CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-14 03:30:23 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Pretty cool result:
http://www.nature.com/news/first-proof-that-infinitely-many-prime-numbers-come-in-pairs-1.12989
There are infinitely many primes within 70E6 units.  Using no unproven conjectures!

2013-04-03 05:37:52 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Wow, this'll be really useful, +Tim Pope does it again with another essential #vim  plugin:
https://github.com/tpope/vim-dispatch
Essentially it allows asynchronous execution of shell commands, and catches the output to the quickfix!

2013-04-02 03:14:41 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Best new feature ever (and not a joke) in Chrome Canary: "Copy as cURL" 

Copy, open terminal, paste, send request with all same headers, cookies, etc - epic!

2013-03-29 07:50:59 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Okay, so I first heard of the "Immortal Jellyfish" today in Torko, and now I happened upon an io9 article, it must be some sign:
http://io9.com/5964375/could-this-immortal-jellyfish-unlock-the-secret-to-human-life-extension
My favourite quote "It's transdifferentiating", reminds me of Flash when he proclaimed the city (I actually forget which) was "transmogrifying before [his] eyes" from the excellent JLA run.

2013-03-29 07:40:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Vintage computer ads:
http://io9.com/hilarious-and-awesome-computer-ads-from-the-golden-age-461802690 Aah reminiscence.

2013-03-29 07:00:20 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Wow, it'll be very interesting to see how more studies come down on this:
http://io9.com/oklahoma-s-strongest-earthquake-has-been-linked-to-the-461441953

2013-03-27 03:55:09 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Dizzying but invisible depth

You just went to the Google home page.

Simple, isn't it?

What just actually happened?

Well, when you know a bit of about how browsers work, it's not quite that simple. You've just put into play HTTP, HTML, CSS, ECMAscript, and more. Those are actually such incredibly complex technologies that they'll make any engineer dizzy if they think about them too much, and such that no single company can deal with that entire complexity.

Let's simplify.

You just connected your computer to www.google.com.

Simple, isn't it?

What just actually happened?

Well, when you know a bit about how networks work, it's not quite that simple. You've just put into play DNS, TCP, UDP, IP, Wifi, Ethernet, DOCSIS, OC, SONET, and more. Those are actually such incredibly... more »

2013-03-21 02:23:28 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Wow, I knew insects were more resilient wrt their brains, but this is just amazing:
http://io9.com/the-bizarre-history-of-insect-head-transplants-456738894

2013-03-06 03:32:10 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

An interesting look back at Columbia, who was the symbolic personification of America until the 1920's or so. (When Uncle Sam took over) I've always found her image significantly more stirring than I ever found Uncle Sam's. (With the exception, perhaps, of Steve Darnall and Alex Ross' comic "US," which did something truly brilliant with it)

America was Columbia in the same way that England was Britannia and France was Marianne. America's capital is the District of Columbia; New York City's great early private university was Columbia College (now University).

2013-03-06 02:44:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Another Java vulnerability, this one stands out just for the fact that by default java doesn't check for certificate revocation!  I get CRLs and/or OCSP is hard, but at least the option should be on by default...

Anyways, YARDJ (Yet Another Reason to Disable Java).

2013-03-04 22:08:36 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Amazing breakthrough!  Can't wait to see when they're able to find the magic point to recieve maximum efficiency.

Via +Matt Cutts.

2013-03-04 00:55:33 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Not sure if this'll prove to be repeatable, but it is an amazing milestone:
http://io9.com/5988214/hiv-has-been-cured-in-a-child-for-the-first-time

2013-02-24 01:17:51 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

When numbers don't really mean what they claim

It's usually easy to spot when a politician or news group tries to manipulate statistics to mislead. But it is much more difficult to spot when scientists do it, especially if the scientists themselves are unaware of the pitfalls of statistical analysis. Alex Reinhart has updated his excellent page on statistical fallacies and how they (sometimes innocently) end up in many scientific studies. If you have ever wondered about things like data analysis, p-values, or statistical power, then this article will provide you with a solid introduction to the subtle traps of statistical misinterpretation.

http://www.refsmmat.com/articles/statistics.html

2013-02-19 22:02:58 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Old news, but if you've not opted-in here's the link for the HTML5 youtube player:
http://www.youtube.com/html5
the best feature (for me) is the ability to change the speed of playback under the settings icon on the player.  Way nice!

2013-01-21 04:18:22 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Wow!  If you've ever seen the (generally) poor motion comics check this out:
http://io9.com/5977501/brilliant-motion-comic-tells-the-story-of-a-man-hired-to-kill-deathwithout-animation It's an artists "motion comic" and is absolutely brilliantly done.

2013-01-20 19:14:37 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Wow, very cool.  4-strand DNA discovered in guanine rich cells.  (Standard DNA is 2-strand the double helix).

2013-01-20 02:36:20 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

If only we can drive Internet Explorer's market share to zero! Think about it, no more murders in America!!!

:)

Great example of data correlations don't necessarily imply causation.

[sidebar]
There used to be a time when people were really scared of Internet Explorer's world domination. It could never be beat. Monopoly. Et. Al. And yet just a few years later... things are very different. That's the way with tech. If you don't innovate, you die. If you don't innovate, someone's waiting to take your place. Google, Amazon, Apple... watch your backs! [/sidebar]

Source: http://i.imgur.com/47D7zGq.png via
+Thomas Baekdal +Eivind Savio 

2013-01-19 03:38:22 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

2013-01-11 21:19:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

reddit IAmA w/ Google Site Reliability Manager coming 1/24 on http://www.reddit.com/r/iama.  It isn't me, but this'll be exciting to watch.  Google calendar link from reddit:
https://www.google.com/calendar/render?eid=OTRsOGtqcmhzN2cyNnQ0Y3Mxc2xpc2NoZmcgYW1hdmVyaWZ5QG0

2013-01-10 06:07:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

ZDNet Raves About the Chromebook Following Months of Use
#chromeos   #chromies   #chromebook  

Excerpt: "I am regularly approached when using the Chromebook by those who have never seen one in use and field lots of questions about it. These folks are impressed when they see the performance of the Chromebook. This still impresses me too as there is no lag when I use it. Everything happens immediately, more so than the MacBook I have been using for years."

2013-01-09 23:42:56 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Pretty neat demo from CES.  Very cool concept to project the game onto the walls & room.  I'm not sure how well it'll work given the variety of rooms, but an awesome, promising concept.

2013-01-06 08:44:56 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Cracks in the reality distortion field?

2013-01-06 05:40:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Just finished. Had the antelope, kangaroo, wild boar, venison and shark. It was an excellent 2 hours of eating, and overall the kids had fun. Filled my hankering for venison and antelope (though the kangaroo was really good and stole the show).

2013-01-04 03:45:37 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Pretty fun little article:
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2013/01/dont-mess-with-google.html
discussing the usefulness of Chrome's certificate pinning.  Though they miss the actual list of watched sites:
http://dev.chromium.org/sts
not sure if out-of-date, here's the source:
http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/net/base/transport_security_state_static.h

I personally would like to also see:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-websec-key-pinning-01
adopted, then arbitrary sites could get pinning w/o modification of Chrome/Firefox/etcetera's source (and other browsers would pick it up).

2013-01-02 07:36:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Wow, go CrOS:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/01/02/0048248/chromebook-takes-top-place-in-laptop-sales-on-amazon?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
Top seller on Amazon laptops!  I've really enjoyed mine at work, and am looking forward to receiving my personal one soon!

2013-01-01 08:16:48 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

From The Official Google Blog

2012-12-31 07:03:27 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Quietly behind the scenes, most of the Irish newspaper industry has rolled out a system of charges for links to their content. It's the Irish version of Leistungsschutzrechte with some people receiving invoices already. 

2012-12-31 06:43:41 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Why Open Sourced Security is not always your friend:

Note: As with all my posts, the opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily that of my employer. 

I was recently working on updating NSS for ChromeOS to match upstream Gentoo, and noticed some somewhat depressing patching that was modifying the NSS trusted root certificates.

As part of my role on Chromium, I am pretty familiar with the Root Certificate Programs of the various consumer OSes and browers - Windows [1], Apple (iOS and OS X) [2], Mozilla [3], Opera [4], for example - but I hadn't really bothered to look in detail into what open source distros are doing.

I had assumed that the distros were simply deferring to Mozilla, who operates their program transparently and through community input. What I found instead shocked and saddened me.

Debian: From [5]. According to... more »

2012-12-27 20:31:11 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Excellent EOY list of the top scientific accomplishments:
http://io9.com/5971542/the-biggest-scientific-breakthroughs-of-2012

2012-12-22 01:13:47 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Best report (while being heavily based on US point of view) of the ITU meeting.

Don't forget the U.N. is the collective sum of the countries's government and ... it's frightening.

" (...) The US had privately expressed concerns to the Secretary-General that the Internet resolution made the treaty unacceptable. As a compromise, the US suggested that Touré introduce a modification that would make the draft text more palatable—to replace any discussion of “Internet” with “broadband.” This was still not ideal, but it would at least limit the resolution to physical infrastructure rather than content.

Bu when the Secretary-General took the floor on Wednesday night, he said that “Internet” should not be a forbidden word at the ITU. He recommended not replacing references to the Internet with broadband, but adding broadband language to the Internetresolution. As... more »

2012-12-20 07:32:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Learned a new word "humbug", always thought it was a gibberish word until tonight.  While reading the wizard of oz (marvel version) to my daughter the wizard decried himself as a humbug...turns out it means deceptive or dishonest.

The more u know!

2012-11-30 23:15:12 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Wow, if u haven't seen this, well worth a read:
http://www.igvita.com/2012/11/30/web-performance-anomaly-detection-with-google-analytics/
so many astoundingly useful tools.

2012-10-27 06:55:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Reading the wikipedia entry for tripel while enjoying my Gulden Draak:
http://www.pintley.com/beer/Gulden-Draak/8325/
I come across:
"According to brewing historian Michael Jackson..."
It's not who u'd think ;-).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripel

2012-10-24 02:36:05 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Late to the party, but wow I am amazed at the specs on the new iPad mini...
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57537541-243/ipad-mini-vs-google-nexus-7-vs-amazon-kindle-fire-hd/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title Can't believe it's resolution is smaller the the N7...esp with a slightly larger screen...

(FWIW I am very happy with the N7, though 3G/4G would be nice for me).

2012-10-18 05:15:54 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

A great bit of practical physics by my lifelong friend (and now PhD in Applied Math from MIT) +Michael Baym analyzing Felix Baumgartner's recent high altitude jump. Way to apply that math! :)

2012-10-18 04:42:51 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Great demo of the impact of using SPDY PUSH by the Jetty guys.

BTW, Jetty has an awesome implementation of SPDY, which also includes an automagic PUSH implementation: it tracks which resources are requested based on referrer, and then uses this knowledge to push resources to the client! 

2012-10-17 03:06:03 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Absolutely crazy, it'll be very interesting to see the effects this produces (hopefully it doesn't destroy much)...
http://io9.com/5952101/a-massive-and-illegal-geoengineering-project-has-been-detected-off-canadas-west-coast

2012-09-28 05:14:22 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

+2 cancer risk: Brilliant!
http://xkcd.com/1114/

2012-09-20 04:48:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Proxies and Gateways and Tunnels ... Oh My!

2012-09-16 01:55:33 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

60 years of Presidential attack ads, in a single video http://j.mp/QA1FrJ 

2012-09-14 05:47:15 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

New monkey species (Cercopithecus lomamiensis):
http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0912-hance-lesula.html
simply amazing there is still so much we can discover!

2012-09-12 06:35:10 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Fish With Transparent Head Filmed 
This barrel eye fish is not going to win any beauty prizes. But it surely deserves admiration for its enormous telescoping eyes, housed in a transparent head that functions as a muscle-driven lens to scavenge what little light penetrates the inky ocean depths. The huge green lenses points to a retina with exceptional density of rod cells, packed with the light harvesting protein rhodopsin.  Cone cells, that see color, are absent. Those two tiny openings on either side of its mouth? They are nostrils .
The fish spends most of its time motionless, eyes directed upwards to catch the shadow of prey emitting faint bioluminescence.

#scienceeveryday when it's not +ScienceSunday .

2012-09-08 18:57:51 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Amazing video (don't want to ruin it):
http://io9.com/5941535/the-battle-of-shark-vs-octopus-has-a-shocking-ending

2012-08-31 23:22:24 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

I have a huge urge to go off and modify signs after going through these.

via +Enrique Gutierrez.

2012-08-30 01:14:20 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Here's a talk about Goobuntu, the homebrew flavor of Ubuntu Linux that we use at Google. Nice to see us talk a little more about how Ubuntu/Linux is used inside Google.

2012-08-08 03:08:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

DBZ 2013!!
映画『ドラゴンボールZ』特報

2012-08-07 07:12:49 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

4 tries to get 3 golds!

2012-08-07 03:16:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Well written article on the the "Apple iCare hack":
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/
must admit using the last 4 digits of the credit card is unbelievable scary as its plastered on many many places...(also find myself wanting 2 factor on my amazon account).

2012-07-28 05:23:47 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

This'll both make you laugh and cry simultaneously!
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11695110/why-is-this-program-valid-i-was-trying-to-create-a-syntax-error

2012-07-23 02:35:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

A Supercontinuum? With Light’s Negative Counterpart
by +Sophie Wrobel, +EuroTech; Germany

Matter is offset by anti-matter, and light, it seems, can be offset by ‘negative’ light – or, in more proper terminology, negative-frequency resonant radiation... and with it, a new flurry of activity in supercontinuum research is set to take place.

Background
You probably recall from grade school that any physical electric field is a real function. But: do positive and negative frequencies work the same way as in classical electromagnetism? Eleonora Rubino’s team, from the University of Insurbia in Como, Italy, has demonstrated that the answer to this question is No.

If you take light and pass it from one medium into another, it refracts, travelling at a different angle. But different wavelengths refract at different angles. That allows us to use sometrickery ... more »