Tech Today w/ Ken May

If you’ve ever dealt with a computer crash due to virus, hard drive failure or otherwise, then you know this comic is 100% TRUE. I mean, who has time to waste constantly backing up the hard drive, and technicians can make it all better, right? WRONG. After you get your system back on track you should make this comic your desktop image and NEVER FORGET to back that data up. And remember-no amount of key pressing will bring your precious data back, and those kittie pics on your hard drive could have made you A MILLION DOLLARS! Link

You probably have heard of the TV-B-Gone . If you haven’t, it’s a small wireless gadget that will turn of any TV. Now, for people who hate the TV-B-Gone, or for people who hate it when someone changes the channel on a TV set in a public space, there’s the IR Jammer Kit . You know those people that just love to change the channel on the TV? Put an end to it with this, the IR Jammer Kit from the Maker Shed. Just press the button and you can render infrared remotes completely useless. Works with almost all IR controlled devices by corrupting IR data from the six commonly used transmission frequencies. Perfect for pranks and for showing the channel surfers who’s boss. Alan Parekh (creator of the IR Jammer) and Mitch Altman (creator of the TV-B-Gone) should join merge companies and call the new business Sylvester McMonkey McBean Incorporated. IR Jammer Kit . $18.99 in Maker Shed

A forensic worker walks at the city’s morgue past the recovered bodies of people that had been dumped around Veracruz September 22, 2011. At least 11 more bodies were dumped around the Mexican city of Veracruz on Thursday, according to local media reports, two days after the discovery of 35 other corpses in the once-quiet Gulf port.The bodies found on Thursday were in small groups scattered in various parts of the city, despite high security for a summit of attorneys general and justice officials. (REUTERS/Yahir Ceballos) NPR’s John Burnett , whose reporting I have admired for many years, has a story on All Things Considered today about social media and the drug war in Mexico. In areas where they are powerful, the Mexican drug cartels silenced the mainstream media by threatening and killing journalists. Now they seem to be extending the practice to social media. Many Mexicans have had to rely on social media to find out what’s going on in their cities after newspapers, TV and radio stations stopped reporting on drug-related violence. But last week, the mangled bodies of a young man and woman were hung from a highway bridge in Nuevo Laredo along with a sign that read: “This is what happens to people who post funny things on the Internet. Pay attention.” People are paying attention. “It suggests that the blogosphere has been included in the media landscape that the cartels are looking at. Because up until now it has only been traditional media — print, TV and radio,” says Javier Garza, the editor of El Siglo de Torreon, a newspaper in the neighboring Coahuila state, which is also aflame with cartel violence. Listen here .

New York Times reports that Ugandans say they were beaten and forced off their land to make way for a carbon credit forest. The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations. The company involved, New Forests Company , grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC. In 2005, the Ugandan government granted New Forests a 50-year license to grow pine and eucalyptus forests in three districts, and the company has applied to the United Nations to trade under the mechanism. The company expects that it could earn up to $1.8 million a year. But there was just one problem: people were living on the land where the company wanted to plant trees. Indeed, they had been there a while. Are carbon credits the new blood diamonds? (Via The Agitator )

Sony’s HMZ-T1 is a head-mounted 3D headset, to be released later this year in Japan. Two 1280×720 OLED displays, each just 7/10 of an inch across, create a virtual 750″ screen. Perceived 20m from the viewer, it “corresponds to the sense of cinema as seen from a large central seat.” It’ll be 60,000 Yen ($785) from mid-november. Source [Impress.co.jp]

[ Video Link ] Scott Beale says: “Cornell Creative Machines Lab wanted to see what would happend if two Cleverbot AI ChatBots had a conversation with each other.” I think I’ve just seen the beginning of the end. Two AI ChatBots Attempt To Have A Conversation With Each Other

Via Wall Street Journal , news that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is stepping down. PRESS RELEASE: Letter from Steve Jobs August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community: I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my