News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
The linked article lists how much cable companies pay, per subscriber, for the various channels they carry. Notice the huge gap between #1 (ESPN: $4.08) and #3 (TNT: $0.99). Seeing all that money go for unused channels in package deals reminds me why I’m in favor of an à la carte subscription model.
Link: http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/…
(via The Consumerist)
The linked article has an embedded video showing what happened when the author gave an iPad to his two-year-old daughter. Her proficiency is almost scary, which says something very good about Apple’s ability to design user interfaces.
Hoping to skip the long lines at the bank, two would-be robbers called ahead, declared their intention to rob the bank, and told the bank to have their money ready when they arrived. Ten minutes later they showed up at the bank, performed the robbery, and were promptly arrested in the parking lot by waiting police.
One of the major problems with alternative energy sources such as solar or wind power is that they’re intermittent, while demand is continuous. All the turbines in the world are useless if the wind isn’t blowing. So alternative energy has been delegated to a role where it only supplements traditional power plants.
A possible solution to this problem is compressed-air energy storage (CAES), where energy is stored as compressed air then converted to electricity as needed—thus providing a steady power supply. And CAES doesn’t only apply to alternative energy. It can be used to store energy from traditional, coal-powered generators, allowing them to run more efficiently.
CAES is not a new technology, but it’s gaining popularity because of the growing use of alternative energy sources. Let’s hope we see more of it.
Link: http://www.wired.com/…
(via Slashdot)
It’s possible to fix water-damaged books, photos, and documents by putting them in the freezer while they’re still wet. They’re essentially freeze-dried by the dehydrating effect of the frost-free freezer. Note that even though the Lifehacker article says to place the book in a plastic bag, you should not seal the bag—the sublimated water vapor has to have somewhere to go.
Link #1: http://lifehacker.com/…
Link #2 (PDF): http://ccaha.punkave.net/…
(via Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts)
Every so often a business or government entity will attempt to release “anonymized” data only to find that the anonymization process fails miserably (AOL, Netflix). The problem is not so much with the actual data itself, but is in how it can be combined with other data sources to identify specific individuals. A researcher has shown that 87 percent of Americans can be uniquely identified with just their ZIP code, birthdate, and gender.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
A teenage burgler broke in to a furniture store office in Kennewick, Washington, but instead of doing a quick smash-and-grab, he decided to use the office computer for some personal web surfing. This left enough evidence for police to identify him.
Link: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/…
(via The Consumerist)
I really don’t think you can get URLs much smaller than with the TO./ URL Shortener. I had to do some research to understand how it was even possible. Note that the period after the “to” is vital.
Link: http://to./
(via Lifehacker)
Security researcher Christopher Tarnovsky has managed to hack Infineon’s SLE66 CL PE chip, which the company had claimed was unhackable. Despite this, we shouldn’t be overly concerned. Tarnovsky used acid to reveal the chip’s circuitry, and he also required an electron microscope—not something that your average person has sitting around the house. Once he reverse-engineered the chip’s logic, he modified the circuitry to bypass its (formidable) defenses. Tarnovsky then used tiny probes to view the chip’s internal data signals, allowing him to read its stored memory. This just goes to show that unlimited physical access can break almost any security scheme.
Link #1: http://www.darkreading.com/…
Link #2: http://localtechwire.com/…
From the article: “In retrospect, going on the “Dr. Phil” television show to talk about their shoplifting exploits did not … work very well for Matthew and Nora Eaton.”
Link: http://www.signonsandiego.com/…
(via Neatorama)
Here at the Chad’s News Network Command Center, we haven’t yet taken plunge and purchased an SSD, even though we know it’s a simple-but-expensive way to speed up a computer. SSDs are becoming more popular, and as the prices decrease, more system administrators are thinking about using them at the enterprise level. Unfortunately, all is not well, and enterprise SSDs may not be such a good idea—or at least should cause one to take a good, hard look at their specifications.
The linked article warns about the case where an SSD’s internal transfer rate isn’t fast enough to support both its external transfers and its wear leveling activities. In such a case, the effective transfer rate will drop below the advertised rate, sometimes by a significant amount. The author also warns about using SSDs in a RAID system. The SSDs are simply too fast for the current crop of high-end RAID controllers, thus lowering the effective transfer rate of the drives due to bottlenecks in the RAID hardware.
Please note that these issues only apply to high-performance, high-traffic systems. They won’t affect the normal person with a single-user desktop or laptop computer.
Link: http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Social Networking Rule #1: don’t post photos of yourself doing stupid things. In this case, a woman named Ashley Sullivan received a stiffer criminal sentence because of pictures she posted to her Facebook page.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
