Category Archives: Space, Science & Tech

AT&T: “Slight chance” my iPhones will be delayed by a few days

Last night, I received a confirmation e-mail from AT&T — two of them, actually, one for my iPhone and one for Becky’s — titled “Your recent ATT order status.” They state: Dear Brendan Loy, Thank you for ordering iPhone 4 from AT&T. Your device has been reserved. Today was the busiest sales day in our history. Because of the incredible… Read more »

No iPhone for me until… July? [UPDATE: Know Hope!]

I may need to modify the countdown sidebar thingy at right. AT&T has confirmed that, thanks to “the busiest online sales day in AT&T history,” they’ve already sold out of pre-ordered iPhone 4s, and thus “people who got their orders in after 4:30 [PM Eastern Time] are expected to get their phones any time between June 25th and July 5th,”… Read more »

iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO vs. ???

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So… Becky and I are almost certainly going to imminently upgrade, finally, to smartphones. Indeed, the tentative plan has been to pre-order two iPhone 4s on Tuesday, the first day it’s possible to do so. But we’re not under contract with anyone right now, so all options are available to us. And I’m concerned about the AT&T network issues that… Read more »

iPhone 4/HD unveiling open thread

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[UPDATE: Event over; iPhone 4 is here. And it’s awesome. Of course, the best part of the demo was when Steve Jobs had network connectivity issues while trying to demonstrate the new, super high definition screen: Yeah… somebody‘s getting fired. Heh. To make matters worse (and more hilarious), at one point, Jobs asked for suggestions from one of his techies,… Read more »

Holy gigantic sinkhole, Batman!

      4 Comments on Holy gigantic sinkhole, Batman!

As noted earlier, today is Atlantic hurricane season’s opening day. But the Pacific hurricane season starts a half-month earlier, on May 15, and it has already produced a landfalling system — Tropical Storm Agatha — which has killed more than 150 people in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and produced this enormous, building-swallowing sinkhole in Guatemala City: Photo courtesy of… Read more »

Cassava crop virus threatens millions, could be Irish potato famine writ large

Happy Monday Tuesday! In need of something new to worry about? Start off the new week, and month, right — with a new source of PANIC!!!!!!!!!: [A new plant-blighting virus, called] brown streak, is now ravaging cassava crops in a great swath around Lake Victoria, threatening millions of East Africans who grow the tuber as their staple food. Although it… Read more »

The 2010 hurricane season is underway

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Today is the “official” start date, climatologically speaking, of the Atlantic hurricane season. As I’ve pointed out before, it’s really an arbitrary date, with no special significance except that the National Hurricane Center begins publishing its Tropical Weather Outlook four times a day. Speaking of which: TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 800 AM EDT TUE JUN… Read more »

Party like it’s 2005? “Active to extremely active” hurricane season predicted

I’ve written extensively in the past on why I think preseason tropical activity forecasts are generally fairly useless. And indeed, trying to specifically predict a particular number of storms is pretty silly. Although hurricane seasons are medium-period events, occupying the gray area between long-term weather and short-term climate, individual hurricanes are short-period events, influenced heavily by other short-period events, which… Read more »