Nerd (Micro) Blurbs: Dick Jokes Edition

Interesting late-breakings around the News-o-sphere today regarding size: it DOES matter after all. What’s that? Oh, that was a cheap, inaccurate dick joke? Okay, we’ll get to the actual news then. Scientists have been making tiny breakthroughs and large discoveries and we’ll give you the size of it in this edition.

“…I’m Going to Need a Microscope…” (That’s What She Said!) “…To See Your Processor…”

Because great scientific discoveries always seem to come in twos: two different research facilities are working on processors the size of atoms. But IBM is taking an upper-hand it seems, as The New York Times reports, by making twelve atoms their bitches forcing them to spit out both zeroes and ones. Now, I’m not about to out-write The Times so I’ll let you read that article and not pontificate, but they are partially responsible for all these dick jokes because they interviewed a Stanford professor for this article named Shan X. Wang. I shit you not.

Now, we’re not only talking about quantum computing, but processors infinitely smaller than the ones we have today that can process information better than even the most formidable super computer today. Crazy.

Of course we’re still left with a measurement problem:

"Your porn, under such a quantum processor, would both exist and not exist. Also, your wiener is tiny." -Albert Einstein

That was…uh…helpful, Einstein. Thanks for that. Moving on.

Weekly Time Waste: The Phantom of the Shatner Edition

"I'm...the Phantom. Of the Opera....inside...insideyourmind. KHAAAAAAAAAN!

This week’s time waste is brought to you by the fact that William Shatner will be starring in a one-man show on Broadway, titled “Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It,” The NY Daily News reports. As the article states, quoting the producers, “The two-hour show will take audiences on a voyage through Shatner’s life and career, from Shakespearean stage actor to internationally known icon and raconteur.” No word yet on how much of those two hours will be filled with dramatic pauses. Previews start on Feb. 14th at the Music Box Theatre and will play there until March 4.

Weekly Time Waste: The Expendable Scott Pilgrim

Because Mickey Rourke looks infinitely more handsome in purple hair.

So we’ve got Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Expendables opening today, so I thought to have so photoshop fun and tom-foolery.

If Sarah Michelle Geller is Cast as The Wasp, I Swear Whedon…

News out of Comic Con SD today indicates that Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer helmer, Joss Whedon, is set to direct the upcoming Avengers movie, Entertainment Weekly reports. The nerd in me is excited, but it’s also cautiously raising it’s eyebrows (when around Whedon, you want to cautiously raise your eyebrows, otherwise he might mistake you for a transforming vampire and have you staked).

Yes, Whedon is responsible for some well-done nerditity with his sci-fi story-telling, but there seems to also be a part of him that wants to appeal to pre/post pubescent girls, a demographic that just doesn’t work for the geek demographic you’re selling to and the actor load that’s lined up. Okay, maybe X-Men tapped into that some of that younger lady appeal with Hugh Jackman and James Marsden, but here’s the thing. Who’ve we got for the Avenger’s line-up? Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Ed Norton (maybe?), Chris Hemsworth (Kirk’s dad in Star Trek), and Chris Evans (Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four). Sure, some of these guys are dream-boaty, but not to the Buffy crowd.

That aside? Whedon’s a phenomenal story-teller, giving otherwise dry, bloated characters a sense of realness. Is Tony aka Iron Man about to hit the sauce super-hard? Will an out-of-time, maladjusted Captain America beat the living snot out of some dude for coming on to him? Will a useless Bruce Banner unleash the Hulk so that his over-funded team-mates have something to hit? What about Henry Pym, are we going to see him break his wife’s face in celluloid? How far are we taking this Whedon?

The director is a self-professed feminist, who does terrible things to his female characters, in order to have them drag themselves up by their beat-up boot heels. Considering that the line-up of the Avengers doesn’t include very many women, generally, that we’ll definitely have The Wasp, and that yeah, her husband’s probably going to hit her. Other qualifiers for the position of  team chicks include: Black Widow (which is a STRONG possibility, being established in IM2), Scarlet Witch (less so, she didn’t appear in the X-Men movies…did she?), She-Hulk (fuck that green snatched two-d character), Hellcat (who?), and Jessica Jones AKA Ms. Marvel, who’s a fan favorite, but obscure enough for the studios to just say “no,” as though her outfit were made of marijuana.

They say to not judge a book by it’s cover, and that’s probably doubly so when that book hasn’t even been written yet, so I’m going to reserve judgment until I see a trailer. Then we’ll judge galore. Until then, have a great weekend, true believers.

-Excelsior! (Eh? See what I did there?)

Had a Hack-tastic Weekend?

Why is YouTube Turning Bieber into Beaver?!?

The beaver is just as confused as you are, Bieber.

That was a question Justin Bieber fans were asking for about an hour this weekend, after hackers imported code into the comments page on certain YouTube pages (including Bieber’s), which directed users to pornography. The code also displayed messages saying that Bieber had died. Google, who own YouTube, shut down the comments for an hour, and fixed the bug that allowed this to occur at all, the BBC reports, within the next hour.

The hackers utilized cross-site scripting (XSS) to carry out their evil plot, a vulnerability typically used in phishing, that allows seemingly official-looking pop-ups to actuate on the page. Compared to the usual usage of XSS, this was fairly benign, cyber-punks looking to punish Bieber fans for being…Bieber fans. The truly fascinating thing to me about this story is that Google fixed the whole thing in two hours: they truly are good at what they do- which apparently now also includes protecting tween girls from seeing porn.

I Bought a Vietnamese Book App? Nhưng tôi không đọc được tiếng Việt!

The Bible in Vietnamese, because there's nothing like the third or fourth translation.

In related news, word broke out that a Vietnamese book seller named Thuat Nguyen broke into some people’s iTunes account and used them to artificially inflate the rating and ranking of his Vietnamese book apps, wrote PC World yesterday. All Nguyen’s apps have been struck from the App Store, Apple citing that the shady developer violated “the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns.” The picture is from app, Kinh Thanh, which has nothing to do with Nguyen, but merely demonstrates why people might be confused about the whole thing when they saw they’d bought the program.

There is no word yet as to what criminal charges might be brought against Nguyen, though I recommend he be brought to the US and allowed to be pelted to death with first-generation iPhones. Apple has claimed that no personal information (other than apparently the requisite amount to make a purchase) was compromised by Nguyen, but recommends that anyone that was effected cancel their cards, ask for charge-backs, and change their passwords. Thanks Apple – couldn’t have figured that out without you: how about developing an app that lets you know when another app is gonna fuck you over?

Weekly Time Waste: Molester Edition

Bill offers Al some sage advice, from one pervert to another.

This week’s Time Waste is inspired by a four-year-old allegation that Al Gore sexually molested a masseuse at a posh Portland, Oregon hotel (they have those), People reports. Not exactly the smooth player, the unnamed 54-year-old woman is claiming that Gore “…pleaded, groped me, grabbed me, engulfed me in embrace, tongue kissed me, massaged me, grabbed my breasts.” And here I thought he was just a block of wood; nope, turns out he has some personality after all – just not the kind that would get you elected president (unless you’re Bill Clinton).

This whole incident could have been avoided had Gore just stuck to his usual script and said, “You seem to have caused some global warming…in my pants.” But nope, turns out the guy’s a prick. I hope he goes to jail for this – because A) he’s a douche, and B) because perhaps being in prison will, firstly, allow him to experience the trauma he inflicted on this woman first-hand, and secondly, perhaps it’ll inspire another Academy Award winning documentary? Hollywood likes rapists, after all, right?

Missing Links: Holy Crap Edition

Some stuff garners your attention like nothing else can, drops your jaw and makes you say, “Holy crap.” That’s the type of stuff we’re concerned with on this week’s edition of Missing Links. From farting felines to fun with photoshop, this Missing Links is like a turd dropped in a bowl of sanctified wine…that metaphor sounded better in my head.

1. Graphic artists in the Netherlands have created one of the craziest light shows in the world. It’s a work that is transformative of the building it’s projected upon. Wholly astounding.
2. I didn’t even know cats could hiccup. Don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to, but just never have been in the presence of cat-‘cups. Have witnessed their flatulence though, so I’m only half-astounded by this video: Cat Farts & Hiccups at the Same Time. I never thought something like that would be adorable.
3. Are you a nerd that likes to get his drink on? Combine the two worlds and imbibe this concoction, a taste cocktail affectionately called The Warp Pipe.
4. Some fun displays of multiplicity. Yes, technology your average person owns has surpassed the best effects of crappy Michael Keaton movies.
5. Behind the scenes TED talk from engineer Adam Sandusky, discussing the creation of the OK Go Rube Goldberg machine video for This Too Shall Pass, which I was listening to while writing this post. Cheers.
6. Flash. Circles of color. Put your mouse over them. They divide. Like, whoa man.
7. One of the coolest clocks I’ve ever seen. I think I’m going to make it my homepage. What’s with the Netherlands totally rocking visual design?
8. The most holy crap moments filmed ever; some of the luckiest people on the planet, escaping death by just fractions and millimeters.
9. Wired Science has an article that transitions sci-fi with science fact: the Japanese have deployed a spacecraft with a solar sail propulsion system. Snoogans.
10. MarioCrossover.com places other video game characters in the plumber’s world. Why no one thought to do this before is beyond me, but it’s awesome…except that one can’t seem to toggle the sound. Oh well.

Weekly Time Waste: Get Him to the Greeky Friday Edition

The tale of a rocker who switches bodies with his overweight handler.

Get Him to the Greek comes out this week, and while reading the New York Times review, I became inspired. Not even ten minutes this took, and yes, you can tell, but I think it captures (with distinct character of its own) what I was going for. Just look at the surprise on their faces; it’s priceless. Yes, I would pay bank to see the version of the movie this photoshoppery entails, but with Russel reprising his Forgetting Sarah Marshall role of Aldous Snow – I’m still expecting quite a show.

SCRAM! Alcohol Bracelet to be New to Lohan’s Line?

Due to Lindsey Lohan’s failure to appear at her court date (she had better things to do, like be at the Cannes Festival….Wait, what? Why? She hasn’t been in a movie worth seeing in four years) she has been outfitted with one of these:

Looks kind of like a clunky accessory, no?

That there’s called a SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring) and it measures the alcohol content of perspiration every half hour. However, it only uploads its measurements to the police department once a day, according to the Associated Press, so it’s not really a deterrent, from say, drunk driving, it merely keeps a record of inebriation: not intoxication, which to my understanding is more of an issue for the redheaded lass. So Lohan will probably still be abusing substances and being generally irresponsible. Celebrities get a carte blanche pass in the court of law as it is, so I don’t know what this is going to accomplish beyond my pissy blog entry.

At least I can obtain some joy in the idea that Lohan is running around all melodramatic at the “injustice” of it all. She’ll probably console herself with a vodka martini or five. So long as she stays out from behind the wheel, she can do whatever she wants to her internal organs as far as I’m concerned.

I’ll drink to that.

Missing Links: Fresh Edition

We’re gonna give you the illest ish on a silver dish today in the Links, kid! You think the lightest wit would bring the highest bid, and don’t you know that it did! So relax a bit and click through, these sites won’t diss you or cause you computer issues; but if you miss, true, your tears’ll need a tissue. Word.

1. For everything you need to know about “Fresh,” “Freshness,” “Freshnicity,” “Freshocity,” and “Freshervescence(tm),” check out the Wikipedia disambiguation page.
2. The most wicked Ian McKellen impression I’ve ever seen; Gandalf recites the theme for Fresh Prince (wicked props to Big Poppa Snark, the sick link shark for finding this gem of Hunter Davis).
3. Be both fly and environmentally conscious: make yo’ trash into flash, like these guys on Cracked’s list.
4. Superman and Batman be blingin’ in different threads, when io9 lists the sickest scribes giving heroes alternate lives.
5. Yo you, yo. Ain’t no playas all stinky in the joint. Get your fresh on at Fresh.com – with scents and moisturizers for keep ya from smellin’ like a felon.
6. It don’t get fresher than a celebrity – they got built in game, right: they’re automatically interesting people – no? You’re right. No. At least of all Nic Cage who’s talkin’ ’bout how he only eats flesh of animals who have interesting sex. That’s the opposite of ill, Nic; that secret sauce is fowl.
7. If you’ve got a blog, you wanna keep it fresh, so check out Blogfresh to learn the code that’ll help you loads.
8. Tech is fresh, it’s hot off the press, the cats at Gizmodo let you know why Android is best. Expect no less than grandiose things; because the new Android has got the best bling.
9. Fresh out the 80’s, you gotta have played, Pacman, way back in the day – here’s the link to the Google banner fool, and if you want more, you’ll have to check out the module.
10. Most important fresh out there’s fresh water. People around the world don’t have access to it. Technologies are trying to change that. Learn here how light can make even the most putrid water potable.