Lexicon alert! Heard of BACN? You will. According to Lifehacker and the Social, Bacn is the term to use for the stuff filling your in-box that is neither spam nor mail. Instead it’s:

“the middle class of e-mail,” the stuff that isn’t really spam because it’s not totally unwanted, but isn’t really wanted either.

Think newsletters, recommendations, updates from Amazon, wordpress, eMusic and iTunes. Think messages, announcements and friend requests from Youtube, Facebook and Asoboo. On one hand, they’re annoying filler, but on the other hand, I really want to know what’s now available on eMusic and what old high school buddy found me on Facebook. Problem is, when am I gonna look at all of it? Lifehacker says:

As it is I route bacn to a “when I have time” label in Gmail, and often I never get the time.

Sounds familiar…

So communications minister, Yoshihide Suga plans to replace the internet by 2020, huh? Good luck selling that idea to the Chinese.

Via Kotaku and Engadget

Ran across this by accident today. No pun or play on words here. Nope, this is really what a sonic boom looks like:

I found the image and explanation HERE

Cory Doctorow, of the badass Boing Boing team, will be in Japan at WorldCon, a Sci-fi convention held this year in Yokohama. Some of the events sound pretty cool. Just look at the very first one on the program guide: Exomusicology - The Study of Alien Music.

Science fiction has been creating alien cultures for decades, but we rarely think about alien music. Where are there descriptions of alien music in the genre? What might truly alien music sound like? Would we like it? Would we even recognize it?

And would it have a good beat? Could you dance to it?

Cory has posted his schedule on his personal blog

A couple comments on the HYPTYO message board merit more amplification:

The DFA Radio Mixes are consistently brilliant, with special points going to James Murphy for finding a way to mix Venom and the Bee Gees.

Big thanks to Sebastien for recommending Pig Radio. The mix up for grabs now is from Ed Banger Records. Hoo boy. Good stuff.