June 30, 2009
As yesterday was urban-withdrawal-day, these sobering stats were from Patrick Cockburn’s latest piece at The Independent:
Countdown to withdrawal: The Iraq war in numbers
170,000 The number of US troops in Iraq at the peak of the invasion in 2003
135,000 The number of American service personnel in Iraq on 1 June 2009
4,303 The number of US military deaths
2,200 The number of Iraqi doctors and nurses killed during the conflict
92,438 The minimum number of documented deaths of Iraqi civilians
80,000 The number of mobile phones owned by Iraqis before the war, compared with the estimated 17.7 million handsets owned by the population now
500,000 The number of Iraqis who were living abroad before the invasion, compared with the estimated 2 million expats who are living overseas now
138 The number of journalists killed
2.41 million Current oil production at Iraq’s oilfield, down from 2.58 million before the war
$674bn The estimated cost of the war in Iraq, equivalent to £407bn
- Uranium found on the Moon (Bad Astronomy)
- White spaces on steroids and free spectrum for everyone (ArsTechnica)
- No more beta: Skype 3.0 for Windows phones (CNet)
- Mozilla’s Weave: (Too far) Ahead of its time (CNet)
- New solar airplane unveiled in Switzerland (CNet)
- Expelled redux (Pharyngula)
- Vitamin D and Fish Oil – Time to Put Up or Shut Up (Singularity Hub)
- MIT’s EurekaFest showcases high school students” problem-solving prototypes (CrunchGear)
- “Tourist Remover” cleans up your vacation photos (BoingBoing Gadgets)
- Intel, Micron, Samsung start NAND scaling race (EE Times)
- TSMC adds analog to 0.13-micron process (EE Times)
- The Houston Dome (Discovery Channel :: How Stuff Works)
- Interview with Eric Lerner on Plasma Physics (Next Big Future)
June 29, 2009
Three days of rain here on the plains of central China.
- Space Suits Past and Future (Air & Space Magazine)
- Thumb-Size Bat Found in Lava Tunnel (National Geographic)
- Underweight, Extremely Obese Die Earlier Than People Of Normal Weight (ScienceDaily)
- Carbon Ring Storage Could Make Magnetic Memory 1,000 Times More Dense (Technology Review)
- ZigBee Alliances developing Green Power standards for energy harvesting devices (Engadget)
- Mini OLED projector prototype for mobile phones (Gizmag)
- Toyota technology has brain waves move wheelchair (AP)
- Light touch: a design firm grapples with Microsoft Surface (ArsTechnica)
- Innovation: Physics brings realism to virtual reality (NewScientist)
- Africa alone could feed the world (NewScientist)
- Solar X-rays may create DNA building blocks on Titan (NewScientist)
- Telecom firms back standard phone charger in Europe (Reuters)
- Spirit Rover Begins Making Night Sky Observations (Universe Today)
- Iranian protesters avoid censorship with Navy technology (Washington Times)
- Five Google Voice Features That Could Cause Users To Hang Up On Skype (SAI)
- Ch-ch-ch-changes: A visual history of Firefox (CNet)
- Google move paves way for Firefox on Android (CNet)
- Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia (NY Times)
- First quantum processor created (TG Daily)
- Acer’s Everywhere. How Did That Happen? (NY Times)
- Feathered fuel tank soaks up hydrogen (Oregon Live)
- Recent scenes from the ISS (The Big Picture)
June 28, 2009
- Michael Jackson: secret library of 100 songs could be released (Times Online)
- Tehran dispatch: The regime shows us movies (Salon)
- A Quixotic Pursuit: Tilting at Green Windmills (Washington Post)
- English-education city opens in S. Korea (CNN)
- Recovery In China? Not So Fast (Forbes)
- China Coal City’s Tycoons Splurge on Antiques as Dealers Swoop (Bloomberg)
- Student hoax wins magazine’s top prize (Independent)
- Where is the Arthur Seldon for our own era? (Spectator)
- Volcker Gets Less Than He Wants in Curbing Excesses (Bloomberg)
- A survey on ageing populations: China’s predicament (The Economist)
- The consumer paradox in China (Globe and Mail)
- Defining Bullshit (Slate in 2005)
- Teaching Philosophy 101 at the Lunenburg Correctional Center (Chronicle)
- Half of all premature deaths of Russian adults down to alcohol (PhysOrg)
- The only bonus you’ll get this summer is the sun (Japan Times)
- My trip to Neverland, and the call from Michael Jackson I’ll never forget (Telegraph)
- One Lesson From the Crisis: It’s Time to Create Your Own Economy (Fast Company)
Wiki entries: Peter Arnett :: Bến Tre :: Gamelan
- ‘Synthetic tree’ claims to catch carbon in the air (CNN)
- CNano Technology announces 500 Ton per year Multiwall Carbon Nanotube Factory (Next Big Future)
- A Glimpse of the Future MEMS-based Storage: Totally Green & Thumbnail Size (PhysOrg)
- INL team helps pave way to Generation IV reactor (Idaho National Laboratory)
- The New Nuclear Revolution (WSJ)
- Climbing the ladder to longevity: critical enzyme pair identified (Salk Institute)
- Development of microfluidics as endothelial progenitor cell capture technology for cardiovascular tissue engineering and diagnostic medicine (FASEB)
- BELLA: Accelerating Science by Accelerating Electrons (Berkeley Lab)
- Edelweiss PC casemod goes above and beyond insanity (Engadget)
- God and Science Don’t Mix (WSJ)
- A Ham Radio Weekend for Talking to the Moon (NY Times)
- America’s Fortress: Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD live on (CNet)
- Ulysses space mission to end (PhysOrg)
- DARPA wants a super-efficient supercomputer that can fit into a 19-inch cabinet, thanks (Layer 8)
- Natural History Magazine’s Picks From the Past (BoingBoing)
- Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out (Wired)
- Paul Romer on Technology and History (Infectious Greed)
- The pros and “conns” of Intel’s ConnMan for Linux (ArsTechnica)
If you really were quoted properly in the recent “Facebook versus Google” piece on Wired, you are in for a rude awakening.
Not that you don’t know this but Facebook is a closed garden. Its silo-status is the biggest obstacle preventing all of its smart users from writing and publishing interesting content on there.
I don’t care how thorough and fast the new Facebook search function is or becomes, because all real content is published on the real internet. No offense to any of my friends that use facebook to post notes or tweets, but if I want to find out about the latest scientific news surrounding oxytocin or what The Standard Model is, I will consult a real search engine connected to the real internet.
And let’s not forget the fact that content creators are not rewarded monetarily (e.g., if you post a note or picture on Facebook, you do not get a slice of the advertising pie, whereas with real search engines, you can opt into their text-ad networks)… so why would I want to ever post anything remotely original/interesting on a site I do not control and have no financial stake in?
When these incentives are put into place, then it may be a better time to talk about slaying Google & Co.
June 27, 2009
- Smartphones Get Killer App (BNet)
- Domain-Name Wars, Rise of the Cybersquatters (Slashdot)
- How to beat belly bloat (Chicago Tribune)
- Sega-licensed “Retro Gen” might have you hunting for cartridges (Engadget)
- Veterinary Stem Cells: Why Your Dog Is Getting Better Treatment Than You (Singularity Hub)
- Stem Cells Used to Grow Hearts: Cool Pics and Vid (Singularity Hub)
- Artificial Life on the Horizon (Singularity Hub)
- Five enablers for future chip scaling (EE Times)
- Sematech addresses EUV inspection gap (EE Times)
- Robust growth predicted for 193-nm resist (EE Times)
- Grains of Sand Reveal Possible Fifth State of Matter (Wired)
- World’s Oldest Functioning Planetarium (BoingBoing)
- Plug and Play: Researchers Expand Clinical Study of Neural Interface Brain Implant (Scientific American)
- The Pyramid of North Dakota (BoingBoing)
- Behind the scenes: How Tetris blocks are made (OffWorld)
- Reporters find Northrop Grumman data in Ghana market (IT World)
- Japanese Car Tree (Japan Probe)
- The Last Inka Suspension Bridge (Source)
- Michael Jackson’s patented “Smooth Criminal” leaning shoes (BoingBoing Gadgets)
- Sarychev Peak Eruption, Kuril Islands (Earth Observatory)
- The truth about game physics (Guardian pt. 1 2 3 4 5)
- World’s Firsts (Oddee) :: camera, mp3 player, motorcycle
June 26, 2009
- Privacy Requires Security, Not Abstinence (Technology Review)
- Waterproof Lithium-Air Batteries (Technology Review)
- Invisibility cloak could hide buildings from quakes (NewScientist)
- Teenage ‘baby’ may lack master ageing gene (NewScientist) :: the opposite of Benjamin Button
- Gallery: Domestic robots with a taste for flesh (NewScientist)
- Stem cell surprise for tissue regeneration (PhysOrg)
- US Copyright Law, King Lear, and Jammie Thomas-Rasset (GrokLaw)
- Do China And India Really Want Stronger Intellectual Property? (TechDirt)
- Army ordered to split Future Combat System (EE Times)
- Analysis: Can proprietary wireless HD survive? (EE Times)
- Exec: Memory business model is broken (EE Times)
- Orange’s Solar Concept Tent has lots of revolutionary, imaginary features (Engadget)
- Motorola Endeavor HX1 ears-on (Engadget Mobile)
- Why apples, avocados and a glass of red wine could ease your arthritis (Daily Mail)
- New chips don’t deliver, Facebook says (IT World)
June 25, 2009
- Water-cooled Aquasar supercomputer does math, heats dorm rooms (Engadget)
- Thinergy Micro Energy Cells – the worlds most powerful micro battery (Red Ferret)
- SanDisk’s 32GB class 10 SDHC card competes for world’s fastest (Engadget)
- The Worst U.S. Cities to Work in IT (CIO)
- Nazis And Hortens And Stealth, Oh My! (Aviation Week)
- NASA criticised for sticking to imperial units (NewScientist)
- Cows that burp less methane to be bred (Telegraph)
- 15 Year Old Invents Algae-Powered Energy System (Inhabitat)
- Deep in Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears (NY Times)
- Want to get something done – talk to people in their right ear (Telegraph)
- IBM researcher solves longstanding cryptographic challenge (Net Security)
- New Drug Kills Cancer with Few Side Effects (Technology Review)
- A Pound of Cure: IT health care spending (Technology Review)
- Interview: CEO of space-based energy company (Next100)
- Intel China fab to use 65nm process, produce notebook chips (ArsTechnica)
