List of Facebook's "Beacon" anti-privacy goons

Here's the current list of sites blithely sending user-specific activity information to Facebook as part of their incredibly bold privacy-violating Beacon advertising scheme.

(Sites I'm particularly surprised at and disappointed in for participating in this are bolded.)

• AllPosters.com
• Blockbuster
• Bluefly.com
• Busted Tees
• CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter)
• Citysearch
• CollegeHumor
• eBay
• echomusic
• ExpoTV
• Fandango
• Gamefly
• Hotwire
• iWon
• Joost
• Kiva
• Kongregate
• LiveJournal
• Live Nation
• Mercantila
• National Basketball Association
• NYTimes.com
• Overstock.com
• Pronto.com
• (RED)
• Redlight
• SeamlessWeb
• Sony Online Entertainment LLC
• Sony Pictures
• STA Travel
• The Knot
• TripAdvisor
• Travelocity
• Travel Ticker
• TypePad
• viagogo
• Vox
• Yelp
• WeddingChannel.com
• Zappos.com

YouTube RSS: "Favorites" vs. "Video Blog"

YouTube and I seem to have different ideas about the purpose of the "Favorites" collection
vs. the "Video Log" (variously referred to on YouTube as Vlog, Video Log, and Video Blog). Favorites, to me, is stuff I'll want to look at again, and not necessarily foist on others. The Video Log is for stuff I've checked out that might be interesting to others. I Vlog many, but Fave few. Why is there an RSS feed available only for Favorites and not for the Video Log?

Careful talking to TechCrunch "off record"

Google To “Out Open” Facebook On November 5:

"The meeting was so secret that all attendees had to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements strictly forbidding them from discussing what was shown to them at the meeting. Notwithstanding that NDA, I’ve now spoken with three of the attendees off record to get an understanding of what Google is planning."

Then Arrington goes on to blab the details to the world.

If I'm Google, I'm pretty pissed today at three attendees and one tech writer.

Screamin' Stones

Screamin' Stones from the band Hunter

I'd never heard of this Polish "soul-metal" band before. This song combined with 9/11 imagery is pretty potent.

TwitterNotes

TwitterNotes: Clever, but I'm not sure this is actually a great idea. I know people are starting to use Twitter for more than the original "what I'm doing" bulletin purpose, but the more tangential stuff we push into the service, the less useful it's going to be. Do you really want to see people's personal reminders to themselves in their public Twitterstream?

Dokken(!)

Dokken is playing at the nightclub in the local AMF Bowling Center tomorrow night. I won't comment on that except to say that I'd go but it's sold out. However: guys, come on, hire some kid to Photoshop my mom's Nissan Altima out of the background of your tough-rock-gods-in-black promo photo.

Hosted Tracks GTD application "comparison"

"Here’s my comparison between the three Tracks front ends. As you can see, I didn’t even bother checking out the extra bits for tracks.tra.in or Personal Tracks. That’s because the deferred start date is that important to me."

Aw come on, why post a "comparison" for the world to see if you didn't bother to fill in all the fields? What good is this to anyone who doesn't share your exact same application criteria?

Speed Racer: rated G?

Susan Sarandon talks about the Wachowski Brothers' SPEED RACER:

Tommy Lee Jones: What is the movie about?

Susan: It’s a cartoon called Speed Racer which they’re now making into a movie. What the stories about is John Goodman and I are mom and pops and he makes racing cars and it’s about the corruption of sports by corporations and of course while we were doing it all these horrible things were happening in the sports world – including the racing world. It’s all about cheating and betting and how things are fixed and everything else, but it’s also about family values and pancakes are love.

Q: There is a lot of talk that it might be rated G? Are they still going for that?

Susan: Yeah.

Rated G? I remember Speed Racer reruns from childhood as one of the most violent things on television. Cars had wheel-hub spikes and deployed giant saws to mangle their competitors. I remember a sequence where a disembodied head rolled to the side of the road.

You can argue whether kids can handle depictions of such violence. I think I turned out okay but at the time I was a little creeped out by the show. To my kid-brain it just seemed wrong.

Now it's great if the Wachowski Brothers want to make a G-rated live-action cartoony movie for today's kids, but why choose Speed Racer for that purpose? If I were to remake this cartoon as a hugely expensive modern live-action film, I'd aim it at the original audience of the show who are now mature adults. I could stay true to the tone of the original, and capture a more guaranteed audience.

Sure, real fans will go see a kid-safe version. Eventually. Once. But will they line up on day 1 and help generate positive buzz? Will they contribute to box-office figures for the first crucial weekend? Will they buy it on DVD?

Maybe they're dreaming up a way to make it kid-friendly and still attract the adults who remember a fairly dark and violent original.

Snake shake

For his study, McCue put 20 ball pythons, 22 ratsnakes and 20 western diamondback rattlesnakes through 168 days of starvation. Weight and other measurements were taken at regular intervals. After the 168 days, McCue chemically euthanized each snake and pureed it in a blender in order to better conduct chemical analysis.

Scientists find drug to banish bad memories

A traumatic memory may be debilitating because it carries with it the original associated emotions. Scientists have now developed a way to dampen the emotional component of a bad memory for test subjects, allowing them to remember every detail but not experience the emotion. In another experiment, they appear to have completely erased a specific targeted memory in lab rats. Now that's interesting.

Gene explains why people are night owls

A genetic mutation called the "after-hours gene" may explain why some people are night owls, it is revealed in Science journal today.

The altered gene, named "after hours" or Afh, is a variant of a gene called Fbxl3, which had not been linked to the body clock that keeps our metabolism, digestion and sleep patterns in tune with the rising and setting of the sun.

The discovery involved scientists from the Medical Research Council Mammalian Genetics Unit, Oxfordshire, the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, Cambridge, and colleagues based at New York University.

Told ya so! All my life I've struggled to achieve a "normal" wake/sleep cycle, finding it very unnatural for me. This may explain why.

11 dead, 100 injured in kite flying festival

Punks attack elderly tourists, get pwned

So these armed muggers tried to hold up a tour bus full of US seniors in a rough neighborhood in Costa Rica. The worldly travelers chased off two of them, while one 70-year-old retired serviceman put the third in a headlock and "broke his clavicle", killing him. Killing him!

The clavicle is your collarbone! The thing you broke when you fell off your bike as kid. The thing they don't even do anything about, 'cause you can't put a cast on it. How does it kill you? That clavicle must have found its way into something quite vital.

That must've been a hell of a headlock.

Obsession

The inspiring story of one man's relentless search... for the place depicted by his Windows wallpaper.

Eagles Fly

This video segment is hilarious thanks to the videographer whose equipment failure led to the priceless lyrics of the song which replaces interview questions.

(There was little to be done, though, about his thoughtless placement of the interview subject: standing outside on a dismal overcast day in a bleak rustbelt alleyway, while talking about the majestic birds of nature. WTF?)