Pickens brings news that researchers from Rice University have discovered that it's possible to store hydrogen inside buckyballs. Hydrogen can be an excellent power source, but it is notoriously difficult to store. The buckyballs can contain up to 8% of their weight in hydrogen, and they are strong enough to hold it at a density that rivals the center of Jupiter. "Using a computer model, Yakobson's research team has tracked the strength of each atomic bond in a buckyball and simulated what happened to the bonds as more hydrogen atoms were packed inside. Yakobson said the model promises to be particularly useful because it is scalable, that is it can calculate exactly how much hydrogen a buckyball of any given size can hold, and it can also tell scientists how overstuffed buckyballs burst open and release their cargo."

Multiple readers have written to tell us of the latest developments out of Intel. Earlier this week, Intel announced the Atom brand of low cost, low power consumption processors. The CPUs, measuring only 25 square millimeters, are the result of the Silverthorne and Diamondville projects. The announcement has caused this CNet columnist to question whether Intel can "spur innovation in ultrasmall devices the way it has in the PC and server industry." Concurrently, Intel has increased its production of 45nm processors to a rate of roughly 100,000 chips per day. As TG Daily notes, the massive investments Intel has made into chip production will make it difficult for AMD to catch up.

An anonymous reader writes "Despite all the emphasis on protecting Olympic copyrights in China this year, the official web site of the Beijing Olympics features a Flash game that is a blatant copy of one of the games developed at The Pencil Farm. Compare the game on the Olympic site with 'Snow Day' at The Pencil Farm."

ericatcw writes "Critics have charged that last week's ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) to decide the fate of changes to Office Open XML standards proposal was too perfunctory and deviated from accepted ISO practices, possibly in an attempt to smooth the passage of the Microsoft format. This week, the ISO 'convener' of the BRM disputed those charges, saying that voting to dispose of 900 changes to the spec at once and allowing 'O' Observer countries to vote were the correct moves. ISO released a statement backing him up. Also, Patrick Durusau, editor of the competing OpenDocument Format specification and a late convert to OOXML's passage, also said that claims the process was flawed were overstated."

palegray.net writes "Threat Level brings us the story of the US Air Force's use of the DMCA to forcibly remove a 'Cyber Command' recruitment video that they had previously thanked Threat Level for running. The article notes that US government works are not even subject to copyright, but this fact didn't stop YouTube from caving and taking down the video."

Presto Vivace forwards a link detailing a recent House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the White House missing emails mess. David Gewirtz's report, carried in OutlookPower and DominoPower (in 6 parts, keep clicking), makes for scary reading. "If, in fact, the bulk of the White House email records are now stored in bundles of rotting PST files, all at or above their maximum safe load-level, that ain't good in a very big way... I object to using the inaccurate and inflated claim of excessive cost as a reason to avoid compliance with the Presidential Records Act."