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Lifehacker
One of the nation's largest rebate processing firms, CPG (RebateStatus.com) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. What does that mean for you? Well, if you happened to mail-in a rebate form with a company that CPG works with, your... Read More »
An alleged (and formerly convicted and released) rapist was picked up in Staten Island, New York after being selected from a lineup by the victim. Sources said the woman struck back during the attack by stabbing the perpetrator in the neck with a nearby iPod charger, and the man picked out of the lineup bore the twin bruises of an AC adaptor on his neck. He fled the scene before police arrived, but left his yellow jacket (emblazoned with Sylvester the Cat) behind, and in addition to the victim's testimony will hopefully be enough to put this creep away for life. Or several lifetimes. [Gothamist]
The legal snafu regarding former IBM employee Mark Papermaster's departure for Apple took a hard right toward Lifetime TV town this week after some new information shed light on just how far IBM went to keep him on the payroll. Imploring Papermaster to remain in the Big Blue camp, an unnamed exec asked the new iPod head at Apple to "consider the effect of his decision on his family." When Papermaster declined the offer, thereby choosing free iPods over discount blade servers, IBM sued him for violation of a non-compete contract. Per a judge's emergency order, Papermaster is currently not working for Apple until this is cleared up. If nothing else comes of this, at the very least Papermaster has some interesting additions for his updated resume. [CRN]
DHL, a popular shipping alternative to FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service, has gone belly up in the ever more fun economic crisis. Today the company announced that it will end all domestic shipping services starting January 30th (which means 9,500 layoffs) while only international shipping to/from the US will remain. Hopefully one less competitor in the ring won't increase all of our internet shipping costs too greatly. [DHL]
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley went to Guiyi, China to document the lives of Chinese e-waste workers there. He was able to get footage of what these pits, which process much of the toxic electronic scrap we in the West throw away, look like--despite being jumped by angry e-waste lot owners and nearly having his camera confiscated.
I only wish the highly coveted "nerd vote" was analysed by the fancy computer technology that all of the major news networks were using during the election because I'm sure that demographic was key to Obama's victory. After last year's visit to Google HQ, it was clear that he would make the advancement of technology a top priority in his administration. If you are looking for more insight into his plans, Junauza.com has compiled a list of 12 Obama quotes on technology made throughout his campaign.
Holy crap, the future is here, and I'm not talking about the next president being elected tonight. CNN's election night talking heads won't be yapping against a boring green screen. No sir, they will be 3D holograms beamed into the studio next to Wolf Blitzer, making it seem as if they are actually there. While it's not surprising that bringing this bit of sci-fi magic to the more mundane arena of guys with large heads huffing and puffing about politics and numbers is an impressive technical feat, it's kind of amazing just how much comes together to make it happen.
Today HP, Toshiba, and Dell issued a recall of 100,000 Sony battery packs found in their laptops sold between 2004 and 2006. Only 35,000 battery packs were affected in the U.S, with an additional 65,000 batteries recalled worldwide. Out of the 40 reported incidents, only 19 incidents have been in the U.S., thus affecting a smaller amount of people than in past Sony battery recalls. There have been reports of smoke and fire coming from the laptops. Sony issued a statement saying that the defective batteries are related to manufacturing line adjustments from 2004 to 2005. For a list of affected laptops, please head over to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) website for more details. The CPSC asks that laptop owners should take the batteries out and immediately contact the manufacturer for replacements. [U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission]
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the 284 passengers on board Quantas Flight 12--a Boeing 747-400 flying from Los Angeles to Sydney--couldn't believe their eyes when they looked through their windows to see another Boeing from Air New Zealand flying just a few thousand feet from their aircraft. The explanation, as the commander announced, was simple: He was "flying blind" after their aircraft's weather radar broke three hours after take off. Fortunately, as Qantas explained, the Air New Zealand flight was able to relay the data their 747 needed all the way to the other side of the Pacific:
Here's a piece of advice: when riding a high-speed train with a toilet that uses super-high powered suction to flush, keep your hand out of there. One unlucky Frenchman learned the value of this advice the hard way when he dropped his phone into the toilet of a TGV train. When he reached in to retrieve it, the suction kicked in, and it all went downhill from there.
Apple, long a proponent of gay rights, is putting its money where its mouth is, donating $US100,000 to the group No on Prop 8. Proposition 8 is a ballot initiative in California that would deny the rights of same-sex couples to marry. Kudos, Apple.
I'll admit—it is not unusual to feel a little anxiety when your mobile phone is dying. However, breaking into a stranger's home to charge it is a sign that you have a serious dependency on your gadgets. It could also mean that you are high and/or a complete moron. It appears that 24 year old Scott Boe may have been all three. Indeed, Boe claimed that he broke into the house to charge his mobile phone, but the police confiscated a backpack at the scene that contained several knives, a large pry tool and other suspicious devices. So, in reality, the mobile phone thing was most likely a really lame excuse that will surely stand alongside "that stuff isn't mine" in the lame excuse hall of fame. [AZCentral via Fark]
Though Apple's live broadcast of its fourth quarter earnings doesn't start for another few minutes, they've already dumped the numbers on us. Here are the important ones: 6.9 million iPhones, 2.6 million Macs, and 11 million iPods to bring in over $US7.9 billion in revenue for a $US1.14 billion profit. Wryly noting that "we sold more phones than RIM," Steve Jobs says they're still not sure how the recession is going to affect them, but whatever, bitches, they've got "$US25 billion of cash safely in the bank with zero debt." We'll be following the call live in the post below, in case any other news breaks—like the death of the Mac mini.
Eve Tahmincioglu, a career columnist for MSNBC is questioning whether or not Circuit City's decision to fire 3,400 of their highest-paid clerks and replace them with lower-paid substitutes last year had a major impact on their recent decline. Let's face it, customer service in Circuit City is far from stellar, and ditching highly qualified personnel does nothing to improve that situation. Plus, it is bound to send a shockwave of poor morale through the company. It's one of the first rules of business—spending money on quality employees pays off in the long run.
A priest has resigned from his parish after being caught viewing web porn in his computer at work. While I'm sure God doesn't give a damn about porn--no matter how close it is to heaven--or the weaknesses of this priest, the church's IT staff and the archbishop weren't so amused when they discovered that his porn surfing antics had infected all the computers parish network.
Did you know? Besides sitting on Apple's board of directors, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been an informal adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. In fact, he lurves Obama so much that's he not just going to endorse him (shock, right?) he's going to actually campaign for him next week. And not just 'cause Obama might be good for business! No, he says he's "doing this personally." Very possibly because he wants to be the nation's very first Chief Technology Officer, a position Obama said he would create last year—maybe not-so-coincidentally right before he paid his first visit to Google!
Now here's a creative military operation: the British set up a fake Laundromat in Belfast, where they wanted to find IRA bomb-makers. They staffed the Laundromat with locals and sent out coupons to different neighborhoods, with each neighborhoods coupon a different colour. When people brought their clothes and coupons in, they got their clothes washed, but while their clothes were being washed, they were secretly being analysed for bomb-making chemical residue.
You're one of those internet-addicted, Obama-loving youngins that's actually going to vote on Election day. That's great, since the youth vote has historically been a bucket of fail. But PBS and YouTube want you to take your civic duty even more srsly and bring your camcorder to document the experience—as well as any problems you see, like long lines (horror!), glitchy voting machines (likely) or "overly aggressive" voter ID practices—and upload it to their Video Your Vote channel. The best clips will air on PBS, like legitimately produced journalism. Oh, the fine print:
Here's why you should never trust endorsements—besides the general principle of the matter. NY Times reporter Marc Santora did an interview for a startup site called Big Think, talking about how technology has changed covering stories like the Iraq War. Imagine his surprise when part of it was slipped into a DigitalNomads ad, a site that's "powered by Dell," magically turning his interview into an endorsement.
President Bush signed into law today a bill that will create a centralised position in the executive branch, appointed by the president, to head up the fight against piracy and intellectual property violations. The Prioritising Resources and Organisation for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP) is backed strongly by the usuals--MPAA, RIAA, etc.--and yet faced some pushback from the Justice Department and the Bush administration itself as it made its way through the House and Senate. So what does it all mean?
As if we didn't have enough with the stock market going down in flames on its own, computers have decided to screw them a little bit more and make everyone go "WTF" for a few minutes this morning. After dropping around two hundred gazillion points yesterday, today the Dow Jones industrials saw another drop of 700 points, which was suddenly reduced to 125 and then went down again. Everyone thought "rebound" for a second there, until they realised what was really happening.
NYC is full of ATMs. It's one of the great things about living in this city--you're never more than a block or two away from cash. But a large, large percentage of NYC's ATMs are cut-rate bodega models that look like your card could catch something nasty from them once dipped. Helping spread the nasty is this, the newest development in ATM skimmers, with SMS capability. So now, if he's got $US8,500 to drop on the top of the line scam gear, the asshole who just jacked your card number and PIN doesn't even have to come back to the scene of the crime to retrieve it.
Earlier this week, a Qantas A330 inexplicably climbing 300 feet then nose-diving back down. In the cabin, 71 people were injured. Interestingly, the ATSB is now looking at in-cabin interference from personal electronics as a possible cause of the "irregularity with the aircraft's elevator control system." Wait, what? Really?
AU: I feel the need to clarify this: the original article on this stated that investigators were looking at "onboard computers" being the cause of the sudden dive. An enterprising (and unnamed) journo at AAP decided that "onboard computers" must mean "passenger laptops" and hence the rumour was born. While the investigators havent ruled out passenger laptops as a possible cause, they also haven't ruled out the possibility that the co-pilot rendered the entire cockpit unconscious with a stench-laden, in-flight meal-fuelled fart (okay, they may have ruled that out). My point is that this is a media beatup fuelled by some shoddy journalism. You may continue flying with your gadgets without fear of dying.UPDATE: Check out this APC piece by David Braue about the whole incident. It's a good look at the real facts involved with the story.
If prosecutors have their way, David Kernell, the 20 year old son of a Tennessee state representative and prime suspect in the Sarah Palin email hack will make an inmate looking for a young, supple jailhouse bride very happy. He was indicted today by a federal grand jury in Knoxville, Tenn for illegally accessing the account and faces up to 5 years in prison, a $US250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release. A trial date has not been set, but it is safe to say that things don't look good. [USDOJ via Crunchgear]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 1:00 PM on October 8, 2008
The results of Canon's Digital Lifestyle Index were released today, and despite all the recent economic doom and gloom, the situation doesn't look too bad for consumer tech companies in Australia. In the first half of this year, we Aussies spent a total of $2.424 billion on gadgets, which is a 12.1% increase on the same period in 2007.
More and more games consoles, digital music players, digital cameras and multifunction devices are being sold than ever before, but at the same time, DVD players and single-function inkjet printers seem to be dying a painful death, mostly due to market saturation.
Flat-panel TVs are the biggest earners, thanks to dropping prices and big events like the Olympics. LCD accounts for more revenue than plasma (not really a big surprise there) and digital cameras are actually worth a crapload of money each year, considering their low cost relative to TVs.
The full press release is below the fold. It's fascinating reading if you've got a few minutes to spare:
Bloomberg News Accidentally Publishes Draft of Steve Jobs's Obituary
Steve Jobs Says He Doesn't Have Cancer (And Why It's Not Your Business Anyway)
