Attentive BarCampers at Dan Kaminsky's Ask a Hacker session. Attendees range in age from 18 months (her 2nd BarCamp) to so old we're afraid to ask | photo by pinguino The twice-yearly, geek-tastic unconference for technologists, gamers, industry-folk, and Internet lovers of all stripes is again upon us. BarCampLA is in its fifth iteration and thanks to a collaborative effort fronted by Jason Cosper and Crystal Williams (and dozens of sponsors), it's shaping up......

Some interesting tech-related news from around the web this week. • Imitation may be a form of flattery (the sincerest kind, so they say) but AOL, I think you might have taken it a bit too far. • AT&T Chief Edward "Moneybags" Whitacre is retiring. His going away present? $158.5 Million. Not a bad present. I bet he won't try to return it. • Apple issues a fix for the battery issues that plague......

So Mr. Editor wasn't in the mood to be on this rock spanking internet show-thing, but yours truly took the bait. The DL on AOL. See you think it stands for down low -- but it stands for downloaded. The internet can be clever and quick on its toes that way. Ah, that AOL. Their music channel is called Spinner and the DL is one of five links they have to different music reviews......

LAist has been around the block. And we know people. We have friends in high places and we have some friends who are simply high. Somewhere in between we have discovered what we could safely assume is something close to "the truth". One of our friends showed us an unedited list of a very popular search engine and we were somewhat surprised to see "ass" pretty close to the most searched-for term. Ass? In......

The first question should be, "who the hell still uses AOL?" With DSL being advertised for $20 or less for new users, and cable providers doing more to use that fat pipe, LAist finds very little sympathy for modern-day web surfers who pay the Virginia company $28 a month for the wonders of dial-up. And we have even less sympathy for those whose social security numbers ended up on an AOL-generated web site recently......