2012

Odds of dying from an asteroid strike: 1 in 74,817,414

It was a busy day for planet Earth. Asteroid 2012 DA14, a 45-meter wide space rock, sped past the Earth a mere 17,100 miles overhead. In the Ural mountains of Russia, a 15-meter wide, 7,000 metric ton asteroid hit the Earth's atmosphere, creating a 300-kiloton shock wave that injured more than 1,000 people and shattered 1 million square feet of glass.

What are the odds that an asteroid impact will destroy your being in a given year? Slim -- 1 in 74,817,414, according to data compiled by The Economist. For comparison, the odds of … Read more

Just in time: Scientists propose vaporizing asteroids

The sky is totally falling.

As if it weren't enough that a meteor boomed across the Russian sky today, shattering windows and injuring about 1,000 people, an asteroid 150 feet across is about to sideswipe our planet.

Asteroid 2012 DA14, while unrelated to the meteor, is just as scary. It will graze us at just 17,200 miles from the surface, passing between Earth and our geosynchronous weather and communications satellites.

Possible asteroid strikes are no joke, and if you ask me (or the dinosaurs), they represent the biggest threat to our planet aside from human stupidity.

Fortunately, some non-stupid humans are finally getting serious about countering this threat. … Read more

Everything you need to know for Friday's big asteroid flyby

In less than 24 hours, a 150 foot-wide asteroid will complete a remarkably close, but safe, flyby. For weeks, scientists have been tracking the path of the small near-Earth asteroid known as 2012 DA14, which is on course to swing by the Earth tomorrow at 11:24 a.m. PT.

Again, no need to panic about a collision with Earth, which would be, in a word, catastrophic. If a space rock of this magnitude crashed into us, scientists say, it would release about 2.5 megatons of energy into the atmosphere. The last time an asteroid this size smacked into … Read more

Another close asteroid encounter for Earth coming Friday

In a few days, sky watchers in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia will get a chance to see one big rock hurtling through the heavens. One very big rock. Compared with other asteroids traveling through space, this one may seem a relative pebble -- at half the size of a football field -- but for Earth, it will make for a relatively close call.

"This is a record-setting close approach," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at JPL. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth." … Read more

Windows Live Mesh users must switch by Wednesday

Still using Windows Live Mesh? You won't be much longer.

Come Wednesday, the online storage and syncing service will draw its final breath, leaving Mesh users without a home. So, where can you go if you're currently using Mesh to back up, store, and synchronize your files?

A variety of online storage sites are available. Microsoft's SkyDrive is one obvious choice since it already offers some, but not all, of the features of Live Mesh.

How do you switch from Live Mesh to SkyDrive? And what are the potential pitfalls? Let's go through the process.

First, … Read more

Zynga paints 2013 as its 'year of mobilization'

Quarterly earnings calls have a tendency to sprawl. But sitting down today in front the microphones to discuss Zynga's fourth-quarter earnings, the company's brass went out of their way to make sure that at least one consistent message emerged from the chatter.

"2013 will be a year of mobilization for Zynga," said Chief Operating Officer David Ko.

That's not sounding like much of a stretch. Zynga said 72 million of its monthly active users now play games on mobile devices, or almost a quarter of the company's 298 million total monthly users. What's … Read more

Intel CEO: The PC is shape-shifting into a tablet

In the wake of reporting weak profits today, Intel CEO Paul Otellini couldn't repeat enough that "radical" new PC designs will subsume the tablet experience.

Here are some of Otellini's comments that suggest that Intel and its PC partners are aggressively going after the tablet market with newfangled Windows 8 devices. Most of these comments came in response to analysts' questions.

Radical transformation:

We are in the midst of a radical transformation of the computing experience with the blurring of form factors and adoption of new user interfaces. It's no longer necessary to choose between … Read more

Six states outlaw employer snooping on Facebook

Six states have officially made it illegal for employers to ask their workers for passwords to their social media accounts. As of 2013, California and Illinois have joined the ranks of Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware in passing state laws against the practice, according to Wired.

With Congress not being able to come to agreement on the Password Protection Act of 2012, individual states have taken the law into their own hands. Both California and Illinois agreed on password protection laws in 2012, but the laws didn't go into effect until yesterday.

The laws are designed to prohibit … Read more

Samsung Evolution Kit makes smart TVs smarter

Last year Samsung promised that certain of its 2012 Smart TVs would get an upgrade called a "Smart Evolution Kit," and now the company announced the upgrade would be available soon.

Buyers of the LED-based UN75ES9000, UNES8000, and UNES7500 LED TVs, as well as the PNE8000 and PNE7000 plasmas, will be able to buy the kit for $299 in May. It installs by simply sliding into a slot on the back of the TVs.

The kit is basically a brain transplant for the TVs. It includes a new A15 quad-core 1.35GHz processor that offers a maximum 3.… Read more