Chad's News

I just did a Google search on my name and was pleased to see that my personal website, www.cloman.com came up as the number-one result. The remaining nine results were all profile information from various websites that I belong to. In the past, my cloman.com page has been eclipsed by these other sites. The linked article, however, gives a simple piece of HTML code that tells Google which web page you consider to be the primary source of information about yourself. The trick is to add this attribute to the appropriate link(s): rel="me"

Link: http://marshallk.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

From the article: “North Korea’s New Year’s wish of seeing the destruction of a massive concrete wall dividing the Korean peninsula never seems to come true — mostly because there is no such barrier.”

Link: http://www.reuters.com/…

A man who claims he is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation is suing his neighbor for using her iPhone at home.

Link: http://sfreporter.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

Back in the day, companies would advertise their AOL keywords in print and television. But AOL has been in decline for years now, and having an “aol.com” email address is a sign of being behind the times. In the linked article, the writer discusses how she feels about using her AOL email in a professional capacity, and I have to agree with her. I’ve had the cloman.com domain since 1999 and simply forward its messages to whatever mail client I’m currently using—in this case, gmail. This gives me a certain amount of portability, as well as some tech world street cred.

Link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Last week Apple introduced its latest invention, the iPad. Despite the fanfare, I don’t believe the iPad will dramatically change the state of the art. I expect the chief reason for buying an iPad will be its advanced eBook reading capabilities.

The iPad has been described as a large iPhone. It can run all existing iPhone apps without modification. It runs the Safari web browser but has no support for Flash, which disables quite a few websites. It does not have a built-in camera, nor does it allow you to make phone calls (even VoIP is prohibited for now).

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://www.engadget.com/…

Despite the many attempts to cash million-dollar bills and the availability of fakes, the largest banknote ever printed by the US government was a mere $100,000. The linked article has this and other interesting facts about obscure and large-denomination bills.

Link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/…

Last week, Google released version 4.0 of its super-fast Chrome browser. A much-desired enhancement is the ability to support extensions. Say hello to AdBlock!

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

The time-lapse video in the linked article shows starfish and monster worms feeding on the body of a dead seal that sank to the ocean floor. Very neat!

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
(via naacal)

From the article: “An AP investigation has found that, barred from using lead in children’s jewelry, some Chinese manufacturers have substituted cadmium — which is more dangerous.”

Link: http://consumerist.com/…

Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we’ll give up Windows XP when they pry it from our cold, dead fingers. But for those power users who’ve taken the plunge to Windows 7, we introduce “GodMode” to make your life easier. And for those who really want to explore the intricacies of Windows system administration, there’s even more.

Link: http://news.cnet.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Nearly everyone is familiar with the Y2K problem, and technically-minded Chad’s News readers know of the looming Y2038 issue, but the Y2010 bug (also Y2K+10 or Y2.01K) seems to have caught everyone unaware.

Starting on January 1^st, 2010, some computer systems thought the year was 2016. The Bank of Queensland’s EFTPOS system (in Australia) had this problem, and customers were unable to use their credit cards because the cards had “expired.” Many Germans had a similar problem.

Most computer scientists will figure this one out at first glance (although that didn’t happen here at Chad’s News). Just looking at the last two digits of the years, 10 and 16, should make the problem obvious. The bug was caused by the use of a fairly obscure numbering system known as binary coded decimal (BCD), where each digit of a base-10 decimal number is represented in base-16 (hexadecimal). So a hexadecimal 10, which is normally a decimal 16, is considered to be a decimal 10 instead. The code that failed did not understand this fact and treated the hex 10 as a decimal 16—thus the change from 2010 to 2016.

Link: https://www.networkworld.com/…
(via Slashdot)

The 2009 Darwin Awards are out, and the winners are two bank robbers killed by crushing debt. Here at Chad’s News, we think one of the runner-ups (dying to go) was more deserving, but the judges were obviously swayed by the rare phenomenon of having two people remove themselves from the gene pool with a single action.

Link: http://www.darwinawards.com/
(via Neatorama)