The 404 933: Where it’s the nightmare before Nokia (podcast)
What’s an 8-foot-tall Lego man doing on the beaches of Siesta Key Village, Florida? We don’t have the answer, but it’s the third one that’s washed ashore in the last three years–similar occurances were reported three years ago in Brighton, England, and Zandvoort, Holland; each bearing the same cryptic messaging: “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE.”
Yahoo News did the dirty work and inquired about the phenomenon to Lego’s assistant brand relations manager, who vehemently denied, on record, any affiliation with the stunt, eliminating the possibility of it being a viral stunt. Who knows, maybe it was printed on a 3D imaging device by the folks at MakerBot!
Motherboard replica city of Helsinki, Finland
(Credit:Maximum PC)
OK, OK, back to tech headlines. The news of the day concerns the Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 smartphones, the company’s last shot at the smartphone market. The new handsets drop Nokia’s own software in favor of the Microsoft Windows Phone OS, and the devices feature a sexy curved 3.7-inch touch screen reminiscent of the oldApple iPod Nano encased in a polycarbonate housing.
Hold onto your platters, because the great Hard Drive Shortage of 2011 is coming. Hothardware.com reports on the high likelihood of a hard-drive price hike in Q4 due to the catastrophic floods hitting Thailand, the second-largest manufacturer of hard drives, behind Samsung.
The industry faced similar fears earlier this year in the face of the Japanese earthquake that forced many PC manufacturers, including Toshiba, Canon, and Fujitsu, to shut down their factories.
And now for some bad news on the homefront–New York is about to get a lot stinkier, if you even believe that’s possible. The city’s sanitation department is leading a two-month campaign to remove trash cans from select underground subway station, with the ultimate goal that citizens will remember to throw their garbage away prior to entering the tunnel.
Here’s the jaw-dropper, though: their messed-up psychology is actually working! Initial surveys are returning mostly positive, and even some “very positive” responses to the new clean routine, but what about the rats? What will they eat? will someone please think of the rats?
There’s much too much to cover in today’s episode of The 404 Podcast, including this awesome Nikon D3 DSLR Halloween costume that actually works, a startup called NextDoor.com that encourages you to break out and meet your neighbors, and the first step toward the Singularity: smartphone dock prosthesis!
Enjoy the show, Internet.
Ep. 933: where it’s the nightmare before Nokia
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