How Much Should I F-ing Tip?

"How much should I tip?"

There's also an uncensored version.  (Via Custard Tank.)

Which Countries E-mail Each Other, And Why

"An incredible map of which countries e-mail each other, and why"

China's Internet Censors

How China's internet censors work. And what they choose to censor.

How Fast is Spooky Action At A Distance?

"Chinese Physicists Measure Speed of 'Spooky Action At a Distance'".

Short answer: "[M]ore than four orders of magnitude faster than light".

Lego Stephen Hawking Kit

"Lego Stephen Hawking kit". No, really.
.

Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Found Using Internet Data

NYT: "Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Found Using Internet Data". 

From the article:

Using data drawn from queries entered into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University have for the first time been able to detect evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects before they were found by the Food and Drug Administration's warning system...

Titanium Escape Ring

The Gadgeteer reviews the Titanium Escape Ring.

Light Posting

Admin note: Posting may be lighter than usual for the rest of this week and next week due to external obligations.

Graphene Micro-supercapacitors

"UCLA researchers develop new technique to scale up production of graphene micro-supercapacitors". (Via Doug K.)

Micro 3-D Printing

"Micro 3-D Printer Creates Tiny Structures in Seconds"

Tank Hobbyists

Fun WSJ article on the subculture of legal tank hobbyists in the US.

From the article:

A tank in the U.S. can have operational guns, if the owner has a federal Destructive Device permit, and state laws don't prohibit it. The permit costs $200, and the applicant must swear he hasn't been a "fugitive from justice," "adjudicated mentally defective" or convicted of "a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence." A local law-enforcement official, usually a sheriff or police chief, has to sign off on the application...

Earlier this month, Mr. Bauer, the Texas banker, took his Chaffee out for a spin in his warehouse parking lot. He had rigged the .50-caliber machine gun on the turret with a propane system that generates the noise and muzzle flash of gunfire, without the bullets. He fired off several bursts.

Minutes later, two Port Lavaca police cruisers pulled up. The first officer rolled down the window and asked dryly: "You know why we're here, right?"

Mr. Bauer assured him that no actual rounds had been fired. Still, the officer said, "we had multiple calls—people get scared."

The second policeman, Jeremy Marshall, got out of his car and eyeballed Mr. Bauer's tank. "Awesome," he said.

What Will Replace the Touchscreen?

"Here Comes the Parade of Computing Interfaces That Want to Replace the Touchscreen"

Stuxnet Update

StrategyPage: "Stuxnet Never Ceases To Amaze"

Remote Proctoring Online Tests

As online education proliferates, so do issues of preventing cheating with online test proctoring. This will be a new growth industry.

Surveillance Stories: DHS, Police, OB/GYN

Three stories that caught my eye yesterday:

Department of Homeland Security built domestic surveillance tech into Predator drones, including ability to detect if a civilian is armed.

Declan McCullagh also asks, "Why is it only 'controversial' when citizens record police, not when police record citizens?"

Johns Hopkins gynecologist kills himself after being caught using "pen camera" to record patient exams without their knowledge.

“Download This Gun”

"'Download this gun': 3D-printed semi-automatic fires over 600 rounds"

Tyranny of the Queen Bee

WSJ: How women undermine other women in the workplace. (Via Ryan Sager.)

What Law Enforcement Can Recover From A Seized iPhone

"Here's What Law Enforcement Can Recover From A Seized iPhone"

Schneier on the Internet Court of Public Opinion

Bruce Schneier: "The Court of Public Opinion Is About Mob Justice and Reputation as Revenge"

4D Printed Objects 'Make Themselves'

I, for one, welcome our self-creating 4D printed overlords.

[Off topic] Hsieh Forbes OpEd on Fertility Panic and Freedom

[Off topic] Yesterday's Forbes (2/27/2013) published my latest OpEd, "Freedom, Not Fertility, Is The Key To A Thriving Economy".

I respond to some conservatives fretting about America's low birth rate, and discuss why it's not the government's job to promote any specific lifestyle (e.g., single vs married or childless vs. multiple-child marriage).

How many unique English tweets are possible?

How many unique English tweets are possible? (Via Rand Simberg.)

3D-printed Plastic Car

"The first 3D-printed plastic car is as strong as steel and half the weight"

Scientist Proposes Marriage with Physics Paper

"Scientist Proposes Marriage with Physics Paper". (Via Charlie Martin.)

Autopsy of a Dead Social Network

"An Autopsy of a Dead Social Network". (Via Ryan Sager.)

How Pickpockets Work

Video: "How Pickpockets Work"



(Via Amy Alkon, who notes that the video is in Dutch but the scenarios demonstrated don't really require translation.)

Rats as Landmine Detectors

Trained rats as landmine detectors. (Via M.H.)

Dangerous Pads And Helmets?

"Do pads and helmets increase rather than prevent football injuries?"

Streaming And Spyware Are Killing Music Piracy

Alex Knapp: "Streaming And Spyware Are Killing Music Piracy"

Computers Making Scientific Discoveries

Slate: "What if technology makes scientific discoveries that we can't understand?"

Vaportini

"The Vaportini: A Cocktail Inhaled, Not Stirred"

College Chess Recruting

The competition between colleges to recruit for chess stars. (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Onion-like Real Headlines

I'm both hysterically amused and horrified by this collection of real-life Onion-like headlines.

Don't Drink That Water

Slate: "Which diseases can you catch from drinking water that’s had a corpse floating in it?"

Cast of Ant Colony

Cast of an ant colony. (Via @supatrey.)

Related video:

Who owns Sherlock Holmes?

"Who owns Sherlock Holmes?"

Fork by Dave Jilk

My friend Dave Jilk has written a clever short SF story, "Fork". As he says, it's not about utensils.

8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need

"8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need"

31 Years of Mobile Phone Evolution

"How far mobile phones have come in the past 31 years".   (Click on image to see full size.)

Rules for the New Monopoly Cat Token

"Rules for the New Monopoly Cat Token"

Physics of Sunsets

The physics of sunsets.

When I lived in La Jolla, CA many years ago, I saw 3 "green flashes" during the course of the year.  (One of the benefits of a beachside apartment.)

App Lets You Keep Tweeting After Death

"New app to keep you tweeting after death":

A new application will soon allow users to keep posting Twitter updates from beyond the grave, independently using intricate knowledge of your online character to create a virtual continuation of your personality after you die.

"When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting," says the new application’s tagline...

Due to be launched in March, the LivesOn application will keep tweeting after you pass on. The service will utilize advanced analysis of your main Twitter feed, to carefully select appropriate subjects, likes, or articles that would have been likely to interest you, posting them on your behalf for your friends to read.

Pre-existing applications so far have only allowed users to schedule prepared updates.

 (Via VAViper.)

Why Germans Can't See YouTube Meteorite Videos

"Germans can't see meteorite YouTube videos due to copyright dispute"

Rota's 10 Lessions

MIT professor Gian-Carlo Rota offers these classic "Ten Lessons I wish I had been Taught".

I especially liked #7 and #8:

7. Use the Feynman method

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

8.  Give lavish acknowledgment

I have always felt miffed after reading a paper in which I felt I was not being given proper credit, and it is safe to conjecture that the same happens to everyone else. One day, I tried an experiment. After writing a rather long paper, I began to draft a thorough bibliography. On the spur of the moment, I decided to cite a few papers which had nothing whatsoever to do with the content of my paper, to see what might happen.

Somewhat to my surprise, I received letters from two of the authors whose papers I believed were irrelevant to my article. Both letters were written in an emotionally charged tone. Each of the authors warmly congratulated me for being the first to acknowledge their contribution to the field.

Internet Bacon Number is 19

Slate: "The Whole Web Is Connected in 19 Clicks or Fewer"

Airplane Seat Anarchy

"Tilting your seat back on an airplane is pure evil. But so is installing seats that recline in the first place."

Doom

"Higgs boson find may spell doom for universe".

Update: Link was missing before, now fixed!

Language Affecting Thinking

"5 examples of how the languages we speak can affect the way we think". (Via Trey.)

3D Printing Pen

Mashable: "This 3D Printing Pen Lets You Draw Sculptures in Midair". (Via Trey P. and Vik R.)

Bionic Hand That Can Feel

"The first bionic hand that can feel":

...[T]he hand will be attached directly to the patient’s nervous system via electrodes clipped onto two of the arm’s main nerves, the median and the ulnar nerves.

This should allow the man to control the hand by his thoughts, as well as receiving sensory signals to his brain from the hand’s sensors. It will effectively provide a fast, bidirectional flow of information between the man’s nervous system and the prosthetic hand.

100 Best First Lines from Novels

"100 Best First Lines from Novels". (Via William Dale.)

Spaceward Ho for iPad

I used to be a huge fan of the Mac game Spaceward Ho and I'm delighted that it's now available for the iPad.  (It's a 4X style turn based strategy game.)

Best $5 I've ever spent on an iOS app. 

Asteroids A Reminder of Space Program Weakness

Reynolds: "Asteroids a reminder of space program weakness"

[Off topic] Hsieh PJM OpEd on Guns and Civil Disobedience

[Off topic]: PJ Media has published my latest OpEd, "Would New Gun Laws Spark Widespread Civil Disobedience?"

Cancer, Innovation and a Boy Named Jack

Forbes: "Cancer, Innovation and a Boy Named Jack"

Show Me The Neighbors' Money

Infographic: The Average Income For Every Neighborhood In America. (Via Ryan Sager.)

Ultimate Star Trek Blooper Reel

41 minutes of Star Trek bloopers:

Virgins and Volcanoes

"Have virgins ever been tossed into volcanoes to appease the gods?"

Real Life Identical Twin Criminal Law Conundrum

French police know that one of two identical twins committed a series of sexual assaults but cannot tell which.

Conventional DNA testing cannot tell the two apart.  (There is a very expensive test that might distinguish between them, but it costs 1 million Euros.)

Bruce Schneier notes, "both have been arrested in the hope that one may confess or implicate the other" (i.e., a real world Prisoner's Dilemma).

Sleep Texting

"'Sleep Texting' Is Growing Problem Among Teens". (Via Charlie Martin.)

Identity Providers

"Which firms will profit from proving your identity online?"

Robotic Harassment of Rats

"Robotic Harassment Causes Depression in Rats"

Neptune Smartwatch

"The 18 year old whose smartphone watch could beat Apple's iWatch to market"

The Malware-Industrial Complex

"Welcome to the Malware-Industrial Complex"

Making Scotch In Space

Alex Knapp on making scotch in zero gravity.

Why It's OK That I Don't See Things

NPR: "Why Even Radiologists Can Miss A Gorilla Hiding In Plain Sight"

Social Media Makes Impulse Buying Even Easier

"American Express Cardholders Can Now Tweet to Buy". (Via @LyndsiM.)

SI Bikini Economics

"The Economics of SI's Swimsuit Models: Where Bikinis and Business Align".

Related: "The S.I. Swimsuit Cover Models: Where Are They Now?"

Vader's Mistakes at Hoth

Wired: "Inside the Battle of Hoth". A discussion of Darth Vader's strategic mistakes.

How the Zipper Was Invented

NYT: How the zipper was invented.

Superhydrophobic Oleophobic Coating

Nanotechnology update: "Ultra-Ever Dry is a superhydrophobic (water) and oleophobic (hydrocarbons) coating that will completely repel almost any liquid".



(Via Trey.)

Are You Good at Following Flowcharts?

Flowchart: Are You Good at Following Flowcharts?

(Click on image to see full size.)

Chinese Hacker Activity

Strategy Page: "China Denies, Defies And Keeps On Attacking"

It Wasn't The Cigarettes

"Finally confirmed: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs". (Via Instapundit.)

Although I always liked this "Far Side" cartoon:

The Secret History of Pad Thai

"Pad Thai is the most misunderstood noodle". (Via GMSV.)

Disk Size Discrepancies

"Surface Pro versus MacBook Air: Who's being dishonest with storage space?"

The answers may surprise you.

Smaller Faster Watson

Forbes: "Over the past two years, IBM’s researchers have shrunk Watson from the size of a master bedroom to a pizza-box-sized server that can fit in any data center."

Oh, and they also "improved its processing speed by 240%". (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Glasses For Red-Green Color Blindness

"New Eyewear Could Help People with Red-Green Color Blindness"

Riding In a Self-Driving Car

"What It's Like to Ride in a Self-Driving Car"

Chinese Hacker Blackmail

William Gerrity (Slate.com): How a Chinese hacker tried to blackmail me.

Can Spotify Predict The Grammys?

"Can Spotify Predict The Grammys?" (Via Ryan Sager.)

2001 Home Office As Predicted in 1967

Walter Cronkite shows how a home office of 2001 would look like, as predicted in 1967. The key is the computerized communications console.



(Via Kottke.)

Online Gambling With Bitcoins

"Is Online Gambling Legal If Bitcoins, Not Dollars, Are At Stake?"

Social Media Super Bowl Winner

"Twitter Mentioned In 50% Of Super Bowl Commercials, Facebook Only 8%, Google+ Shut Out". (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Awesome Table

I want one of these tables:

Grand Canyon on Google Maps

"Exploring the Grand Canyon on Google Maps".

For example, here's the "Street View" of the Bright Angel Trail.

Norwegian Diaper Arbitrage

Norwegian diaper arbitrage. Yes, really. (Via Marginal Revolution.)

Silent Circle

Silent Circle: "Meet the groundbreaking new encryption app set to revolutionize privacy and freak out the feds". (Via Instapundit.)

Micro-production Revolution

Ari Armstrong: "The Burgeoning Micro-Production Revolution"

Confessions of a Corporate Spy

"Confession of a Corporate Spy"

Facebook May Soon Be Tracking You At All Times

Forbes: "Facebook May Soon Be Tracking You At All Times"

The article quotes this Bloomberg piece, "The app, scheduled for release by mid-March, is designed to help users find nearby friends and would run even when the program isn’t open on a handset".

News Prediction

"Software Predicts Tomorrow's News by Analyzing Today's and Yesterday's"

Big Breasts and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

"Are large-breasted women more likely to get carpal tunnel syndrome?"

Richard III Body Found Under Parking Lot

"Body found under parking lot is King Richard III, scientists prove":

British scientists announced Monday they are convinced "beyond reasonable doubt" that a skeleton found during an archaeological dig in Leicester, central England, last August is that of the former king, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

Mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones was matched to Michael Ibsen, a Canadian cabinetmaker and direct descendant of Richard III's sister, Anne of York.

Experts say other evidence -- including battle wounds and signs of scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, found during the search and the more than four months of tests since support the DNA findings.

Inducing Fear in the Fearless

"Scientists Find A Way To Scare Patients Who Can't Feel Fear"

Supersonic Ping-Pong Gun

"How to Build a Supersonic Ping-Pong Gun"

Freakonomics Experiment

If you're stuck on a major life decision, you might want to enroll in this Freakonomics experiment.

Almost Alive

"Scientists Create a Near-Living Crystal"

Skype Steganography

"Tinkering with Skype can allow people to send undetectable messages"

Astronauts Will Be Watching Super Bowl

Alex Knapp: "Space Station Astronauts Will Be Watching The Super Bowl"

As he notes, "It's unknown at this time whether nachos and/or buffalo wings will be served."