Creepy, scary, ghostly critters of the night.

Hey all. Tonight is halloween. The night when the creepy ghouls and ghostly visages decend on the town and feast on the living!!!!

Moffie will be out and about the town and will have a camera handy. Hope to see you all out and about!!!!!!!

IBM Simulates 4.5 Percent of the Human Brain and Might Make You Obsolete by 2019

Machines have been outperforming the human brain for a while now. Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov, Watson vs. Ken Jennings, Siri vs. my hungover inability to operate technology. Now IBM's Blue Gene is trying to not just outperform, but simulate the whole damn human brain. It's 4.5 percent of the way there.

The Blue Gene project was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009, and just two years ago it needed 147,456 (then-Power-PC) processors to simulate a cat brain. It now has the cat simulation down to 24,576 processors, and has squeezed 4.5 percent of the human brain into the same 147,456 processors. And it's still on pace to finish the job of turning the human mind into a componentially-replicable thing by 2019, which researchers think will take about 880,000 processors. So you've got eight years to figure out a way to contribute to society that isn't wholly reliant on your brain.

Turn your dog into a tank for Halloween

What's a gearhead pet to do on Halloween? There are plenty of choices for people (our favorite being Human Tire Barrier), but it's a little harder for our pets. That is unless you're extremely clever and can turn some cardboard boxes into a TANK DOG.

The creator or of this awesome, tracked costume created the tank from cardboard, paper clips (for the tracks) and even has a real working weapon. Needless to say, TANK DOG destroyed all the puppy pirates and kitty karate masters at the local Petsmart Howl-o-ween costume contest.

87-year-old caught with 228 pounds of cocaine in truck

An 87-year-old horticulturist from Indiana was pulled over on 1-94 west of Ann Arbor, Mich., last Friday for tailgating. And then things got weird. When it was over, the senior citizen and $2.9 million worth of cocaine were in police custody.

After refusing to let his pickup be searched by police, drug-sniffing dogs were called in and 87-year-old Leo Sharp was arrested for possession of 104 kilos of cocaine, with a street value of about $2.9 million dollars.

The elderly plant specialist claims that he was forced at gunpoint to transport the party dust to an as-yet-undisclosed location. Sharp was released on $10,000 bail, and what promises to be a very interesting court hearing is scheduled for November 10.

Two things to learn from this episode: First, never ever carry three million dollars' worth of blow in your vehicle. Second, if you're somehow already doing that, for God's sake mind your following distance

A Decade On, Windows XP Is Still the World’s Most-Used Desktop OS

Windows XP first went on sale ten years ago today. In that span, it has become the desktop OS of choice with a worldwide install base of as much as 80 percent. Here's looking at you XP.

XP was originally scheduled for a massive roll-out on October 25th, 2001, however the 9/11 attacks put a severe damper on its release—slumping into the market with lower initial sales than even Windows 98's release three years prior. Slow adoption by users due to its direct competition with much-lauded Win2000 as well as XP's increased resource demands and initial driver incompatibilities didn't help win it any fans either. It wasn't until desktop hardware performance eventually caught up did XP really take off.

Once it did become established, XP surpassed all other desktop OS systems for longetvity. For years, especially after Service Pack 2 released, XP was the be all, end all of PC operating systems—you were a sucker not to use it. Two factors have directly affected that tenure: The explosion of Internet usage and Microsoft's lack of an heir. The incredible growth of the World Wide Web in the first few years of this century effectively killed off earlier, morfe-entrenched variations like Win95, 98that simply couldn't handle the hardware and security requirements needed to run in a rapidly connecting world. The lack of a follow-up OS played an even bigger role. With no bigger and better OS to look forward to, XP was, by default, the best a PC user could do. Rumblings of the secrect Longhorn project ended coming to naught when Microsoft canned the project and Vista, well...was Vista.

Heck, 52 percent of the desktop PC market still runs XP, however, its doubtful the world will ever see an OS not only stick around for a decade, but remain relevant for that long. Now, even Microsoft is trying to trim its turn-around time between major OS releases to just 2-3 years, a la Apple. Sure, Windows 7 might hit 50 percent market share before Windows 8 drops, but in ten years, it'll be about as relevant as Windows 95 in 2005.

Holy Crap Qaddafi’s Corpse Is Being Stored in a Freezer at a Mall

Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former dictator of Libya, was killed yesterday but Libyans don't know what to do with his body just yet. Right now, Qaddafi is being stored in a room-sized freezer at a shopping center in Misrata, the home city of the fighters who killed him. A fitting end?

The AP saw Qaddafi's body and described it as:

The body, stripped to the waist and wearing beige trousers, was laid on a bloodied mattress on the floor of an emptied-out room-sized freezer where restaurants and stores in the center normally keep perishables. A bullet hole was visible on the left side of his head—with the bullet still lodged in his head, according to the presiding doctor—and in the center of his chest and stomach. His hair was matted and dried blood streaks his arms and head.

Qaddafi was supposed to be buried today (in accordance to Islamic tradition) but the interim government wants to figure out how he died before they put the former dictator away. So the freezer solution it is! Incredibly odd that they picked a mall though, as crowds are growing to sneak a peek at the dead man's body.

HE HAS A SEAGULL! NO HE DOESN’T, IT’S HIS NOSE!

 

This piece of footage from a 2007 Formula Vee race is like an animated GIF on drugs. You will want to watch it over and over and over again. And again. And yet again. And then again, once more. But don’t let the seagull distract you from the fancy crash.

Are Cellphones Officially Safe to Use or What?

Dear Lifehacker,
 I'm reading in the news that there's this study that says there's no link between cellphones and cancer. That's good, right? I feel like I read a new one of these every other week, though. Are cellphones safe now or what?

Thanks,
 Confused by the News

Dear Confused,
 Yes, this latest study—the largest of its kind yet—didn't find any significant link, so headlines all over are declaring "no cancer link" and "cellphones don't increase cancer risk." But it's impossible to prove a negative (like you can't prove there's no invisible unicorn watching you right now), thus the debate rages on. There's still no definitive answer and, as usual, more research is needed. But here's some background for you, plus tips on what you can do.

This latest study, published in BMJ, is an update of a nationwide Danish study that covered more than 350,000 cellphone users. It found no link between owning a cellphone and tumors in the brain or central nervous system, even after over a decade of cellphone ownership. Good news, right?

It's important to note that I said ownership, not use, however; that was one of the study's limitations. It substituted subscriptions for usage. A group of experts from several countries are fiercely criticizing the study now, saying that it's flawed based on the choice of individuals in the control group, such as leaving out corporate users, as well as an increased risk found in eight cases of a very rare type of cancer.

Previous studies on the possible link between cancer and cellphones have been similarly hotly debated and inconclusive. No one study is definitive. Because of this, the best thing we can do is educate ourselves about the facts: there's no consistent link proven yet, but cellphones do emit radiofrequency energy. The National Cancer Institute has a good fact sheet on cellphone cancer risk explaining the key points and current studies, as well as guidelines for the "better safe than sorry" measures you can take:
Use a hands-free kit
Don't use your cellphone for long periods of time near your head

Sometimes, the back and forth findings (with experts arguing amongst themselves) can be more confusing than helpful, but, still, the more research that is done, the better. We're sure there will be more studies to read about in the future and take with a grain of salt. Photo by Ed Yourdon.

Love,
 Lifehacker

Woman Has Her Breasts and Uterus Removed—and She Didn’t Even Have Cancer

A 35-year-old woman preemptively had a hysterectomy and had her breasts removed after she tested positive for a gene strongly associated with breast and ovarian cancer.

It sounds drastic, but it's what some women with the same diagnosis choose to do; the BRCA1 gene gives women like Dana Bushman, combined with her family history of cancer, an up to 90-percent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime and an up to 70-percent chance of ovarian cancer. Those are terrifying odds, and faced with them is likely the only time a women would voluntarily give up her breasts and fertility.

Everything about Dana Bushman's story, which she tells to Blisstree, is gasp-inducing, but one part I found particularly fascinating was the technique she chose for breast reconstruction. She didn't want implants because she's a yoga and Pilates instructor and implants could inhibit her movement. So she chose analogous tissue transfer, also known as "flap" surgery, a method that involves taking fat from another part of her body and putting it where her breasts were (the skin and nipple remain intact). They even re-attach veins and arteries from the relocated fat to the breast area.

The original doctors she consulted about the technique told her she didn't have enough fat for a successful operation. But she found an outfit in Louisiana where surgeons performed the operation with no problem, and now she sends all of her thin, BRCA-positive friends there.

Of course the best part about the story is that Bushman has drastically reduced her chances of developing breast or ovarian cancer. Listen up ladies: get tested! No one wants to go through what Bushman has, but like she says in her story, it's better than having cancer. Also, men carry the BRCA1 (and BRCA2, there are two) genes as well. Bushman found out she might be a carrier because her father was, and he pushed her to get tested. Also a note: men, though less often than women, can also get breast cancer.

Keep Those Umbrellas Handy, Another Satellite is Falling to Earth This Weekend

We may have all survived the less than graceful return of NASA's UARS satellite a month ago, but you'll want to keep your eyes on the skies this weekend since we're not out of the clear yet.

Back in September we reported that the German Roentgen Satellite, or Rosat, was expected to come careening through our atmosphere sometime in late October or early November. Like the UARS, no one really knows when and where the Rosat is exactly going to rain on mankind's weekend parade, but most recent educated guesses have it coming down sometime on Sunday, anywhere between fifty three degrees north and south. Which is roughly a swath of land stretching from the northern tip of the United Kingdom to the southern tip of South America, or in other words, pretty much anywhere on Earth.

Don't get too cocky about surviving that last satellite attack, though. The Rosat, which was shut down in February of 1999 and has been in descent ever since, isn't expected to completely burn up on re-entry. In fact, because of the German Space Agency's use of more robust materials, it's calculated that half of the satellite's launch mass could hit the Earth's surface, some 1.6 tonnes of cabon composites, stainless steel and titanium. It's hoped that these recent incidents will lead to greater restrictions on just how much space crap can fall back to Earth in the future, but I think we just focus our efforts on engineering satellite proof umbrellas instead. [BBC News via The Atlantic]