World-class robots compete in their first Olympics – “The world’s first International Humanoid Robot Olympic Games have opened in the city of Harbin in the northeast of China. The robots, designed by gifted young people from China, South Korea, the United States and Japan are competing in track-and-field, soccer, volleyball, boxing and even in non-Olympic events, such as playing the drums and dancing…”

iPhone 4 Reception Issue with Holding the Phone:

See also: iPhone 4 Loses Reception When You Hold It By The Antenna Band?

‘E-Rockit’ hits German fast lane – “A Berlin inventor has come up with an electric bike which you power by pedalling that can reach speeds of 50 mph…”

Motorola Droid X (Verizon Wireless) – “The Motorola Droid X is excellent. It’s also a little excessive. This Hummer humdinger of a phone delivers the absolute maximum in state-of-the-art Android power, at the cost of stretching the joint between your thumb and your other four fingers. The Droid X will be one of the first phones to run Adobe Flash when a software upgrade arrives later this summer, and its features and quality set a standard for how other Android phones should perform. It gets our Editor’s Choice for Verizon smartphones, although there are now a bunch of strong Android-powered choices on Verizon’s network…” See also: Verizon launches Droid X, Google releases Froyo source code

Infographic: EVO 4G vs. iPhone 4 vs. Droid X

23 Tips for Buying the Best HDTV – “Buying the right HDTV is actually much harder than simply walking into a store and laying down some plastic – and certainly much harder than it should be. There are quite a few cautions but also quite a few things that you can do to prepare yourself. Virtually identical issues apply to buying computer monitors, so keep the following info and tips in mind the next time you’re in the market for a monitor as well…”

UK paper requires free Web accounts; traffic plunges – “In the UK, The Times is rolling out its paywall and now demands that anyone intent on reading its content register an account. According to research done by the traffic metrics firm Hitwise, simply demanding registration has already cut into traffic at The Times…”

More than 160,000 Android phones activated every day – “Speaking on Wednesday at the Droid X event,, Google VP Andy Rubin stated that there are more than 160,000 Android devices sold and activated every day. That’s almost two every second of the day. Even more impressive is that Android has grown 60 percent since roughly one month ago…”

Attack of the Cosmic Rays! – “A few weeks ago, though, I encountered some bizarre behavior on my desktop, that honestly just didn’t make sense. I spent about half an hour digging to discover what had gone wrong, and eventually determined, conclusively, that my problem was a single undetected flipped bit in RAM. I can’t prove whether the problem was due to cosmic rays, bad RAM, or something else, but in any case, I hope you find this story interesting and informative…”

Big House; No Cattle – “A recently published article in The Wall Street Journal indicated that nearly 15% of “homeowners” with outstanding mortgage balances of $4M or more were at least 90 days overdue in their payments. That is nearly twice the rate for all home loans. In America today there is growing number people of the “big house, no cattle” variety who are facing bankruptcy…”

Analysis of the “Flash Crash” – “Because many of the stocks involved were high capitalization bellwether stocks and represented a wide range of industries, and because quotes and trades from the NYSE are given higher credibility in many HFT systems, when the results of these trades were published, the HFT systems detected the sudden price drop and automatically went short, betting on capturing the developing downward momentum. This caused a short term feed-back loop to develop and panic ensued…”

Dogs Sniff Out Poop of Endangered Species – “What do the Eastern spotted skunk, the striped skunk, black bear and long-tailed weasel have in common? They are just four of 117 endangered species in the state of Alabama — which ranks 3rd in the country behind Hawaii and California for the number of declining animals — that are difficult to track. But a new program is enlisting dogs to sniff out the scat of endangered species, giving ecologists a better sense of where the elusive animals live, roam and how many individuals in a species may exist…”

Does Chimp Warfare Explain Our Sense of Good and Evil? – “830108454_32661fcd9b_o.jpgA groundbreaking ten-year study on the behavior of chimpanzees, reported in Current Biology, reveals that humanity’s closest living relative expresses a propensity for human-like warfare. The nature of chimpanzee war, in which males patrol their group’s territory and violently annex the territory of other groups in pursuit of land and resources, is startlingly similar to the warfare that has consistently emerged throughout human history. The study had led many to conclude that war is an innate behavior with genetic roots extending millions of years. But it may reveal more than just the genetic roots of warfare. The propensity for warfare in chimps could help explain the human conceptions of “good” and “evil” that define our laws, our social norms, and our morals…”

Modern Physics : Theoretical Minimum – “This Stanford Continuing Studies course is a collection of classes and lectures that is the minimalist approach to Theoretical Physics. A student following this curriculum would achieve a solid understanding of Modern Physics in an optimized manner. It is the minimum that is required to begin to understanding theoretical physics…”

Fin to limb evolution clue found – “A study has shed light on a key genetic step in the evolution of animals’ limbs from the fins of fish, scientists say…”

What Viacom’s loss to YouTube means for Hollywood – “Youtube_logo The Google geeks have beaten Hollywood chic. But how much will today’s court ruling against Viacom in its $1 billion copyright battle over YouTube tip the balance of power from professional content creators to online distributors? “

Microsoft shoots for the stars with Bing update

Full Analysis of iPhone Economics – it is bad news. And then it gets worse – “I promised to return with the full analysis of the iPhone App Store economics analysis, from every angle, with all data I have managed to find. This blog intends to paint the most accurate picture of the specifically Apple related iPhone App Store market economics – and lessons from here should apply to most other smartphone app stores as well. The one final piece of the puzzle that had been missing, that we desperately needed to ge the full, honest picture, was the Apple official revenue number, which we finally got a few days ago, at $1.43B total revenues generated over 2 years, and thus $1B paid to developer. Now we can do the full analysis. But first a few general comments…”

Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders – “Microsoft is hosting a celebrity-laden event here on Tuesday, announcing a variety of new entertainment features it hopes will give Bing a little more star power…”

Can baby ‘bot help Japan reproduce? – “Yotaro cries, giggles, and kicks when you tickle him. He sneezes and his nose runs. When he is upset, his rattle calms him down. An average baby — sort of — since Yotaro is a robot. His inventors hope he will help Japan’s sagging birth rate, among the lowest in the world…”

NYC’s top talent is being squandered – “In New York, money is the most direct proxy for prestige and one of the surest paths to riches is working on Wall Street or in consulting. The convenient thing about both is that you don’t need to be a business major or an Excel jockey to get a job in those fields. Often times, sufficient academic pedigree and sharp interview skills are all you need. For directionless students, the allure is undeniable. As a result, droves of fresh graduates from top schools move into their shoebox Manhattan apartments every summer with starry-eyes and the expectation of making it big in the concrete jungle. There is a certain sense of pride in many of their voices when they say, “I work for Goldman Sachs/McKinsey.” At schools like Penn, one is often left with the impression that obtaining a job in finance/consulting is the ultimate goal…”

Consumer camera detects cancer in real-time – “A group of researchers have turned a consumer grade digital camera in to a cancer detecting device that lets doctors easily distinguish cancerous cells from healthy cells simply by viewing the LCD monitor on the back of the camera, according to results published online this week in the open-access journal PLoS ONE…”

Updated Post: What Happens to Your Body If You Drink a Coke Right Now? – “Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? Because it gets you high. They removed the cocaine almost 100 years ago. Why? It was redundant…”

Beyond the petaflop: DARPA wants quintillion-speed computers – “Not known for taking the demure route, researchers at DARPA this week announced a program aimed at building computers that exceed current peta-scale computers to achieve the mind-altering speed of one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second….”

PHILIPS UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST LED REPLACEMENT FOR MOST COMMON HOUSEHOLD LIGHT BULB – “Royal Philips Electronics (AEX: PHI, NYSE: PHG) today unveiled its 12 watt EnduraLED light bulb, the industry’s first LED replacement for a 60 watt incandescent light bulb…”

How HTML5 will change the Web – “HTML5 will spawn richer, more sophisticated Websites while also easing development. Here are nine ways the impact of HTML5 will be felt…”

Why E-Mail May Be Hurting Off-Line Relationships – “In an age of perpetual digital connectedness, why do people seem so disconnected? In a Duke University study, researchers found that from 1985 to 2004, the percentage of people who said there was no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled, to 25%; the same study found that overall, Americans had one-third fewer friends and confidants than they did two decades ago…”

iPhone 4: a Welcome and a Warning – “iPhone 4 is an object of rare beauty (even when badly photographed using an iPhone 3GS). Noticeably slimmer but a trifle heavier than predecessors, its new heft only adds to the profound feeling of quality and precision that the device exudes. Sharper edged, it is girt by a stainless steel band which cleverly houses all the antennas required by a modern smartphone. Jobs himself made a comparison between iPhone 4 and a classic Leica. With this device in my hand I feel that I am holding its designer Jonathan Ive’s personal prototype, hand-machined as a proof-of-concept model. Ive is surely one of the most influential and gifted designers Britain has ever produced and iPhone 4 may well be his masterpiece.”

Stem cells reverse blindness caused by burns – “Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells – a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday…”

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