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25 Jun 2011 15:09

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Politics: Obama announces robotics initiative, makes awesome robot joke

  • You might not know this, but one of my responsibilities as commander-in-chief is to keep an eye on robots. And I’m pleased to report that the robots you manufacture here seem peaceful. At least for now.
  • President Barack Obama • Speaking at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center yesterday. About robots. The president plans to launch an initiative that will invest $70 million on robotics, so if these robots rise up and kill their creators, it’s his fault. Just sayin’. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

05 Jun 2011 21:51

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Tech: Antimatter stops by CERN long enough for a good converstation

  • 17 minutes trapped in one place; antimatter was just hangin’ source
  • » This is what we call progress: Back in November, it was kind of a big thing when scientists managed to trap antimatter at all — even for .17 seconds! Now we’ve gotten past viral video length and we’re almost at the length of an episode of “The Office.” The lifespan of the antimatter is a big deal because usually when antimatter is made, it disappears instantly. But the process that CERN (known as the European Organization for Nuclear Research) uses basically holds the antimatter in place using really strong magnets. The longer lifetimes offer scientists the opportunity to study it in greater detail, which is kind of neat, and to possibly figure out longer-term uses for this pretty cool technology. This research totally matters, guys.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 09:58

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Music: VIDEO: Radiohead’s awkward-dance-heavy “Lotus Flower”

  • Never have we been so excited to see a middle-aged man dancing like a rockstar. Welcome back, Thom Yorke. Your fans missed you. The song rules, too – a clear continuation of “In Rainbows”-era awesomeness. Oh yeah, the album’s out now, not tomorrow. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 11:15

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Tech: Pixelfari: Surf the Web like Super VGA never happened

  • We were looking for a way to test our site on a Commodore 64, and we think we found it. Neven Mrgan has released onto the world the most useful Web browser in the history of the Interwebs, Pixelfari, an OSX variation on Safai that renders sites as if higher resolutions never made their way to computers. It appears we have some work to do to ensure that an Apple II can properly handle our rig. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

25 Jan 2011 16:03

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Biz: Taco Bell president says “proprietary blend of seasonings and spices”

  • Unfortunately, the lawyers in this case elected to sue first and ask questions later — and got their ‘facts’ absolutely wrong.
  • Taco Bell President Greg Creed • Who used the phrase “proprietary blend of seasonings and spices” to defend itself from a hilarious lawsuit that claims their taco meat isn’t real meat. We’ll just leave this here. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

17 Jan 2011 12:19

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Offbeat: The Washington Post agrees: The DC Metro makes free-jazz music

  • We’ve been saying for months that there is a great found-sounds album to be made from the incidental noises from the DC Metro’s escalators. Some of the escalators sound like they’re performing free-jazz. It appears the Washington Post agrees with us, because they wrote an article about it. Nobody steal our idea, OK guys? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Dec 2010 22:54

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Tech: Nerds devise crazy way to make computers insanely fast

  • [Field Programmable Gate Arrays] are not used within standard computers because they are fairly difficult to program but their processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker – so they are also a greener option.
  • University of Glagsow researcher Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede • On the amazing technological discovery he and a team have discovered – a method of creating computer chips that runs 20 times faster than modern computers, and can fit 1,000 cores (rather than one or two) on a single processor. Basically if this actually gets on a real consumer-purchasable computer in the next few years, Moore’s Law will be matched – and then some. The programming issue is kind of a big deal – if they can figure out a way to make these mega-processors convenient to program, it could be a huge deal and a major computing breakthrough. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

17 Dec 2010 14:12

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Tech: Word Lens translation app really awesome, “points very anus”

  • As a follow to our reblog on Tumblr, it might be good to note that real-time language-translating app Word Lens, while good, isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s points very anus. Or as Garry Trudeau put it back in the day, it’s egg freckles. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Dec 2010 11:21

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Offbeat: Crazy animators make crazy animation with Google Docs

  • The people who made this are supremely clever, but have way too much time on their hands, honestly. Google Apps wasn’t designed for something this crazy. (thanks drawnblog)
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Dec 2010 19:40

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Politics: Bernie Sanders’ filibuster: The Senate gets interesting for a day

  • 516 number of minutes Bernie Sanders and others filibustered in the Senate today (from 10:24 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.)
  • no Sanders’ filibuster, fun as it was to watch, didn’t affect any votes from happening today source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
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