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Books

Puzzle In xkcd Book Finally Cracked 90

Posted by kdawson from the be-there-or-be-somewhere-else dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. Here is the start of the thread on the xkcd forums; and here is the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time)."
Portables (Apple)

Apple Announces New MacBook, Pro, Air 774

Posted by kdawson from the must-have dept.
Steve Jobs just got through announcing new MacBook lines in Cupertino. The MacBook, the Pro, and the Air all got revved. The old line of plastic-body MacBooks drops in price by $100, to $999. The new MacBooks have a metal body and multi-touch trackpad, just like the new Pros. The Pro features two NVidia graphics chips. Quoting Jobs: "With the 9400M, you get 5 hours of battery life, with the 9600M GT you get four hours of battery life. You choose." In summary: "We're building both [MacBook and Pro] in a whole new way. From a slab of aluminum to a notebook. New graphics. New trackpad, the best we've ever built. And LED-backlit displays that are far brighter, instant on, far more environmentally responsible." They are shipping today and should be in stores tomorrow. Oh, and one more thing: Steve's blood pressure is 110/70.
Space

The Quietest Sun 227

Posted by kdawson from the storms-a-comin' dept.
Orbity sends in a Boston Globe report on the unusual calm on the surface of the sun. The photos, many taken in more active solar times, are excellent — see the sequence from last year of a coronal mass ejection carrying away the tail of a comet. "The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum — in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year — with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm..." As if to be contrary, New Scientist mentions that the number of sunspots seem to be increasing.

Feed Engadget: ThinkSecret "confirms" 3.5-inch touchscreen iPod with hard drive (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

ThinkSecret is tooting its own horn with a supposed confirmation they've obtained of an iPhone-sized (3.5-inch), hard drive-based, touchscreen iPod -- ThinkSecret started talking up a touchscreen iPod 20 months ago, and apparently all that blind rumoring is finally paying off. This contradicts reports of there being flash memory in the device, and is the first time we've heard anyone sound so confident about the 3.5-inch screen size -- though it seems likely that Apple will want to use the same screen as the iPhone for bulk ordering and familiar components -- but otherwise there aren't many surprises. ThinkSecret expects up to 120GB of storage on the 1.8-inch HDD, and sees WiFi as a definite possibility, but doesn't think the reports about internet radio are too on-target. And of course, the iPod nano is supposed to go QVGA, with video playback and up to 12GB or 16GB of storage. We'd make our usual assurances of all being found out tomorrow, but in reality we're just one day away from the next round of rumors beginning, so it's a small comfort.

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Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. - Kahlil Gibran

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