"Production line built from Legos makes Lego cars". Ok, I'm scared now. (Via Jim May.)

Robotic vacuums get smarter.

Luxury camping. (Via BBspot.)

"The software awards scam":

I put out a new product a couple of weeks ago. This new product has so far won 16 different awards and recommendations from software download sites. Some of them even emailed me messages of encouragement such as "Great job, we’re really impressed!". I should be delighted at this recognition of the quality of my software, except that the 'software' doesn't even run. This is hardly surprising when you consider that it is just a text file with the words "this program does nothing at all" repeated a few times and then renamed as an .exe.

...Even the name of the software, “awardmestars”, was a bit of a giveaway. And yet it still won 16 'awards'.

...The obvious explanation is that some download sites give an award to every piece of software submitted to them. In return they hope that the author will display the award with a link back to them. The back link then potentially increases traffic to their site directly (through clicks on the award link) and indirectly (through improved page rank from the incoming links). The author gets some awards to impress their potential clients and the download site gets additional traffic.

This practise is blatantly misleading and dishonest. It makes no distinction between high quality software and any old rubbish that someone was prepared to submit to a download site. The download sites that practise this deceit should be ashamed of themselves. Similarly, any author or company, that displays one of these ‘awards’ is either being naive (at best) or knowingly colluding in the scam (at worst).

Both funny and alarming. (Via BBspot.)

An archaeology student has found the world's oldest chewing gum -- 5000 years old.

"Your Virtual PhD": Nice roundup of online learning resources at the graduate level, with a heavy emphasis towards science and technology. Includes information on the MIT OpenCourseWare and Harvard Extension School. (Via Instapundit.)

"In developing robots to work alongside humans, scientists find even crude facsimiles of human behavior help people accept mechanical colleagues".

"iPhone hacking for the rest of us". Full details here.

Chips with "mesh architecture".

"Robot wars are a reality". (Via Gravity Lens.)

"Why Did Google Answers Shut Down?" (Via Waxy.)

"Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years".

Some questions about the recently reported speed-of-light "violations".

"Is strength of will in fighting illness a factor in whether you live or die?"

I have no idea if Star Trek: New Voyages will suck or not. (Via Michael Williams.)

Reinventing the ladder.

"How to blow out a candle from the other side of the world."

How to unlock police-style plastic handcuffs. (Via Bruce Schneier.)

Have scientists really broken the speed of light?

...[T]wo German physicists claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the strange phenomenon of quantum tunnelling, in which particles summon up the energy to cross an apparently uncrossable barrier.

Their experiments focused on the travel of microwave photons -- energetic packets of light -- through two prisms.

When the prisms were moved apart, most photons reflected off the first prism they encountered and were picked up by a detector.

But a few appeared to "tunnel" through a gap separating them as if the prisms were still held together.

Although these photons had travelled a longer distance, they arrived at their detector at the same time as the reflected photons. This suggests that the transit between the two prisms was faster than the speed of light.

Dr Gunter Nimtz, of the University of Koblenz, told the magazine New Scientist: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."

More on why Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrum thinks we may be living in a Matrix-like simulation. (Via Gravity Lens.)

Admin note: Posting will be light and/or irregular for the next week due to external obligations.

"Space Hotel Expects 2012 Opening":

"Galactic Suite," the first hotel planned in space, expects to open for business in 2012 and would allow guests to travel around the world in 80 minutes.

Its Barcelona-based architects say the space hotel will be the most expensive in the galaxy, costing $4 million for a three-day stay.

..."It's the bathrooms in zero gravity that are the biggest challenge," says [company director Xavier] Claramunt. "How to accommodate the more intimate activities of the guests is not easy."

But they may have solved the issue of how to take a shower in weightlessness -- the guests will enter a spa room in which bubbles of water will float around.

(Via Engadget.)

"How to become a mad scientist for DARPA".

"101 Frightening Ice Cream Flavors From Around The World". (Via BBspot.)

Financial markets and Second Life.

Never type "http://www" or ".com" again.

Video of the day: "Jeep® Waterfall". Very slick visual effect. (Via Found on the Web.)

Invention of the day: "The Incapacitating Flashlight, An LED flashlight makes culprits vomit."

Detailed analysis of the red-shirt phenomenon. (Via Cynical-C.)

"Can You Survive in Space Without a Spacesuit?" (Via Cosmic Log.)

"Pencil removed from woman's head 55 years after accident". Of course it includes a dramatic picture from a CT scan of her head. (Via Boing Boing.)

"Bacteria revived after 8 million years in the freezer".

Science fiction on Mars:

A glass CD loaded with literary, visual and audio science fiction works about the red planet was strapped to NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. said Friday. Called the "Visions of Mars" library, the 3.2-inch (8-centimeter) disk also contains more than 250,000 names of the organization's members and space exploration enthusiasts.

...The CD contains 161 novels and stories, 63 pieces of artwork and four radio broadcasts related to Mars, totaling 1.43 gigabytes of data.

Inlcluded in the works are H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" and even Thomas Disch's "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars."

Kim Stanley Robinson, a popular science fiction writer, said he is thrilled to have his short novella "Green Mars" included on the CD.

"The idea that I'm part of the first library on Mars ... is really a fulfilling moment," Robinson said.

(Via Gravity Lens.)

Update on levitation technology.

"The World's Most Advanced Bionic Arm"

"How to take Someone's Wallet, Just By Asking".

Blogger "Cynical-C" notes:

After watching the clip above, I did some research on what exactly was happening and found out this entry on Milton H. Erickson and the Handshake Induction:

Confusion is the basis of Erickson's famous hypnotic handshake. Many actions are learned and operate as a single "chunk" of behavior: shaking hands and tying shoelaces being two classic examples. If the behavior is diverted or frozen midway, the person literally has no mental space for this -- he is stopped in the middle of unconsciously executing a behavior that hasn't got a "middle". The mind responds by suspending itself in trance until either something happens to give a new direction, or it "snaps out". A skilled hypnotist can often use that momentary confusion and suspension of normal processes to induce trance quickly and easily.

"Can spiders sucked into a vacuum survive?"

"The Netflix Prize: 300 Days Later". One entertaining tidbit:

As soon as you start looking at the data set it becomes obvious why it is so difficult to get good results. Databases don't have the linear algebra and other mathematical tools for taking a run at the prize but they are convenient for exploring data sets, so I loaded the data into a SQL Anywhere database (The developer edition is a free download, and I'll provide a perl script to load the data if you really want it) and started poking around. Here are a few of the more obvious oddities (all these observations have been posted elsewhere - see the Netflix prize forum for more):

* Customer 2170930 has rated 1963 titles and given each and every one a rating of one (very bad). You would think they would have cancelled their subscription by now.

* Five customers have rated over 10,000 of the 17,770 titles selected - and presumably they also have rated some of the others among the 60,000 or so titles Netflix had available when they released the ratings. Are these real people?

* Customer 305344 had rated 17654 titles. Even though Netflix make it easy to rate titles that you have not rented from them (so they can get a handle on your preferences) can this be real?

* Customer 1664010 rated 5446 titles in a single day (October 12, 2005).

* Customer 2270619 has rated 1975 titles. 1931 were given a 5, 31 were given a 4, 10 given a 3, 2 given a 2 (Grumpy Old Men and Sex In Chains) and a single title was given a 1. That title? Gandhi, which has an average rating of over 4 and which less than 2% of those who watch it give a 1.

* The most often rated movie? Miss Congeniality with ratings by over 232,000 of the 480,000 customers. And which title is most similar to it in terms of ratings (using a slightly weighted Pearson formula)? Bloodfist 5: Human Target.

* Most highly rated - Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Extended Edition), with 4.7.

There's lots more worthwhile analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of recommender systems in general in the post. (Via Marginal Revolution.)

"When Cell Phones Fail":

This week's tragic collapse of the Interstate 35W Bridge in Minneapolis triggered another collapse of sorts: a jam-up of the cellular phone networks in the area. Bystanders and survivors tried to phone loved ones, only to find that they couldn't put the call through. So what's the solution? Two words: text messaging.

...Cell-phone networks are set up in such a way that text messages can piggyback on the streams of voice data traffic bouncing around the system. The digital messages, which amount to mere dozens or hundreds of bytes, can be slipped into the gaps in that stream.

"They're able to sneak through there, even when you and I are having a conversation," [Minneapolis Verizon spokeswoman Karen] Smith explained.

So if you don't know how to use the text-messaging feature on your phone, now is a good time to learn. "Get one of your nieces or nephews to teach you how to do it," Smith joked, "or stop by a Verizon store and ask them to show you."

Silicon Valley millionaires who don't feel rich.

(I don't usually link to NY Times articles because they require registration, but I thought this was sufficiently interesting to be worth passing along. It explores the lifestyle and psychologies of the "single digit millionaires", i.e., those worth < $10 million. Of course, to the extent that the cost of living is higher in the SF Bay area as opposed to, say, Kansas City, their concerns have some merit. To the extent that they are driven by a desire to "keep up with the Jones", then their problems are psychological. It does show that the key to happiness isn't necessarily more money but rather having an appropriately thought-out set of priorities, goals, and expectations, aka a proper "hierarchy of values".)

"Climate models may never produce predictions that agree with one another even with dramatic improvements in their ability to imitate the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans."

(Which gives rise to the natural question -- should major public policy decisions be based on these models that cannot be proven to be valid?)

Both Diana and I have been spending too much time on StumbleUpon.

Armed robots are being deployed in Iraq.

"Does massage work by getting rid of toxins?"

The architecture underneath the hood of YouTube.

A pessimistic view of the war against spam. (Via ALDaily.)

Beer in space. One excerpt:

Graduate student Kirsten Sterrett at the University of Colorado in the US wrote a thesis on fermentation in space, with support from US beer behemoth Coors. She sent a miniature brewing kit into orbit aboard a space shuttle several years ago and produced a few sips of beer. She later sampled the space brew, but because of chemicals in and near it from her analysis, it didn't taste great by the time she tried it.

Beyond the challenge of producing beer in space is the problem of serving it, says Jonathan Clark, a former flight surgeon and now the space medicine liaison for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston, Texas, US.

Without gravity, bubbles don't rise, so "obviously the foam isn't going to come to a head", Clark told New Scientist.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Guitarist Brian May of the rock band Queen used to study astrophysics before he became an international rock star. Now at age 60, he will be completing his Ph.D. in astrophysics. His dissertation topic will be, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" for the Imperial College of London. (Via Marginal Revolution.)

LISP cycles.

"10 Reasons It Doesn't Pay To Be 'The Computer Guy'"

10 things your IT department doesn't want you to do, and how to do them anyways. (Via Diana.)

"How does a human calculator do it?" (Via Cosmic Log.)

Humans can't detect cellphone tower emissions:

Roughly 4% of Britons claim to be affected by radio waves from sources such as telephone transmitters and other electrical equipment.

...When told that the transmitter was switched on for 50 minutes, 'sensitive' individuals reported higher anxiety, discomfort and tension. But when asked to tell whether the transmitter was on or off, only two of the 44 'sensitive' volunteers were correct six times out of six. Five of the controls were equally successful.

And the severity of symptoms reported by the volunteers, as well as their heart rate and levels of sweating, did not depend on whether the transmitter was switched on or off, the researchers report...

...The results suggest that the many health problems attributed to mobile phone transmitters -- including nausea, headache and flu-like symptoms -- are probably caused by something else, says Elaine Fox, a psychologist at the University of Essex in Colchester, who led the research. She suggests that the problems may well be psychological.

This is a nice bit of science.

Sharks are repelled by geeky rare earth magnets.

Gillette is giving away a free trip to outer space. (Via Gravity Lens.)

Update: Jim May points out that the contest may be only open to Canadians. Bummer!

"The Top Ten science moments in The Simpsons". (Via Cynical-C.)

"In Japan, even sex goes high-tech"

"How I Envisioned My Adult Work Week When I Was 6 Years Old"

Update on 3D-TV.

"Earthquake Sets Japan Back To 2147":

TOKYO—Japanese government officials confirmed Monday that the damage wrought on Japan's national infrastructure by the July 16th earthquake—particularly on the country's protective force field, quantum teleportation system, zero-point fusion energy broadcasting grid, and psychodynamic communications network—was severe enough to set the technologically advanced island nation back approximately 300 years to a primitive mid-22nd-century state of existence.

"Japan finds itself in crisis, with our society and culture temporarily reverting to a pre-cyberunification era," said Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, communicating non-telekinetically for the first time in his nearly 150 years of post-cryogenic life. "Though many citizens have been limited to algorithm-based emotion detection, neutron baths, speed limits below the speed of light, and other barbaric inconveniences for over a week now, I promise we will pull through."

(Via The Onion, of course.)

Humans are only barely better at poker than machines.

There are 12 kinds of effective ads. Learn how to resist them.

Orson Scott Card on cognitive bias and global warming.

"Profiting from mortality": Death Bonds.

Ultrastrong paper made from graphene.

Detailed update on MRI lie detection. (Via Bruce Schneier.)

My friend Francisco Gutierrez is blogging again.

Excellent camera illusion.

Admin note: Posting may be light or non-existent for the next couple of days, as I'll be reading the new Harry Potter book.

Statetris is Tetris with US states.

"Psychology, design and economics of slot-machines". (Via Boing Boing.)

God's Inbox. (Apparently God uses a Mac...)

How AT&T has broken up and come back together. (Via Neatorama.)

Bouncing cooking oil.

"Famous Poems Rewritten As Limericks." (Via GMSV.)

Laws of software development. (Via Found On The Web.)

Wireless power transfer: A nice overview.

"10 things i hate about star trek". My favorite:

5. Rule by committee. Here's the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last year:

Star Trek:

Picard: "Arm photon torpedoes!"
Riker: "Captain! Are you sure that's wise?"
Troi: "Captain! I'm picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it appears that you're a 'fraidy cat."
Wesley: "Captain, I'm just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say something."
Worf: "Captain, can I push the button? This is giving me a big Klingon warrior chubby."
Giordi: "Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first."
Picard: "I'm so confused. I'm going to go to my stateroom and look pensive."


Firefly:

Captain: "Let's shoot them."
Crewman: "Are you sure that's wise?"
Captain: "Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I'll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize who's in command."
Crewman: "Aye Aye, sir!"

(Via Clicked.)

"Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead":

Just ask a group of teen Internet entrepreneurs, who readily admit that traditional e-mail is better suited for keeping up professional relationships or communicating with adults.

"I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors," Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.

"Sometimes I say I e-mailed you, but I mean I Myspace'd or Facebook'ed you," she said.

(Via /.)

A marketplace for information on security breaches?

The world's tiniest PC's.

Computers are now unbeatable at checkers.

"Debris spots found on stars reveal planets that went splat like bugs on a windshield." (Via SciTechDaily.)

"101 Ways To Know Your Software Project Is Doomed". (Via GMSV.)

Ultracold physics.

MIT scientists design new sleek, skintight spacesuit. (Via Gravity Lens.)

"People playing chess on roller coasters." Real life pictures inspired by this comic. (Via Boing Boing.)

"How Top Bloggers Earn Money". (Via MeFi.)

Before the 2007 iPhone, there was the 1983 Apple phone.

"Did Ron Howard exaggerate the drama of the reentry scene in the movie Apollo 13?"

The answer: A little bit, but not much. Flight director Gene Kranz (played in the movie by Ed Harris) explains:

The final ordeal of the flight was a radio silence, or blackout, caused by ionized air surrounding the command module during its superheated reentry through the atmosphere. With no radio signal, there was "no way to tell" how the crew and ship were faring, Kranz says. "There was no telemetry from Odyssey until the end of blackout," he recalls. "Take a look at the picture of the flight directors during blackout.... There was some distress, but nothing we could do about it." To make matters worse, the blackout went on longer than usual because the reentry path for Apollo 13 was longer and shallower than normal. "Per my mission log it started at 142:39 and ended at 142:45 -- a total of six minutes," Kranz relates. "Blackout was 1:27 longer than predicted... Toughest minute and a half we ever had."

Crocs: A cultural and aesthetic history.

The future of Google search technology.

How dangerous is it to be gored by a bull?

"How Useful Are You? Take This Technology Quiz"

There is a Twilight Zone episode where a businessman makes a pact with the Devil, which allows him to go back in time so that he can capitalize off of his knowledge about the future. It turns out though that the businessman's knowledge about the future is all superficial and thus he is unable to jump start any technological advancements by traveling back in time. This would likely be the plight of most contemporary humans if they were sent back in time. While we rely greatly on technology, most of us don't know much about how it actually works and where the materials to make it come from.

If you were to travel 2000 years into the past, how useful would you be in jumpstarting technological advancements? This 10 question quiz will help you figure out your technological usefulness. If you do poorly on the quiz, as most people likely will, then just let that inspire you to study up more on how things work and where raw materials come from.

I scored 10/10, but had two lucky guesses. (Via BBspot.)

"Five Ideas That Will Reinvent Modern Computing".

"Why can an opera singer be heard over the much louder orchestra?"

New mathematical discovery about the properties of the Moebius strip:

[Mathematician Eugene] Starostin and his colleague Gert van der Heijden, both of University College London, have solved a conundrum that has perplexed mathematicians for more than 75 years -- how to predict what three-dimensional form a Möbius strip will take.

The strip is made from what mathematicians call a 'developable' surface, which means it can be flattened without deforming its shape -- unlike, say, a sphere.

When a developable surface is formed into a Möbius strip, it tries to return to a state of minimum stored elastic energy, like an elastic band springing back after being stretched.

But no one has been able to model what this final form will be. "The first papers looking at this problem were published in 1930," says Starostin. "It seems such a simple question -- children can make these things -- but ask the experts how to model this shape and we've had nothing."

People are reverse "upgrading" from Vista back to Windows XP.

What it's like to have "face-blindness", aka prosopagnosia. (Via Neatorama.)

"Nine Brain Quirks You Didn't Realize You Had"