An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has gathered conclusive evidence which confirms that the iPhone Firmware 1.1.3 update is 100% real. It installs only from iTunes using the obligatory Apple private encryption key, which nobody has. The list of new features, like GPS-like triangulation positioning in Google Maps, has been confirmed too. Apparently it will be coming out next week, but there's bad news as expected: it breaks the unlocks, patches the previous vulnerabilities used by hackers and takes away all your third-party applications."

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destinyland writes "YouTube's most popular videos in 2007 were a bunch of major label music videos, and YouTube is scrambling to re-assure the net roots community with an alternate list of 2007's "Most Memorable" videos. 'The rankings, released by YouTube on Thursday, took into account the most shared, most discussed, top rated and general popularity of clips...' One article argues that the real trend in 2007 was viral re-mixes of the original viral videos. 'In 2007 the viral video stars spawned their own wave of counter-memes, proving once again that the internet moves in mysterious ways.'"

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phorest writes "One would have thought the choice of Ohio lawmakers to move away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals would be welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Instead, the group is warning the elections board that their alternative might be illegal under state laws. 'The main dispute is whether a central optical scan of ballots at the board's headquarters downtown would result in votes not being counted on ballots that are incorrectly filled out. The ACLU believes the intent of election law is to ensure voters can be notified immediately of a voting error and be able to make a second-chance vote.'"

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drewmoney writes "Misconceptions about what 'open source software' means has made elements of the US Defense Department reluctant to deploy in a live environment. DoD proponents of shared-source projects are now working to reverse this trend by educating IT decision-makers and demonstrating OSS usefulness. 'The cost of cleaning up a "network spill" that introduces classified material on an unclassified network is running about US$11,000 per incident on the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), so the free Secure Save tool could produce monetary savings for the Navy. Additionally, it would cover more file formats than the costly commercial redaction product currently available on the NMCI.'"

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News.com is reporting that the next version of Ubuntu will see KDE unsupported, but only for the time being. Because of the dramatic changeover from KDE 3.5 to 4.0, Ubuntu sponsor Canonical is unwilling to initially support the popular Linux GUI. Gnome will still be supported, and the company expects to return support to kubuntu soon. "Developer interest is focused on KDE 4.0, but it's not mature enough yet to use in the next KDE-based variation of Ubuntu, called Kubuntu, Scott James Remnant, leader of the Ubuntu Desktop team, said in an explanation to a Kubuntu mailing list. But most Kubuntu developers adding features "upstream" of today's products are focused on KDE 4.0, meaning that it's risky to release a long-term support version based on 3.5."

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A Korean newscast reports on a hybrid breed of carp with "human faces." Not exactly human, but helllp-meeee freaky Fly enough to give me the willies. Link (via Neatorama)

A German hacker dusts off his plasma globe from the '80s and hooks it up to an ATMega8 MCU and serial PC interface so that he can tune it.

Large plasma Globe Tuning - [via] Link
Build site (in German) - Link

[Read this article] [Comment on this article]

These heart-shaped tea-cups from Bits and Piece run $13 each ($10 in quantity). I wonder if they're a little sloppy to drink out of? Link (via Cribcandy)

henrypijames writes "For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to what looks like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation."

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LiveJournal user Phogg painstakingly created this fantastic Disneyland quilt -- "Keep in mind that short of a single mickey head patch on each panel, the moon in the center and Pooh's balloon in Critter Country, everything started out as white cotton. EVERYTHING was either painted directly onto the panel or painted onto a separate piece of white cotton then appliqued by hand using good old fashioned blind stitching onto the panel. All the lettering was done by hand too." Link (Thanks, Batty!)

christian.einfeldt writes "Computers and handheld devices running default GNU Linux or Unix OSes have swept Amazon's 'best of' list for 2007, according BusinessWire.com for 28 December 2007. Best selling computer? The Nokia Internet Tablet PC, running Linux. Best reviewed computer? The Apple MacBook Pro notebook PC. Most wished for computer? Asus Eee 4G-Galaxy 7-inch PC mobile Internet device, which comes with Xandros Linux pre-installed. And last, but not least, the most frequently gifted computer: The Apple MacBook notebook PC."

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Michael Calore at Wired News writes about something I do too, and love.

Wired News: "The first time I ran it, I let FlickrFan pull just AP photos, then I sat back and watched. I run two monitors here at my desk at Wired, so I can see two photos from the news agency side by side. This makes for some fantastic juxtapositions -- like a picture of Bhutto smiling on one screen and her coffin being hoisted by mourners on the other, or of Iraqi children playing soccer on one side and a center ice scrum from an NHL hockey game on the other."

It's a fun game to play in the living room with just one monitor, but with two (Macs work very cleanly with multiple montors) you get some special kind of magic.

People who focus on the software miss the point. It's about the photography. The software just facilitates.

Update: A Flickr set that illustrates.

GeneRegulator writes "The NY Times is running a story on communities that are forming around kids with rare genetic mutations. New technology that can scan chromosomes for small errors is being applied first to children with autism and other 'unexplained developmental delays.' It turns out that many of them have small deletions or duplications of DNA. Meanwhile, hundreds of little groups are forming around the banner of their children's shared mutations. As new research shows that many of us have small deletions and duplications of DNA that separate us from our parents, and that many of these "copy number variants" contribute to skills and senses, the families described in the story may presage the formation of all sorts of 'communities of the genetically rare' in the general population, not just amongst the developmentally delayed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Still listening to this classic Dead song.

And writing about it on Twitter...

It's an MP3 that I ripped from the Mars Hotel album. Which I bought on CD many years ago.

I've listened to this track about 1000 times. When I play it it puts a smile on my face. Because Cucamonga is a place with no pride, imho.

It's a joke, kind of like Truckin makes fun of New Orleans, a town that done the Dead wrong, once, a long time ago.

Now if it were on vinyl I would have wore it out a long time ago. I'm sure there was a copy of the song on the disk Apple stole from me.

There you have it RIAA. You can go after Apple. I'll support you because they stole from both of us. They have no right to listen to PofC.

I imagine Steve Jobs and Phil Shindler sitting around smokin a doobie listening to Phil Lesh sing, thinking "Dave has good taste in music."

BTW, Cucamonga is a suburb in southern CA. Near Ontario. Probably very non-descript. Might have been interesting 70 years ago.

And that's your bedtime story for Saturday, boys and girls. Have a nice day, don't hit your brother (or sister) and be nice to the sitter!

Token_Internet_Girl passed us a link to an MSNBC article on a very disappointed Star Trek fan. Mr. Moustakis of NJ bought a poker visor he thought was worn by Data in Next Generation at a Christie's auction for some $6,000. When he brought it to a convention to have it signed, actor Brent Spiner explained that he'd already sold the well-known visor in a personal sale; like Senator Vreenak, Moustakis had been given a fake. "Christie's spokesman Rik Pike stood behind the authenticity of the auction and said the disgruntled buyer's case had no merit. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Manhattan, demands millions of dollars in punitive damages and a refund for the visor and two other items Moustakis bought at the 2006 auction."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Token_Internet_Girl passed us a link to an MSNBC article on a very disappointed Star Trek fan. Mr. Moustakis of NJ bought a poker visor he thought was worn by Data in Next Generation at a Christie's auction for some $6,000. When he brought it to a convention to have it signed, actor Brent Spiner explained that he'd already sold the well-known visor in a personal sale; like Senator Vreenak, Moustakis had been given a fake. "Christie's spokesman Rik Pike stood behind the authenticity of the auction and said the disgruntled buyer's case had no merit. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Manhattan, demands millions of dollars in punitive damages and a refund for the visor and two other items Moustakis bought at the 2006 auction."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A simple no-nonsense writeup of FlickrFan. Thank you.

However, the product does much more than what they say.

We'll continue explaining and enhancing the product here.

I'm going to try to add one feature to FlickrFan every day.

Today's feature: How to find a user's feed, if they have one.

Bottom-line: On the public list, there's now an XML icon next to every user who has a feed, who hasn't opted-out.

stevedcc writes "The Guardian is running an article about members of the Writer's Guild, still on strike, creating their own ventures to deliver content over the internet. The intention is to get their work to consumers while bypassing the movie studios. Their effort will include actors and directors, and it is not the first step they have taken to expand their interests during the strike. One particular project is said to include A-list talent, and will be released in roughly 50 daily segments before going to DVD. This is also relevant to the strike because, as the article states, 'at the core of the current dispute is the question of how to reimburse writers for work that is distributed on the internet.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ttnuagmada points us to an article about scientist David Wiltshire's suggestion that theorized dark energy is not needed to describe the expansion of the universe. His work challenges assumptions made about the distribution of matter in the universe. Early solutions to general relativity were based on a "smooth distribution" of matter. Wiltshire's approach focuses on a "lumpy" dispersal, which more accurately fits data from modern studies. We have discussed other theories about dark energy in the past. Quoting: "Through observational projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the 2 Degree Field survey, we now have a much better picture of the large-scale structure of the universe and we know that galaxies are not uniformly distributed. 'Rather, they are in clusters sprinkled thinly in filaments and "bubble walls" surrounding huge voids hundreds of millions of light-years across,' Wiltshire says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.