The decline in album sales is certainly nothing new, thanks to the smattering of streaming options now available to eager listeners. However, 2014 looks to be particularly awful. Forbes reports that nearly 10 months into the year, no release since January has yet to reach platinum status — a release that sells 1 million copies. What’s more, only one has sold a million copies: the Frozen soundtrack that hit shelves last year. At this point in 2013, five different albums had hit that sales mark (Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience led the pack). How bad are the numbers? Well, the best-selling effort that was actually released in 2014 is fourth on the year’s sales tally (Eric Church’s Outsiders ). And singles are seeing the same fate, albeit at a slower pace. So far, 60 tracks have sold a million — down from 83 at this point last year. As Forbes points out, sales usually see a boost during Q4 (holiday bump), but popular artists like Adele, Katy Perry and others capable of selling loads of albums don’t have new material on tap before the year’s end. [Photo credit: Gabe Souza/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images] Filed under: Misc Comments Via: Fact Mag Source: Forbes
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No one has a platinum album in 2014
Windows: With the release of Yosemite , even the most diehard fans of Microsoft’s OS at least once thought about moving to Mac OS X. Reasons may be different, but in case they are the appearance and style, then there is a nice solution that you can try out. Read more… 
HughPickens.com writes After rising rapidly for decades, the number of people behind bars peaked at 1.62 Million in 2009, has been mostly falling ever since down, and many justice experts believe the incarceration rate will continue on a downward trajectory for many years. New York, for example, saw an 8.8% decline in federal and state inmates, and California, saw a 20.6% drop. Now the WSJ reports on an awkward byproduct of the declining U.S. inmate population: empty or under-utilized prisons and jails that must be cared for but can’t be easily sold or repurposed. New York state has closed 17 prisons and juvenile-justice facilities since 2011, following the rollback of the 1970s-era Rockefeller drug laws, which mandated lengthy sentences for low-level offenders. So far, the state has found buyers for 10 of them, at prices that range from less than $250, 000 to about $8 million for a facility in Staten Island, often a fraction of what they cost to build. “There’s a prisoner shortage, ” says Mike Arismendez, city manager for Littlefield, Texas, home of an empty five-building complex that sleeps 383 inmates and comes with a gym, maintenence shed, armory, and parking lot . “Everybody finds it hard to believe.” The incarceration rate is declining largely because crime has fallen significantly in the past generation. In addition, many states have relaxed harsh sentencing laws passed during the tough-on-crime 1980s and 1990s, and have backed rehabilitation programs, resulting in fewer low-level offenders being locked up. States from Michigan to New Jersey have changed parole processes, leading more prisoners to leave earlier. On a federal level, the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed to reduce sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Before 2010, the U.S. prison population increased every year for 30 years, from 307, 276 in 1978 to a high of 1, 615, 487 in 2009. “This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration, ” says Natasha Frost. “People don’t care so much about crime, and it’s less of a political focus.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Check out this stunningly crispy photo of Saturn moon’s Hyperion— taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Apparently it is inhabited by alien wasps the size of cars or at least it looks like a wasp nest to me. So gross!* New analysis of Cassini’s data reveal that, if there are giant alien wasps, they are producing electrons. Read more… 
The thought of a robot burrowing its way through your cheek to access your brain certainly sounds unsettling. But for conditions that require access to areas like the hippocampus located on the underside, it’s actually far less invasive than cutting open the skull on top and having to drill through the entire brain to reach it. Which means there’s far less recovery time for the patient. Read more… 