Posted 11/19/09 at 11:45:38 AM by Paul Lilly

Today's WTF moment is brought to you by AOL. The struggling ISP recently told investors it would spend $200 million trimming down a large portion of its staff, but up until now, the suits in charge didn't say how they planned to do it. According to CEO Tim Armstrong, AOL is looking for "up to 2,500 volunteers," CNet reports.

Raising your hand for a pink slip doesn't quite have the same effect as barging into the boss man's office and telling him to to 'take this job and shove it,' so we're curious how AOL's volunteer program plays out.

The 'step forward and enjoy the holidays on unemployment' program begins on December 4, just a few days before AOL spins off from Time Warner. So in other words, AOL employees must choose whether to leave on their own free will and start the job hunt right away, or roll the dice and hope they won't end up with a pink slip anyway as AOL moves to cut its annual operating expenses by $300 million. Sounds about as much fun as Russian Roulette, but hey, at least the investors are happy.

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Posted 08/05/09 at 08:30:00 PM by David Murphy

Open-source beer. Were it only as easy as walking to the store and picking up a free case of alcoholic something that's been built and licensed by a team of geeks. At the very least, we can all can build our own booze-making machines following a handy set of open-source software and hardware instructions. But the fun doesn't stop there.

What is open-source hardware? I've chatted about this before. In short, open-source hardware is be a combination of software code and hardware instructions (or, really, just the latter) that's given to you for a set price (not necessarily "free as in beer") and license for use. You're free to use the instructions to develop carbon copies of that which you wish to build, or create derivative works of said hardware, provided you offer up your diagrams/code/instructions under the same licensing as you received it.

Now that's out of the way, let's check out the open-source home brewery kit along with a few other crazy projects from the OSH world!

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Posted 10/07/08 at 01:30:55 PM by Paul Lilly

Google wants to make sure you never again send an email that you later wish you could take back. Problem is, once that angry letter or drunken confession flies out of your outbox, the damage has been done and it's only a matter of time before the recipient reads it. If only there could have been someone by your side to force you to solve math problems before allowing you to send that email! Wait, what?

Now there will be, and it's called Mail Googles. Once enabled, Mail Goggles will subject you to a handful of math equations that must be answered before that email can be whisked away for good.

"When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email," writes Jon Perlow, a Gmail engineer. "And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?"

Hit the jump to post your thoughts on this one, but first, what's 86-32?

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