ozmanjusri writes "Major news outlets are reporting that after 20 million years, Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) are now officially extinct. This is apparently actually old news; it was announced on a Baiji conservation website in December of last year. One outlet, though, is claiming they may not quite be completely dead yet. The same scientist that filed the report leading the the declaration of extinction is still hopeful: '"This is only one survey and...you can't have a sample in a survey, so you cannot say the baiji all is gone by the result of only one survey," he said. "For example, there is some side channels or some tributaries [where] we cannot go because of a restriction of navigation rules, and also we don't survey during the night-time so we may miss some animals in the Yangtze River." Professor Ding says based on anecdotal evidence, he remains confident the dolphins are still out there. "I'm pretty much sure there are a few of them left somewhere in the Yangtze River," he said. "I keep receiving reports from fishermen, they say they saw a couple of baiji somewhere, sometime."'"

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Scripting News is a proud sponsor of BarCampBlock on August 18-19, in Palo Alto, CA.

Sniper223 writes with a link to an interview on the Network World site with Linus Torvalds. Linus goes through the usual spiel about stuff like why he released the Linux OS in the first place, and how the future is open source. He also has some interesting commentary on the Microsoft/Novell deal: "I actually thought that whole discussion was interesting, not because of any Novell versus MS issues at all, but because all the people talking about them so clearly showed their own biases. The actual partnership itself seemed pretty much a nonissue to me, and not nearly as interesting as the reaction it got from people, and how it was reported ... I don't actually personally think the Novell-MS agreement kind of thing matters all that much in the end, but it's interesting to see the signs that the sides are at least talking to each other. I don't know what the end result will be, but I think it would be healthier for everybody if there wasn't the kind of rabid hatred on both sides. Some people get a bit too excited about MS, I think. I don't think they are that interesting." An interesting contrast to our earlier conversation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Click on the thumbnail to the right for my collection of Gnomedex 07 pics.

All these pics flowed through Twitter, using the new Flickr-to-Twitter mashup. It worked without a hitch, and was a big hit with my fellow twitheads. Not one complaint.

My theory is that as long as the photos have titles, they are just like normal Twitter status messages with the benefit of having a visual image attached. People only complain when the pics all ahve the same title. This actually makes total sense.

Now I want the whole package, a title, an image, and an opportunity to narrate verbally. My iPhone has all the capabilities I need, but I can't write the software. Open platforms will rule here.

willatnewscientist writes "Forget flippers, the latest idea from the guys at DARPA is a tail-like prosthetic for divers. The (forward-facing) tail, demonstrated at DARPA Tech 2007, is designed to help a diver maintain a speed of 2 knots for up to 300 metres. 'The unpowered, carbon-fibre structure straps to a diver's shins and is used with a motion that is not unlike the way Patrick Duffy swims in The Man from Atlantis. The design is inspired by the way mammals like Seals and Dolphins swim. I caught this video of Powerswim (3.5 MB .avi) at the DARPATech 2007 gathering in Anaheim, California. It would be nice to grab one and try it out when I next head down to the beach, but unless its designers DEKA (the same people who make the Segway) come up with a budget version, the $500 price-tag is going to keep me firmly in my flippers.'"

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Scott Rosenberg: "The day that Google's results look like the flow of spam into your e-mail inbox is the day that people will start clamoring for something like Mahalo. But unless Google slips up badly, that looks unlikely."

the_manatee writes "Ford's 999 hydrogen-powered speedster is making waves for its upcoming speed record attempt in the Bonneville Salt Flats, but details on what's actually going on under the hood have been scarce. As it turns out, there are NASCAR-style brakes, steering, and suspension components, along with 16 Ballard Mk902 fuel cells that produce 350 kW of electricity. All that juice spins up a 770-hp motor and the rest is (hopefully) history. One final ingredient: 400 lbs of ice for cooling, which will melt in seconds once the car gets up to speed."

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Jason Calacanis posted a continuation of the discussion around his presentation at Gnomedex yesterday. It's mostly personal, about me. Pretty nasty stuff, anything but friendly (though he claims to be my friend). He could just edit that stuff out, it's irrelevant. If he wants to succeed as the CEO of Mahalo, he's going to have to get past his feelings and listen to what we were saying, and think about it, and resolve the conflict he has in the structure of his company, rather than just try to pave it over with his supposed personal issues with me.

Yesterday, and in all his previous marketing, he rails against advertising and spam, which ironically, was exactly what he was doing to the environment at this mostly non-commercial conference. What we said (and I wasn't the only one speaking back to him, I wasn't even the first) was a response to this. It didn't come out of thin air. If he had given a similar speech to venture capitalists, if he offered them no way to win, they would have had the same response, but it probably wouldn't have been as patient or polite. Now, clearly he doesn't have the same respect for us that he has for VCs. But it seems that to some extent the success of his company depends on winning over the people here at Gnomedex. If it didn't, he should have stayed home, because his pitch, as delivered, doesn't work here, because he didn't offer us anything we want. We get a better deal from Google, believe it or not.

Some of his argument against Google rings true, very few people love them as we did in their early days, but their proposition to web writers and podcasters is basically fair, it's a win-win. We get flow from them, they get ad revenue. They also offer us a way to put ads on our sites, so we can profit financially from the relationship. Nothing in Jason's pitch offers us anything like that. No flow, no money. And technically, it's not a platform, so we can't build on it.

We're people, and we're smart, Jason, just like you, just like your investors. If you come making a pitch, there should be something for us, or it's not going to be well received.

So there's a big bug in the concept behind his company and he tries to blow by it with an attack aimed at one person. That might convince really stupid people, but smart folk can see right through it.

Bottom-line, he needs to figure out a way to build the company so that many others can profit from it. Otherwise I don't think it has a prayer against Google, which we like less and less as a company, but who basically offers an equitable proposition to the users of the Internet, who the Gnomedex crowd represent in a loose kind of way.

His pitch here failed. He can't blame me for that. A good CEO goes back to the drawing board and figures out what works. I've known lots of successful CEOs, that's how they all work. I know many more CEOs of companies that failed, and they approach problems the way Jason is approaching this one.

Ultimately, this is the act of friendship Jason is looking for. Now let's see if he has the maturity and will to succeed to let him see that.

willatnewscientist writes "Researchers in the Netherlands and Japan have found a way to grow perfect crystals in 'zero gravity' here on Earth. By exploiting the way a powerful magnet influences diamagnetic materials they have been able to grow protein crystals without the defects normally introduced as a result of gravity (The same trick has been used to levitate a frog before). Normally, such crystals are grown in space, such as aboard the International Space Station."

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kripkenstein writes "We have just heard that the SCO fiasco is finally going to end for Linux. But Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at DesktopLinux.com points out that the favorable result for Linux may cause unpleasant consequences for rival open-source operating system OpenSolaris: 'At one time, Sun was an SCO supporter ... Sun's Jonathan Schwartz — then Sun VP of software and today Sun's president and CEO — said in 2003 that Sun had bought "rights equivalent to ownership" to Unix. SCO agreed. In 2005, SCO CEO Darl McBride said that SCO had no problem with Sun open-sourcing Unix code in what would become OpenSolaris. "We have seen what Sun plans to do with OpenSolaris and we have no problem with it," McBride said. "What they're doing protects our Unix intellectual property rights." Sun now has a little problem, which might become a giant one: SCO never had any Unix IP to sell. Therefore, it seems likely that Solaris and OpenSolaris contains Novell's Unix IP.'"

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narramissic writes "The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced plans to revamp its Secure Flight program, with the agency no longer assigning risk scores to passengers or using predictive behavior technology. In addition, the Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will have direct control of checking domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists, instead of the airlines, said DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. Just the same Marc Rotenberg, executive director of privacy advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), notes, air passengers still can't see the reasons why they're targeted for extensive searches or kept off flights, nor can they correct bad information on the terrorist watch lists. 'The problems with the watch list are still valid and are not going away,' said Rotenberg."

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kripkenstein writes "Jim Zemlin (executive director for the Linux Foundation) gave a talk at LinuxWorld saying that the open source community should stop poking fun at Microsoft. From the VNU article: 'Open source vendors have to recognize that Windows is here to stay and that together with Microsoft it will form a duopoly in the market for operating systems. This also requires that the Linux community respects Microsoft rather than ridicule it. "There are some things that Windows does pretty well," Zemlin said. Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition.'"

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An anonymous reader writes "AT&T is focusing on the batteries supplied by Avestor as the cause of its 2006 equipment explosion in a suburban Houston neighborhood. The carrier says it has 17,000 of those same batteries still in its network. Some photos of the equipment that was shredded in the blast are also available."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

babbling writes "Google is going to close the Google Video Store, leaving users who bought videos that used Digital Restrictions Management without their purchases. The users of Google Video Store will be compensated with Google Checkout credit, but it seems they will be out of luck if they don't happen to be Google Checkout users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

epee1221 writes "Wired ran a story describing Lukas Grunwald's Defcon talk on an attack on airport passport readers. After extracting data from the (read-only) chip in a legitimate passport, he placed a version of the data with an altered passport photo (JPEG2000 is used in these chips) into a writable chip. The altered photo created a buffer overflow in two RFID readers he tested, causing both to crash. Grunwald suggests that vendors are typically using off-the-shelf JPEG2000 libraries, which would make the vulnerability common."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cory Doctorow:
I just played with the new Skooba Skin laptop sleeve/totes and I'm impressed. At first, this is just a well-designed, padded canvas laptop sleeve with a simple velcro closureBut the closure folds up and coverts to a handle, turning the sleeve into a tote -- a handy trick for those days when you're just carrying your laptop-sleeve, rather than a larger bag.

The sleeve comes in a bunch of different colors, including an undyed, unbleached white canvas that is meant to be decorated with markers, fabric pens, and anything else you've got hanging around (alas, the surface wouldn't take the stickers I tried on it).

Skooba is the new brand-name for the accessory company Roadwired, whose products I've long admired and used (especially their ingenious RAPS electronics sleeves). Along with the Skooba Skin, Skooba have also launched a shoulder strap called the Superbungee that includes a shock-absorbing ring of bungee cord in the shoulder-pad. I've long used elasticated shoulder straps (mostly the ones from Victorinox, which only last about six months before the metal on the attachment clips gives way catastrophically). They make an enormous difference, converting your computer and books from dead weight into something that moves with you, supporting itself in time with your stride. The Superbungee is going on my bag today, and I'll be taking it on the road with me next week. Link to Skooba Skin, Link to Superbungee Strap

See also:
Joys of RoadWired and Zip-Linq
RoadWired's Skooba Satchel
RoadWired bags kick azz

Cory Doctorow: Giant Robot Warriors, a graphic novel, is a masterful comic allegory for world's military build-up and stand-offs. In a cock-eyed alternate reality, giant robot warriors -- REALLY giant robot warriors -- are the ultimate weapon, capturing the imagination of ever fierce-hearted patriot of every land. Nations that attain GRW capacity are able to handily conquer their neighbors, and that is the scenario that propels this story.

Rufus Hirohito is the playboy scientist in charge of the current-generation GRW program, and his life is inverted by the news that Paraqan, an oil-rich middle-eastern dictatorship, has attained its own GRW and plans to destroy its neighbors. The US has no choice but to intervene -- even if it means sending an untested GRW behemoth into the field.

There's obviously a lot of manga influence here, but the story is pure American, a masterful take on the funnybook hero stories about America's destiny to police and govern the world. The writer, Stuart Moore, describes the book as having been written during the brief flare of post-9/11 optimism that ended when the US squandered its international goodwill on pointless oil wars and security theater.

Five years later, circumstances are still similar enough that Giant Robot Warriors still has political weight (unfortunately). Link

Cory Doctorow: Last week, Australia's Sydney Morning Herald published a jaw-dropping exchange of correspondence between Charlie Rimmer, the commercial manager of Angus & Robertson, Australia's largest bookstore chain, and Michael Rakusin, from Tower Books, a mid-sized Australian press.

The substance of the exchange was this: Angus and Robertson has decided to demand that publishers pay them thousands of dollars for the privilege of having their books sold in their stores. The chain has been churning through management shakeups, unsuccessful SAP implementations, and ot