• SMBC: Where does the time go when you play online games?
• XKCD: Server Attention Span
• The Joy of Tech: The Internet is running out of tubes. (via @brionv)
• Classic Spamusement: They hold a whole lot of it. I had no idea….
• Bizarro on Facebook slacktivism (at Failblog).

Sci-fi and fantasy:

• Keeping Up With the Cardassians. For months, this is what I heard every time someone mentioned the Kardashians. (What can I say? My brain is more attuned to Star Trek than to reality TV.)
• Author Robert J. Sawyer answers pointed questions about Flashforward and the TV adaptation, including what went wrong. I have to agree that it was really hurt by focusing too heavily on the conspiracy arc.

Coolness!

• Discovery spacewalk seen from the ground (Thierry Legault, of course!)
• Majestic Snow Batman towers over Vermont
• Ultra hi-res moon. The full-sized image is 24,000 x 24,000 pixels and half a gigabyte!
• Flash Coffee is a product tie-in just waiting to happen! (That F’ing Monkey). It would fit right in with the Central City Track Team shirt.

Tech stuff:

• Gmail accidentally reset thousands of accounts last month. (They got it back — this is Google after all.) I’ve come to rely heavily on Gmail, but I still keep a local copy of all my email in case something like this happens. (Engadget, via @pobox)
• 6 ways to use public Wi-Fi hot spots safely (C|NET).
• Mobile Content Is Twice as Difficult (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• Map of smartphone marketshare by OS & manufacturer. It’s a 3-way split between iPhone, Android and Blackberry. iPhone & Blackberry are of course one manufactuer, while Android is divided mainly among HTC, Samsung and Motorola. (via @androidandme)
• Things Real People Don’t Say About Your App or website (via @brionv)

Comic Strips

• I found a printout of this User Friendly comic strip while cleaning out my old desk last month. Ah, tech support! Help, I can’t send e-mail!
• XKCD on spambots vs. constructive comments (warning: language)
• Two comic strips about book collections: Wondermark and Girl Genius. I stumbled on the Wondermark strip at Long Beach Comic-Con (write-up should be done today is online) and it really hit home, between the fact that I grew up loving books for exactly this reason, and the impending arrival of the next generation. As for Girl Genius, I think Castle Heterodyne’s library could give the Beast’s a run for its money.
• Fake Science explains the difference between regular and decaf coffee. Insert obligatory “It was ground this morning” joke.
• C-Section Comics shows the difference between iPhone, Android and Blackberry users. For the record: Android user, picked up the link from an iPhone user. Hmm…

Photos

• Incredible star trails and a derelict ship at APOD.
• Usability study: Photos as Web Content (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• Amazing close-up photos of comet Hartley 2.
• Twitter Fail Whale Hat.

Other Stuff

• Someone wants to buy a cosmic treadmill from me: Umm…Not For Sale?
• Wrapping up Cyber Security Awareness Month at @sans_isc. If you use a computer, you should at least take the time to look through this.
• Gotta love the MPAA’s priorities. A brief scene of therapeutic swearing earns the same rating as an entire film full of graphic, gruesome torture: The King’s Speech vs. Saw 3D.

• Incredible photo from APOD: Clouds, Birds, Moon, Venus. I’ve finally replaced my Woodbridge Snow photo as my desktop wallpaper at home.
• Gender-swapped Scott Pilgrim cast at Project Rooftop by Jemma Salume.
• Speaking of Scott Pilgrim, Amazon is offering incredible deals on the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels — less than $5 per book! You can pick up the whole series for under $30! (via Comics Worth Reading)
• Microsoft provides an interesting look back at the evolution of the Internet Explorer logo over the past fifteen (yes, fifteen) years.
• 100-year data preservation. A 350-year-old copy of Shakespeare is still readable. But what about that 35-year-old floppy disk?
• Funny: Swedish voters submit SQL injection and JavaScript attacks on hand-written ballot. The article’s title refers back to the XKCD comic about “Bobby Tables.” (via Slashdot)
• [Edit: One more.] Flickr gives me yet another reason — uploading in Android 2.2 — to upgrade to a Vibrant or G2 once the dust settles here.

It’s a safe bet that your web browser uses at least one plugin, and probably several. Maybe it’s just Flash for viewing animations and video (think YouTube and Hulu). Maybe it’s Silverlight for watching Netflix, or Shockwave for playing games. You’ve probably got Java installed.

Just like your web browser, these plugins must be kept up to date or you’ll run into problems: missing features, instability, or (worst case) security vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, most plugins don’t update themselves.

Several months ago, Mozilla introduced a service called Plugin Check that will identify the plugins you have installed and tell you whether they need to be updated — and how to do it. At first it only worked on Firefox, but now it’s been expanded to all major browsers: Chrome, Safari, Opera, and even Internet Explorer.

It’s worth taking a few moments to check. Think of it as a pit stop for your computer’s web browser.

There’s been some slight improvement in the past decade, when the most common password was “12345″ (the kind of combination an idiot has on his luggage). Now it’s got a whole extra digit. (Whee.)

Hmm, I wonder where “Chuck Norris” appears on the list?

(via @dixonium)