As I mentioned in the video, the reason I upgraded to an SSD was to eliminate heat, increase battery life and shock tolerance. And ofcourse, performance.

But let’s be honest. As a general [power] user, I didn’t notice much in the way of performance gains. Well perhaps, I haven’t measured them accurately as yet. It is very hard to gauge how hard this drive is working.

On the contrary, the laptop and hard drive in particular got fairly hot during the installation of Adobe CS4. This was certainly not what I was expecting. While playing games, namely Counter Strike: Source, the temperatures were steady (i.e. hotter than my expectation, but cooler than a regular HDD). Let’s just say it was warm enough to make my palms sweaty.

The boot time was not cut in half, however the computer shuts down faster than I can blink as is evident from the video above. Battery life gains are not noteworthy either. A measly 15-20 minutes tops. I was expecting 30 minutes at the very least. Too much? I don’t know.

Last but not least, applications don’t launch as they do/did online. Does Windows 7 take more advantage of this technology than OSX? I’d be hard-pressed to say yes at this moment as we all know OSX is superior. But, it seems like Photoshop, Microsoft Office opens just a tad-teeny-tiny-pole faster. *yawn*

After charging $307.44 on my American Express, I feel like the only real world difference apart from the YouTube benchmarks that scooped me in to this frenzy to buy an SSD: I’m not afraid to jiggle and wobble my laptop.

Pros:

• “Coolest kid on the block” feeling
• Deathly silent – I can hear the entire neighbourhood chirp as I sit by my window
• I’m not afraid to gravitate at 163 degrees in mid air

Cons:

• Cost and everything else associated to it

So again, welcome, and good luck — since this baby is running the relatively ancient Android 1.5, you’re probably going to need it.

Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been collected and published on the net by a security consultant.

Ron Bowles used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user’s privacy settings.

The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile, their name and unique ID.

Mr Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information.

The file has spread rapidly across the net.

On the Pirate Bay, the world’s biggest file-sharing website, the list was being distributed and downloaded by more than 1,000 users.

One user, going by the name of lusifer69, described the list as “awesome and a little terrifying”.

In a statement to BBC News, Facebook said that the information in the list was already freely available online.

“People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want,” the statement read.

“In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook.

“No private data is available or has been compromised,” the statement added.

‘Privacy confusion’
But Simon Davies from the watchdog Privacy International told BBC News that Facebook had been given ample warning that something like this would happen.

“Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it,” he said

“It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn’t have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there’s an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence, he added.

Mr Davies said that the trawl of data fed into “the confusion of the privacy settings”.

“People did not understand the privacy settings and this is the result,” he said.

Earlier this year there was a storm of protest from users of the site over the complexity of Facebook’s privacy settings. As a result, the site rolled out simplified privacy controls.

Facebook has a default setting for privacy that makes some user information publicly available. People have to make a conscious choice to opt-out of the defaults.

“It is similar to the white pages of the phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook,” said a spokesman for the firm.

“If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications.”

But Mr Davies disagreed, saying the default settings should be changed.

“This highlights the argument for a higher level of privacy and proves the case for default nondisclosure,” he said.

“There are going to be a lot of angry and concerned people right now who be wondering who has their data and what they should do.”

However, Mr Davies pointed out that this was something of an “ethical attack” and that more personal information, such as email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses had not been included in the trawl.

Source

UPDATE: Apple acknowledges antenna issue in iPhone 4.

What’s more annoying than spending hours lining up for a shiny new gadget? Learning that your precious phone can’t actually connect to the network. Well, depending on how you hold it — word has it that the iPhone 4′s bottom-left corner isn’t playing nice with your skin.

That said, we had no issues when Apple’s $29 rubber bumper accessory (given to us free for standing in line) was attached, creating a buffer between our palm and the antennas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Continue reading for a pictorial round up of the WWDC 2010…

Highlights:

• New design, thinner, lighter, stainless steel/glass design for better build/reception quality
• New IPS Technology, better screen resolution
• Six-Axis motion
• iMovie support (App: $4.99)
• 5 MP Camera, LED flash, front-facing camera, 720p HD Video Recording
• Increased battery life
• And ofcourse, iPhone 4.0 OS (coming “soon”)
• iBook, iBookStore available for the iOS/iPhone 4
• iAds – help developers earn money to keep app prices low; if not free.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is no small feat. Quite a few of my friends, some dubbed “Blackberry b-whores” have indicated that they will switch to the new iPhone once it becomes available. Apple has already trumped Microsoft to become the biggest technology company in the world. Is it time they trample RIM to become the biggest mobile [smart] phone developer/provider of all time?

Your future wall decoration has arrived, and it’s called Winscape ($2,500-$3,000). Based on two 46-inch Panasonic TC-P46G10 plasma screens, a Mac running specialized software, a Wii remote, a custom-built IR-emitting necklace, and an iPhone app, Winscape creates two virtual windows, which can display static images up to 4096×4096 resolution, or 1080p video — with sound — and tracks the necklace wearer’s movements around the room, realistically changing the view out of the “windows” accordingly. It’s not quite Holodeck-level sophistication, but it’s getting there, and it far surpasses the coolness of that oversized Matrix poster you bought sophomore year.

Meet the iWatch – if it does what the iPhone does, then we’re interested. Shame it’s just a concept.

There’s the question of whether or not it’s really possible to build a particle accelerator in your own home with sufficient power to create a new element.

The short answer: why yes, you can build your own particle accelerator. It’s already been done by physicist Michio Kaku, who built a 2.3-million-electron-volt accelerator (called a betatron) in his parents’ garage for his high school science fair project because he “wanted to play about with antimatter.”

The long answer is a bit more complicated, as Satogata’s analysis makes clear. The basic building blocks are a beam tube with a large vacuum, charged particles, magnets to bend the beam, and radio frequency oscillators, or RF cavities, to accelerate the particles. Based solely on what’s depicted on screen, Tony Stark seems to be missing RF cavities (although they could be off-screen), and his magnets don’t appear to be large enough for maximum steerage.

There’s also the question of where he’s getting the juice to run his homemade accelerator: on the order of 10 to 15 megawatts, enough to run over 10,000 homes. “For Stark to run his accelerator, he’s gotta make a deal with his power company or he’s gotta have some sort of serious power plant in his backyard.” I humbly suggest that if Stark can build a tiny fusion reactor to operate his suit, finding the energy to run an accelerator isn’t his biggest problem.

Okay, so while there’s a real-world basis for this pivotal scene in Iron Man 2, it’s not yet something within the reach of our most brilliant scientists. But our most brilliant scientists aren’t Tony Stark — that’s why he’s a superhero; he can achieve what mere mortals cannot. Emory University’s Sid Perkowitz, author of Hollywood Science, explains:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source