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DIY Component Cables

HD Beat has a short piece on making your own high- quality “monster” component A/V cables. It’s actually fairly easy to do, but the tools will cost you close to US$100. This is the sort of situation where sharing tools with friends and neighbors (or buying/selling used on eBay) would come in handy.

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Sift Through Interstellar Dust in Your Free Time!

You likely already know about Seti@Home and Folding@Home, but did you know that you’ll soon have the opportunity to rummage through intersellar dirt at home, thanks to UC Berkeley’s Stardust@Home project?

When the Stardust spacecraft returns to Earth later this week (Sunday), its dust-bag will be filled with what it vaccumed out of the tail of comet Wild 2. While bringing this material back home is exciting enough, the spacecraft will also have a few grains of interstellar dust in its hoppers. And that’s where Stardust@Home comes in. Scientists only expect to find 45 or so grains of such dust in the craft’s collectors, creating a needle in a haystack scenario. So they decided to use the distributed eyeballs of the Internet to help speed the search. They’ve created a Virtual Microscope which will allow volunteer researchers to digitally scan the aerogel tiles where the submicroscopic grains have been trapped. Scientists hope that by finding and studying this interstellar dust, they can learn more about the internal processes of the supernova, flaring red giants, and neutron stars that would likely produce such dust.

Thanks, Alberto!

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Netflix Settlement Objection Filed

Netflix Settlement Sucks has offiicially filed their objection to the settlement reached between Netflix and a law firm claiming to represent agrieved Netflix customers. The objection has more than 1000 signers-on, and there are other objections being filed as well.

If you’re unfamiliar with the hullabaloo, here’s the skinny: some bonehead named Frank Chavez filed a class-action lawsuit against Netflix for making false claims in its advertising, namely that the rentals were not “unlimited” really (because you can’t get an infinite amount of rentals into a finite 30-day period, I suppose) and because the company’s 1-day delivery wasn’t always 1-day.

The case was settled pending approval by the judge. Under the settlement terms Frank Chavez gets US$2000. The lawyers for the “class” get $2,528,000, and Netflix customers get one free month of “upgraded” service that is automatically continued (for a fee) if users don’t cancel in time. In short, customers get screwed, the lawyers make a mint, and Frank Chavez (whoever he is) is the most hated man in the Netflix community for a lousy $2k. Most folks I know who are Netflix subscribers object to this settlement, not because they themselves aren’t getting anything, but because a company that they like is getting railroaded and they are bearing the cost.

For the full-text of the settlement objection email, click “read more.” If you’re a Netflix customer who also objects to the settlement, go to Netflix Settlement Sucks to find out what you can do.

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Control your Car via PSP: Crash. Die.


You may have heard about the ’94 Honda Civic at CES that was controled via a Sony PSP. Now you too can risk driving your car into your neighbor’s living room thanks to the release of the source code used to control the car. More info and links via PSPUpdate.

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MacWorld Announcements Leaked?

Job’s Keynote is about to start in a few minutes. Go to Engadget and keep refreshing the live notes to see what’s happening as it happens (if that sorta thing floats your boat). On Kevin Rose’s blog, he has intel that claims the announcements will be as follows:

15″ intel Macbook – order tomorrow, ships Feb (thinner, dual core)
iPod FM receiver
iWork/Life ’06
New remote of some type
Photocasting (iPhoto)
OS X.4.4 w/new widgets

and perhaps Job’s “One more thing” will be the Apple TV.

So, maybe no full-blown Mac Mini as media center PC this time around. Stay tuned…

Update: So far, Jobs is following the leak script: Announcements of:

(as of 12:41 Eastern)

* iPod FM Tuner and Remote Control
* OS X 10.4.4 with many new Widgets
* iLife ’06
* Photocasting (RSS-based photo-feeding to .Mac accounts)

Update:

(as of 1:17 Eastern)

* iWeb authoring software with built-in blogging and podcasting tools.
* New Intel-based iMacs are here (on sale TODAY!). Same flavors, same pricing, “two to three times faster” via dual-core Duo chips.

Update:

(as of 1:40 Eastern)

And: the “One more thing:”
* MacBook Pro, 15.4″ laptop with same dual-core Intel processor as new iMacs. One inch thick, 5.6 lbs. Vivid Cinema Display-quality screen, DVI-out. 4 -5 times faster than PB G4. Ship in February.

That’s it. No Apple TV, no big entertainment partnership announcements, no Apple media center tech. The MacBook is cool, and Intel Macs ahead of schedule, but otherwise? Whatever.