Category: Weirdness
Canon lets Japanese employees go home early twice a week to make babies
Japan’s birthrate is 1.34, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, and that’s too low. It needs to be 2.0 for the population to maintain itself. As a result, 22% of the population is 65 or older – the highest proportion in the world. All this is primarily due to the country’s common 12-hour workday, which doesn’t exactly assist procreation.
Well, to try and rectify the balance, Keidanren, a business group of 1300 major international corporations, has asked its members to let workers go home early to “spend time with their families”, meaning ‘have lots and lots of dirty sex’.
Canon’s part of the group and will be letting its employees go home early at 5.30pm twice a week for that very reason. As well as helping the country’s demographic problems, it also means that the company spends less on overtime payments, and employees are happier. Everyone wins.
(via Crunchgear)
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World's oceans will soon be ruled by IMMORTAL SELF-CLONING JELLYFISH
This is more “science” than “gadgets” to be honest, but we can’t turn down the chance to report on the discovery of an immortal jellyfish.
The jellyfish, known as Turritopsis Nutricula among jellyfish enthusiasts and on jellyfish forums, manages to cleverly revert back to a juvenile state after mating – effectively becoming a baby again and living forever. Scientists say…
Dick Cheney's house gets uncensored on Google Earth
Former American Vice President, Dick Cheney, was a big fan of secret surveillance and monitoring, but wasn’t so keen on having aerial images of his house beamed all over the world, so it used to be pixellated out at very low resolution on Google Maps. With the new administration, however, Joe Biden has moved in and suddenly the house has become viewable again.
The change happened on Google Earth on January 18th, and rolled out to Google Maps on the 22nd. Google’s official line? They didn’t do anything – the images were displayed unaltered from the source – in this case, the U.S. Geological Survey. I’m inclined to believe them, though it’s interesting that the White House remained in full view the whole time. For before and after pics, click over the jump.
Less is more – new socially-networked nano-blog Chirp gives you ten letters to express yourself
New tech start-up Chirp is the hottest new, lime-green-coloured, nano-social-blogging tool on the web, offering users a chance to “Keep fellow Chirpers up to date with your every thought” – in ten characters or less.
So if you find that Twitter is simply too long-winded and you can’t be bothered doing a whole sentence-worth of typing because you can never think of as many interesting things to say as Stephen Fry, give Chirp a go.
It is, of course, a joke. And a very good one. The sort of joke most of us will go to the grave without having created…
Bush's Googlebomb hits Obama
Remember when bloggers, a few years back, “googlebombed” former US President George W Bush by linking his official biography to the phrase “miserable failure”? Well, along with the war in Iraq and a devastated economy, poor Obama looks to be inheriting Bush’s googlebomb, too.
Searches for “miserable failure” on Yahoo! and Live Search both bring up Obama’s bio. Google has successfully killed the bomb on its own search engine, however. In the meantime, one enterprising blogger has started a campaign to link the words “Cheerful Achievement” to Obama’s biography. Sounds good. Sign me up.
Cheerful Achievement (via SEO & Web Marketing News)
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USB lunchbox pumps out 60°C of face-melting heat
This scares me a little. It’s a little bag with a heating element in, which claims to cook your lunch when plugged in via USB. In reality though, 60C is barely warmer than a cup of tea – certainly not enough to kill any bacteria. Don’t rely on it to grill a steak beyond “rare”.
On the other hand, if all you’re doing is heating up your cous-cous, then my objection isn’t so pronounced. Who knows? Maybe in the hands of Heston Blumenthal it could be a force for good. Now there’s a program I’d like to see – Heston Blumenthal’s USB Lunchbox.
Thanko (via Oh! Gizmo)
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Biggest data breach ever at Heartland Payment Systems – 100 million transactions at risk
Although we’ve seen some whoppers in the UK, you can always count on the Yanks to do things bigger and better. One payment processing company, the brilliantly-named “Heartland Payment Systems” processes transactions for a quarter of a million businesses in the USA and has found some monitoring software on its servers, sending data to an external machine.
“We found evidence of an intrusion last week and immediately notified federal law enforcement officials as well as the card brands. We understand that this incident may be the result of a widespread global cyber fraud operation, and we are cooperating closely with the United States Secret Service and Department of Justice.” said Heartland president Robert Baldwin
In the USA, unlike the UK, companies have to disclose when data breaches occur. It’ll be interesting to see if Europe implements a similar law, but the UK government is opposed to such a move.
(via Out-Law.com)
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Spammers take advantage of Obama's inauguration
Later today, Barack Hussein Obama will be inaugurated as President of the United States, and thousands of spammers are using it an opportunity to.. well… do what they do best. Emails are circulating with subjects like “Barack Obama refused to be president of the USA” complete with links to phishing sites and viruses. Symantec warns of one in particular called W32.waledac.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened – the people who run these spam networks are well in-tune with current events and often use major holidays and other big world events as social engineering to get people to click links that they might normally be wise to. So be careful, you hear?
Symantec’s Warning (via TechRadar)
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Belkin is 'extremely sorry' for buying good reviews on Amazon
Belkin’s slapping its own wrists, after The Daily Background caught them offering 65 cents for every good review posted on Amazon.com, and asked participants to “Mark any other negative reviews as not helpful”. Rather shady, no? Well, it turns out that Belkin’s upper management agree, and have issued a full apology.
The upper echelons claim not to have been aware of the tactic, which was instigated by one Michael Bayard, a Business Development Representative at Belkin. All the requests are now down, and any reviews posted have been removed. Still, I suspect Mr Bayard is now either out of a job, or keeping his head way down.
Belkin’s apology (via Geek.com)
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Bizarre dual-lens clamshell 'CLAM' camera concept, for the vein photographer
The dual-lens and hinged design of this ‘CLAM’ camera’s body lets the second lens take a photo of the face of the photographer, should he or she be feeling a bit left out of all the fun and want a happy memento of the time they took that lovely photo.
When folded open flat, the CLAM…
