My thoughts on the latest Reuters scandal (at least “Routers” has never used fake pics…) over at TCS Daily, and what it may mean for the future of press photography.

Two, actually. Voicemail systems for credit cards that insist you use voice, and don’t offer a keypad option.

But this one also bugged me. After giving me the confirmation number, it asks “Can I repeat that for you?”

The answer is obviously “yes,” and never going to be “no,” but that obvious grammatical logic would put me in an infinite loop. It irks me as a pedant. I wish it would ask instead “should I repeat that for you?” If it were a human, I would joke with it, saying, of course you can, but you don’t need to. But with a machine, it’s simply irritating.

Researchers have been able to tailor semi-conductors one atom at a time.

A quick non-conference post here: oil from plankton?

Pretty cool, if it works. It would be nice to put the mullahs out of business.

[VIa email from Billy Beck]

Rear-wheel drive is once again in ascendance.

[Via Kaus]

Firefox 2.0 is ready for testing.

…offered by Technology Review against Aubrey de Grey’s theses doesn’t seem to be going so well. At least for the skeptics:

The judges

Self-cooling beer bottles.

When I was a kid, I wondered why you couldn’t have some kind of CO2 cartridge built in to the bottom of a can that when released and expanded would suck the heat out of the bottle. But I never bothered to run the numbers on it.

That’s the way you’ll take away my fast forward on my DVR. This guy seems to be in denial over the loss of his business model:

“I’m not so sure that the whole issue really is one of commercial avoidance,” Shaw said. “It really is a matter of convenience–so you don’t miss your favorite show. And quite frankly, we’re just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I’m not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don’t fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can’t skip commercials.”

No, of course not. No one wants a DVR to be able to skip commercials.

This looks promising:

The researchers are working on a new device that uses carbon nanotubes to store and release electrical energy in a system that could carry as much power as today’s lead or lithium batteries.

But unlike the rechargeable batteries used on today’s cellphones and laptop computers, these devices could be recharged hundreds of thousands of times before wearing out.

There are the skeptics, of course:

Andrew Burke, research engineer at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis, said that the new capacitors would have to be many times more powerful than any previously created. “I have a lot of respect for those guys, but I have not seen any data,” Burke said. “Until I see the data, I’m inclined to be skeptical.”

Even if Schindall’s capacitors work, he doubts they’ll transform the electronics industry overnight. Companies have too much invested in today’s battery systems, and it would take years before carbon nanotube capacitors could be mass-produced.

A classic innovator’s dilemma.

I’ve never been a big battery fan. Chemical energy storage always seemed very crude to me.