Gerade über dieses Bild gestolpert, das ich schon vor einigen Jahren gemacht, aber nie gebloggt habe:
Summer-born Children Prone to Near-Sightedness
As we all know, September-born children are the best anyway (well, at least I did).
Sadly, they also seem to be among the most badly sighted ones:
Israeli researchers now found out that being born during the summer increases the risk of becoming near-sighted significantly:
Children born in June and July - the months with the most sunshine - are 25 percent more likely to become nearsighted (myopic) than those born in December or January, according to Israeli research just published in the on-line edition of the most prestigious eye medicine journal, Ophthalmology. (...) The more light a newborn is exposed to after birth, the more the eyeball lengthens, according to the study, causing images to be focused in the vitreous part inside the eye rather than on the retina at the back of the eye.
Well, at least now I have a clue where my glasses come from -- and I guess I am lucky not to be born during the really bright months, or I'd be a total mole.
(Link to the article, requires subscription)
Update: This got boingboinged. Thanks, Xeni!
Time to get an iPhone
A teen from New Jersey unlocked the iPhone, so it can be used with non-US phone networks. Nice move.
The hack takes "about two hours and involves some soldering and skill with software" though, the guy says. So, if you don't want to brick your phone, maybe it's not such a good idea after all.
Also, I wonder how long it takes until the companies in question sue the bejesus out of that kid. Or, if they are smart, they just hire him. We'll see.
Freiburg i.Br.
Aus der Reihe "Dafür sorgen, dass sich die Bahncard lohnt", heute: Freiburg im Breisgau ;)
München
Willkommen im Sommerloch. Gerade komme ich wieder aus dem Urlaub, ich war in München!
Der Stirnlappenbasilisk
... oder: die zehn unglaublichsten Gewinnspiellösungen im deutschen Fernsehen.
Noch frei
Beim Kraftfahrzeugamt (DMV) von Kalifornien kann man personalisierte Kennzeichen online beantragen. Schade nur, dass so ziemlich alle guten Kennzeichen schon vergeben sind. Die meisten Namen, zum Beispiel.
Google to increase GMail Storage?
Rumor has it, GMail's storage may some day soon be cranked up to 10 gigabyte.
That'd be sweet, for sure.
While I am really not (yet) in danger of hitting the limit (at the time of writing it's 2887 Megabytes), I still find myself deleting pictures etc. that I get by email if they are "too big" ever so often. Maybe I am too conservative there, but I still consider mails > 1 MB to be "big" and I tend to delete them if and when I can. It'd be nice if I had a reason to get more 21st-century-ish about it :)
I need to admit though, that GMail and most of its competitors are already beating accounts like my university email by far. I finally stopped using that one when I ran into its ridiculous 50 megabyte limit twice a month.
(via valleywag)
Update: It's Google's "Shared Storage" Program that made people's GMail storage amount increase. Sadly, they increased the impressive one dollar price for 6 Gigabytes to 20 dollars just shortly after the program was started.
Lenovo to sell Linux Laptops
Lenovo, one of the world's biggest PC manufacturers, is to start selling laptops to business and consumers with Linux pre-installed on the machines.
That's good news, I guess: In particular when you don't want or need an instance of MS Windows preinstalled on your machine, you can now finally avoid the "Microsoft Tax" that you currently have to pay no matter what, just to delete it off your box once it arrives. It may also give customers an idea of how many dollars they actually spend on Windows, because nowadays many still believe "Windows was for free, it came with my computer"...
Apparently, earlier this year Dell already announced it would start shipping Linux PCs also.
Way to go, Dell and Lenovo!
