I’ll keep this brief, since the lack of response on this issue from Apple tends to result in taking sides before the facts are out (as evidenced by this lawsuit). It seems that Apple’s little persistent tracking cookie, consolidated.db, is likely part of a future patented feature having to do with keeping a persistent, low-power-draw, low-precision location record for stuff like geotagging, “journal” apps, etc.

So someone might have reasonably guessed given the applications of such a database; the issue is of course whether it constituted some sort of crime or misrepresentation on Apple’s part to create this file regardless of the user’s preference. Read the full patent here.

[via Reddit]

Original post:
Apple’s Consolidated.db: Patented iPhone Feature

Liquid cooling, long the geeky masterwork of any PC gaming champion, has become simpler to set up, with pre-assembled, self-contained units available for any dummy in search of a cooler CPU. Maingear says their newest cooler frosts like a boss. More

What’s fast, electric, and made in Canada? No, not the latest Rush record, it’s the P1, a new electric motorcycle prototype from Quebec-based Amarok Consultants. The company — named after the Inuit word for wolf — unveiled the bike this week, announcing plans to enter it in this year’s TTXGP, an international racing series for electric vehicles. The 75 horsepower two-wheeler was designed with a laser-focus on lightweight construction, squeezing a 7.5-kilowatt-hour battery and two Agni 95 electric motors into a bantam 325 pound body — making for one of the lightest electric racing motorcycles around. The company’s not stopping there, however, shooting for 275 pounds for the second generation of the bike, putting it more on-par with gas-powered counterparts.

Amarok’s P1 electric motorocycle prototype is fast, light, and ready to race originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“During World War II, the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a possible Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.”

(barnstormers.com, via the BB Submitterator, thanks Jellodyne)

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WWII airplane factory camouflaged as residential neighborhood

Click on the infographic for a larger version and link to a NASA webpage. There’s more info at the NASA Space Shuttle information page.

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Post tags: NASA, orbiters, Space Shuttle

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Infographic: Fun Facts About the Space Shuttle Orbiters

We’re taking this with a grain of salt, since it applies only to users of the cross-platform Appcelerator Titanium development environment, but it appears that Windows Phone 7 is facing an increasingly uphill battle for mobile mind-share. At this point it should go without saying that a platform lives and dies by its developers and, according to Appcelerator, they’re growing less and less interested in creating apps for Microsoft’s smartphone OS. Only 29-percent of devs responded to the company’s quarterly survey that they were “very interested” in putting their wares on WP7, a fall of 7 points from last quarter and far less than market leaders Android and iOS. News is even worse for RIM, which saw a fall of 11-points in developer interest for BlackBerry, and now trails the folks from Redmond. Again, this survey is based only on the responses of 2,760 developers using a particular product, so we’d refrain from calling the results incontrovertible. Still, it reinforces something that even a casual observer could discern: BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 have a tough row to hoe. Two more charts after the break.

Continue reading Windows Phone and BlackBerry struggle to attract developer attention

Windows Phone and BlackBerry struggle to attract developer attention originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If anyone reads books, it’s probably you guys. But according to some recently-gathered (and frankly startling) statistics, you’re a dying breed. To wit:

• One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

• 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

I can relate to that last one — I buy lots of books (or check them out from the library) but a significant portion of them I only get about halfway through — or less, if they don’t hold my interest. But that stat about 42% of college grads never reading another book? That’s a little frightening. One thing I’m not certain about, and isn’t mentioned in these statistics, is how they stack up over time — but I’ll bet you money that more than 42% of college grads kept reading books in the 1950s, 60s, 70s.

So what’s to blame? A shift in popular entertainment? The dominance of the screen over the printed page? Are books just less interesting than they used to be? Or are we, as a society, getting … dumber?

What do you think?

Continued here:
Who Reads Books?

If you have a modern Android phone, you know the pain of turning on your phone at 5 PM only to realize it’s deep in a low-battery coma. Here are the simple manual changes, and clever automatic tweaks, that will keep your phone awake and useful for far longer. More

What do you do when you’ve already helped invent terrifying monsters for Syfy’s original movies? What do you do next, with that kind of creativity? If you’re Brian D. Smith, writer of Alien Express and Flu Bird Horror, you go into the ice cream business. With science. More

I just found this photo over at Planetary Folklore which reveals the circuit board planning scheme of an urban area of Southern California.