gregsmithsays

[link] [11 comments]

[link] [46 comments]

[link] [15 comments]

[link] [16 comments]

[link] [17 comments]

In this video clip from New York University's annual talent show four years ago, Stefani Germanotta — aka Lady Gaga — performs two songs she wrote herself. She came in third place. At the end of her performance, one of the judges says: "Norah Jones, look out!" Little did she know that Lady Gaga ...

Behaviorally speaking, heroes and serial do-gooders have a lot in common with sociopaths, according to this paper on psychology and neuroethics: "their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them."...

Britain is full of license-plate cameras, cameras used to send you tickets if you're caught speeding, or driving in the bus-lane, or entering London's "congestion-charge zone" without paying the daily fee for driving in central London. And because of Chekhov's first law of narrative ("a gun on the m ...

Parents, romantic partners and roommates of America: I am not encouraging your child, partner or person you share living space with to do this. At least, not in your good microwave. They should buy their own for this sort of thing. And for the love of Pete, they should wear protective eye covering. ...

Vadim Ponorovsky, the owner of the restaurant Paradou in trendy Park Slope Manhattan's meat-packing district, sent his employees an email in which he called them "lazy motherfuckers" because they failed to extract enough email addresses from their customers (he has a spam list and he makes it his se ...

Using new processing techniques in the near-infrared part of the spectrum, astronomers have peered through the thick dust of the Centaurus A galaxy to reveal the leftovers of another galaxy it consumed.

While you are giving thanks for the important things in your life next Thursday, mull these 10 geeky things for which we all have reason to be grateful.

In Ray Bradbury’s book, The Illustrated Man , the title character is covered with moving, shifting tattoos. If you look at them, they will tell you a story. New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course).

In an age when everyone is following everything, is it ever possible to disappear? On Aug. 13, one man drove out of San Francisco determined to stay hidden in plain sight and test this possibility.

While on the run, Evan Ratliff snapped a self-portrait each day to document his constantly evolving appearance.

Using new processing techniques in the near-infrared part of the spectrum, astronomers have peered through the thick dust of the Centaurus A galaxy to reveal the leftovers of another galaxy it consumed.

While you are giving thanks for the important things in your life next Thursday, mull these 10 geeky things for which we all have reason to be grateful.

In Ray Bradbury’s book, The Illustrated Man , the title character is covered with moving, shifting tattoos. If you look at them, they will tell you a story. New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course).

In an age when everyone is following everything, is it ever possible to disappear? On Aug. 13, one man drove out of San Francisco determined to stay hidden in plain sight and test this possibility.

While on the run, Evan Ratliff snapped a self-portrait each day to document his constantly evolving appearance.

As Sony scrambles to reassert its technological relevance, CEO Howard Stringer is betting on a strategy for the electronics giant that focuses on adding online content to more of its gadgets.

The German semiconductor maker said it swung to a fiscal fourth-quarter net profit on growing demand for its logic chips.

Ad revenue at China's national broadcaster, CCTV, is poised to continue to rise in 2010, as domestic and international firms pledged to spend $1.6 billion.

Barnes & Noble on Friday said customers who order its Nook electronic-book reader now won't get it until the week of Jan. 4.

Advanced Micro Devices said it would use its $1.25 billion settlement from Intel to reduce its debt coming due in 2012 by up to $1.4 billion.

Two members of the touring New Zealand rugby team have been warned for using micro-blogging website Twitter.

After more than a year out of action, the world's largest particle accelerator is set to start up again this weekend.

Politicians, ISPs and privacy groups have all offered their views about the Digital Economy Bill, outlined in parliament this week.

The government has outlined the Digital Economy Bill, which will put the onus on ISPs to take action against suspected file-sharers.

Web User summarises the main points of the Digital Economy Bill announced this week by the government.

You know what you'll be doing in 2011? Everything that you've ever wanted, that's what, 'cause the world as we know will unquestionably end in 2012. Amazingly enough, one of those bucket list items that you'll be able to achieve is to change the channel on your tele without ever slipping a battery ...

Ready for yet another way to watch TV? Sezmi has just gone on the air in Los Angeles, offering its unique blend of premium OTA and internet delivered video to a few limited trial users. $5 a month brings whatever local networks you can pull in, basic IPTV (YouTube, OnNetworks , podcasts) and intern ...

Good news for folks who against all odds don't have a home theater Netflix streaming option yet, and yet inexplicably own an internet-connected Sony BRAVIA TV: Netflix just went live. It just takes applying the latest software update and you're in business. BRAVIA owners were promised the update bac ...

Sony and Panasonic are both hellbent on convincing us their forthcoming super-duper 3D television sets are the future, but before we all start selling off the children and re-mortgaging our homes, how about a little taster of what it might be like? Channel 4, the British answer to a question nobody ...

Yamaha seems to be pushing its newly unveiled yAired technology pretty hard, with the second system to sport it unveiled just weeks after the first. The $399.95 MCR-140 is far from being the most stylish mini stereo we've seen -- in fact, it's probably one of the ugliest -- but it is available in a ...

AP - Think of it as closed captioning for the new media world.

PC World - You probably already know that many Black Friday bargains are available online too. Rather than brave the elements or risk being trampled at 5 a.m., it's much more pleasant to shop from the comfort of home. Save the Kevlar vest for another day.

Macworld.com - It was a banner week for stupid opinion pieces about Apple. Indeed, the Macalope had a hard time narrowing the field. He did eventually pick two lucky winners, but he’d like to assure all the silly pundits who auditioned that they did horrible, horrible work and even though they ...

AP - Think of it as closed captioning for the new media world.

PC World - You probably already know that many Black Friday bargains are available online too. Rather than brave the elements or risk being trampled at 5 a.m., it's much more pleasant to shop from the comfort of home. Save the Kevlar vest for another day.

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof is controversially asking web users to "Boycott Bing", claiming that Bing is censoring Simplified Chinese queries even outside the People's Republic of China. Last night, Bing responded to Kristof's Friday afternoon posting, citing a programming bug but failin ...

Google has already transitioned GrandCentral users over to Google Voice, and now comes the final step in that move: Google is shuttering the GrandCentral website and telling users to download any old messages and contacts they have on that site. The GrandCentral site will be closed on the last ...

Social media is a double-edged sword. Due to its unfiltered nature, it can be a powerful promotional tool. However, it can also publicly expose our problems. Former reality TV star Tila Tequila is an unfortunate but prime example. Some backstory: Tila Tequila is one of the most popular ...

We've been matching up popular web services, applications and mobile apps against each other in heated one-on-one battles here in our weekly Faceoff Series. Last week Microsoft Office bested Google Docs in a head to head race for the title of office suite champion. This week we turned our attention ...

This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: Fido Factor Quick Pitch: Fido Factor is a d ...

10 days ago, Facebook developer Joe Hewitt rocked the iPhone development world when he announced that he would stop making iPhone apps because he was fed up with the way Apple is running the App Store. This is significant since Hewitt was pretty much solely responsible for one of the ...

Google Voice was GrandCentral before Google acquired that company back in 2007. Like most Google acquisitions it took a long time to fully rebuild the service on Google's infrastructure, and even today Google Voice is still in private beta. But lots of changes are coming. Google Voice should roll o ...

Editor's note: Today, being a news junkie requires not just the ability to keep up with hundreds of breaking stories a day, but the ability to redistribute those stories to your followers and news sites. To get some insight into the modern news junkie, we asked Mrinal Desai to ...

When pitching to VC’s, entrepreneurs hype the heck out of their ideas, years of experience and management teams. But I’ve never heard of anyone touting their luck or connection to God. After reading the posts on TechCrunch, one could easily get the impression that God doesn’t play much of role ...

Every afternoon, seven days a week, Ed Epley has a 5 p.m. appointment with the war.

Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The vicious hair-pulling of an opponent was inexcusable. But prominent advocates of women's sports say that so, too, has been much of the commentary generated by the popular video of college soccer player Elizabeth Lambert's combative tactics in a recent game.

The sign sits propped on a wooden chair, inviting all comers: "Ask an Atheist."

Vampires and werewolves have vanquished a dark knight. "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" took in $72.7 million in its first day to break the single day domestic box office record previously held by "The Dark Knight," which had a $67.2 million opening day last year.

Today InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy says that Google’s Chrome OS will fail. What he is missing is he’s looking at the wrong field. Google is playing a different game. Google Chrome OS is NOT about killing Microsoft or Apple. What is it about? Developers, developers, developers, developers, devel ...

Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo, today, at the TechCrunch Real Time Crunchup (live video of the conference is live now on building43, there will be lots of news all day long from this event), told the audience that Twitter is, indeed, going to turn on an advertising model. This is a huge shift in what ...

I use Twitter and Facebook a lot. Probably more than 99.9999% of people in the world. I am in search of the perfect client that will help me use Facebook and, particularly, Twitter (which I use a lot more than Facebook because that is the best place to network with other technology professionals). ...

Microsoft exec Ray Ozzie, at a lunchtime session with bloggers at its PDC conference told the bloggers that apps won’t be a differentiating factor on smart phones. He is wrong. Totally wrong. Why is Mike Arrington so passionate about his Droid (we argued about it for 39 minutes on the Gillmor Gang ...

At the Blog World Expo a few weeks ago someone asked what Twitter is for and I answered “pimping your blog.” Hey, it works for TechCrunch and Mashable, why not you? Or me. So, I’ve finally figured out that I was clueless because I didn’t have a Twitter account for my blog. When people say t ...

Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab : Video Demonstrates Wired's Concept iTablet App   —  Who takes Apple's rumored touchscreen tablet seriously?  Wired's parent company Condé Nast.  Earlier this week, the corporation revealed its plans to work with Adobe to repurpose magazine content for upcoming d ...

Matthew Newman / Bloomberg : Oracle $7.4 Billion Sun Takeover May Be Blocked by EU on Competition Issue   —  Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) — Oracle Corp.'s planned $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. may be blocked by European Union regulators because of concerns Oracle might be able to elim ...

Laura Northrup / Consumerist : Smoking Near Apple Computers Creates Biohazard, Voids Warranty   —  Unless you've just arrived in 2009 on a time machine, you know that smoking isn't good for you.  Did you know, that smoking isn't good for your computer, either?  It's true, at least according ...

Nicholas Kristof / Nicholas D. Kristof : Boycott Microsoft Bing   —  Critics have accused President Obama of kowtowing to Chinese leaders, by failing to meet dissidents, toning down his criticisms and delaying a meeting with the Dalai Lama.  On balance, I think that criticism is premature: Con ...

MG Siegler / TechCrunch : Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever.  And Hasn't Tried Google Wave.   —  “Email is not going to disappear.  Possibly ever.  Until the robots kill us all.”  - Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, co-founder of FriendFeed, currently doing vague infrastructu ...

tburton writes "The US House of Representatives yesterday released the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (HR 4128) to try and end the international trade of tungsten, tantalum and col-tan, the mining of which is accused of fueling violent rape and murder in eastern Congo. Since the very same minerals powe ...

boggis writes "Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times journalist, is calling for a boycott of Microsoft's Bing. They have censored search requests at the request of the Chinese Government (like certain others). The difference is that Bing has censored all searches done anywhere in simplified Chinese cha ...

angry tapir writes "Cyber attacks on the US Department of Defense — many of them coming from China — have jumped sharply in 2009, a US congressional committee has reported. Citing data provided by the US Strategic Command, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that there were ...

Bourdain writes with news out of the University of Arkansas, where researchers are looking for ways to combat counterfeit RFID tags. Passive tags typically wait for a reader to transmit a signal of the appropriate strength and frequency before sending their own transmission. The scientists found tha ...

itwbennett writes "Some very generous Alpha OS geeks have snagged the Chrome OS source code and compiled a version to share with the rest of us, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The build comes in the form of a virtual machine, which means you'll need VMWare or VirtualBox running, and of course the imag ...