The Hollywood sign is in danger: The surrounding land is up for sale, and luxury homes may invade it soon. A non-profit trust is trying to stop this, but someone has another idea: Turn it into a hotel. More »
From Autoblog:
MyFord Touch promises to better connect drivers to their phones and MP3 players as well as the functions that are traditionally controlled by buttons and knobs. The screen will be displayed on a 4.2-inch LCD located directly in front of the driver next to the speedom
Several publishers now set their own price for Kindle books, not Amazon. Which often means pricier than what Amazon was charging. And now Amazon says they're adding sales tax on any book where the publisher sets the price. More »
On Twitter today geographile linked to some pareidolia that I simply have to keep you abreast of. I won’t post the picture; instead I’ll just send you to the article and note that it is very mildly NSFW and NSF people with grown up sensibilities.
But it made me smile.
Oh– keep the comments clean, folks!
From Scientific American:
Today's supercomputers run hot, thanks to power-hungry microprocessors that enable sophisticated scientific research and complex financial transactions to be performed in the blink of an eye. As these microprocessors have become smaller and more powerful
From Gizmodo:
It's scaremongering at best, but yesterday's volcanic ash story has turned into a right old mess for the aviation industry, with all planes grounded until at least Sunday in the UK. Even worse, a much larger volcano could erupt. As I said yesterday, the Eyjafjallaj
When Microsoft wants to you hire you, it drops a "love bomb" on you, according to a person we spoke with who Microsoft wooed. More »
A reminder to Bostonites: I’ll be speaking tomorrow at 4 at the Museum of Science as part of an all-day bash put on by the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences. The weather outside is going to be frightful, or at least dreadful, so why not enjoy some indoor entertainment? More information and registration here.
So Herrman thinks Microsoft needs to cool it with marketing to hipsters. OK! Let's help them out by creating some marketing materials that aim at some underrepresented demographics. More »
I’ve been away visiting relatives who somehow survive without WiFi. So now I’ll be catching up with a series of quick posts over the course of the day.
From NYT > Technology:
For the 140 computer network specialists, law enforcement agents and diplomats from eight countries who met in this German ski resort this week for a Russian-sponsored conference on Internet security, the biggest challenge was finding a common ground to discu
Hello!
does somebody know if ST35 is a stainless steel or a normal steel?
thanks
The OM wireless optical mouse is a flat surface the size of a hand, only 10 millimeter thick at its highest point. In theory, it makes your hand relax. In the practice, it's a very cool concept. More »
Last night, President Obama issued a memo that will change hospital visitation rights around the country. The administration will draft new rules declaring that any hospital participating in the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs—which is most of them—will no longer be allowed to bar visitors that patients desire to have access to them.
This has been a particular hardship for gay Americans, who have been turned away from visiting sick loved ones because of policies that allow visiting rights solely to spouses or family members. They aren’t the only ones, either, Obama argues. He cited widows or widowers without children, members of religious orders as examples of people who have been unable to choose the people they want to be at their side [Reuters].
The changes won’t take effect right away. The Department of Health and Human Services must draft the new rules, then put them in place and police them. But in addition to expanding visitation rights, the order also requires that documents granting power of attorney and healthcare proxies be honored, regardless of sexual orientation. The language could apply to unmarried heterosexual couples too [Los Angeles Times]. You can read Obama’s memo here.
The President was particularly inspired by the case of a Florida couple, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond. When Pond suffered an aneurysm, Langbehn was denied visiting access at the hospital, despite the fact that she carried power-of-attorney and the couple had adopted four children. Pond died before Langbehn was allowed access. On Thursday night, Mr. Obama called her from Air Force One to say that he had been moved by her case. “I was so humbled that he would know Lisa’s name and know our story,” Ms. Langbehn said in a telephone interview. “He apologized for how we were treated. For the last three years, that’s what I’ve been asking the hospital to do” [The New York Times].
Related Content:
80beats: Health-Care Reform Passed. So What Does It Mean?
80beats: Should You Avoid Hospitals in August, When the Rookie Docs Arrive?
80beats: Familial Rejection of Gay Teens Can Lead to Mental Health Problems Later
Discoblog: In Hospitals, If Your Disease Doesn’t Kill You, a Cell Phone Might
Image: iStockphoto
From technabob:
A young Togolese man named Sam Todo made a humanoid robot "almost entirely from old television sets." Todo built the robot as a way of encouraging his fellow Africans to become more interested in science and technology. The hearts of hundreds of millions of dusty, u
From BusinessWeek.com -- Innovation:
What are the signs that innovation in a company is set up to fail? Wouldn't it be great to have a checklist on this? Unfortunately, innovation is too complicated and company-specific for one standard rule. It is possible, however, to become b
From Medgadget:
A study of 1,000 computer-assisted robotic total knee replacements performed over a five year period at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, NY demonstrates that computer-assisted procedures result in far better leg alignment, much less likelihood of complicati
Developers at KLab have built an NES emulator for the Kindle. It's more awful than you could possibly imagine. More »
From IEEE Spectrum:
Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara have reported that they have developed a glue that can be activated and deactivated by magnetism, a sort of on/off switch for the material's adhesiveness, that mimics the adhesive characteristics of a gec
