The Dutch city of Leeuwarden has lost the municipal pornography archive and officials fear it may be gone forever. A spokesman for the city said the collection may have been taken home "accidentally" by an employee or visitor. "We're hoping that someone will say 'Hey, I have that in my attic' and bring it back," he said Thursday. "No questions asked." Leeuwarden shouldn't be too upset. I've found it a good practice to get rid of your porn archive and rebuild every 6 months or so.

Urchin writes to tell us that physicists working in a new field called "phononics" claim that waste heat from a processor could actually be used to add to its power. "Crunching data coded using photons — photonic computing — is one example, and in 2007 researchers built the first workable optical transistor. But now the idea of computing using heat flow is gaining popularity among applied physicists. Heat travels through solid materials by means of phonons — ripples of vibration passing through a series of atoms. Those ripples can be used to send and store data in digital form: one temperature is read as 0 or 'off' while a second, higher temperature is interpreted as 1 or 'on.' Provided that the thermal memory is well insulated, it can keep its temperature — and data — intact for a long time."

Z80xxc! writes "The Windows 7 Beta release is now available for download by the general public, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Microsoft had previously announced availability around 3 PM PST on Friday, but after unexpected numbers of people proved to be interested in the download, had to postpone it to add more servers."