Residents of Venezuela have been treated to a light show that has been going on for thousands of years. One spot on the Catatumbo River gets, regularly, forty thousand bolts every night. The lightning has helped sailors navigate, foiled attacks on the nearby countryside, and is actually responsible for Venezuelan independence. Find out about the most zapped spot on earth. More »
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A place in Venezuela that gets 40,000 lightning strikes per night [Video]
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from geek.com (based on a report at Droid Life) that makes me consider quitting or at least suspending the very expensive service 3G data service I get from Verizon: “With 2012 about to start, it seems Verizon has decided paying your bill online or over the phone is
now worthy of an extra charge. So, from January 15, anyone choosing to pay their monthly bill using either method will incur a $2 charge. Verizon is classing the charge as a ‘convenience fee’ which translates into them deciding allowing you to pay either online or over the phone is a convenience. They also explain in the FAQ above that the fee allows them, ‘to continue to support these bill payment options.’ Really, Verizon? When did offering online payments or accepting phone calls from customers get so much more expensive?”
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Verizon Adds $2 Charge For Paying Your Bill Online
One sign of a good judge is being able to set aside his or her personal feelings to uphold the law when it conflicts. We got one of those rulings in this case. The judge condemns Ripoff Report using some of the harshest language I’ve seen in a judicial opinion in a while:
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Judge affirms “appalling” Ripoff Report’s Communications Decency Act protection
Trailrunner7 writes “Just a day after security researcher Stefan Viehbock released details of a vulnerability in the WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) standard that enables attackers to recover the router PIN, a security firm has published an open-source tool capable of exploiting the vulnerability. The tool, known as Reaver, has the ability to find the WPS PIN on a given router and then recover the WPA passphrase for the router, as well. Tactical Network Solutions has released the tool as an open-source project on Google Code, but also is selling a more advanced commercial version.”
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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes “RipoffReport.com contained an admittedly defamatory posting, by one of its users, about a person who operated a Florida corporation providing addiction treatment services. Although the site was asked by the poster herself to remove the post, it refused. A Florida appeals court has ruled that the site is absolutely immune from suit (pdf), and cannot even be directed to remove the offending post, since under the Communications Decency Act (47 USC 230) ‘no cause of action may be brought’ against a provider of an “interactive computer service” based upon information provided by a 3rd party.”
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Court Rules Website Immune From Suit For Defamatory Posting
The inventions that make up this gallery are strange, unquestionably handmade, and many seem quite useful.
Like the one man paddle submarine pictured above, they look like clever and inventive ways to get around, and may not seem so strange when your town gets hit by a flood.
However, personal safety clearly wasn’t a consideration when these inventions were built, and some of them look like they might explode right in your face!
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A Gallery Of Weird Chinese Inventions
You’re looking at a rare, fish-like creature known to marine scientists as amphioxus. Widely known for being not only faceless, but brainless, these small, elusive creatures are some of the most bizarre ocean-dwellers we’ve ever discovered. More »
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This rare, brainless sea creature could hold the secrets to vertebrate evolution [Evolution]
iOS 5 can be jailbroken untethered on all non-A5-based devices. iOS 4.3.3 can be jailbroken easily via a web site but iOS 4.3.4 can’t. Confused yet? The state of jailbreaking is a little messy at the moment and it’s hard to understand which devices and versions of iOS are eligible. This helpful chart can clear up the confusion. More »
One image can change the way we see the world, especially in science. From photographs of movement that’s too fast for the human eye to perceive, to atomic force microscope images of atomic bonds, pictures created by new technologies have often catalyzed scientific discovery. More than tools of discovery, though, images can help scientists communicate the reality of what they study to each other and the public. More »
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10 Images That Changed the Course of Science (And One That Is About To) [Daily 10]
2011 was in many ways a quiet (albeit thoroughly profitable) year for Microsoft. The company made big, important announcements—the Nokia partnership, the Windows 8 reveal—but neither had much impact in 2011. Nokia has released only a couple of handset models in a few countries this year, and Windows 8 is not yet in beta.
2011 for Microsoft was all about telling us what to look forward to.
2012 will be when that talk becomes real. 2012 will be when lots of Microsoft’s talk becomes real.
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A look ahead: 2012 is Microsoft’s turning point