2005 Zuckerberg didn’t want to take over the world

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What a flashback!

The Huffington Post has come across this fascinating five-minute interview of Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook’s Palo Alto office in June 2005. The clip is apparently part of a longer 40-minute-interview from a documentary about millennials shot by Ray Hafner and Derek Franzese. That interview has never been shown in full, and if I were Hafner and Franzese I’d be figuring out a way to do that stat, especially post-The Social Network.

Zuckerberg’s initial vision, “an online directory for colleges” seems remarkably short-sighted in light of the fact that Facebook users comprise now 11% of the world’s population and 35% of the world’s online population…

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India takes Monsanto to court for biopiracy over development of GM eggplant

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Biopiracy a Sensitive Issue in India.

Agri-giant Monsanto may be forced to take one on the chin in India: The nation’s first genetically modified food crop, a variety of eggplant known at Bt brinjal, has sucked its Big Ag developers into court. Monsanto, Mahyco, and “collaborators” have been accused of biopiracy by the National Biodiversity Authority of India.

NBA says the developers of Bt brinjal (the introduction of which was halted in 2010 by then environment minister Jairam Ramesh on the grounds that more tests were needed to prove its safety) used local varieties of eggplant in developing the GM crop “without prior approval of the competent authorities.”

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Crowdmug lets you pay strangers to be your social spies

It’s always a bummer when you decide to try something new, only to discover that it’s not your scene. Crowdmug for iOS helps you avoid these situations by harnessing the most effective crowd motivation tool of our time: money.

The premise is simple: offer cash for photos or videos of whatever place and people will answer…

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Iowa: Now 20% wind-powered

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Taking advantage of the wind in Iowa.

Iowa now gets a higher percentage of its power from wind than any other state in the nation. The Des Moines Register is reporting that Iowa’s wind generation hit the 20% mark last quarter, supplying the state with a full one fifth of its energy needs. That’s really good — like, Denmark good. Stats like this make it harder and harder for cleantech foes to deny that renewable power is fast becoming an integral part of the American energy mix…

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Information could escape from Black Holes after all, study suggests

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Do black holes NOT swallow everything?

New research by scientists at the University of York gives a fresh perspective on the physics of black holes. Black holes are objects in space that are so massive and compact they were described by Einstein as “bending” space. Conventional thinking asserts that black holes swallow everything that gets too close and that nothing can escape, but the study by Prof. Samuel Braunstein and Dr. Manas Patra suggests that information could escape from black holes after all…

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China launches its first ever aircraft carrier

There’s no denying that China is a growing super power. It dominates manufacturing after drawing western countries with cheap labor prices and readily available materials, until recently it had a stranglehold on supplies of rare earth minerals, and while Western markets are struggling with debt it has enough money to invest heavily in businesses around the world.

The latest step forward for the country is the launching of a 300-meter-long, 60,000 ton aircraft carrier…

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$2 erasable e-paper aims to replace paper

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e-Paper goes a long ways at replacing current paper sheets.

The paperless office is a myth. We all still need to print stuff out occasionally, but a new form of e-paper may go a long way towards replacing the paper sheets we put in our printers and use once before recycling.

The new flexible e-paper is called i2R e-Paper and can be printed on using a thermal printer. It can also be wiped in the same way, or just by supplying electricity to the sheet. That reuse could save on a lot of paper, especially as one sheet is good for 260 re-prints and they only cost $2 each at A4 size…

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65,000 CDs hand-sewn together to create metallic ‘sea dunes’

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Repurposed CDs given a whole new look.

French artist Elise Morin and architect Clémence Eliard hand sewed 65,000 old CDs and laid them out on inflatable mounds to create a sea of discs. The purpose? To “reveal the precious aspect of a small daily object.”

The art exhibit is called “Wastelandscape” and is located in Paris. The point is to transform the seemingly mundane objects that we take for granted into monumental “sculptures” as they reach the end of their life…

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Feeling anxious? 5 Scientifically proven relaxation techniques

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Is it time to destress and relax?

Everyone gets anxious from time to time: there’s public speaking, job interviews, the dentist and all the rest. For about one in six of us this will cross over into what psychologists term a disorder at some point in our lives. This is when people are almost continuously anxious and find it difficult to concentrate, have trouble sleeping and become irritable and restless…

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Melting Islands

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World of Islands as it is now.

Seems like we’ve flown too close to the sun on this one–Dubai’s ambitious World of Islands that were built as part of a luxurious resort are now eroding back into the sea from which they came. Millions of tons of sand were pumped in to form the islands to mimic the world, and as you can see no longer resemble the world so much as… suggesting it. Property assessments are grim…

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LinkedIn now adding two new members every second

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Some big numbers coming up here!

In LinkedIn’s first earnings call as a public company, CEO Jeff Weiner revealed that LinkedIn is adding two new members every second, which is up from one member per second in November 2010. In Q2 alone, LinkedIn added 14 million members, after passing the 100 million mark earlier this year…

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