With swirling rumors all but pointing to an April 13 refresh of Apple’s MacBook Pro line, these new model numbers, spotted at Microcenter, lend further credence to the belief that an update is imminent. More »
Blog
-
MacBook Pro Updates Spotted at Microcenter [MacBook]
-
Foldable Bluetooth iPad Keyboard
OK so now there is they iPad and people love it but some of you have the need for an external keyboard but don’t feel comfortable to carry around a normal size bluetooth keyboard, for those people we found the solution.
The Freedom Pro keyboard is foldable in to a small case so that it is small enough to easily take with you. folded the keyboard is only 6.4″ X 4.0″ X 0.75″.
And it even comes with a little stand but I don’t know if the stand can hold an iPad because it is made for smart phones.
But as you see there is an small and easy solution for people who travel with iPad and that need a keyboard.
Order your Freedom Pro Bluetooth Portable Keyboard
-
Stig Asmussen lays out possible God of War III DLC
We’ve heard talk about God of War III DLC before. It’s still a possibility, but don’t expect anything huge, though. According to Stig Asmussen, the most they can probably add are challenges and skins. Oh, and and probably an
-
US Gov’t Creates Significant Waste with Printing that is Not Needed
A recent report from the Washington Times shows that a significant amount of printing by US Govt employees is never needed … it is thrown out or recycled. Wow – 1/3 of all printed paper is wasted !!" …. Washington Times reports that a full third of the printing performed by U.S. government employees is instantly tossed out or recycled."
"… high time government … takes the lead from businesses that have their printing costs under control. … Duplex printing is only part of the story. … "
"… asking these kinds of questions before they click ‘Print’: … Is it vital that I have a hard copy of this right now? … Have I run the electronic file by my colleagues first? … Does the item I am about to print have to be “perfect”?"
How about you? Do you really need to print everything you do print? Can you print 2 – sided ?
Via: ZDNet.com LINK
-
Show #356: PAX East wrap up and Splinter Cell Conviction
Host: Larry Hryb, Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson (Xbox LIVE ) (Twitter)
Co-host : e (Xbox LIVE ) (Twitter)
Co-host : lollip0p (Xbox LIVE) (Twitter)
Co-Host: Stepto (Xbox LIVE) (Twitter)Interview: Alex Parizeau, Splinter Cell Conviction (36:59 – 55:25)
Name the Game
Xbox 101 and more
Note: I’ve added the above show notes to the ID3 Lyrics data field. If your device supports displaying lyrics, you’ll find this usefulLinks to some of the things mentioned in this episode:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/storage
SanDisk Xbox 360 USB 2.0 8 GB Flash Drive
SanDisk Xbox 360 USB 2.0 16 GB Flash Drive
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/splash/t/tomclancyssplintercellconviction/
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction
Xbox 360 250 GB Elite Splinter Cell Conviction Bundle
Just Cause 2http://www.xbox.com/games/f/finalfightdixbla/
http://marketplace.xbox.com/games/offers/0ccf0002-0000-4000-8000-000045410830
Halo 3- ODST <—You’ll need this for the Halo Reach beta
http://www.apple.com/iphone/preview-iphone-os/
http://www.gillette.com/en-US/#/entertainment/gillettechampions/en-US/index.shtml/
Show Details:
Duration (approx): 1:41:54
File size (approx) : 46.7 MB
Format: MP3 Listen now:
Click the player below to stream this show to your browser and listen to the show:
Subscribe:
Subscribe directly using your preferred podcasting tool:[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3) Listen in iTunes? Submit a review [Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in Zune Or, copy and paste this URL into a podcasting tool: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MajorNelsonblogcast
Download Latest Episode-> Download the latest episode to your computer or preferred device
Email at Major – at Xbox – dot com with comments about the show.
-
Automotive Attention Getters

Where the guys at Youdrivewhat.com find these pictures I’ll never know. As I was perusing through their vast collection of automotive comedy I did managed to come across a few choice vehicles with a particular theme. Sure, they may not be the most appropriate cars, trucks or bikes on the road, but they do have a certain style to them.
• Ya’ think they’re talking about potential passengers, or the people around them?

• SEMEN HERE! GET YOUR FRESH SEMEN HERE!

• Only a Griswald can drive this…

• I really hope this guy gets big bucks to rock this on his Monte.

• It’s perfect for little Jimmy’s birthday party!

• Where to go, for camel toe…

-
Can Facebook or Twitter Spin Off the Next Hadoop?
Like most people, I suspect, I wasn’t too surprised to find out that Hadoop-focused startup Karmasphere has secured a $5 million initial funding round. After all, if Hadoop catches on like the evidence suggests it will, Karmasphere’s desktop-based Hadoop-management tools could pay off investors many times over. In some ways, though, the fact that Hadoop is mature enough to inspire commercial products means it’s yesterday’s news. Now, I’m wondering, which open-source, big-data-inspired product will be the next to launch a wave of startups and drive tens of millions in VC spending?Big data has narrowed the gap between the needs of bleeding-edge web companies, their offspring and even traditional businesses. Hadoop has caught on across industry boundaries as an analytics tool for unstructured data sets, and it seems logical that other web-based tools will catch on in other parts of the data layer. In my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro (sub req’d) today, I took a look at the potential for Cassandra, which grew out of Facebook, and Gizzard, Twitter’s ill-named big-data baby.
Given its growing popularity and expanding functionality, Cassandra right now seems like a prime candidate. Rackspace has taken over its development reins, and its found varied applications within Digg, Twitter, Reddit, Cloudkick and Cisco to name a few. This diversity illustrates Cassandra’s versatility; it’s not just for the social media crowd. Furthermore, Cassandra graduated to a top-level Apache project in February, signifying the quality of the work done on it thus far and, most likely, a groundswell of new developers.
Twitter’s newly open-sourced Gizzard tool seems to have promise, as well. By eliminating some pain from the often difficult sharding process, Gizzard makes it easier to build and manage distributed data stores that can handle ultra-high query volumes without getting bogged down. Like Google, Yahoo and Facebook before it, Twitter has played a role in evolving how we use the web, and software developed within its walls should be a hot commodity for present and future Twitter-inspired sites and products.
Which do you think will take off?
Photo courtesy Flickr user zzzack

-
Are Passwords a Waste of Time? [Passwords]
Simple answer? No, of course not. Complicated answer? Good question, self, because complicated is part of the problem. More »
-
Toyota se enfrenta a una posible segunda multa por haber retrasado la notificación de los pedales defectuosos

La National Highway Traffic Safety Association todavía no ha terminado de vapulear la muy dañada imagen de la marca japonesa. A la primera sanción de 16.400 millones de dólares (unos 12.000 millones de euros) que se anunció el 5 de abril se puede sumar otra debido a que Toyota no avisó a tiempo a las autoridades federales de los problemas que tenían los pedales de muchos de sus modelos.
El director de asesores legales de la NHTSA, O. Kevin Vincent, comunicó a través de la carta que publicó la agencia reguladora el pasado viernes que Toyota les informó de los fallos del pedal el 19 de enero de este año, justo dos días antes de que iniciara su campaña de llamadas a revisión en Estados Unidos.
Pero la NHTSA no es la única que acusa a Toyota de ese retraso, porque el secretario de Transportes estadounidense, Ray LaHood, también declaró esta semana que el fabricante tardó cuatro meses en alertar del problema de los pedales del acelerador y del freno, y que, por tanto, “ocultó conscientemente un fallo peligroso”.Esta afirmación se basa en la carta que le mandó la NHTSA a Toyota cuando confirmó la primera multa, en la que se reveló que la unidad de ingeniería de la división nortamericana de la marca fue informada el 21 de octubre de 2009 por un directivo de no realizar el mismo cambio de diseño de los pedales de CTS Corp. para los coches estadounidenses que sí estaba en marcha para los europeos.
Toyota, además de tener que responder a estas dos afirmaciones, todavía tiene hasta el 19 de abril para comunicar a las autoridades reguladoras si acepta la primera sanción de 16.400 millones de dólares o la recurre.
Vía | Automotive News
-
Same old song at TRIB
In case you were wondering whether sane people have wrested control of the editorial board from the public employee-haters who have been in charge at the once-great, now bankrupt, Chicago Tribune for the last couple of years, the answer is “no.”

The paper’s obsession with public employee pensions remains intense, based on Sunday’s editorial.
The good news: the TRIB recently took a couple of solid shots from respected public servants over its pension obsession, particularly the insistence that Gov. Quinn and the General Assembly must cut pension benefits for active members of the state pension systems.
First, the TRIB was taken to task by the Honorable Abner J. Mikva, whose long, sterling career as a legislator and as a federal judge (I think he was once an advance man for Abraham Lincoln) makes him supremely qualified to comment on the constitutionality of the TRIB’s proposal.
Article 13 of the constitution says “membership in any retirement or pension system” of any governmental entity “shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.” Under the “plain meaning” rule that almost every judicial authority recognizes, the words speak for themselves. Every existing employee is protected against changes in benefits. That is what Illinois courts have said the words mean.
And
Even if my opinion is erroneous (I have to acknowledge that the U.S. Supreme Court told me so on a few occasions when I was a judge), there is no question that a pension reform that affected existing employees would be challenged and tied up in the courts for many years. During that period, there would be no “immediate” savings to the state. Judges, whose pension rights would be impaired if it applied to existing employees, would be making the decision. If the whole proposal were thrown out (as I think would happen) there would not be any savings any time.
In other words, “Give it up.”
Also on the attack is Illinois Senate President John Cullerton who is clearly PO’d over the TRIB hits he’s been taking after helping move the bill that reduced benefits for future state employees.
Cullerton favored negotiating an agreement with the unions, one that would not have gone nearly as far as SB 1946. But Speaker Madigan, working with the Republican leadership, forced the issue and the Senate President went along. Now that he’s being deservedly blasted by IEA and other employee groups for the pension attack, he doesn’t want to hear from the TRIB that his action was inadequate.
Cullerton insisted that the paper print his entire response, including his calling the TRIB editorial “riddled with inaccuracies.” Since they wouldn’t print that, Cullerton posted his response on his website . Among the highlights:
The Chicago Tribune’s March 20 editorial, “Last Chance,” purports to offer sound advice on the state’s current fiscal catastrophe. Instead, the editorial board’s criticisms are riddled with inaccuracies that ignore the complete set of facts that have led to our budget crisis. It makes one wonder if the Tribune’s editorial production line has either a total lack of understanding of state government, or an unfortunate agenda that disguises partisanship as journalism.
Ouch.
But rather than acknowledge that we’ve made budget cuts at all, the Chicago Tribune instead fawns over an amateur Illinois Policy Institute proposal that “would cause some heartburn.” While they play policymakers, both the Tribune and the Illinois Policy Institute fail to realize that the cuts we’ve already made are as serious as a heart attack.
It’s a dangerous game. In one breath the Chicago Tribune decries the lack of leaders willing “to make unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unpopular decisions,” but then drums up public outrage to remove from office those who’ve made the unpopular decisions.
Case in point? Senate Democrats last year passed legislation that would have generated more than $2 billion a year for public education, and provided $1.2 billion in tax breaks, including $700 million in property tax relief and more than $230 million in tax credits for Illinois’ working families.
The Tribune editorial board dismissed our plan out of hand – much like they now ignore the conservative, pro-business Civic Federation’s claim that, in addition to billions of dollars in budget cuts, the General Assembly must pass a permanent, $7.6 billion tax increase in order to become financially solvent.
The Tribune editorial writers might honestly believe they understand the budget better than the Civic Federation or the members of the General Assembly. But to characterize our response to the state’s fiscal crisis as “petrified inaction” is both delirious, and does a grave disservice to the Tribune’s readership and to those affected by the state’s fiscal failures.
So what else do the Tribune editorial writers propose? What other plans have they concocted to absolve the state of its $13 billion scarlet number?
First, they say we should violate the Illinois Constitution. The Tribune proposes we freeze previously earned pension benefits for current state employees, and reduce them going forward. Those retirement plans are constitutionally guaranteed, but that doesn’t stop the Tribune from proudly boasting the plan would save the state $2.1 billion a year. Bravo for finding savings that will never be realized because it is unconstitutional.
It’s hard for those of us who grew up in homes where the Chicago Tribune was read faithfully to deal with the current incarnation of the paper. Even when one disagreed with the editorial policy (which was, frankly, most of the time), there was always a belief that, at heart, the paper wanted what was best for Illinois.
Anyone still have that feeling? Anyone? Bueller?
Have you made your SOS Rally Day plans?
# # #
Follow IEA on Twitter http://twitter.com/ieanea/
-
Metro Lockscreen App
With the growing popularity of Windows Phones 7 Series, we are seeing many rendering of this new OS
pop up in different forms, and this one is a lock screen. This new lock screen does not mimic the slide down function of the WP7S lock screen, but it gives it a WP7S look with a slider similar to the current 6.5 lock screen. The lock screen also features a clock, date, calendar appointments. What’s new/different compared to the other lockscreen?
1. hardcoded background picture
2. left aligned text matching the Metro guidelines by Microsoft
3. new font "Zegoe" Light and Regular (will be installed with the CAB) matching the Metro designA word about requests:
I had many requests via PM for changing alignment/site/whatever of the text. I don’t have the time to do this. But what you can do: post your background picture you want to see within this lockscreen. I’ll change that just for you Hint: make a screenshot of your device showing the lockscreen and work with Photoshop or similar "over" the layout so your new background doesn’t "interfere" with the text layout.What should I do if I find an error?
Just post your screenie and I’ll see what I can doUpdate 6.4.2010: as requested the lockscreen without background.
New versions online with all notification icons skinned in "Metro-Style"This lock application can be acquired over at XDA
-
Oil, Not China, Is The Real Destroyer Of America’s Trade Balance
UBS’s head of Asia-Pacific economics argues that the real global trade imbalance isn’t U.S.-China, it is U.S.-oil. As shown below, current account surpluses from fuel exporting-nations have been a far larger driver of total global trade imbalances coming from emerging markets.
China’s current account surplus (in blue) has been large in recent years, as a percentage of the global economy, but it has been dwarfed by fuel exporters (in green):

Jonathan Anderson of UBS, via Caixin:
Looking at the movements from the late 1990s through 2006, when the overall U.S. deficit worsened from 2 percent of GDP to nearly 7 percent of GDP at the trough, a full three percentage points of that adjustment came from other advanced economies and from fuel imports; only two percentage points came from China and other non-fuel emerging markets. And the recent drop in the U.S. deficit had almost nothing to do with China; again, it was oil prices and developed trade that explains the entire swing over the past 18 months.

Thus the U.S. could use a little less finger-pointing at China… and a lot less foreign oil usage… if it really wants to correct its global trade imbalance.
This is a huge argument against U.S. trade protectionism since protectionism would miss the largest cause of America’s trade deficit while only hurting U.S. export prospects by pissing off trade partners.
Join the conversation about this story »
-
A book written within and on the backside
This morning’s Get Fuzzy featured a Bulgarian stereotype that seemed slightly, well, random:
Bucky Katt’s assumption seems to be that the dress code at a Bulgarian nightclub would be ragged and strange, thus (at least partly) explaining Rob Wilco’s pre-torn and pre-soiled shirt.
As it happens, this morning’s Stone Soup featured a more familiar Bulgarian stereotype, based on the history that resulted in the name Lactobacillus bulgaricus:
So I thought I would see what other Bulgarian stereotypes might be floating around out there, and as a result, I stumbled on a relevant story from last fall that I somehow missed at the time — “Aliens ‘already exist on earth’, Bulgarian scientists claim“, The Telegraph, 11/26/2009.
Aliens from outer space are already among us on earth, say Bulgarian government scientists who claim they are already in contact with extraterrestrial life.
Work on deciphering a complex set of symbols sent to them is underway, scientists from the country’s Space Research Institute said.
They claim aliens are currently answering 30 questions posed to them.
Lachezar Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, confirmed the research.
He said the centre’s researchers were analysing 150 crop circles from around the world, which they believe answer the questions.
“Aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time,” Mr Filipov told Bulgarian media.
“They are not hostile towards us, rather, they want to help us but we have not grown enough in order to establish direct contact with them.”
A few days later, “badmoviefan” at the site abovetopsecret posted a letter said to be from Filipov himself:
This year, I had the opportunity of putting together a team of experts representing various scientific fields and walks of life. We worked together on a project based on the original work on our own Mrs M.Vezneva, a former architect and correspondence member of IAI. Mrs. Vezneva has two published books containing dictionaries of universal symbols language via which she states that pictograms may be interpreted. In her books, she engages in a dialogue regarding global issues with the crop circles “creators”. It is based on the universal symbols language, I.e. Pcychometry and telepathy.
The aim of the “Dialogue 2009” experiment is to carry out a similar dialogue regarding the use of the crop circles but using different participants. We believe that the crop circles are real existing formations from unexplained nature, and that they carry information from alien to us sources. We have already 36 participant replies which we are currently analyzing. Currently, there are facts confirming our initial hypothesis, mentioned above, however we will publish our final thoughts after careful consideration by all team members.
More information about Ms. Vezneva’s pictogramology is available on a special website, including a dictionary in which my favorite item is the remarkable entry
“A book written within and on the backside” – the human consciousness and sub-consciousness, the human memory from his past lives; the human brain, “sealed by seven seals”.
Inexplicably, Cybertronian has not yet been added to the ancient writings in Ms. Vezneva’s collection.
As a topical hook, Reuters/Ipsos has just released a poll showing that “One in Five (20%) Global Citizens Believe That Alien Beings Have Come” (4/8/2010). National alien belief rates are reported to range from a high of 45% in India to a low of 8% in the Netherlands, with the U.S. (24%) in the middle. Bulgaria isn’t listed, but Italy (25%), Russia (21%), Poland (19%), Czech Republic (18%) and Hungary (14%) are.
Overall,
Those who believe that “alien beings have come to earth and walk amongst us in our communities disguised as us” (20%) are more likely to be men (22%) compared to women (17%), under the age of 35 (25%) compared to those aged 35-54 (16%) and those over the age of 55 (11%) and those more likely to be higher educated (22%) compared to those who are lower or middle educated (19%).
The poll didn’t break out national Academy of Science members as a separate category, but perhaps in that case the effects of age neutralize those of sex and education.
[And for langiappe, this is real science: “Two new alien species of Bidens have been recorded in Bulgaria“. The alien Bidens really were found in the Varna railway station, but they turn out not to be among those that Mr. Filipov’s group believes are already observing among us on earth.]
[Finally, we need to revisit Roman Jakobson’s language-learning method, in which Bulgarian plays a central role.]
-
A Calm, Reasonable Argument Supporting Apple’s Anti-Flash SDK Language

Gruuuuubeeer! Why do you force us to listen to your reasoned, intelligent arguments explaining the odd language in the new iPhone SDK guidelines outlawing outside iPhone compiling methods, including .NET and Adobe’s own Flash-to-iPhone tools? If we follow Godwin’s law to its obvious conclusion, we can only say that you are a collaborator with enemy forces!For those of you not following along, the story is this: Apple’s new SDK guidelines state, in no uncertain terms, that you can only use Apple tools to compile and submit iPhone and iPad apps. Nothing else is allowed. To many this is an affront to the general dignity of man and a call to arms. To others, and I suspect many others, it’s not a really a BFD.
Gruber writes:IPHONE DEVELOPERS: No change. If you’re a developer and you’ve been following Apple’s advice, you will never even notice this rule. You’re already using Xcode, Objective-C, and WebKit. If you’re an iPhone developer and you are not following Apple’s advice, you’re going to get screwed eventually. If you are constitutionally opposed to developing for a platform where you’re expected to follow the advice of the platform vendor, the iPhone OS is not the platform for you. It never was. It never will be.
(And, in one sense, this is good news for existing iPhone developers: their skill set is now in even greater demand.)
He also points out “Microsoft’s mantra was (and remains) ‘Windows everywhere’. Apple doesn’t want everywhere, they just want everywhere good. The idea though, is to establish the Cocoa Touch APIs and the App Store as a de facto standard for mobile apps — huge share of both developers and users.”
In short, Apple is like a car repair place with an open hiring policy. Anyone can come in and become a car mechanic. Heck, you can even get rich doing it. But Apple Car Repair doesn’t want some dude walking in with a rubber wrench and weird screwdrivers stripping the heads off of oil pan screws and breaking more than he’s fixing. Even Steve Jobs, in an email to a developer, admits this. He writes:
We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.
In short, if you don’t like his tools, get out of his garage.
The problem here is the ascription of malice to what is, in the end, a business decision. While you have plenty of tools for programming in Windows, you also have plenty of tools for programming under OS X. However, to allow a multitude of frameworks for mobile devices is asking for trouble, especially when Apple’s goal, in the end, is to offer a superior mobile experience on their devices.
Heck, even Windows Phone is limited to a few frameworks and tools. Whereas an operating system can survive some junk programs now and again, to have your phone BSOD is a horror. I actually experienced this on a long drive two weeks ago. I was running a navigation app and it crashed. The iPhone wouldn’t start up and I reset it, while driving, multiple times. Finally, I let it sit, charging, and after almost forty minutes the silver Apple logo disappeared and the phone booted. A phone is a device designed for 24/7 access (AT&T’s network notwithstanding) and letting just anyone come in and pound out some apps is a recipe for disaster.
As a corollary, this control also offers a superior experience for the consumer. Until the iPhone, I never purchased a single mobile app on Symbian, Palm, or Windows Mobile. Ever. Period. Now I buy apps like mad and am looking forward to apps on the iPad. I think this behavior is a massive step forward in a word where mobile programming was often relegated to second tier.
In short, learn Apple’s tools or hire someone who knows Apple’s tools. Just because you like Flash/.NET/C#/COBOL/Pascal/LOGO doesn’t mean Apple has to like it. As horrible as it sounds, Apple is doing this for your own good.
-
Twitter Walking a Tightrope With Developers
The past week has seen a lot of drama around Twitter’s relationship with third-party app developers. Fred Wilson’s post about the company’s evolution seemed to touch off a powder keg of emotion about what the company’s approach to new services might be, and that was still bubbling when Twitter announced that it had bought Atebits, maker of the iPhone app Tweetie, which touched off a new round of criticism. Developers have protested on a Google group, formed a Twitter group with the hashtag #unionoftwitterapps and made caustic comments about the company in blog posts, podcasts and pretty much everywhere else.
Wilson’s post suggested that Twitter had grown so large and ubiquitous that it had reached an “inflection point,” where it could become the center of a developing ecosystem or infrastructure of other products and services. But the acquisition of Tweetie put a different spin on that message: the implication seemed to be that Twitter had become so large and ubiquitous that it could (and possibly should) either acquire or compete with the third-party apps that have grown up around the company. And the reason it wants to do that is pretty obvious: to own the relationship with the user.
Developer Ben Metcalfe has some suggestions about what Twitter could do next week during the Chirp conference to create opportunities for third-party developers in a number of areas, as a kind of “exit strategy.” But as Chris Dixon of Hunch points out in a blog post, the biggest remaining hurdle for both Twitter and third-party developers is the fact that neither side knows what the company’s eventual business model will be (or if Twitter knows, it isn’t saying). That vacuum is what is causing a lot of the tension, and it likely won’t go away entirely until the vacuum is filled.
Some companies might think: “Why should we care whether developers are mad at us or not? We own the ecosystem — without us, they would have nothing, so they can just sit there and take it, while we compete with them or buy one of their competitors or whatever else we want to do.” But the reality is that many of those third-party apps did provide a substantial amount of functionality that Twitter was missing, whether it was photo uploading or URL shortening or geo-location. Maybe some developers did take a ride on Twitter’s coattails — but others did add value, and as a result helped Twitter become the global phenomenon it is now.
And trying to extend some kind of olive branch to the developer community that has built up around Twitter isn’t just a nice thing to do. As large as it is, and as much money as it has now, the company can’t realistically build all the things it needs or acquire all the things it needs tomorrow. It is still going to need lots of help, and the benefits of a thriving developer ecosystem are manifold: not only does it produce valuable add-ons that might never have occurred to Twitter HQ, but it is also a very powerful form of marketing, both for the product and for the company itself.
“There’s some misunderstanding around platforms,” Evan Mr. Williams told the New York Times. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to developers about this.” Hopefully the Twitter CEO has found a way, because the company’s Chirp conference is next week, and there are going to be plenty of people looking for answers.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
How Human Users Are Holding Twitter Back
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Image Munky

-
More antivax hammering | Bad Astronomy
The antivaxxers are getting more media attention, and it’s not good for them. NPR has a story about measles being on the rise in Vancouver, and make it clear that it’s due to antivax fear-mongering. Money quote:
CDC officials are watching the Vancouver outbreak closely, as neighboring Washington state has sizable populations of vaccine refusers.
“If measles crossed the border into those populations, there’s a potential for a sizable outbreak,” says Dr. Jane Seward of the CDC.
The antivaxxers are nothing if not ironic: they say they want to protect our health, and yet put it at grave risk, and the fear they monger about vaccines is the exact opposite of what we really should be afraid of: outbreaks of preventable and potentially fatal diseases.
Tip o’ the syringe to Evan Wilson for the NPR story.
-
Porsche 911 GT3 Hybrid podiums in second outing
Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Hybrid, Porsche, Racing
Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid – Click above for high-res image galleryPorsche’s new 911 GT3 R Hybrid is making rapid progress in the Nürburgring Endurance Series. After finishing sixth in its debut outing two weeks ago, it moved up to third place this weekend. Porsche factory drivers Joerg Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler praised the new flywheel hybrid car as they ran a trouble-free four-hour race.
The drivers were pleased with the extra 120 kilowatts of electric power available, especially as they accelerated out of corners. The electro-mechanical drive system also cut the car’s fuel consumption considerably, with the hybrid requiring one fewer pit stop than all the other 911s. Hopefully if the car keeps running this well, we’ll indeed see it run in the American Le Mans Series later this year.
Gallery: Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid
[Source: Porsche]
Continue reading Porsche 911 GT3 Hybrid podiums in second outing
Porsche 911 GT3 Hybrid podiums in second outing originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.









