled water. (Xeni posted a teaser a couple of weeks ago.)
When Fiji water launched an…
★ GIF, H.264, and Patents →
Arthur Wyatt, in a post on MetaFilter regarding the battle over HTML5 video codecs: However Mozilla have taken a stance against incorporating H.264 into Firefox on the grounds that it is …
Happy Birthday, Gnutella: Pioneering P2P Protocol... →
Ten years ago this week, online music pioneer Justin Frankel released a little application dubbed Gnutella that enabled file sharing through a distributed P2P network. Frankel, whose…
Jean-Louis Gassée on Palm →
Analysis and insight from a man who knows what it’s like.
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Toshiba 640GB portable USB hard drive: $90+free... →
From the Toys Section:
Amazon today has the Toshiba 640GB USB Portable hard drive model HDDR640E04XR for $89.99 w/free shipping. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen for a portable 640GB hard…
Militant arm of the infoviz movement gets serious... →
By Mark Goetz. (Thanks, PeaceLove)
Peter Watts may serve two years for failing to... →
I’ve spent the last day in a funk at the news that my friend, Canadian sf writer Peter Watts was convicted of obstruction for getting out of his car at a US Border crossing and asking what was…
Peter Watts found guilty →
Early terse reports are that the jury has returned a guilty verdict for Dr Peter Watts, a science fiction writer who was beaten at the US-Canada border when he got out of his car to ask why it…
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“Because it isn’t about “universal health care.” It’s...”
– (via The Huffington Post)
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iPhone’s Missing Feed Reader →
“The predicament with feed reading apps [on the iPhone] is most certainly not in the quantity of the selections; rather, the quality. This is not to say that most of the legitimate feed reading apps on the iPhone have not been developed with care — but as agents of delivery for my favorite authors, and as contrivances meant for enjoying lengthy bits of text, I prefer a simple app that does...
How to Calculate a Dog's Age in Dog Years... →
A popular misconception is that dogs age 7 years for each calendar year. In fact, canine aging is much more rapid during the first 2 years of a dog’s life. After the first 2 years the ratio settles…
The Onion Puts Out An Equally Accurate Report On... →
Ah, leave it to The Onion to successfully encapsulate the state of the recording industry with a report that is basically as accurate as most of the reports that come out of the RIAA these days:
The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that the combined revenue brought in by Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal, and countless independent music labels in 2009 totaled $18. “The...
What does keeping kids out of school do, and why,... →
Suspension: It Grows on You Is “Suspension” ever corrective?
Mark Shuttleworth clarifies: Ubuntu is "not a... →
Filed under: Business, OS Updates
As some of you may have noticed, the new Ubuntu theme for 10.4 features the window buttons on the “wrong side” (left). This has caused quite…
Peter Watts found guilty →
Early terse reports are that the jury has returned a guilty verdict for Dr Peter Watts, a science fiction writer who was beaten at the US-Canada border when he got out of his car to ask why it…
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WatchPredators Trailer
★ Hope You Enjoy the Smell of Napalm in the... →
This lengthy New York Times story on the escalating rivalry between Apple and Google hit while I was at SXSW; I didn’t have time to do much more than point out the curious choice to describe Apple…
Inside the Collapse →
Compelling 60 Minutes interview with author Michael Lewis, on the Wall Street financial collapse.
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Loud sex is a reason for cops to search your home,... →
Brian McGacken of Farmingdale, New Jersey was sentenced to ten years in prison because police discovered he was growing marijuana while on a call to investigate loud sex. Daniel Tencer of AlterNet…
Analysis Of Google And Viacom's Arguments Over... →
I’ve spent the last few hours going through the motions for summary judgment from both Google and Viacom in the YouTube case. If you’d like to kill a few hours yourself:
Viacom Summary Judgment…
EU Proposes Criminalizing Inducing Infringement In... →
While the EU Parliament has decisively denounced ACTA — both in terms of the process and the substance of the (still secret) draft agreement, it appears that the EU negotiators are still pushing…
Loud sex is a reason for cops to search your home,... →
Brian McGacken of Farmingdale, New Jersey was sentenced to ten years in prison because police discovered he was growing marijuana while on a call to investigate loud sex. Daniel Tencer of AlterNet…
Amazon Playing Hardball With Book Publishers Over... →
Quoting a report in the subscriber-only Publishers Marketplace: At least one independent publisher of scale was told categorically by Amazon in a recent phone call initiated by the etailer that…