Gizmodo Australia

Europe Could Be Eating Cloned Meat And Dairy Right Now

Kyle VanHemert — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:40:00 GMT

Whether you think it’s cool and futuristic or gross and immoral, cloning can yield leaner, healthier livestock. And the Times reports that some cloned meat and dairy products are already thought to be lining Old World supermarket shelves.

While the FDA declared that food from cloned animals was A-OK to eat (at least nutritionally), Europe has been less receptive to the idea of cloned livestock, as well as genetically-modified crops. But that hasn’t stopped breeders in Switzerland and Britain from importing semen and embryos from cloned animals originating in the U.S., hoping to create more profitably plump livestock.

One British farmer, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Times he was routinely selling milk produced by the offspring of a cloned cow, and the Swiss government admitted that “several hundred” of its cattle were second- or third-generation clone descendants. Of course, these only amount to an extremely small percentage of the continent’s total meat and dairy output, but that percentage could well increase as farmers continue to see the benefits of cloned livestock. I, meanwhile, will continue to assume that my first cloned-cow cheeseburger will make me leaner and more disease resistant. [NYT]

Twitter Will Now Suggest People You Might Be Interested In Stalking

Rosa Golijan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:33:12 GMT

It can be tough to find fascinating people to follow on Twitter, but now and then you’ll find someone whose tweets perfectly match your interests and you’ll wish there were more people like that. Well, now Twitter will help you find those folks—if they exist:

Today we’re beginning to roll out a simple, but powerful new feature to help address that — “Suggestions for You”. The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow. You’ll see these suggestions on Twitter.com and the Find People section. If you like a suggestion, click “follow”; if you don’t, click “hide,” and we’ll try not to suggest that user again.

Has anyone found a great result using this new feature yet? [Twitter]

This Is How Last Generation Fighter Jet Helmets Work

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:20:00 GMT

I always thought that last generation fighter combat helmets—like the Eurofighter Typhoon’s Head Equipment Assembly or the F-35 demon helmet—tracked the pilot’s head position using gyroscopes. It turns out that they are more Kinect than Wiimote.

Both the Typhoon HEA or the F-35 Gen II HMDS use optical-magnetic tracking technology. Cameras and sensor inside the aeroplane track the special three-dimensional pattern on the back of the helmet. They do it hundreds of times per second, feeding extremely accurate positioning info to the airplane’s computer in real time.

The computer uses this data to calculate the pilots’ eye position, projecting video and targeting information inside the helmet’s visor according to what he’s seeing at the time. [Runway Girl, Eurofighter, VSI]

How To Splice A Fibre Optic Cable

Kyle VanHemert — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:00:00 GMT

It’s 2010, which means it’s almost the future, which means pretty soon your speaker wire-stripping and Cat 5 cable-crimping skills will about as useful as knowing how to cobble a pair of shoes. Here’s how you splice fibre optics. [TWUntangled]

iPad Mount Makes Apple’s Tablet The Priciest Fridge Magnet You’ll Have

Kat Hannaford — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:40:00 GMT

Sure, you could try affixing some magnets to the back of your iPad, and get the same iPad-as-fridge-magnet effect for far less, but then what’d happen if the iPad dropped and shattered? You wouldn’t have anyone to sue but yourself.

Not that I’m suggesting you sue Woodford Design if that does indeed happen, but I do appreciate that �49 / $US76 is pretty steep for a couple of magnets. It can obviously be used in either landscape or portrait angles, and comes with replaceable corner clips for next year’s iPad model. On sale later this year. [Woodford Design via TechRadar]

US iPad Data Cost Versus The World: We Lose

Brian Barrett — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:20:00 GMT

It’s one thing to compare how much downloads cost you across various US carriers. Here’s how the US iPad data plan stacks up against what the rest of the world pays. It’s not pretty.

iPad Data Plan Cost by Country

It’s one thing to compare how much downloads cost you across various US carriers. Here’s how the US iPad data plan stacks up against what the rest of the world pays. It’s not pretty.

This interactive visualisation, created by Tableau Software, shows just how much (in $/GB) iPad data plans cost through its various international carriers. While we’re not nearly as bad off as France, it’s possible to to get a data plan in the UK for 1/5th the cost, per GB, of the US. In Singapore, the cheapest plan is 20x less expensive than here.

Of course, a lot of factors go into these numbers that don’t necessarily show up on an interactive chart. But in terms of raw data, it’s hard not to feel a little squeezed. Oh, well. At least we’re not Belgian.

AU: Something seems a bit weird here: Telstra and Optus are the same price, and both are cheaper than Vodafone and Three? Anyone want to do the maths and check those stats for us?-NB

[Thanks, Ross!]

Zune HD Gets Two New Apps, MSN Money And Animalgrams

Christina Bonnington — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:26:00 GMT

Both apps are free and currently available for download in the Zune Marketplace. MSN Money lets you monitor stocks, convert currency, and get info on companies and past trends, and Animalgrams is a basic word game where you to come up with as many words as you can from an animal’s name before the time runs out. [Zune Spring and Zune Boards]

UnityRemote Makes Any iOS Device An IR Universal Remote

Brian Barrett — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:20:00 GMT

What to do when Apple’s abandoned its remote app and you don’t want to gum up your dock connector with an adapter? Well, UnityRemote’s a great start: an infrared hub that turns iPhones and iPads into a 360-degree universal remote.

It’s an elegant solution from GEAR4: the hub communicates with a free app on your iOS device via Bluetooth and uses five infrared emitters to locate the TV, radio, DVD player, etc. of your choice. It’s a bit more expensive than some bulkier options—$US100 for the hub—but the ease of use might just make it worth it. It should be available this October. [Cult of Mac]

Bad Universe: The TV Program That Will Obliterate All Space Myths

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:00:00 GMT

Discovery Channel and Phil Plait—of Bad Astronomy fame—are on a mission to destroy wrong astronomy factoids this fall. The TV program will be called Bad Universe and, from the sneak peek, it looks fun.

Finally, A Hole Punch For Beer

Mark Wilson — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:40:00 GMT

I think I can speak for everyone here when I say there’s nothing worse than not drinking a bottle of brewskie through a crazy straw.

But this collective passion we have, a religion, if you will, dedicated to drinking cold bottles of beer through ornate and often rare straws, oft-requires the elusive bottle opener.

Today, a new dawn is upon us. No longer shall we apologetically hide bottle openers on our key chains, the sharp-edged contraptions free to scratch the artisan crazy straw cases in our pockets.

Through some sort of divine mercy, this BottleBop Bottle Cap Punch was forged upon this earth, and will empower all of man and womankind to drill right through a bottle cap rather than attempting its removal, creating a straw hole—nay, a straw cave—through which one can mine the finest alcoholic nectars with the craziest of straws available in their region.

You may be asking, “But what of the tiny disk of metal that will likely fall into my drink?” And to that we can only say, blasphemy. $US21 [epaulet via badbanana via OhGizmo!]

The Young And The Restless And The Tech Support Guy

Kyle VanHemert — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:29:13 GMT

Oh what a tangled web we weave. The local ABC affiliate in San Francisco is reporting a scintillating tale of misplaced nude photos, fraudulent laptop purchases, pornographic websites, and a Dell tech support guy—basically an internet soap opera.

The gist of the story, as ABC tells it, is this: Tara Fitzgerald, a single mother hailing from Sacramento, took some sexy photos of herself to send to her boyfriend, could not find them, and enlisted Dell tech support for help. (There will be many moments here which will test the limits of your credulity, but just try to stick with it). The Dell tech support guy, based out of India and named Riyaz Shaikh, proceeded to find the photos in question, download them, and ostensibly supply them to someone who created a pornographic website exclusively for their presentation.

Then, Fitzgerald claims, the tech support guy talked her into buying him a laptop so he could “work on her case” at home, helping her to remove the exploitative site. Then, on Valentines day (a particularly cruel detail), Shaikh told Fitzgerald that he had fallen in love with a young woman in Tennessee—another Dell tech support caller—and shortly thereafter, Fitzgerald discovered that Shaikh had purchased his new paramour Dell electronics using Fitzgerald’s credit card number. That about brings us up to speed.

Just like with the real soap operas, one can never be sure who to trust in this story, with each fold in its fabric adding some new insight or making one reconsider one’s allegiances. Fitzgerald seems like the victim, to be sure, but the chat transcripts flashed during the ABC News video betray a far deeper relationship between her and Shaikh than that of a mere support technician and customer. And while this isn’t the first time someone’s accused Dell tech support of impropriety, Shaikh hasn’t had a chance to tell his side of the story. That will come, hopefully, in the next installment of The Young and the Restless and the Tech Support Guy. [ABC KGO via Consumerist via Jezebel]

Feds Pushing For Stronger Privacy While You Shop Online

Sam Biddle — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:28:50 GMT

Congress is getting behind a policy “rethink” regarding online privacy, including the implementation of an FTC-enforced “Do Not Track” list. Such a list would allow shoppers to opt-out of advertising and behavioral tracking that follows customers from item to item.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is thoroughly creeped out, as expressed at a hearing on internet privacy earlier this week where he compared internet shopping to a sort of perverse shopping mall. In this internet mall of nightmares, there’s

“A machine recording every store you enter and every product you look at, and every product you buy. You go into a bookstore. The machine records every book you purchase or peruse. Then, you go to the drugstore. The machine is watching you there, meticulously recording every product you pick up—from the shampoo to the allergy medicine to your personal prescription.”

So what to do? Beyond the their “Do Not Track” list idea, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who testified at the hearing, believes a “privacy box” of summarized tracking policies should be presented to online shoppers upfront. But does the FTC have the authority to mandate this a privacy box? “We can certainly encourage it,” says Leibowitz. Comforting!

Google, whose bread and butter is knowing exactly what you’re looking for and looking at online, dropped by to urge that increased privacy will come in the form of guiding “principles”—which, of course, means nothing—rather than concrete regulation. [Ars Technica]

Image via laura padgett

This Aeroplane Luxury Suite Is Way Out Of My Budget

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:20:00 GMT

This is the most luxurious aeroplane “seat” money can buy: The Singapore Suite, on board Singapore Air’s A380s. It has real bed and a comfy three-feet-wide leather armchair, along with a multimedia centre with integrated 23-inch TV.

The Singapore-to-London roundtrip costs $US15,000. [Brunei News via Born Rich]

Five Years Of An Ant Colony Stuck In A Scanner

Mark Wilson — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Fran�ois Vautier built an ant farm into a scanner, then he proceeded to scan the farm every day for five years. The ensuing clip? Just as wonderful as you’d imagine, though I wish I could see it uncompressed. [Thanks OblivionVII!]

Our Worst Nightmare Realised: Subway Stations And Tracks To Have Mobile Service, Wi-Fi

Brian Moylan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:27:00 GMT

Not only will the city’s subway stations be rigged to support your handheld electronic devices, but chatty citizens will be allowed to make calls in between stops, too. Is there anything worse than this?

The MTA reached a deal with a company called Transit Wireless three years ago to enable cell phone service in subway stations, but the firm never proceeded with the plans. Now it’s back on the front burner, apparently, and the plans are even more ambitious than before considering they’re planning to install both phone signal and internet access underground. And where the stops are close enough together—and the tunnels are wider—riders should have coverage during their entire underground journey, says an official from Q-Wireless, one of the four companies working with Transit Wireless to install the subterranean transmissions. This is a travesty. For many people the subway is the only place to not only get away from the nagging of your own iPhone or Droid, but also to end all the chattering, inane conversations of your fellow citizens.

Under the current deal, Transit Wireless has two more years to install the technology in six test stations and then eight years to wire all 277 subway stations. Mobile phones in stations we can kind of understand, but allowing people to have conversations while commuting may bring about the end civilization as we know it. And, really, why does the subway need wi-fi? So that you can download porn onto your iPad on the 6 Train? Really? Everyone knows the subway is for jerking off while looking at real people. Come on!

[Image via Getty]

Spanning Backup Secures Your Data In Google’s Cloud

Sam Biddle — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:21:50 GMT

Those who use Google Apps probably assume data is safer in a cloud than it is on a laptop, prone to being dropped and spilled upon. Spanning Backup says otherwise, offering data protection services against data loss on Google’s end.

The service, priced at $US3.95 a month or $US39.95 a year after a free 30 day trial, will backup your calendars, contacts, and Google Docs files in case of a cloud catastrophe. How much danger is your Google-hosted data in? Spanning Backup claims “data loss and corruption is a serious problem for Google Apps users,” though the list of complaints they point to on their site seems largely of the “Oh no I deleted all of my stuff by accident” variety.

Nonetheless, if you conduct serious business via Google Apps or store anything you would miss more than you’d miss forty bucks a year, Spanning Backup might be an affordable and hassle-free means of being confident in the security of your files once you close your browser. [Spanning Backup]

Image via Discovery

Spanning Backup Secures Your Data In Google’s Cloud

Sam Biddle — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:21:50 GMT

Image via Discovery

IBM Creates The Most Detailed Map Of The Brain To Date

Kyle VanHemert — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:20:00 GMT

In a paper published earlier this week, IBM researchers made huge strides in mapping the architecture of the brain, charting three times as many connections as any previous study. Where does such a map lead us? The cognitive computing future.

Specifically, the study traced long-distance connections in the brain of a Macaque monkey, the “interstate highways” which transmit information between distant areas of the brain. Said one of the researchers:

We can now gain unprecedented insight into how information travels and is processed across the brain…a stepping stone to both fundamental and applied research in neuroscience and cognitive computing.

Their map depicts 6,602 long-distance connections between 383 different regions of the brain, allowing researchers to grasp how and where the brain sends information better than ever before.

Such data will allow scientists to more accurately perform theoretical analysis—the same type of projections that optimise search engines or track social networks—which will be essential in developing computer chips that can keep up with our brain’s immense computational power and navigate its complex architecture.

And of course fairly mindblowing to remind yourself that all of this work is going towards charting the vast, mysterious region existing inside your noggin right now. [KurzweilAI]

IBM Creates The Most Detailed Map Of The Brain To Date

Kyle VanHemert — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:20:00 GMT

We can now gain unprecedented insight into how information travels and is processed across the brain…a stepping stone to both fundamental and applied research in neuroscience and cognitive computing.

Their map depicts 6,602 long-distance connections between 383 different regions of the brain, allowing researchers to grasp how and where the brain sends information better than ever before.

And of course fairly mindblowing to remind yourself that all of this work is going towards charting the vast, mysterious region existing inside your noggin right now. [KurzweilAI]

Kindle iOS4 App Updated With Dictionary And Search

Brian Barrett — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:45:34 GMT

Your Kindle-on-iPad experience just got a boost: the Kindle 2.2 iOS4 update adds a dictionary and the ability to search inside your books. Just another reason to stick with Kindle’s platform even if you skip the hardware. [iTunes]