"Yes, our source tells us that Google is building a Chrome OS tablet. It's real, and it's being built by HTC. No surprise there, since HTC churned out the Nexus One for Google."

Tags: geeky

"A new-and-improved successor to the troubled Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa ? which finally returned a capsule to Earth earlier this year ? could launch as soon as 2014. Hayabusa 2 would then be expected to return in 2020, bearing clues to the origin of life on Earth. Last week, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) got the go-ahead from the government to begin development of Hayabusa 2, which will cost an estimated 164 billion yen ($2 billion)."

Tags: science

"Second Life is a virtual world with many million participants created by Linden Labs. Your digital representation in this world is called an avatar. You can make your avatar wander around, buy houses, design clothes, get married, whatever you like. Think of it as World of Warcraft without the weapons. There are a few interesting features of Second Life that make it interesting from a security perspective. The currency used in the virtual world, Linden dollars, can be exchanged for real currency in a fully supported way. The exchange rate is something on the order of 270 L$ for 1 USD$. Therefore, if you could exploit another player?s client, you could potentially cash out their Linden dollars for real money."

Tags: geeky

"When Paul Graham went to work for Yahoo after they bought hid startup in 1998, it felt like the center of the world. It was supposed to be the next big thing. It was supposed to be what Google turned out to be. What went wrong? The problems that hosed Yahoo go back a long time, practically to the beginning of the company. They were already very visible in 1998. Yahoo had two problems Google didn't: easy money, and ambivalence about being a technology company."

Tags: geeky

"Flight attendant Steven Slater, 38 years old, was struck in the head with luggage that a passenger was trying to unload from an overhead compartment, according to an airport official with knowledge of the incident. Slater demanded an apology from the passenger, the official said, but the passenger refused. The two argued before the passenger told Slater to ?f? off?, the official said. Slater then got on the plane?s PA system and directed that same obscenity at all the passengers and added that he especially meant it for the man who refused to apologize. Slater is alleged to have then activated the plane?s inflatable emergency slide, grabbed two beers from the galley, then slid down the chute, the official said."

Tags: awesome

Back in the heady early days of my multiplayer gaming addiction,
crowded into garages and lounge rooms, when my buddies got bored with
me schooling them at Quake we would play Warcraft 2 and later
Starcraft. I was never as obsessed with real time strategy games
anywhere near my love of Quake, but I have very fond memories of blood
rushed ogres and unleashing swarms of zerglings apon my friends.

12 long years after the original, Starcraft 2 has been released and
has reinvigorated my interest in RTS gaming. As is my usual approach
to gaming, I skipped over the single player campaign and dove directly
into the online multiplayer portion of Starcraft 2. I watched a couple
of tutorial videos on youtube and learned how to do the cheesiest and
easiest rushing strategies, using these to do pretty well in the
ranking matches. In hindsight, getting placed into the gold ladders
wasn't a smart move as the players I'm facing actually know more than
how to build up a rushing force in the 1st 5 minutes of a match. I
threw some of my ranking matches for the 1v1 and 4v4 ladders and got
ranked in silver for these, where I'm actually able to hold my own.

I've been watching a lot of replays of the very very good players
downloaded from the amazingly slick sc2replayed.com and learning a lot.
I still suck but at least I have a bit of depth to my strategy if
someone is able to counter my early game attacks. The fact that the
game rewards aggressive play really resonates with me. I can't see
this developing into a true obsession, as I'm well aware that the time
investment required to compete at top levels in Starcraft 2 would be
insane especially because the top guys have been playing the original
game for the last 12 years. However I am really enjoying finding the
most annoying tactics and using these to piss off my enemies. I've
also found that a few quick games of Starcraft 2 puts me into a great
mindset for poker.

"Who called in the fleet?"