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Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, has been officially announced, and promises to change, among other things, the one problem keeping Linux from world domination: the poop-colored desktop theme. The next version, 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, is almost at feature-freeze time and is scheduled to launch in April, in accordance with Ubuntu’s strict 6-month release calendar. Karmic Koala…
I am typing this on a 9-inch, 3G-equipped, almost-pocketable computer, running the best consumer OS money can currently buy. It costs around $400. Do you want one too? Here’s how to get yours. There are a lot of netbooks on which you can install and run OS X, but if you’re mindful of the handy…
A gathering of economists from Georgetown and Columbia Universities discussed the employment repercussions of the proposed expansion of rural broadband access, and turns out many think increased broadband access will actually reduce employment. What? As we’ve all discovered, economists can’t predict the effect of stimulus any better than you or I or a damn monkey,…
Daniel Simon, the guy designing the lightcycles and other crazy vehicles for Tron 2, previously published Cosmic Motors, a compendium of otherworldly vessels you will never drive, but spend your life wishing you could. https://gizmodo.com/tron-2-trailer-video-makes-pants-wet-worldwide-5029479 You can hit the guy’s blog for new concepts, or buy his 2007 book—$19.77 isn’t a lot for all those…
This Mac mini is definitely real. It’s also like a USB humping dog orgy waiting to happen. [BoingBoing Gadgets] https://gizmodo.com/mac-mini-2009-leak-analyzed-declared-fake-5157263
Last night, I previewed Seagate‘s FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player, which docks those super-slim FreeAgent 2.5″ USB drives in order to connect your video files to your TV. The Free Agent Theater HD Media Player uses composite, S-Video and component video inputs, coaxial out for Dolby Digital surround sound. Its integrated dock is for the…
Apartment therapy‘s Unplggd did a post about my working habits and work place. How nice of them! [Unplggd]
So there’s this commercial on TV right now for some computer maintenance service with technologically-inept people frustrated over their crappy, virus-laden, machines. At one point an iBook even flashes a BSOD…wait, what? Oh, the joys of low budget commercials and oblivious ad men! If El Jobso saw this, he would be furious! Plus, they show…
To make our Snowmodo meetup at Northstar-at-Tahoe accessible to everyone, we need to arrange a carpool or bus. So we ask you guys, who needs a ride and how can we make it happen? https://gizmodo.com/gizs-snowmodo-reader-meetup-saturday-april-4th-north-5143084 Carpool: For those of you who want to carpool, we would suggest that you turn the comment’s section of this…
Say what? A Kansas City woman with a tight weave gets shot at by her boyfriend through a car window. Later, the cops find a spent bullet in her hair. Did the hair stop it? Apparently some weaves are tighter than others. (Apparently, some relationships are tighter than others too.) After 20-year-old Briana Bonds told…
Only Nintendo would be this crazy. The original Nintendo DSi design had two DS card slots—not SD people, I type good dammit—so it could hold two DS games at once. It was also monstrous. In a session of “Iwata Asks,” the DSi’s design team reveals how the DSi we know and meh came to be.…
Apparently, sometimes lightning comes in ball form, slowly falling out of the sky and exploding on contact. Unsurprisingly, people want to turn lightning balls into weapons. Oh, humanity. Ball lightning is incredibly rare and hasn’t been replicated in a lab, but that didn’t stop Dr. Paul Koloc from getting funding from the Missile Defense Agency…
Today we had a false-alarm that South Park‘s rejected video-portal app hit Cydia—it was just third-party shite. But the news made us question specialty content apps: Most are worthless but a few are desperately needed. https://gizmodo.com/apples-puritanical-review-system-kills-south-park-iphon-5155031 By specialty content apps, we mean iPhone or iPod Touch apps that are either portals to online content or…
Every time you Google “Krispy Kreme cheeseburger” or “how to relieve herpes” or “laser cats,” it takes the processing power of up to 1,000 machines. In a talk at WSDM 2009, Google Fellow Jeff Dean revealed some statistics about how Google’s operations have grown from 1999 to 2009, and it’s pretty mind-boggling. Queries have gone…
HP will begin instituting a pay cut to its 100,000 employees, with some as high as 20 percent. (HP’s CEO Mark Hurd will be taking the max cut.) HP also plans to cut back other employee benefits such as 401k plans. [WebGuild]
In case you missed it, there is a bigger, badder duct tape in town. Used mostly in the nuclear power, shipping and steel industries, this stuff can handle just about anything. 3M’s Nuclear Grade Performance Plus Duct Tape is certified for low leachable halogens and sulfur and can handle temperatures up to 200-degrees Fahrenheit. It’s…
Shown off at the 2009 TED conference (aka Mosquito Madness), these Siftables blocks are location aware, motion sensitive, touch interactive and work with other blocks to take on a variety of functions. Monstermunch posted on the Siftables, which have a 3-axis accelometor that allows for gesture-based controls, and an OLED touchscreen that allows direct user…
Austrian company Skloib is known for making high end furniture. One of their latest creations, the “TV Drehturm” is a rotating TV cabinet and fireplace all-in-one. I like the idea of rotating focal points much more than I like the idea of trying to cram both a TV and a fireplace into a single area,…
NOSTALGIA ALERT! There is now an honest-to-goodness Retro MacOS emulator for jailbroken iPhones in the form of Mini vMac, which loads disk images and everything. It’s like getting your first Mac all over again. The OS, developed by Named Fork, is based around that found on the Mac Plus (v3.0, presumably). If you can stomach…
The Mac mini on video here looks like the new one we saw yesterday with five USB and dual display ports—the one declared fake earlier. This looks pretty convincing. Is it real? https://gizmodo.com/supposed-mac-mini-2009-spy-shot-shows-so-many-usb-ports-5156823 Click to view [9to5Mac]
