Posts

Posted on

An Asteroid Could Have Killed Us Tonight [Space]

Rejoice, because you are alive: An asteroid named 2009 TM8 just passed only 216,000 miles from Earth, racing at 18,163mph. That’s closer than the moon. But don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to panic, says the JPL:

If it’s typical density, it would create a 4 kiloton explosion in the Earth’s atmosphere if it were to hit, which of course it won’t. You’d expect an object of this size to fly within the orbit of the moon every few days or so.

That's what Don Yeomans—manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California—said talking about 2009 TM8 and the other 7 million objects in the near-Earth space which, "needless to say we have discovered only a small fraction of them."

Great. At 30 feet, something like 2009 TM8 is not as big as the killer Apophis or as the superkiller that can destroy everything on Earth. But who cares about destroying everything when this thing is large enough to annihilate Brooklyn.

Ah well, as if I needed any excuses to celebrate after this sodding Friday. Zacapa rum, here I come. [MSNBC]






Posted on

Home sales up 18%

The Canadian Real Estate Association says 135,182 homes were sold countrywide in the third quarter, up 18 per cent from a year earlier and the most ever for the period.

Posted on

Integrated Gmail Updates with Improved Looks and Handy Features [Downloads]

Firefox: Integrated Gmail is a clever way to load any Google app on one landing page. With version 2.0, it also adds a lot of interface fixes and helpful features, in the style of a certain well-known Gmail extension.

The basic functionality of Integrated Gmail remains the same—load in other Google Apps, like Reader, Calendar, Chat, Tasks, or whatever you'd like, and set how big they are when you click to expand them. New to 2.0 are several features included in Better Gmail 2, like message counts in your web favicon, and a few that are just all-around neat: universal drag-and-drop between left and right sidebars, sidebar and title bar hiding, multiple inbox support, theme detection and compatibility, and much more, detailed at the developer’s Mozilla page.

Of course, loading multiple Google apps in a single page can introduce a good bit of lag, and we saw some incessant Gmail load flickering in our installation. With some adjustments, though, you can probably create a single-page inbox for all the stuff Google wants to serve you.

Integrated Gmail is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.






Posted on

Filippa Hamilton: I was fired because I was too fat!

Ralph Lauren’s clothing company fired the model whose body looked emaciated in a touched-up ad because she weighed too much, the woman told the Daily News Tuesday.Filippa Hamilton – whose hips appeared slimmer than her head in the recent altered ad – said her contract was terminated in April because she was too heavy.”They fired me because they

Posted on

HP Ranked #1 Green Company (What!?) [Hp]

Newsweek’s latest Green Rankings gave Hewlett Packard the top position, establishing the firm as the greenest Fortune 500 company this year—a far cry from Greenpeace’s #14 ranking. So what gives?

The ranking methodology utilized by Greenpeace and Newsweek are radically different; the Newsweek rankings are based on a holistic view of the companies including greenhouse emissions, water consumption and supply chain management. Greenpeace study analyzes more focused benchmarks like the use of toxic chemicals.

Greenpeace's biggest knock on HP is it's continued polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardant (BFR) usage despite a commitment to discontinue their utilization, while Newsweek recognizes their continued use— they give HP credit due to progressively diminished usage.

HP got especially high marks for it’s Green Policy and Performance from Newsweek, issues Greenpeace did not consider. While Newsweek’s ranking system is more comprehensive, there is good reason Greenpeace looks specifically at PVC and BFRs. Dioxin, an organic compound, produced as a byproduct of PVC production has been implicated in a broad range of health problems from acne to sarcoma.

Both rankings have valid rationales to justify their methodologies, HP most likely belongs somewhere in between #1 and #14. [Newsweek and Greenpeace]

Thanks Prof. Singaram for helping me work through organic chemistry.






Posted on

New Wi-Fi Direct to Connect Gadgets Without Routers [Wireless]

Coming mid-2010 there will be a new Wi-Fi standard that will allow any Wi-Fi gadget to connect wirelessly with each other without having to go through a wireless router. The best thing: It will only require a software update.

The new standard is called Wi-Fi Direct and—unlike Bluetooth—the technology will enjoy exactly the same speed and range as Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi Alliance—which includes Intel, Microsoft, and Apple—says that it will automatically detect and hitch any device equipped with Wi-Fi within a 300 range, from computers to cameras to TVs to printers to anything in between. All peer-to-peer.

The Wi-Fi Alliance and everyone else—including myself—are pretty excited about this. So excited that they are planning a big advertising campaign to make people move to it. And since it will only require a downloadable software patch, you can expect the technology to become ubiquitous pretty fast.

Farewell, Bluetooth. It was not a pleasure to meet you. [Wi-Fi Alliance]