Geeks are Sexy Technology News

[Via]

Remember the post about the guy throwing a brick into a running washing machine? Well Youtube user Landstrider edited the video and added a face on the machine, making the whole thing oh so much more funny in the process. Check it out:

[Via Geekologie]

Those of you hoping to relocate to the Moon may be out of luck: it appears that although there’s ice on the surface, that might be it as far as water goes.

Geochemist Zachary Sharp of the University of New Mexico believes his studies of lunar rock suggest that not only is the inside of the moon completely dry, but that it’s always been that way.

Sharp came to the conclusion after studying chlorine in the rock. He looked at the relationship between the two stable isotopes, chlorine 37 and chlorine 35. On Earth the ratio between the two is virtually constant, but the samples on the moon showed the ratio varying by a factor of 25 — a finding so unusual that his team rechecked everything to make sure.

According to Sharp, who writes in the latest edition of Science (PDF), the hydrogen levels in rocks on Earth would make such variation impossible. He believes the most likely explanation is that when the lunar rocks were formed, the lava which created them was completely free of water.

That implies that while the Earth has oceans formed from steam from the gases in volcanic eruptions, the same didn’t happen with the Moon. Instead whatever water was inside the Moon and released in such a way may have been lost to space because the Moon’s gravity was too weak to hold on to it.

If that’s correct, it would bring us back to the beliefs of earlier lunar rock geologists that the Moon is completely dry. While that has been questioned because of the discovery of ice, Sharp suggests that this ice may not have originated on the Moon and instead come from comets which collided with it.

Yeah, I know, this isn’t really geeky in itself, but since each and everyone needs to be alone with themselves sometimes, I thought you guys would enjoy this incredibly beautiful and uplifting video. Enjoy!

[Via Reddit]

[Source: Craigslist]

[Via Gizmodo]

For those of you who are looking to get a XBox 360, here’s a deal you might want to check out. Amazon.com currently offers the Xbox 360 Elite with Final Fantasy XIII, a FF XIII faceplate, UFC Undisputed 2010, and Bioshock 2 for only $299. That’s around $200 off what you would normally pay if you’d get all the items separately. Not bad!

[FF XIII Xbox 360 Bundle + Faceplate + UFC Undisputed 2010 + Bioshock 2 - $299]

What can I say? This guy is just awesome… almost as awesome as Jonathan Coulton, but not quite. He’s got quite a few crumbs to eat before getting there! (Code Monkey FTW!)

The following clip shows a montage of every single lightsaber ignition and retraction from all the Star Wars movies. Shame on the creator for forgetting to add all those from the Clone Wars animated series and from all the various fan films on the Internet. This is an outrage to Star Wars enthusiasts everywhere.

[Via Buzzfeed]

Yes, in concept a solar roadway would be amazing, but I see a few problems with the idea. First, these roads could almost only be installed in countries where there is no snow and where the temperature doesn’t get too cold. Oh, the road’s surface could be heated, but wouldn’t that cost more energy than can actually be produced? Second, what happens when the pavement gets dirty? The efficiency of the pannels would then be severely affected. And what about the price of installing these things? I’m sure the people behind the idea have thought of many of these issues, but unfortunately, they’re not covered in this video, and the official website does not give much more details.

As we had speculated, Apple is about to release a fix for a flaw in the mobile edition of Safari. The bug had been exploited by enthusiasts to allow a simple, no-computer-needed form of jailbreaking, but had the potential to be used for more sinister purposes.

Although the jailbreaking technique was packaged to resemble an app (for user comfort rather than to mislead people), it actually involved visiting a page in Safari on an iPhone or other device. It now appears the technique took advantage of two distinct flaws in the browser: one was that the way it handled PDF files allowed code to get into the browser, and the other was that that code could then get out of a protected ‘sandbox’ within Safari and get into the root control of the entire device.

While many people looking at the situation noted that the flaws could pose a serious security risk if used by malicious sources, Apple first responded to the issue after a warning by the German government. That’s not unusual: Germany has a department dedicated to information security and regularly advises the public against using particular pieces of software while a bug remains unpatched.

Apple now says: ” We’re aware of this reported issue, we have already developed a fix and it will be available to customers in an upcoming software update.”

In the meantime, it’s probably safer for iPhone users to steer clear of opening PDF documents in Safari, including via search engine results lists. While there’s no evidence yet of hackers exploiting the flaw, any hoping to do so will be acting quickly in a hope of getting to devices before they are updated.

The people behind the jailbreaking trick, the iPhone dev team, have kept busy however: they’ve now extended their network unlocking tool ultrasn0w to cover the iPhone 4.

Yep, it looks like Jedi mind tricks even work on Facebook!

[Via Blippitt]