Google Steam

Google may have Valve in their sights.

Samsung in Hostile Takeover Bid of Sandisk

Samsung, the massive quasi-state-owned Korean conglomerate known in the west for its LCD's and cell phones (one of their lesser known offerings pictured here), has made a hostile takeover bid for Sandisk at $26 a share, which is quite a premium.

Samsung's been making moves on the smaller firm for some time now, and the answer has been a consistent 'no.' Guess they got sick of playing nice. Word down the grapevine is that compared to previous similar situations, it's likely that this deal will start out on the hostile path, but some loose pockets on Samsung's part may well make things consentual. The big hurtle will be regulators, but the fact that Samsung is behaving so aggressively at this point indicates that they are determined to engulf Sandisk, or in the very least, make any rival acquisitions that much more costly.

Sandisk seems doomed at this point. One interesting point is that this move by Samsung may escalate its faceoff with Intel, which has a demonstrated record of backing DRAM companies with cash against the Korean firm.

Sandisk makes...stuff. USB keys, hard drives, etc., is all that really comes to mind. They're all about the semis. Their one brand name that I remember for some reason is a tacky budget MP3 player called the Sandisk Sansa.

Guess that makes Samsung Littlefinger GET IT?!!?1

Spore

Why I won't get bored with this game.  Meet Brian, the only one of my creations to get commented on my godamn myspore page which I just now realize existed.

He wants you to use his big green mouth as a human toilet.

BOOM goes Lehman

Lehman Bros.' holding company has filed for bankruptcy.

The whole street is on damage control lest they are crushed by the giant's corpse. Merrill Lynch is getting bailed by Bank of America, for one.

I am sooo glad I didn't have my shit together when I did those interviews last year.

Googlebot pranks stock market

Notice anything funny about this chart?

At about 10:45AM on Monday Google listed an article about how UAL had just filed for bankruptcy. This news was automatically picked up by services that piggyback on Google and was propagated all over the web where it was then picked up by automated stock-trading systems. The stock price fell by 75% in a matter of minutes.

The thing is, the announcement was six years old. Google discovered a copy with no date on it, apparently because it appeared on some generic "recent popular links" list, and threw it into the news hopper anyway. Over a billion dollars of value temporarily disappeared before NASDAQ hit the emergency brake.

Google=the singularity

Putin Saves TV Crew from Siberian Tiger

I was somewhat disappointed to find out that he had actually used a tranquilizer gun to do it. Perhaps it speaks to the man that I, and I'm sure many others, clicked on the link expecting him to have done it with his bare hands.

Then again, blasting a pouncing tiger when no one else even saw it coming is probably harder than point and click, in the first place.

Too bad he's got such a bad rep in this hemisphere, because, you know, it's his fault that that wonderfully weak, poor and corrupt plutocratic freedom-loving Russia of days yore has been replaced by a country that can do more than wank and cry when their interests are sliding down the shitter.

Will Wright's PEE: The Count Down

Spore's out in the wild in a little more than a day.  Gamespot has given it a rather underwhelming 8/10.  Gaming jesus it ain't, but I will probably end up shelling out some lunch money just to see what the fuss is about, that, and penis monsters.

Btw, the title refers to this Penny Arcade comic, which, quite frankly, is spot on.

I'm personally waiting on Fallout 3 and Fable 2, which will be the final catalyst for my acquisition of a 360.

Musical Tastes Reflect Personality?

Could one of you science types take a look at this? The fact that it ends up reading something like a horoscope seems invalid to me for some reason, but I do like the fact that Reggae and Indie are the only two musical tastes associated with the "not hard working" trait.

Oh wait, they spelled "not hard working" 3 different ways: as two separate words, a compound word, and hyphenated. You're special BBC!

Christ. The study also lost my respect when I realized they lumped rock and heavy metal together...

Food For Thought

Not meant to be taken very seriously, obvii, but rather amusing nonetheless. For my fellows here, you may find the placement of the top three states particularly interesting.

Something else I noticed, is that most states seem to have an average below average IQ, which really doesn't make sense at all, unless you take into account population density.

Shiny Poo

Some sketches are up of Apple's next outting of music players.

The key terms here seem to be "thicker" and "longer."