Ben says the moon is shrinking, Lyle says antimatter is 1% less likely then matter in our universe, and Lindsey tells us about solar powered toothbrushes. Miles hosts this beast!
Currently we’re looking through the emails we’ve received regarding the future of the website. As soon as we’ve thought of a suitable way to continue, you’ll find it right here.
Foursquare (and its competitors GoWalla and Facebook Places) is an online service that allows you to use you fancy modern smartphone to tell the whole world exactly where you are right now. The New York Times carried an impassioned article today about how these ‘checkin services’ are increasingly patronized by young people as they scramble to be awarded virtual ‘mayorships’ of businesses, buildings, and even lost alleyways.
On this weeks show I delve into the intersecting world of podcasts and public radio with The Memory Palace and The Geek Speak podcasts. An interview with Lyle and Al from Geek Speak reveals that public radio and podcasts are kindred spirits and that everyone really needs to get with the program.
“A recent atom smasher experiment may help finally explain why our universe is mostly made of matter, and not its bizarro-universe sibling, antimatter.”
“An anonymous, twentysomething blogger is giving Mexicans what they can’t get elsewhere – an inside view of their country’s raging drug war.”
I am very, very happy to announce that the pilot for my TV show, “Phil Plait’s Bad Universe” now has an official slot in the Discovery Channel lineup: Sunday, August 29th at 10:00 p.m. (ET)!
The Moon is shrinking!
Well, a little: new results from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that over recent geological time, the Moon has shrunk by approximately 100 meters in diameter.
The Soladey-J3X has a solar panel at its base that transmits electrons to the top of the toothbrush through a lead wire. The electrons react with acid in the mouth, creating a chemical reaction that breaks down plaque and kills bacteria. The toothbrush requires no toothpaste, and can operate with about the same amount of light as needed by a solar-powered calculator
“Facebook Places is similar to FourSquare. You can go to places, ‘check-in’ so your friends know you’re there, rate them, comment on them, and generally spew your opinions all over the internet as fast as your fingers can hit the keys.”
It’s the latest survey scam spreading virally across Facebook, using the tried-and-tested formula used in the past by other viral scams including “Justin Bieber trying to flirt”, “Student attacked his teacher and nearly killed him”, “the biggest and scariest snake” and the “world’s worst McDonald’s customer”.
We’ve also seen slightly different wording – but pointing to the same scam.
Newly leaked roadmaps show that Intel plans to make some major revamps to its SSD lineup, with capacities set to double thanks to new flash memory chips.
Sandisk has just announced the arrival of the world’s smallest SSD with storage capacities ranging from 4GB to 64GB and which will be part of the company’s integrated SSD range of products.
Weighing less than a paper clip and smaller than a postage stamp, the iSSD comes in a tiny Ball Grid Array and boasts support for the SATA standard, which means that it can be soldered directly on motherboards.
Apple has applied for a patent covering an elaborate series of measures to automatically protect iPhone owners from thieves and other unauthorized users.
The patent, titled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device,” would also protect Apple against jailbreaks and other unauthorized hacks to the device, which were recently excepted from copyright enforcement.
During his visit to the the Swedish capital Stockholm, Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange struck a deal with the local Pirate Party. The Party, which participates in the national elections next month, will host several new Wikileaks servers to protect the freedom of the press and help the whistleblower site to carry out its operation.
5 million domains serving malware via compromised Network Solutions widget.
The widget was automatically included on every “parked” domain by Network Solutions.
It is the “Small Business Success Index”, and it can be picked up on NS’ growsmartbusiness.com website and on Widgetbox (where an installation
script is provided).
Network Solutions has been notified of the fact, and has acted quickly by removing the widget from their parked domains.
