A Nexus smart phone got launched 28,000 feet into the atmosphere, riding on the back of a rocket, and videotaped the whole ride. Yes, it’s a little dizzying (rockets spin as they fly) but still awesome. More

Well, this doesn’t sound good: NASA just announced that the Earth’s thermosphere, an upper layer of the atmosphere, collapsed. It’s the biggest contraction in 43 years and scientists have no idea what’s going on. I don’t feel safe anymore. More

Chances are, as a kiddywink, you looked up to your Mom or Dad and asked “why is the sky blue?” Just in case you’ve forgotten, or your parents told you a whopping fib, io9 has come to the rescue . More

This is a photo taken on the International Space Station by a NASA astronaut on May 29. It shows aurora australis, the southern lights, above the Indian Ocean. More

You might have heard Google’s Chrome OS will live entirely in the cloud , and that devices running the web-based platform will automatically back up your data on remote servers. You might think it will keep your private details safe — as safe as anything else you trust Google to store, that is. But had you ever considered what the cloud meant for the hardware running it? CEO Eric Schmidt has. This week, he told the Atmosphere Cloud Computing Summit that Chrome OS devices will be “completely disposable” at netbook -esque price points of between $300 and $400. That’s pocket change for a large IT department perhaps, but we can’t imagine tossing even the cheapest Eee PC in our dustbin. How about subsidized, though? Asked whether Google might give away devices on contract, Schmidt said “Sure,” adding afterwards only that his company doesn’t see itself selling the data plans. We wonder what that means for the thousands of enthusiastic towns now praying for Google fiber . Hear Google’s CEO for yourself after the break; info in question begins 13:33. Continue reading Schmidt says Chrome OS devices will be ‘disposable,’ priced like netbooks Schmidt says Chrome OS devices will be ‘disposable,’ priced like netbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

It may just  be one of the most ominous bits of evidence yet that global warming could run out of control.  Scientists are beginning to find that methane frozen in permafrost under the Arctic Ocean is bubbling up to the surface and reaching the atmosphere, raising concerns that one of the most-feared potential self-reinforcing effects

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Methane from frozen seabeds could accelerate global warming, new research suggests

Cafe Grumpy ‘s one of the best coffeebars in NY. It’s known for two things: It’s one of the few places that to get Clover-made coffee in NY, and it banned laptops . I was there yesterday; it’s incredible. People were talking . That is, instead of staring silently, glass-eyed and slack-jawed, faces aglow with the soft light of a laptop, occasionally slurping coffee, rows and rows of slumped-over humanity. The place was packed. Bustling. Alive. I couldn’t find a place to sit. It’s a vibe I haven’t seen in a coffeebar in a long time, especially not in New York. (The closet-sized abraco excepted, where everybody always seems escstatic about being there, and perhaps not coincidentally, cannot sit.) People used to go to coffee shops to talk. Read. Or hell, enjoy coffee. Now they’re simply the other place to use a laptop: not home, not work. People sit affixed and silent. For hours. I’ve done it. But there’s no question: Laptops smother the atmosphere. So it’s amazingly refreshing to feel something different, people connecting to people, instead of gadgets. Which brings us to the iPad. It’s supposed to be this third thing. Bigger than a phone, smaller than a laptop. It browses; it’s got books; it plays video. Can it possibly have a place in a laptop-free utopia? I asked Caroline Bell, who owns Cafe Grumpy , if she’s going to drop the banhammer on the iPad when they come out. Her reply surprised me: I think iPads would make for some interesting conversations these days because you don’t see too many around yet…plus, they don’t take up much table space nor do they create a physical barrier between you the rest of the world when you put them down in front of you. So, I guess I won’t be adding no iPads to the signs just yet! I wonder how long that’ll last.

The rest is here:
An iPad Is Not a Laptop [Ipad]

My recent hiatus in transmission was caused by a holiday with my sons in Budapest, one of my favourite cities. For those who don’t know it, it has that elegiac, fin-de-last-siècle-but-one, late-Habsburg atmosphere that Vienna has more or less grown out of. My aim was to fill a bit of a gap in my cultural [...]
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