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The 404 885: Where we weeze the juice (podcast)

"Woot" joins "jeggings," "mankini," "noob," and 400 other new definitions in the 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary published today, but what happened to "glamazon," "hangry," and "retrosexual"?

Along with our suggestions for new slang to be added, we're also warning everyone about a privacy breach called juice-hacking and a virtual hit-man service that charges $10 an hour for DDoS attacks. And we talk about whether it's necessary to reboot or shut down your computer at night.

This, plus a handful of Calls From the Public on today's episode--enjoy!

The 404 Digest for Episode 885

'Woot' is officially a thing, according to Oxford English Dictionary. Beware of juice-hacking. Russians outsource DDoS attacks for $10 per hour. Is it necessary to restart or shutdown your laptop every night? Congratulations to Sir Ron for completing the maze we featured on yesterday's show!

Episode 885 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

'Woot' is officially a thing, according to Oxford English Dictionary

August marks the 100th anniversary of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED), the smaller but most widely recognized derivative of the official Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. To celebrate, the lexicon published its 12th edition today that adds more than 400 new entries--many of which reflect the technological pervasiveness of modern society, like "woot," "mankini," and "jeggings."

COED Editor Angus Stevenson heads up a small team at the Oxford University Press's academic cabinet tasked with choosing the next words for inclusion, and the process involves keying popular words into a database that shows frequency of use in print and online.

Since publishing its first edition back in 1911, the COED's evolution shows the tremendous effects of social media and instant-access technology on language, creating new words but also modifying existing definitions of words like "follower."

What once meant "a person who imitates or copies" now earns a second and more widely used meaning: "someone who is tracking a particular person, group, etc., on a social networking site." Another example that's a little unsettling is the general term "friend" that loses gravity in its new form: "a contact on a social networking Web site."… Read more

Net radio for the streaming n00b

Intempo's new GX01 is an attractive and affordable little networked music streamer and Internet radio device. At 129 pounds (about $271) it's a few tenners shy of the excellent Squeezebox's price tag, so it has potential to snag the interest of media-streaming newbies. The crucial thing, therefore, is ease of use--if the GX01 is even remotely difficult to use, n00bs, no matter how l33t, may pay dearly for paying less dearly.

The system's pretty pleasing to the eye and looks like something DAB specialists Pure Digital would produce--the pine finish and and single speaker makes the … Read more