Shane Cory Potter and his many and varied interest.

New BoingBoing 

Iranians say "no" to Nokia over reports of surveillance collaboration

Richard Metzger interviews Julien Nitzberg about his documentary film, "The Wild Whites of West Virginia"

Spider pizza may be delicious, but I will not be eating it.

New Christian Science Monitor 

Drug cartels launch Mexico's 'Tet offensive'

In Israel, US envoy maps peace with Syria

The Air Force's new poster boys: drone jocks

New ComputerWorld 

Microsoft: Windows Azure will outcompete Amazon Web Services on features, total cost

Surviving Layoffs: Five Lessons from the Trenches

Seven ways to improve your e-mail messages

New Cool Tools 

How to Build With Grid Beam

Pelican 0450

Peg Locks

Butter Bell

LocalHarvest

New Engadget 

The Daily Roundup: here's what you might've missed

China bans electro-shock for treating Internet addicts, far too late to help McMurphy

Android x86 LiveCD now available, lets you run Android on your desktop

New GapingVoid Cartoons 

New MAKE Blog 

Phil Torrone, COME ON DOWN!

Scrounging parts from a desk phone

Print your own glasses

Low-cost laptop car mount using cupholder

Keyring/facepalm

New Rolling Stone music videos 

Blood From A Stone
- Hanne Hukkelberg

A Bar In Amsterdam
- Katzenjammer

Rising
- Lhasa

Rent
- Mayhem Poets

Vivre Sans Temp Mort
- Double Dagger

Those Girls
- Kinky

New Scientific American 

Bill proposed to limit antibiotics in livestock to prevent the rise of antibiotic-resistant germs

More than 50 years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the addition of antibiotics to livestock feed to reduce disease that can occur from dense living conditions and high-protein diets. Yesterday, the FDA announced its aim to withdraw that approval and stop all non-therapeutic germ-fighting in chickens, pigs and cows. [More]

Teen's broken heart mends--literally--after grafted heart is removed

Fourteen years after a risky operation to save the life of an infant suffering heart failure, a team of U.K. doctors is claiming success. Hannah Clark (now aged 16)--who as a baby had a donor heart grafted onto her own--has made a full recovery, three years after the transplanted heart was removed, the doctors claim in an article published online today by The Lancet. [More]

Tip for Casey: To Swing a Faster Bat, Lighten Up That Lumber

Tune into tonight's baseball All-Star game and you'll see a familiar ritual: Batters standing in the on-deck circle will swing a weighted bat (or even a heavy, pipelike club) while they wait to hit. The exercise is intended to improve players' bat speed, with the idea being that the regular bat feels lighter after taking cuts with the heavier one. But a new study suggests batters who add ounces to their practice swings may be making an error. [More]

Clean dreams or pond scum? ExxonMobil and Craig Venter team up in quest for algae-based biofuels

In a bid to take the lead in algae-based biofuels, ExxonMobil will plow $600 million into genome guru Craig Venter's company Synthetic Genomics and plans to construct a pilot facility in San Diego, Calif. [More]

ExxonMobil Bets $600 Million on Algae

Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. is making a major jump into renewable energy with a $600 million investment in algae-based biofuels. [More]

New analysis identifies pitchers at risk for shoulder injury

Arm injuries are commonplace among Major League Baseball pitchers, and such impairments may have cost a few notable pitchers, such as Randy Johnson and Brandon Webb, a chance to play in the 76th All-Star Game tonight. [More]

Voyage to the Pacific Ocean's garbage patch: The middle of the Pacific is teaming with life--and trash

Editor's Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation's 50-foot Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (aka "Pacific garbage patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita crew left Long Beach, Calif., on June 10 with a plan to cross the International Date Line and investigate regions of reported high plastic concentrations, northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. This is his fifth blog post for Scientific American.com [More]

Can Oil Shale Be Used as a Power Source?

Dear EarthTalk: Are the United States' vast oil shale resources a potential source of energy? -- Larry LeDoux, Honolulu, HI [More]

Alternative Ideas about Alzheimer's

With dementia, Alzheimer's disease brings amyloid plaques--proteins that accumulate in the brain. Many scientists believe the plaques are responsible for gradually destroying memory and brain functions. Most research--and most attempts at early diagnosis and treatment--depends on that supposition being correct. But new imaging technologies, which can show plaque buildups in the brains of living subjects, have produced a paradox: some people with plaque remain cognitively intact. A small minority of researchers think this finding suggests a different culprit behind Alzheimer's: oxidative stress. About 10 to 40 percent of cognitively intact people have been shown to have the same amyloid plaques found in autopsies of Alzheimer's patients but show no signs of the disease. That observation raises two possibilities: either the disorder grows so slowly that these people are just in an early phase of the disease and eventually will show symptoms, or the accepted theory is wrong. Most researchers are convinced it is the former--Alz­heimer's can take a decade to grow to severity. That belief is based on years of research, but the way the disease progresses still has not been nailed down, because until now the only way to definitively diagnose Alzheimer's (as opposed to other kinds of dementia) was by an autopsy after the patient had died. [More]

Buying Green: 9 Eco-Conscious Accessories

[More]

What If I'd Never Met My Husband

I met my husband, Peter, rather randomly, at all-the-Absolut-you-could-drink benefit for the Museum of Contemporary Art. We have often observed that had we not met that night, there is no particular reason to think we would have ever chanced on each other in the future, as we did not inhabit the same professional or social spheres. From time to time, I contemplate the fantastic possibility that had one of us ventured several footsteps to the right or the left that evening, my husband, my children and my home might be subtracted from the life I lead today. Counterintuitively, this counterfactual exercise in considering how much worse off I could be today brings me not distress, but pleasure. Then again, a series of elegant studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggest that my experience is not so counterintuitive after all. [More]

Replacing the Honeybee

Honeybees have been dying in record numbers, yet many commercial crops depend on them for pollination. Entomologists who have been struggling to find an alternative now report that another bee might fill the void. The blue orchard bee, also known as the orchard mason bee, is undergoing intensive study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture pollinating insect research unit at Utah State University at Logan. James Cane, an entomologist there, says a million blue orchards are now pollinating crops in California. Like honeybees, the species can pollinate a variety of flora, including almond, peach, plum, cherry and apple trees. Unlike honeybees, however, they tend to live alone, typically in boreholes made by beetles in dead trees. In cultivation, the bees will happily occupy holes drilled into lumber or even Styrofoam blocks. [More]

Cat Call Coerces Can Opening

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] Anyone who's ever had a cat knows how demanding they can be. Let me out, let me in, give me food, give me different food. The list goes on. But how do these clever kitties convince us to do their bidding? A study in the July 14 issue of Current Biology suggests it's all in how they ask. [More]

10 Telescopes That Changed Our View of the Universe [Slide Show]

Sometime in late June or July 1609, Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei constructed his first spyglass--a simple contraption of lenses at the ends of a tube. The previous year in The Hague, a Dutchman named Hans Lipperhey had filed for a patent on the device, but it was Galileo who would go on to make it famous. [More]

News Scan Briefs: Do Rain Forests Make Rain?

A Lower High-Water MarkThe maximum global sea-level rise from the collapse of the rapidly warming West Antarctic ice sheet may be 3.2 meters--not five meters or more as predicted in the past. The revision comes from a new model suggesting that only parts of the ice sheet will collapse--namely, those that are grounded below sea level or sloping downward. Areas of the sheet grounded above sea level or on upward-sloping bedrock would remain in place. The results, in the May 15 Science, say nothing about disappearing ice sheets elsewhere, however. Greenland, for instance, holds enough ice to raise sea levels by seven meters. --David Biello [More]

Movie Magic (Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs), Part 3

The transcript of this podcast wil be posted in two to three weeks. In this series of episodes, we talk to many of the scientists at Blue Sky Studios, which created the Ice Age series of animated features, including the recently released Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. [More]

Auction Offers the Moon--Or at Least NASA Gear That's Been There [Slide Show]

As the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing approaches (on July 20), artifacts spanning a range of NASA's manned space exploration program--from Mercury and Gemini to Apollo and beyond--are being made available to the public as expensive keepsakes. On July 16, Bonhams & Butterfields New York will auction off about 400 lots that include astronaut apparel and equipment, components taken from Apollo lunar and command modules, and photos and charts chronicling the space program's early days. [More]

New Algorithm Speeds the Hunt for Nature-Derived Antibiotics and Cancer Drugs

Last week, Scientific American reported on the decline of nature-derived compounds in the pharmaceutical pipeline, in part because of the cost of isolating and identifying compounds that may have already been described and are therefore not patentable. [More]

Vietnam Burning: Warfare Scorched the Land for 1,500 Years

Sifting through layers of sediment in Vietnam's Song Hong Delta, researchers weren't surprised to find charred evidence of ancient fires after several cultures migrated there about 5,000 years ago. Cycles of early blazes are tied to changes in the climate, when the area dried out, as well as to agriculture, as a means to clear land for planting. But what could explain a surge in singed land throughout the past 1,500 years? [More]

Manipulative meow: Cats learn to vocalize a particular sound to train their human companions

Although perhaps not as jolting as an alarm clock, a cat's "soliciting purr" can still pry its owner from sleep. And, when sufficiently annoying, the sound may actually coerce them from bed to fill a food bowl.  [More]

Ancient fish protrusion points to prehistoric intercourse

A 400-million-year-old penislike piece of anatomy strengthens the argument that ancient armored fish were engaging in surprisingly modern internal fertilization. [More]

International Space Station, still under construction, may be debris by 2016

The International Space Station has been a colossal undertaking among five space agencies whose final price tag will likely be in the vicinity of $100 billion dollars. (The U.S. construction costs alone are estimated to be $31 billion.) Just this year the station finally reached its full capacity of six crew members, but it is still under construction--space shuttle Endeavour sits at the ready today to deliver to the ISS pieces of a Japanese experiment module. [More]

World Waiting for U.S. Congress to Pass Climate Bill

Pressure is mounting on President Obama and Capitol Hill Democrats to show significant progress on global warming legislation in time for a major U.N. climate summit in December. "The Danes, the Chinese, the Europeans, the Australians, the Japanese--everybody is almost singularly focused on what is the United States going to bring to the table," said Jake Schmidt, international policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. [More]

Obama nominates new surgeon general: MacArthur "genius grant" fellow Regina Benjamin

As the country's politicos have their sights set on the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor today, President Barack Obama nominated Regina Benjamin, 52, as the country's new surgeon general, the "leading spokesperson on issues of public health," Obama said. [More]

North Korea's Kim Jong-il not likely to survive much longer if pancreatic cancer reports are true

Kim Jong-il, the eccentric 67 year-old North Korean tyrant who has lived a life of excess as his people starved, is reportedly suffering from pancreatic cancer. [More]

Spark for Life: Lightning Strikes Create Minerals Crucial for Early Organisms

The high energy of a lightning strike creates an unusual form of phosphorus once common on primordial Earth and still used by many microbes today. [More]

After two weather-scrubbed weekend attempts, NASA tries again for shuttle launch

NASA will make a fifth try at launching space shuttle Endeavour this evening, after storms twice delayed attempts over the weekend. The shuttle's mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was originally slated to begin in June but was twice postponed that month due to leaks in a venting system that carries hydrogen gas away from the launch pad. [More]

David Fleishhacker: From Paleontology to the Humanities to Afghanistan

His finalist year: 1955 His finalist project: Making conjectures about a fossilized animal skull [More]

Can Rooftop Solar Systems Serve Whole Neighborhoods?

Dear EarthTalk: I know of solar power systems that people can put on their roofs to generate electricity or heat water. Are there systems that serve whole neighborhoods? -- Lee Helscel, via email [More]

Rhino poaching approaches 15-year high

High demand from Asia has driving rhino poaching to its highest level in more than a decade, according to a new report (PDF) by the by WWF, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Traffic. The report was presented last week at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). [More]

New Slashdot 

Judge May Take "Fair Use" Away From Jury

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what I can only describe as a shocker, the Judge in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum has, on her own, issued an order questioning whether the jury will be allowed to decide the 'fair use' issue at all, or whether the Judge herself should decide it. Judge Nancy Gertner's decision (PDF) notes that the courts have traditionally submitted the fair use defense to the jury, but questions whether that was appropriate, since the courts have referred to it as an 'equitable' — as opposed to a 'legal' — defense. This decision came from out of the blue, as neither party had raised this issue. IMHO the Judge is barking up the wrong tree. For one, all across the legal spectrum in the US, 'equitable' defenses to 'legal' claims are triable to a jury. Secondly, as the Judge herself notes, the courts have traditionally submitted the issue to the jury. It also seems a bit unfair to bring up a totally new issue like that and give the parties only 6 days to do their research and writing on the subject, at a time when they are feverishly preparing for a July 27th trial." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux

twitter writes "The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are "significant." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Attacks Against Unpatched Microsoft Bug Multiply

CWmike writes "Attacks exploiting the latest Microsoft vulnerability are quickly ramping up in quantity and intensity, several security companies warned today as they rang alarms about the developing threat. Symantec, Sunbelt Software, and SANS' Internet Storm Center bumped up their warnings yesterday after Microsoft announced that attackers were exploiting a bug in an ActiveX control used by IE to display Excel spreadsheets. There is no patch for the vulnerability; Microsoft didn't release one in today's Patch Tuesday. A temporary fix that sets the 'kill bits' of the ActiveX control is available, but experts believe it's likely most users won't take advantage of the protection. Symantec raised its ThreatCon ranking to the second of four steps. "We're seeing it exploited, but currently on a limited scale," said Symantec's Ben Greenbaum. Sunbelt also bumped up its ranking, to high." Firefox users can't be too complacent; Secunia is warning of a 0-day in version 3.5. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Expanding the Electricity Grid May Be a Mistake

Perhaps T. Boone Pickens was onto something. Al writes "An article in Technology Review argues that plans to string new high-voltage lines across the US to bring wind power from the midsection of the country to the coasts, could be an expensive mistake. What's needed instead are improved local and regional electricity transmission, the development of an efficient and adaptable smart grid, and the demonstration of technology such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could prove a cheaper way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than transmitting power from North Dakota to New York City." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Faulty Marvell Chips Delay SATA 6G Launch

Vigile writes "The SATA 6G standard offers more than simply a faster 6.0 Gb/s data throughput speed, to wit: improved NCQ support, better power management, and a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives. While modern-day, spindle-based hard drives struggle to keep up with SATA 3G speeds, modern SSDs are nearly saturating the existing standard, and a move to SATA 6G was welcome in the hardware community. It looks like that technology will be delayed, though. The only chip supporting the standard today, the Marvell 88SE9123, is having major issues. Motherboard vendors including ASUS and Gigabyte, which had planned on releasing SATA 6G technology using the chip on Intel Lynnfield platform motherboards later this summer, are having to remove the Marvell 88SE9123 and redesign their boards at the last minute due to significant speed and reliability issues." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikipedia Debates Rorschach Censorship

GigsVT writes "Editors on Wikipedia are engaged in an epic battle over a few piece of paper smeared with ink. The 10 inkblot images that form the classic Rorschach test have fallen into the public domain, and so including them on Wikipedia would seem to be a simple choice. However, some editors have cited the American Psychological Association's statement that exposure of the images to the public is an unethical act, since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test. Is the censorship of material appropriate, when the public exposure to that material may render it useless?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube Phasing Out Support For IE6

Oracle Goddess sends word that YouTube is presenting IE6 users with a banner exhorting them to upgrade to a modern browser, and TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube will be phasing out support for IE6 soon. This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net at the imminent demise of this most despised and non-standards-compliant browser. The market share for IE6 is now well down in the single digits. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BOINC Exceeds 2 Petaflop/s Barrier

Myrrh writes "Though an official announcement has not yet been made, it would appear that the BOINC project as a whole has exceeded two petaflop/s performance. The top page features this legend: '24-hour average: 2,793.53 TeraFLOPS.' According to last month's Top500 list of supercomputers, BOINC's performance is now beating that of the fastest supercomputer, RoadRunner, by more than a factor of two (with the caveat that BOINC has not been benchmarked on Linpack)." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK, Not North Korea, Is Source of DDoS Attacks

angry tapir writes "The UK was the likely source of a series of attacks last week that took down popular Web sites in the US and South Korea, according to an analysis performed by a Vietnamese computer security researcher. The results contradict assertions made by some in the US and South Korean governments that North Korea was behind the attack. Security analysts had been skeptical of the claims, which were reportedly made in off-the-record briefings and for which proof was never delivered." The Vietnamese security site's blog is linked from the article, but it is very slow even before Slashdotting. The researchers observed 166,908 zombies participating in the attacks — a number far larger than most earlier estimates. Update: 07/14 21:24 GMT by KD : Wired is reporting that the UK owner of the IP address in question is pointing a finger at a server in Florida, which it says opened a VPN to the UK machine for the attacks. Once again, the attacker could be anywhere. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aion Shaping Up For US Launch

One of the most promising MMORPGs in development these days is NCSoft's Aion, a fantasy-based offering built on CryEngine. It makes heavy use of flight as a gameplay mechanic, allowing aerial combat and easy travel around the visually stunning game world. There are four basic classes — Warrior, Priest, Mage, and Scout — each of which have two subclasses. For example, Warriors can be tank-like Templars, or berserker-like Gladiators, while Mages can turn into a scholarly Sorcerer or command the elements as a Spiritmaster. Early previews of Aion almost universally comment on how polished the game seems — this is partly due to the fact that it has been up and running since November in South Korea. "Being stable, scalable, reliable and fuss-free is far from a given in MMOs, but Aion is all those things, and can already stand alongside the genre's usability kings, EVE Online and World of Warcraft. Its expansive, zone-free open-world environments look terrific and run smoothly on a wide variety of systems. It just works." Since the game is already in a relatively complete state, NCSoft has been running closed beta "events," where a portion of the game is opened for testing. MMOGamer has a write-up from the latest such event. Aion is due out in September. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Suggestions For Learning FPGA Development At Home?

Doug writes "I've recently been inspired to take up amateur electronics, specifically with FPGAs. I have an understanding of the basics, plus a solid programming background. From my research so far I've concluded that I should start with a simple FPGA development board and a couple of books on Verilog and/or VHDL and go from there. I found this Ask Slashdot discussion on Verilog vs VHDL very useful, but it focuses more on the development language rather than hardware. I'd be very interested in hearing peoples' recommendations for an entry-level kit that is simple, flexible, and affordable (sub-£200), and preferably Linux-friendly, and indeed any other wise words that experienced FPGA developers (professional or amateur) might have for a novice just starting out in the world of circuit design." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Amazing World of Software Version Numbers

Harry writes "In theory, software version numbers should be incredibly mundane. In reality, companies have long twisted them for marketing purposes, avoided ones they didn't like, and even replaced them with things other than numbers. I've prepared a tribute to them with some facts and ruminations, but there's a lot I don't know, and I'd appreciate help on the historical side of things. (Anyone know when the standard decimal point-based system came into use?)" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

German Health Insurance Card CA Loses Secret Key

Christiane writes "The SSL Root CA responsible for issuing the German digital health insurance card lost its secret private key during a test enrollment. After their Hardware Security Module (HSM) dutifully deleted its crypto keys during a power outage, it was all 'Oops, why is there no backup?' All issued cards must be replaced: 'Gematik spokesman Daniel Poeschkens poured scorn on the statement that Gematik had insisted on the service provider carrying out a test without backing up the root CA private keys. "We did not decide against a back-up service. The fact of the matter is that the service provider took over the running of the test system, so it also has to warrant its continuous operation. How it fulfills this obligation is its own responsibility."'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL

Henry V .009 writes with a link to Zed Shaw's "newest rant," which gives a cogent description of his reasons for choosing the not-always-popular GPL for his own code: "Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you're using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, 'Hey, you know there's this guy Zed who wrote the software I'm using, why don't we hire him as a consultant?' You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it. You don't give out any credit, and in fact, I've ran into a vast majority of you who constantly try to say that I can't code as a way of covering your ass." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Zealand Introduces Internet Filtering

Thomas Beagle writes "The New Zealand government has been stealthily introducing a centralised internet child-pornography specific filtering system. Voluntary for ISPs but not for their users, ISPs representing over 94% of the market are already intending to join. Read the general FAQ and technical FAQ about the proposed Netclean Whitebox implementation." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New SquidooCool Blog 

Automatic Twitter Posting: Automate Your Twitter Account

Could you run an Offline Squidoo Business?

The Best Squidoo Advice Ever

Getting More Star Ratings With The Magic Of Tim

Are you making the most of your lenses?