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03 Sep 2010 11:48

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U.S.: “Goodbye Earl”? Not yet. But the hurricane is weakening big time

  • good The storm is currently slowing down; it’s only a Category 1 and has already lost much of its punch.
  • better The storm only minorly nicked North Carolina’s Outer Banks, causing minimal damage. source

03 Sep 2010 11:12

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Tech: Apple’s Ping service has some pretty big problems right now

  • bands The service doesn’t currently have a lot of popular bands on it, mainly because Apple inexplicably decided to do it by invitation at launch. Dumb.
  • control Profile pictures have to be APPROVED by Apple. The app approval process, we could maybe understand. This? What the heck, guys? This is stupid.
  • spam Apple’s social networking service is also overrun with a lot of spam because of a pretty thin spam filter. Those links will not earn you free iPads.
  • The root of the problem: Apple is trying to run a social network, which by definition needs to be open, the same way it runs its hardware business. They’re setting themselves up for a pretty embarrassing fall as a result. If they bought Lala to build this, they wasted their money.

03 Sep 2010 10:06

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03 Sep 2010 09:52

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Biz: Jobs grew, but the unemployment rate still rose

  • 9.6% the latest unemployment rate, which is an uptick source
  • Why the increase? Interesting reasons, actually; apparently, private-sector jobs actually increased. Unfortunately, government jobs continued to disappear.

03 Sep 2010 09:43

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Tech: TechCrunch relives the early Twttr days with an old-school logo

  • There has to be a good story behind this decision. TechCrunch redid its logo today, but they redid it to look exactly like Twitter’s original logo, launched way back in 2006. Arrington posted an article noting how he was sort of wrong about how Twitter’s success would play out, and it’s a bit hilarious to see how off-base some of the commenters were. Blast from the past, indeed. source

02 Sep 2010 22:39

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Culture: Stunt-casting or brilliance? Harvey Keitel could be new “Office” boss

  • I haven’t started any talks with his people, but Harvey would do a great job — a very different energy. And we don’t want to bring in another Michael, having someone play a very similar character because we have such a high regard for Steve.
  • Paul “Toby” Lieberstein • Suggesting an utterly bizarre replacement for Steve Carell on “The Office,” but one that might prove an interesting choice and could ensure the series remains really interesting in the future. Keitel, best-known as “Mr. White” from “Reservior Dogs,” hasn’t been approached yet about Lieberstein’s wild casting idea. Minor detail. He’ll take the part. source

02 Sep 2010 22:20

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Politics: Smokin’: California gets its first medical marijuana TV ad

  • Wonder what they’re smoking. Wanna know the proof that cannabis is about to become legal in California? Because now medical marijuana shops are blatantly advertising their wares. It’s official: The tide has turned in their favor. Cheech and Chong are winning. source
 

02 Sep 2010 21:41

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Offbeat: A note to readers: Would you like to see another Catstravaganza?

  • What is Catstravaganza? To our readers who have only been reading the site for a year or so, we had a sort of fake battle with Urlesque, which ran “A Day Without Cats,” a day where no cats would prowl the interweb. We responded by turning the site into a mecca of catdom, complete with reader submissions.

    Our question for youDo you want to see another Catstravaganza, or would you prefer to get more short, sweet news? Acutally, you’ll get news either way. But there’ll be more cats hanging around on 09/09/10 than usual. Most of them will be strays, though if we find any with tags, we’ll do our best to return them to their rightful owners. And trust us; your allergies won’t kick in.

02 Sep 2010 21:21

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Tech: Copyright owners use YouTube ads as a backdoor into ¢A$H

  • 2 billion views of YouTube videos with ads every single week
  • 14% the percentage of total weekly views on YouTube each week ad-supported videos make up – a small chunk, but definitely still a lot
  • 33% of those videos (or more) are clips which are copyright violations that the owners have chosen to make money from source

02 Sep 2010 21:07

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U.S.: Hurricane Earl weakening, but still has some punch

  • good Hurricane Earl is slowly but surely weakening as it moves up the East Coast this weekend.
  • bad The storm will still be a fairly powerful Category 2 as it hits North Carolina tonight. source