Quick links

What I found interesting lately:

• Xkcd on the halting problem: "Big picture .... all things must someday die" ([1])
  
  
• "Your fingerprint isn't a secret; you leave it everywhere you touch" ([1])
  
  
• Someone printed circuits (for rapid prototyping of hardware) with silver ink and a normal inkjet printer ([1] [2])
  
  
• Sending sounds to just one person with a touch ([1] [2])
  
  
• It is important not just "for the algorithm to work, but for it to be obvious why it works" ([1] [2])
  
  
• How UPS optimizes route planning for its truck drivers. Not really a travelling salesman problem, it requires a lot of understanding of those humans you're trying to guide around. ([1])
  
  
• Even in emerging markets, people are using tablets as an additional device, not a replacement for smartphone or PC ([1] [2])
  
  
• A promising new competitor to the Xbox, that was caused by the disaster that is Windows 8, that may also force improvements in graphics and sound card support for Linux PCs ([1] [2] [3])
  
  
• Someone spent $4M manipulating prediction markets during the 2012 election ([1] [2])
  
  
• Undersea drones and autonomous fighter jets coming soon to a war near you ([1] [2])
  
  
• Startups are having to seek protection from patent trolls by paying off other patent trolls: "the only way out is to shack up with the strangest of bedfellows" ([1])
  
  
• "An algorithm for generating random numbers, which was adopted in 2006 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), contains a backdoor for the NSA" ([1] [2])
  
  
• "Intelligence officials said today that no one at the NSA fully understood how its own surveillance system worked" ([1])
  
  
• "The NSA scandal is ... a severe case of auto-immune disease: our defense system is attacking other critical systems of our body." ([1] [2])
  
  
• "The patient had an infection with Saccharomyces cerevisiae .... So when he ate or drank a bunch of starch — a bagel, pasta or even a soda — the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, and he would get drunk" ([1])
  
  
• "When it heated a small pinch of dirt scooped up from the ground, the most abundant vapour detected was H2O ... Mars' dusty red covering holds about 2% by weight of water." ([1])
  
  
• Dilbert: "Watch me buy that same item with my phone while you stand there being obsolete" ([1])
  
  
• A cute comparison of San Francisco and Seattle ([1])
  
  
• A beautiful and brilliant SMBC comic on teaching children ([1])