A words on Aaron Swartz, your RSS writer

A FEW words on Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide this week. He was 26. If you’re reading this on RSS, thank him:

At 14, Mr. Swartz helped create RSS, the nearly ubiquitous tool that allows users to subscribe to online information. He later became an Internet folk hero, pushing to make many Web files free and open to the public. But in July 2011, he was indicted on federal charges of gaining illegal access to JSTOR, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals, and downloading 4.8 million articles and documents, nearly the entire library. Charges in the case, including wire fraud and computer fraud, were pending at the time of Mr. Swartz’s death, carrying potential penalties of up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

Anorak

Posted: 13th, January 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

How to answer your iPhone like a legend

HOW to asnwer your iPhone, like a Japanese master. Hands are so last season:

Anorak

Posted: 11th, January 2013 | In: Technology | Comment (1)

Sellitonline attempts to profit on Facebook from Tasmania bushfires

IN every disaster, an opportunity to raise your Facebook friends count. Australia is being melted by bushfires. So, the good folks at  Sellitonline have soem up with a way of helping the striken. Join their Facebook page:

“..the more people we get will determine how many generators we donate.“

It’s a huge fail. Says onr Facebook pal:

“F*ck off with your opportunistic marketing trying to take advantage of other people’s tragedy.”

Anorak

Posted: 10th, January 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

The worlds largest simultaneous burnout

PRESENTING the worlds largest simultaneous burnout. As a reader writes:

How clouds are made in Australia.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, January 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

How space changes time

IN space, time moves at a different pace. Jesse McDougall explains:

There are a few dozen GPS satellites floating high above the Earth. Each satellite carries an atomic clock that, when on Earth, is perfectly precise and in sync with Earth time. However, when lifted to the less dense gravity of the upper atmosphere, the satellites’ atomic clocks speed up. Were an observer to fly up to one of these satellites and watch the on-board atomic clock, he would see no difference in the length of a second. It would still be that familiar tick, tick, tick of Earth seconds. At that level of gravity, he, too, would be moving faster through time and would therefore see one second to be one plain old second. But, from here on the Earth’s surface and from within our denser gravitational field, we can see that the seconds pass a little more quickly on the satellites.

Time is slowed by heavy gravity. Just as it’s easier to swim through outer space, than it is through the atmosphere, than it is through water, than it is through rock, time moves more quickly through less dense gravity. Time passes more slowly on Jupiter than it does here on Earth. And, as the impatient clocks on the Mars rover prove, time passes more quickly on Mars due to its lighter gravitational pull.

Anorak

Posted: 7th, January 2013 | In: Technology | Comments (2)

Pakistan lifted YouTube ban for 3 minutes

WHAT did Pakistanis view on YouTube when the site was live for three minutes? The site was banned in Pakistan when some dicks uploaded the ridiculous film the Innocence of Muslims. Banning it might have made the film the must-see smash among Pakistani youth. But the censors were taking no chances. YouTube was banned in September. The experts waited until YouTube was made pure, rid of all and anything that could be deemed offensive to Muslims. Also porn.

The country’s interior minister then ordered that the block be lifted. The world had had plenty to time to comply. Three minutes the site was blocked once more.

Anorak

Posted: 31st, December 2012 | In: Technology | Comment (1)

Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper says Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV app is ‘second to none’

JOHN Witherow,editor of The Sunday Times since 1995, was asked by the Leveson Inquiry’s counsel, Robert Jay QC, if the title’s owner Rupert Murdoch influence the paper’s editorial. He replied:

“He doesn’t have any.”

Anorak

Posted: 25th, December 2012 | In: Technology | Comment

Apple’s iOS 6 offers users the Mildura mystery

HAVE a good journey. And buy a map. In a book. Apple’s iOS 6 system is  mystery ride:

Tests on the mapping system by police confirm the mapping systems lists Mildura in the middle of the Murray Sunset National Park, approximately 70km away from the actual location of Mildura.

Police are extremely concerned as there is no water supply within the Park and temperatures can reach as high as 46 degrees, making this a potentially life threatening issue.

Some of the motorists located by police have been stranded for up to 24 hours without food or water and have walked long distances through dangerous terrain to get phone reception.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, December 2012 | In: Technology | Comment

Black Marble: Suomi captures a weather-free Earth

THIS is Black Marble, ka Earth. The image was taken by the US’s Suomi spacecraft. There is no weather:

Anorak

Posted: 6th, December 2012 | In: Technology | Comment

Slow motion video of water balloons thrown at man’s head

HITTING someone in the face with a water balloon is tremendous fun. I think we can all agree on that. Being hit in the face is less fun. Will Smith set up a slow-mo camera to record Norm Chan being hit in the face with water balloons. Not all of them break on impact.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, December 2012 | In: Technology | Comment

Hitman invites gamers to ‘murder’ and abuse women on Facebook

HEY, gamers. Square Enix are marketing their Hitman: Absolution game with the opportunity insult people on Facebook. The email declares: “SWUATE ENIX “WANTS YOU TO PUT A HIT ON YOUR FRIENDS.”

A hit? As in murder them?

Anorak

Posted: 4th, December 2012 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment

Alan Bartlett Shepard Junior’s Navy Academy Yearbook

SNAPSHOT: Cmdr. Alan B. Shepard Jr. showed same flashing smile and engaging personality as a midshipman as when he climbed from Mercury capsule after historic ride into space. This is the way he appeared in 1945 in his Naval Academy yearbook:

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, December 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment

The Leveson Inquiry almost completely ignored the Internet – just like the old media

THE Leveson Inquiry report has been criticised for not addressing the impact of the internet on the press, and the way it was published today was symptomatic of old-fashioned print publishing that doesn’t put user need at the centre, writes Martin Belam.

There were a lot of jokes on Twitter today that you could pay £250 to get the Leveson Inquiry report in print, or download it for free on the internet, which served as some kind of analogy for the state our newspapers find themselves in.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, November 2012 | In: Technology | Comment

It’s Atari and PONG’s 40th birthday

HAPPY 40th Atari! Amber Frost reminds us that “40 years ago today, with only a $500 out-of-pocket investment, engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney introduced PONG to the market on the Atari game system. From those two humble lines and a single, noble dot came a great pioneer in computer, arcade, and console gaming. Atari is even where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple got their start.”

Anorak

Posted: 29th, November 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology, The Consumer | Comment

The world’s best ever voicemail message (audio)

IS this the world’s best ever voicemail message:

He Bible fell. Oh…She just hit him over the head with a Bible

Anorak

Posted: 27th, November 2012 | In: Technology | Comment

Parents name their child Hashtag Jameson

A COUPLE – the Twitters? – have named their newborn child Hashtag Jameson. The chid was born last Saturday evening.

Anorak

Posted: 27th, November 2012 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment

Stars are dying – space is emptying out

SPACE. The idea is that if you don’t know what you’re looking at (we don’t) you get experts to call it soemthing. So you have dark matter. You have dark energy. You have…SPACE.  A new study says the universe is not making anything new right now. Stars are not in vogue. The big machine operated by whales that makes them is breaking down. Caleb A. Scharf notes:

First, 95% of all the stars we see around us today were formed during the past 11 billion years, and about half of these were formed between roughly 11 and 8 billion years ago in a flurry of activity. But the real shocker is that the rate at which new stars are being produced in galaxies today is barely 3% of the rate back 11 billion years ago, and declining. This indicates that unless our universe finds a second wind (which is unlikely) it will only ever manage to produce about 5% more stars than exist at this very moment.

This is, quite literally, the beginning of the end.

Anorak

Posted: 26th, November 2012 | In: Technology | Comments (2)

Panasonic’s 103 inch-screen telly cannot be too big

DEAL of the day: Richer Sounds is selling a 103 inch-screen telly – Full 3D. Professional quality. The Panasonic TH103VX200 is a dream screen that’s simply without rival – for £75499.95. The advert promises “Lowest price Guaranteed”.

Typo? Probably. But it’s also believable pricing. And we wonder: can a TV be too big?

Spotter: Winker

Anorak

Posted: 26th, November 2012 | In: Technology | Comment (1)

Student Andrea Hernandez suspended for refusing to wear school tracking system

WHEN student Andrea Hernandez from John Jay High School’s Science and Engineering Academy in San Antonio, Texas, was told to wear a tracking device to check on her movements, she declined. She said the radio frequency identification (RDIF) tracking device was akin to wearing the mark of the Beast.

The beeper is part of the “Student Locator Project”. The school needs to prove students are in attendance to get funding. It need to prove to the treasurers that bums are on seats. Students show the chipped lanyard at all times. If they want to vote, use the cafe or the library, students must show their chipped ID. It’s the same technology used to track prison inmates.

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, November 2012 | In: Technology | Comment

Shapad by Time: the clock shaped by powder

TIME to powder the old nose. And thanks to the “Shaped by time” by Studio Toer, the powder tells you when it’s good to go.  What the powder is, the website does not say. Celebrities, Colombian drugs barons, jihadis and unibombers might care to top up the clocks as they see fit. (They can then take the clock into their prison cells and do time, literally.)

The blurb does tell us:

“Shaped-by-time” is a clock that shapes itself by the passage of time. Because it’s looking for the most efficient way to move itself through the matter it will create an organic form by the slow repetitive movement of time. Time is slightly visible when the clock starts running, after a few days it excavates itself out of the matter and time will appear. From then on it slowly starts creating it’s organic form in which it will find it’s ideal shape. When you want to forget time, shake it a bit and it will start all over again with finding it’s way. Like time heals wounds, this clock litterly [sic] heals itself by time.”

Anorak

Posted: 21st, November 2012 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comments (3)

Your brain on alcohol

YOUR brain on alcohol. Your brain on drugs.

Spotters: AsapSCIENCE

Anorak

Posted: 21st, November 2012 | In: Technology | Comments (2)

The greatest keep-fit devices of the 1970s

WERE you around in the 1970s? Did you keep fit with the latest kit? We’ve pulled together some of the devices available in the brown decade. If you have any of these items, please let us know if they worked:

Ladies who crunch

Anorak

Posted: 21st, November 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology, The Consumer | Comments (4)

1985: House spiders on drugs

FLASHBACK to 27/04/1995: EXPERIMENTS BY NASA SCIENTISTS HAVE SHOWN THAT COMMON HOUSE SPIDERS SPIN THEIR WEBS IN DIFFERENT WAYS ACCORDING TO THE DRUG THEY HAVE BEEN GIVEN.

Anorak

Posted: 20th, November 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment

The Quarter of a Second Rule for all websites

WE know. Anorak needs work. The tech is not A-grade. We need to improve. Traffic is being lost. Readers are let down. We’re not alone. Nicholas Carr writes:

Back in 2006, a famous study of online retailing found that a third of online shoppers (those with broadband connections) would abandon a retailing site if its pages took four seconds or longer to load and that nearly two-thirds of shoppers would bolt if the delay reached six seconds. The finding became the basis for the Four Second Rule: People won’t wait more than about four seconds for a web page to load.

In the succeeding six years, the Four Second Rule has been repealed and replaced by the Quarter of a Second Rule. Studies by companies like Google and Microsoft now find that it only takes a delay of 250 milliseconds in page loading for people to start abandoning a site. “Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web,” Microsoft search guru Harry Shum observed earlier this year. To put that into perspective, it takes about 400 milliseconds for you to blink an eye.

Anorak

Posted: 20th, November 2012 | In: Technology | Comments (2)