I’m not sure if this is staged or not, but it seems that this guy doesn’t really appreciate having all his beloved WOW characters suddenly disappear on him. I just hope that his girlfriend won’t get the same treatment as his monitor, else he’ll have the police knock on his front door in no time.
[Via Geekologie]
French Canadian journalist Maxime Johnson, who’s currently visiting the “Display Taiwan” exhibition in Taipei, brought LiteOn’s upcoming LED “mobile lamp” to my attention today. As most LED light bulbs, the “mobile lamp” is compatible with traditional incandescent light bulb sockets, but what sets it apart from similar products is its internal battery, which can keep the light powered for up to two hours in the case of a power failure. The bulb can also be turned on and off when running on battery by gently tapping its base.
Unfortunately, the “mobile lamp” is still under development and will not be released to the market until next year, but when it is, it will be priced in the $50 range. Kind of expensive at first, but considering that the device’s lifetime is around 30 years and that all it consumes is 7w of power, it’s probably worth the investment.
[Via Maxime Johnson]
The security researchers who uncovered part of AT&T’s list of iPad users have inadvertently brought out the big guns. No, not Steve Jobs and his Apple cohorts, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Spokeswoman Lindsay Godwin told the AFP news agency that “The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation to address this potential cyberthreat.”
Clearly nobody would argue that law enforcers shouldn’t investigate what certainly appears to be a case of data theft, but it’s something of a surprise to see the big boys getting involved in what, despite the high-profile nature of the case, is hardly a piece of hacking with serious security consequences.
What’s actually been taken from AT&T (the security breach has nothing to do with the iPad device itself) is a list of around 114,000 iPad user’s e-mail addresses and the serial number on the corresponding SIM card.
What could have been done with this information in the wrong hands? Well, for a start it’s probably worth a fair price in the spam market: one thing you know about the people on this list is that they’ve likely got a bit of cash to splash, which always catches the interest of spammers.
Other than that, you have to stretch a bit. About the worst that anyone’s managed to conceive so far is that malware spreaders could send bogus e-mails with malicious attachments which appear to have come from AT&T or Apple and refer to the iPad, safe in the knowledge that the recipients are more likely to believe they are genuine.
The real fallout of the affair might be that we come one step closer to answering the long-running question of whether Apple products are inherently more secure or simply offer a less attractive audience to hackers. Esche Aurenheimer of Goatse (Google that at your peril…) Security, which uncovered the list, told CNET: “I think that Apple users now have an unrealistic expectation of protection that is going to be quickly shattered as they become a more sizable minority.”
While the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico is far from funny, the following clip making fun of BP’s apparent inability to stop the oil spill disaster is just hilarious. Check it out:
This is a guest article by D. Salmons on behalf of DIY Guides.
House cleaning can be a very time consuming and laborious chore that seems to never end. And just when you think you have it all under control, it’s time to do it again. Even worse, things can be missed that suddenly complicate your plan of attack. Is there any hope?
Yes, there is hope! You just need to think like a geek. And what would a geek do? Why, create a spreadsheet that makes house cleaning a manageable job without any surprises, of course.
The next time you’re on that oh-so-important WOW raid and emptying your bladder isn’t really an option, consider using one of those revolutionary geek leak portable urinal systems. Unfortunately, geek leaks aren’t sold on the market for now, so you’ll have to resort to peeing in something like a modified gas tank… or something.
[Via TechEblog]
This amazing stop motion re-creation of a Super Mario Bros. Game was created by Japenese Youtube user takotuboooo with a total budget of only $55. Check it out:
[Via Kotaku]
The new expansion pack for The Sims 3, Ambitions, was recently released. I’ve had a chance to play with it a bit, and here are my impressions, a breakdown of what it adds to the game, and some nifty screenshots.
In the following video, Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson debunks the 2012 myth, explaining exactly why the various end of the world scenarios that can be found on the net don’t hold up science-wise.
The New York Times—or more specifically their standards editor Phil Corbett—has decreed that the use of the word “tweet” is no longer welcome in the pages of the famed newspaper. His reasoning?
Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.
Except for special effect, we try to avoid colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon. And “tweet” — as a noun or a verb, referring to messages on Twitter — is all three. Yet it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections.
As The Awl points out, Corbett makes some good arguments here. I’m a bit of a grammar nut myself, and I cringe every time someone uses the verb “tweet”—especially during a news cast. It sounds rather insipid, and completely out of context, even to me (someone who uses Twitter every single day). But at the same time, the technology is changing the lingo and try as we die-hard wordwrights might try, in the end we’re not the ones who make the decisions about phrases. To balk the majority means creating a likely rift between the audience and writer.
So: alternatives, perhaps? “Chirp” sounds lame. And, honestly it’s a little difficult for me to think of anything else other than “tweet” at this point. I think that Corbett—however well intended and dead-on about the lingo he is—is fighting a losing battle. That is, assuming that Twitter stays around for another decade. As much as I love Twitter, I’m just not sure it’ll have the staying power of something as game-changing as email (as Corbett discusses in his guidelines). So maybe this entire argument is just, well, for the birds.
How about you? Do you cringe at the word “tweet” like I do in journalism? Can you offer any better suggestions? Or is this just a fruitless argument?