...The Mac Pro That Didn't Exist...Our Nominee for Sexiest Use of Modern Video Production...A Gas Stove You Wear Around Your Neck...The Decline and Fall of Wikipedia...
Spec nerds felt a momentary spike in their britches today when Geekbench turned up a Mac Pro with a 3.19GHz Intel Xeon X5580 processor. "No," you're supposed to mutter knowingly, "the current top-of-the-line Pro only has a 2.93GHz X5570." Was this some Cupertino super Mac busting forth with a score of 18765? In the end, the answer was "No...?" The chip was explained by a processor update, but there was still some unsolved BIOS mystery. Intense, right? [PC World]
Although you can't call the video for Major Lazer's "Pon De Floor" NSFW (because, in doing so, you'd have to label everything on the Fox channel as such), it is an oversexed romp that uses the latest in green screen, animation and ladder leaping to get the point across. All I can say is, I finally know what it was like to be a crotchety old person in 1950 when the kids started dancing to that rock and roll. [YouTube]
MAKE just featured a "hand-crafted brass and copper alcohol burner" that you can wear around your neck, for quick impromptu stir fry, perhaps. Yeah, sure. I'm going to make three suppositions:
1) That the intended wearer doesn't generally cook, at least not food.
2) That the burner is around the neck for a different kind of convenience.
3) That the maker of the necklace stove has probably made other devices that can be set aflame, in one way or another, using precisely this instrument.
[MAKE]
Turns out, Wikipedia won't last forever. There are early signs that, like a red-tinged star, it's on its way out. What happened? Well, people who cared most have boxed out casual contributors, reducing the influx of outside knowledge and curbing the chances of outsider participation in fact checking and article improvement. Part of this is defensive: Spambots often try to insert ad links into Wiki entries, and that ain't right. If the trend continues, it could spell curtains for Everybody's Favorite Source of Mostly Useful Information™. [New Scientist]