Source: Unique Daily
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Factoid: BLK water
BLK water
This is blk. water, black spring water imported from Canada. It’s black because it's infused with fulvic acid, a naturally occuring substance found in pre-historic plant matter such as peat and coal.
Blk. contains natural electrolytes and 77 trace minerals that regenerate your body's cells faster than regular water while proving a large infusion of antioxidants.
Evidently, blk. is the next Perrier.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Infographic: Science Lovers
Physics or fashion? What science lovers link to most.
Visualization of bit.ly data from 6,000 users.
Source: Scientific American
Overheard: Nature is the 99%
What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems - its atmosphere, oceans and biosphere - goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power and control by that corrupt and greedy 1 per cent we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park? What if the assault on America’s middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?
- Nature is the 99%, too
Monday, November 28, 2011
News: Apple iTunes Flaw
A British company called Gamma International marketed hacking software to governments that exploited the vulnerability via a bogus update to iTunes, Apple’s media player, which is installed on more than 250 million machines worldwide.Via: The Telegraph
The hacking software, FinFisher, is used to spy on intelligence targets’ computers. It is known to be used by British agencies and earlier this year records were discovered in abandoned offices of that showed it had been offered to Egypt’s feared secret police.
Apple was informed about the relevant flaw in iTunes in 2008, according to Brian Krebs, a security writer, but did not patch the software until earlier this month, a delay of more than three years.
Overheard: Congress
Despite the founders’ intentions, however, Congress has evolved from a dependency “upon the people,” to an increasing dependency upon the funders. Members spend 30 percent to 70 percent of their time raising money to stay in Congress, or to get their party back in power. Less than 1 percent of Americans give more than $200 in a political campaign. No more than .05 percent give the maximum in any Congressional campaign. A career focused on the 1 percent — or, worse, the .05 percent — will never earn them the confidence of the 99 percent. Indeed, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, so far it hasn’t earned them the confidence of any more than 9 percent.
- Lawrence Lessig
Overheard: Kindle
The Kindle Fire experience doesn’t feel like you’re connecting to the web - it feels like you’re looking through a keyhole into one little room of the web… or perhaps you’re trapped in a hallway with many doors and many keyholes. Many of the keyholes are blocked. That’s when it hit me… Amazon isn’t giving me access to ‘The Cloud’, they’re giving me access to ‘Their Cloud’. Everything that I purchase from them resides in ‘Their Cloud’. The same is true for Apple. The stuff I buy from Apple ends up in the ‘Apple Cloud’… You can’t see the (public’s) sky because the (vendor’s) clouds are blocking it
News: License Plate Scanners
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the District of Columbia is engaging in widespread tracking of citizen’s movements using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). According to the Post, the D.C. police:
It has now become clear that this technology, if we do not limit its use, will represent a significant step toward the creation of a surveillance society in the United States.
- Are running more than one ALPR per square mile;
- Are planning on sharply increasing the density of these devices until they form a “comprehensive dragnet;”
- Retain the time/date/location/tag number even of innocent people for whom nothing is found to be wrong;
- Store that data in a database for three years.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
News: US malls track shoppers via Cellphones
The US is importing a bit of foreign technology this Black Friday, but it’s probably not the kind you’d like to see more of. Path Intelligence’s FootPath location tracking system is being introduced in two American malls on Friday, with the express purpose of logging detailed location data for each cellphone-equipped shopper that enters the premises. The data collection is anonymous and doesn’t attempt to identify you cellular number or any purchases you make, though it does paint an almost intimately accurate path of the route and time you take as you venture through the mall.Via: The Verge
News: Textbooks Take a Big Leap
Amazon, which got its start selling books online, announced this year that, for the first time, its digital books had outsold paper books. This trend of going digital does not hold true for all books: While many popular consumer books have successfully made the switch into the new format, textbooks are still widely read on paper.Via: The New York Times
Textbooks are gaining, though, as publishers take advantage of the popularity of tablets like the Kindle and iPad, expanding their catalogues and offering products like rental digital books that expire after a semester or two.
The potential for digital growth is leading publishers to experiment with products that stretch the boundaries of traditional textbooks, slowly turning away from static text and images toward a multimedia, intuitive approach, publishers say.
“Textbooks as e-books ought to be seen as a stepping stone to the future,” said Mark Majurey of Taylor & Francis, a textbook publisher in Britain.
Daily Links: November 25, 2011
8 Countries that Celebrate a Day of Thanks
15 Songs You Always Knew, But Never Knew The Names Of. I am almost ashamed to admit that I knew almost all of them by name.
A Cherry Pie, an Apple Pie and a Pumpkin Pie, Each Cooked Inside a Separate Cake, and Then All Cooked Together inside Another Cake.
The Food Lab's Complete Guide to a Stress-Free Thanksgiving. Of course, the most stress-free Thanksgiving is one where you don't cook!
Great Food Ideas For A Fantasy and Sci-Fi Themed Thanksgiving. Just in case you'd rather have fun with friends than eat turkey and watch football.
Jell-O Turkeyfest - the turkey-shaped Jell-O mold annual competition. David Byrne is a returning participant. (Past winners/entries: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, and where it all began: 2005.)
This Declassified USSR Bunker gives visitors a glimpse into life during the Cold War.
Top 10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving Eve Is the Best Bar Night of the Year. This is especially true for college students.
Why Thanksgiving is the Best Holiday of the Year.
News:
- High school student Emma Sullivan posted a tweet disparaging Kansas Governor Sam Brownback while on a field trip to the State Capitol. Brownback's staff called Sullivan's principal and complained. This has not resulted in postive PR for Brownback.
News: November DDoS Attack
Information technology and services company Prolexic says it recently helped mitigate the largest DDoS attack of 2011 thus far, seeing bandwidth peaks as high as 45Gbps during the week-long ordeal. Stretching from November 5th through the 12th, the attack saw an Asia-based e-commerce company hit with packet volumes three times that of any event this year — 69 million packets per second at its worst — with the globally-coordinated incident using traffic primarily originating from China. While sabotage by competitors or frustrated employees are possible motives, Prolexic cites particular concern for online retailers during the coming holiday season. The company has seen e-commerce transactions specifically targeted, sometimes even with state approval, due to the lack of taxes collected from online purchases.Via: The Verge
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Tech Links: November 22, 2011
Computers are good at storage and speed, but brains maintain the efficiency lead
The 21 gram keychain computer
"The tiny PC enables what its inventor calls 'Any Screen Computing,' the ability to turn any TV, laptop, phone, tablet, or set-top box into a dumb terminal for its Android operating system." Similar prototype from another inventor. Other than biological hardware (an actual implanted thumbdrive), this seems like the most portable computing possible. But are these devices too late to the party? After all, the concept relies on generic input and output devices becoming as ubiquitous and available as...well, mobile phones. Which, as phones come to feature HDMI-out, as well as USB keyboard input, are pretty much this. But not all content creators are on board.
Breakthrough chip mimics human brain function
The day that computers outsmart their human overlords may yet lie in the distant future, but a new computer chip that mimics the basis of learning and memory in the brain is a critical step towards that moment.
Facebook Enters The Phone Wars
They are reportedly working on a phone in cooperation with HTC that has true social media integration and will probably run a customized version of Android - much like the Kindle Fire.
Google Music v iTunes Match v Amazon Cloud Player.
Google has officially launched its (U.S. only) "Google Music" service, which aims to do for the Android market what iTunes and the recently unveiled (U.S. only) iTunes Match service does for Apple. All three services allow you to upload thousands of songs to the "Cloud". This music store showdown could revolutionise the way people collect, store and listen to music - or not.
Hublot painstakingly recreates a mysterious, 2,100-year-old clockwork relic - but why?
Misconceptions in AI: Or why Watson can’t talk to Siri
"So Watson can’t take dictation, and Siri can’t play Jeopardy. Understanding why shows how far we have to go when it comes to true artificial intelligence and those fears of the robots taking over."
Occupy Flash
The movement to rid the world of the Flash Player plugin
Stanford has announced new online courses for January 2012. Like the three courses currently running (1,2,3), these courses are free, open to the general public, and have no required textbook: CS 101, Cryptography, Design & Analysis of Algorithms I, Game Theory, Human-Computer Interaction, The Lean Launchpad, Natural Language Processing, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Software Engineering for Software as a Service, Technology Entrepreneurship
Stop Internet Piracy Act Has Huge Online Backlash
The act, which is designed to curb foreign policy but would cripple the Internet as we know it, is being officially protested by AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga - and also protested by a huge grassroots movement, which may be turning the tide of the bill in Congress
Wolfram Alpha launches the coolest flight tracker ever
Have you ever wanted to know where the planes flying overhead were going? If so, you finally have a way to find out.
Daily Links: November 22, 2011
Chef Sanjay Thumma (vahrehvah.com) wants to teach you how to make pretty much any Indian dish you can think of at home. Great stuff if you're adventurous with a high threshold for curry.
The Surveillance Catalog: Where Governments Get Their Spying Tools The Wall Street Journal has obtained a "trove" of documents from the secretive retail market in surveillance technology sold to world governments, and has created a searchable database for your enjoyment. "Among the most controversial technologies on display at the conference were essentially computer-hacking tools to enable government agents to break into people's computers and cellphones, log their keystrokes and access their data..." E.g., FinFisher installs malware by sending fake software updates for Blackberry and other devices; VUPEN's Exploits for Law Enforcement Agencies "aim to deliver exclusive exploit codes for undisclosed vulnerabilities" in software from Microsoft, Apple and others.
What Randall Munroe did for Radiation, he does again for Money. (Money: A chart of almost all of it, where it is, and what it can do.)
News:
- "Of course water hydrates." or does it? EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration. Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration. And hysteria over the EU's ruling on water and dehydration ensues. You can read the EU's ruling here (PDF). Highland Spring vows to defy EU rule on water labelling.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Factoid: Lichtenberg Figures
Lichtenberg figures may also appear on the skin of lightning strike victims. These are reddish, fernlike patterns that may persist for hours or days. They are also a useful indicator for medical examiners when determining the cause of death. Lichtenberg figures appearing on people are sometimes called lightning flowers, and they are thought to be caused by the rupture of small capillaries under the skin due to the passage of the lightning current or the shock wave from the lightning discharge as it flashes over the skin. A lightning strike can also create a large Lichtenberg Figure in grass surrounding the point struck. These are sometimes found on golf courses or in grassy meadows. Fulgurites may also be created as sand and soil is fused into glassy tubes by the intense heat of the current.
Architecture: Forest in the Sky
Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) is a project for metropolitan reforestation in Milan, Italy that contributes to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity without the implication of expanding the city upon the territory. Bosco Verticale is a model of vertical densification of nature within the city. It is a model that operates correlated to the policies for reforestation and naturalization of the large urban and metropolitan borders (Metrosbosco). Metrobosco and Bosco Verticale are devices for the environmental survival of contemporary European cities. Together they create two modes of building links between nature and city within the territory and within the cities of contemporary Europe.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Daily Links: November 18, 2011
5 Amazing Homemade Roller Coasters
7 Tragic Magician Deaths: To "die" on stage is the fullest expression of failure; but to "kill" during a performance is the highest achievement. The history of magic reveals many instances wherein the figurative becomes the literal. The history of magic is littered with stories of death and murder.
If We Only Had Wings explores the long-held dream of personal flight, from da Vinci's gliders to the Swiss Jetman to the in-development NASA Puffin (man, do I want a Puffin). Since the article is from National Geographic, there is also a great photo gallery.
National Geographic's picks for the Seven Wonders of Nature.
Unusual Thanksgiving Celebrations from around the U.S. I love the snazzy hats in the first slide.
News:
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Quick Pic: Clouds of Carina
The Cool Clouds of Carina
Observations made with the APEX telescope in submillimetre-wavelength light at a wavelength of 870 µm reveal the cold dusty clouds from which stars form in the Carina Nebula. This site of violent star formation, which plays host to some of the highest-mass stars in our galaxy, is an ideal arena in which to study the interactions between these young stars and their parent molecular clouds.
At this wavelength, most of the light seen is the weak heat glow from cosmic dust grains. The image therefore reveals the clouds of dust and molecular gas — mostly hydrogen — from which stars may form. At -250°C, the dust grains are very cold, and the faint glow emanating from them can only be seen at submillimetre wavelengths, significantly longer than those of visible light.
The APEX LABOCA observations are shown here in orange tones, combined with a visible light image from the Curtis Schmidt telescope. The result is a dramatic, wide-field picture that provides a spectacular view of Carina’s star formation sites. The nebula contains stars with a total mass equivalent to over 25,000 Suns, while the mass of the gas and dust clouds is that of about 140,000 Suns.
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