Geekly Update - 11 April 2012

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

"Here's why your parents haven't called the basement mold removal service yet." Epic Games has lowered the price of its Infinity Games series to $.99 for a limited time. Playable for iPad/iPhone/touch, the gamer plays a knight battling others for, well, you know.

The latest massive hacking attack struck at Global Payments, a major credit card processor that may have exposed over a million customers. Your bank should notify you if you're affected, but you should check with them if you notice suspicious activity on your MasterCard or Visa.

For the sixth time in four years, Yahoo is laying off workers. The 2000 new pink slips will reduce payroll by about 14% and the company says it will save about $375 million annually. Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, after Googling the phrase standard layoff boilerplate, successfully did a search and replace on the phrase "Company Name".

Here's the latest bulletin from the Department of Meaningless Statistics: CNBC's All-American Economic Survey claims that 51% of homes contain at least one Apple product.

Want to know how the Hacker Factor Blog can spot a fake lottery ticket? They detail the tools used to uncover one on their site that was claiming to be a winning Mega Millions ticket.

The Mentor, Ohio Police Department has arrested 27 year-old Justin Medema for stealing over $1000 worth of DVDs from Sam's Club while still in costume as the Easter Bunny from an earlier gig at a retirement home.

IBM is assisting ASTRON in a humongous $43 million project to build a supercomputer for their Square Kilometer Array telescope. Slated to be operational by 2024, the SKA will be used to seek information about the universe and produce an Exabyte of data daily, twice as much as is produced on the internet during the same period. "Take that, Internet!"

George Jetson, your time has come with the advent of two flying cars that may soon hit the market. The $279,000 Massachusetts based Terrafugia Transition has foldable wings, four wheels and turn signals while the Dutch PAL-V is a combination gyrocopter/car/motorbike that recently took its first maiden flight and is seeking more funding.

A most welcome iOS app has been adapted for Android devices. With 25 million users already on iPhones/iPads/iPod touch, Instagram photosharing is now available as a free download for those with Android phones and tablets. Enjoy it while you can, as Facebook has just purchased Instagram for a cool billion dollars.

Introduced on Google Plus, their Project Glass is still in the planning stages but its creators plan these headsets to be the next best thing. The innovative headset may in time handle GPS with Google Maps, play tunes and audio messages, issue weather reports, take photos and share with others in your circle. Or get you a gig on the next Star Trek series.