This confirms what I suspected this weekend: Android Market's automatic update notifications are broken. In the meantime, if you're affected, you have to go to individual app pages to see if there's an update for the app. At least, that seemed to work for me. [Phandroid]

OK, so if crazy Kim Jong Il does try nuking Hawaii this weekend, don't blame me. He was planning on it before this horrifying and hilarious gallery of shameful Photoshops appeared. Oh god, what have I done?

First Place — Nick Dwyer
Second Place —T. Baxter
Third Place — Dave Corrasa

The analysis was correct: the iPhone 3GS graphical abilities are significantly better than the iPhone 3G. Here's how much better, according to OpenGL benchmarks:

* The CPU performance is Faster by 40-70%
* The fillrate* is 3x to 4x higher
* Texture effects and filters are about 10x faster

Keep in mind that it's also running OpenGL1.x on the benchmark test, and iPhone 3GS can run OpenGL 2.x. The upside is that when games do get optimized or developed for OpenGL 2.x, that's when your old phone will no longer be able to play them, or at least play them with better graphics. It's pretty obvious once you play with the phone that it's rendering your old games much faster, but it's good to get it in quantitative form. [glbenchmark via Extremetech via Ubergizmo]

If you're wondering which file system you should format your new Linux partition as, phoronix has a test of EXT4, BBtrfs and NILFS2. The winner (for the most part): EXT4. Hit the link if you want to find out why. [Phoronix via Slashdot]

Fueled by the original rechargeable batteries from 2005, Sanyo's consistently strange eneloop (on-a-loop) line keeps on growing: next up is the eneloop Lamp, a vaselike, wirelessly chargeable table lamp that turns into a flashlight when picked up.

The lamp is intended to spend most of its time on a wireless charging stand, which not unlike the Palm's Touchstone or, more precisely, Sanyo's wireless eneloop Wiimote charger. There, it can be switched between the brighter white light mode and a low-draw blue, or "Healing Light," mode. The stand feeds power into the unit's two AA batteries, which power the lamp when it strays from home. Sanyo's press release says it'll switch modes when it's turned horizontal, mentioning that there's some kind of accelerometer, although it seems like a simple activate-on-disconnect system would work just fine.

At first, I had trouble imagining too many uses for a lamp/torch hybrid, but then it hit me: midnight pooping. For that, this lamp is genius. No price or domestic availability info is available yet; Japan will see a launch on September 11th. [Akihabara News]

A 19-year-old who was part of a swatting group—hacking the phone system to get 911 to respond with a SWAT team to potentially dangerous situations in order to harass people—just got sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Their method of hacking used spoofing to pretend the call originated from the victim's house. The team could then say all kinds of crazy stuff. For example:

On June 12, 2006, for example, another swatter, Guadalupe Martinez, dialed 911 using a spoof card to make it look as though he was calling from an Alvarado, Texas, phone number and told dispatchers that he was holding hostages and had killed family members with an AK47 while high on hallucinogenic drugs.

But what really got him and his buddies in trouble was the fact that he showed up at the home of the Verizon investigator that was gathering evidence against him and harassed him. He was arrested shortly after. [Yahoo]

The Wall Street Journal chimes in on talk of Dell's Android smartphone with the bit that it's not a smartphone (yet), but a media player with Wi-Fi, a la iPod touch or Zune HD. If Dell doesn't kill it. [WSJ]

Robert Buelteman takes electrifying photographs, but he doesn't even use a camera. Instead, he places flowers directly onto film and shocks them with 80,000 volts.

His process is a refined, high art version of Kirlian Photography—a photographic technique popularized in the 1930s. Buelteman places a whittled, near translucent flower directly onto color film, then he sandwiches the subject between sheet metal and plexiglass—all of which is submerged in liquid silicone. Using jumper cables, the flower is pumped full of electricity which ionizes the surrounding air and leaves a glowing corona on the film (the blue outline).

Then, Buelteman "paints" the film with a single fiber optic strand, adding an almost divine white glow to the image (which can take as many as 150 attempts to execute perfectly).

Buelteman argues that without lens glass distorting colors, his flowers have an unparalleled chromatic accuracy. You can judge for yourself in his new book Signs of Life and read more on the story over at: [Wired]

Robert Buelteman takes electrifying photographs, but he doesn't even use a camera. Instead, he places flowers directly onto film and shocks them with 80,000 volts.

His process is a refined, high art version of Kirlian Photography—a photographic technique popularized in the 1930s. Buelteman places a whittled, near translucent flower directly onto color film, then he sandwiches the subject between sheet metal and plexiglass—all of which is submerged in liquid silicone. Using jumper cables, the flower is pumped full of electricity which ionizes the surrounding air and leaves a glowing corona on the film (the blue outline).

Then, Buelteman "paints" the film with a single fiber optic strand, adding an almost divine white glow to the image (which can take as many as 150 attempts to execute perfectly).

Buelteman argues that without lens glass distorting colors, his flowers have an unparalleled chromatic accuracy. You can judge for yourself in his new book Signs of Life and read more on the story over at: [Wired]

The Domo meme has long since hit the internet in full force, but your baby boomer coworkers will hold your $23 Domo iPhone case in the highest regard. Just one minor geek nitpick: Domo supposedly hates apples. [Etsy via LeJournalDuGeek]