July 2010
12 posts
3 tags
Oooh. Shiny. Nationwide 4G from LightSquared
This sounds awesome: a nationwide 4G-LTE wireless network that is scheduled to be up and running (covering 92% of the US population) by 2015. There are some minor details — such as AT&T and Verizon are not allow to play on this network! But that FCC clause denying AT&T and Verizon access is aimed at increasing wireless broadband competition. (Will it save Sprint’s business? ...
3 tags
Does Cellulose Really Exist In Space?
I’ve always wondered why the detection of cellulose in space hasn’t been studied more. If cellulose actually exists elsewhere in the universe, I’d think that would be pretty good supporting evidence of ET life out there…
This was reported in Nature, in 1978. Tholins have been detected as well (I think by Carl Sagan). There are many unidentified bands in the spectra of...
1 tag
Robot Teachers
The NYTimes has a short video on robotic teachers that all look humanoid… but I’d think that the software to improve human learning is more important than having robots that don’t quite bridge the “uncanny valley.”
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infographics are cool →
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Despicable Me
I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I was somewhat surprised to discover that it was produced by a company I’d never heard of: Illumination Entertainment. IBM apparently had a hand in rendering the animation, saying:
For “Despicable Me” the animation process generated 142 terabytes of data — an amount roughly equivalent to the traffic generated by over 118 million...
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Infograph: GDP per capita over 500yrs
Here’s an awesome graph of the growth of GDP over the last 500 yrs for East Asia and the US…
Portable Eye Doc
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Isotope Ratios Will Give You Away
Apparently, you are what you drink. And if you drink bottled water (or bottled drinks in general), the isotope ratios in your favorite beverages can be traced back to where the water came from. So if you drink a lot of Dasani water bottled in Colorado, the isotope signature from that water can end up in your hair… and it’s possible that your drinking habits can be discovered from...
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Solar-Powered Plane... To Orbit The Globe?
A solar-powered plane just spent 26hrs in the air, proving that it’s possible for it to fly continuously, day or night. While the group behind it is planning to circle the globe in this solar plane, I think it would be more interesting to see this vehicle as an autonomous solar-powered plane — so that it could be an alternative to launching LEO satellites. If autonomous solar powered...
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A Persistent Gender Gap For Math/Verbal Skills
This is an interesting study: Gender Gap Persists At Highest Levels Of Standardized Testing. Over a 30 year time period, the test scores of boys and girls show that in the top 5% of the bell curve, boys do better than girls at math/science tests at about a 4:1 ratio. During the same period, top performing girls only do slightly better than the boys in verbal reasoning and writing ability...
2 tags
The Elusive Giant Magnetocaloric Effect
Refrigerators are pretty energy-inefficient. So discovering materials that can produce a giant magetocaloric effect could help save a lot of energy someday. But I’m not sure which effect has more promise the thermoelectric effect or the giant magnetocaloric effect. The giant magnetocaloric effect definitely wins on having a cool name, though.
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iProducts: Great since day one →
The original iPhone was great on day one. It couldn’t do as much as today’s iPhone, but it performed its feature-set extremely well. There were almost no rough edges or unpolished areas in its hardware or software, and nearly everything seemed justifiable, well conceived, and well executed.
Apple has a culture of doing things in “insanely great” ways. Sure, people can argue that...
June 2010
6 posts
1 tag
Immortality Is Not Just For Vampires Anymore
The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish might be the key to learning about why animals age. Individual jellyfish can grow up from a polyp into an adult jelly — and then revert back to a polyp. Obviously, whatever genetic trick these jellyfish have… could be a trick that only jellyfish or other very simple organisms are able to perform. But it’s still a neat trick.
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Good Ol' Ben Franklin...
“As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by an invention of ours.” — Ben Franklin
Is Archive.org Able To Keep Up?
Occassionally, I check out Archive.org to see what websites looked like a few years ago… But recently, it seems like the Archive isn’t really archiving new material. They say they’re “just a bit behind” in indexing — and that the data that has been donated to them via Alexa has a stipulation that only data older than 6 months can be displayed in the Archive.
...
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Beg, Borrow Or Crowdfund -- It Pays To Be...
I came across an interesting writeup of a successful Kickstarter project where the project creator admits to having a back-up plan:
At the time, I also thought that if we didn’t reach our Kickstarter goal by the deadline, then I would move to the Indiegogo platform and ask all our original backers to re-pledge their amounts so we could collect immediately (that’s one major difference between...
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The Japanese Space Agency Has The Right Idea
Japan is aiming for a moon base to be constructed by robots before 2020. This is a seriously good idea that NASA should have been working on for decades now, instead of shuttling people up to the ISS. I guess the ISS is cool and all, but a permanent moon base built and maintained by robots? How can you beat that? Even if the Japanese don’t get their moon base built on time — at...
April 2010
1 post
1 tag
Cold Fusion's Got Some 'Splainin' To Do....
Cold Fusion was easily dismissed as “non-science” by anyone who read the original papers from Pons & Fleischman… I took a class in college that went over the journal submissions, demonstrating “what not to do” in science. Mocking other chemists is a widespread hobby among the chemical sciences.
However, Cold Fusion is making a comeback now. But it’s more...
February 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Robonauts 2.0 (aka R2)
NASA and GM are working on robonauts..? Looks sorta like Honda’s bipedal robots, but these Robonauts seem to be focused on “waist-up” functions instead of walking.
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Random Idea for Newspapers
The cost of school textbooks seems like a pretty heavy cost for school districts. But what if newspapers printed school lessons where the classifieds used to go? I think it’d be somewhat interesting if the state could subsidize failing newspapers by paying them to dedicate a section of their papers to textbook material. That would make these newspaper textbooks somewhat disposable and...
January 2010
3 posts
3 tags
Gov't-Funded Machine Learning
Machine learning will probably be one of the most important technological advances that affects the future of humanity and our ability to become more productive. It actually amazes me that I haven’t really heard of a machine learning project that attempts to augment human learning. (I assume such a project is fairly ambitious, but it seems like a worthy goal.) My understanding of machine...
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Thorium Reactors Sound Cool...
Here’s a Google Tech Talk cut down to about 10 minutes, discussing the benefits of using Thorium instead of Uranium or Plutonium in nuclear reactors. Will fusion beat out fission, though, for the future of energy? hmm..
Happy New Year!
Welcome to 2010, folks! Twenty-ten sounds so futuristic — but I guess not anymore… What year sounds more like the distant future now? 2100? 3001? Twenty-fifty doesn’t quite sound very distant to me. I think we’re supposed to run out of oil in 2050 or something… but I doubt it’ll happen. We’ll have biodiesel or nuclear fusion by then (hopefully).
December 2009
3 posts
WatchI got my copy of this book… and I was avoiding the “unboxing” tweets and videos… but now that I’m halfway through reading it… I saw this and thought it was brilliant. I wonder what 7th graders think of Annabel Scheme….
tcsnmy7:
This was a quick, not-quite-an-unboxing of Annabel Scheme that Anthony and the gang put together yesterday during Open...
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OpenIdea: A Patent System That Grants Duopolies
One of the differences between the US patent system and the patent processes in the rest of the world is that the US has “first to invent” rule — while the rest of the world goes by “first to file” — for granting patents. I say, “Why not make it BOTH?” Basically, instead of granting a monopoly to just 1 inventor, create a duopoly patent system...
3 tags
Aha.. here's a Desktop As A Service offering..
I’ve been sorta on the lookout for a cool DesktopAsAService to try out. Looks like Sun has one. What I’d like to be able to do.. is get a netbook setup that can log into a virtual OS X environment that’s hosted in a way that the lag isn’t noticeable. Maybe there’s a way to do it with Sun VirtualBox…
October 2009
1 post
Are Parents Really Going To Admit Their Kids Are...
I randomly saw this article in the NYT about how Disney’s “Baby Einstein” DVDs made false claims that kids could be educated by videos. So Disney is offering a money back deal to parents who are unsatisfied with the DVDs… But what parent is going to admit their kid is dumb just to get back a few bucks? I think the refund rate (if it’s ever published) would make for...
August 2009
5 posts
1 tag
OpenIdea: Improving The Lottery
The Callifornia “MegaMillions” lottery seemed to get some attention recently for its huge jackpot. Whenever this happens, I always hear people saying “try to pick numbers that no one else will pick, so that you don’t have to share the winnings (if you do, in fact, win).” So why doesn’t the Lottery sell unique sets of numbers for more? The odds of winning are...
5 tags
Where can I find a Desktop As A Service provider?
I stumbled across Desktone, and I think it’s a brilliant service. I’d really like to try out a Desktop As A Service to see what it’s like… and how laggy it might be. This service would basically make being the “go-to IT guy for parents” a thing of the past. I could set my Dad up with a DAAS computer.. and rest easy knowing that he can’t...
1 tag
OpenIdea: Hybrid Engines
One of the drawbacks of hybrid cars is that there’s the extra weight of having both an internal combustion engine AND an electric motor. Why not try to combine the two devices so that they share more parts and save weight? I imagine there could be an engine where half (quarter?) of the cylinders are replaced by an “electric” cylinder — so when the car doesn’t need...
1 tag
P2PU Is the Future of Education
California has started to encourage the development of electronic textbooks, and it seems like educational materials are becoming more widely available in digital formats since the costs of distribution are declining as the internet is more accessible. I saw an ad for online K-3 homeschooling lessons on Facebook, and I figured there must be more open organizations who are developing lesson plans...
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Dissolvable Tobacco.. AKA: Cancer In A Strip
I sorta like the dissolvable breath mints, and I know that the technology behind those strips have been used for other things — like tasting samples. But Camel tabacco as a dissolvable strip — it’s ingenious, but also… so gross.
July 2009
7 posts
1 tag
F-22 Funding Cut Off
Unmanned aircraft are the future of aviation, so creating more and more F-22’s didn’t make that much sense to me — especially when we have almost 200 of them already. And it’s not like we’ll never know how to make them again — in case we ever change our minds and think we need more F-22’s. So I’m not exactly heart-broken that the Senate voted to...
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OpenIdea: Underwater Or Bio-dome Prisons
Ok, here’s another crazy idea. Back in the day, countries used to ship off their prisoners and undesirables to undeveloped places… like the US and Australia. We could still do that.. except we’d have to ship prisoners to Antarctica — and the legal questions could be a bit tricky for that (see Cuba?). So instead of shipping off inmates to legal limbo, how about house them...
2 tags
Economic Indicators...
A bunch of economists are saying that “the worst is over” with regard to the economy — but the justifications for this sentiment are somewhat rare (or debatable). NPR ends an article on the topic with an interesting data point, though.
“Manufacturing overtime hours is one of the best leading indicators to monitor if you want to understand where the economy stands in the...
2 tags
OpenIdea: eBay Will Buy This Idea Someday
I saw this new website gdgt.com which aims to one-up sites like Engadget and Gizmodo… but that got me to thinking… something similar would be a LOT more valuable to the eBay community. I’d think that a wiki-like resource that documented all the “hacks” (and other user-generated instruction manuals for gadgets on eBay) would be a great way to promote second-hand...
3 tags
Wind Energy Feasibility
Apparently, if you run a bunch of calculations, you can determine that there’s enough wind energy to cover the world’s energy need 100 times over. I really like the idea of airborne wind generators, but I assume there’s a catch. There’s also enough solar energy to power the world, too, but we haven’t figured out how to capture it economically without blanketing the...
June 2009
13 posts
2 tags
Nuclear Power From Many Small Reactors
The solutions to the world’s “clean energy” problem (or the “dirty energy” problem, depending on how you look at it) look like a combination of many distributed efforts to generate electricity and store it. One neat example is from Babcock and Wilcox which has a process to manufacture small (~150MW) nuclear reactors that can be strung together as needed to generate...
2 tags
Pirate Bay Version Of YouTube On The Way...
The Pirate Bay is working on its own version of YouTube (called TheVideoBay.org) that will likely allow its users to share any kind of video clips (not just the kind with authorized copyright permissions). This conveniently coincides with more public domain video sites so that the Pirate Bay can legitimately claim that their Youtube-like platform is not *only* used for copyrighted materials since...
3 tags
Biotech Might Create The Dreaded Nano-Goo
Biotech startups are trying to solve the world’s energy problem by making “super-biological” processes that can convert cellulose to ethanol or other fuels. But this approach strikes me as the way to create the sci-fi “nano-goo” scenario where little nano-robots consume everything in their path. Usually, this “grey goo” stuff is thought of as being...
2 tags
Rich People Pay Less Taxes As A Percentage Of...
Not too long ago, Warren Buffet issued a challenge to the other folks on the “richest persons” lists — that his wealthy colleagues (in the US) pay less taxes, as a percentage of their income, than their “secretaries” do. Buffet said he’d donate $1 million to charity if a significant number of them admitted to that assertion…. That got me to wonder: how do...
2 tags
Census Data Collecting Methods...
Next year, the US government will take another headcount to see how many people live in America. I’m somewhat intrigued by the process, and I always wonder how the government arrives at its estimate. (Actually, I don’t really know much about the process, so that’s probably why I’m intrigued…) Do they report a statistical range with confidence limits on the...
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Public Domain Video On The Way...
Wikipedia is planning to get into online videos and to allow its contributors to work on video editing and documentation. JumpCut used to offer web-tools to do video editing online, but it looks like Yahoo shut down JumpCut recently. I wonder what happens to the JumpCut technology? When Google shuts down services, it sometimes releases the code for open source projects. Wonder if Yahoo will...
3 tags
OpenIdea: Furry Cars
Cars have always been covered by shiny metal (or plastic) sheets with varying kinks or curves in them.. But why not cover a car in a “fur” of some kind? Like a carpet of fiber optic sensors that could detect when the car was touched or brushed. I think it would be pretty cool to have a furry car with the option of a “short-hair or long-hair” covering.. The fur covering...
2 tags
OpenIdea: What else to do with Netflix's movie...
Just randomly thinking that Netflix has an interesting set of data with its movie ratings (which it already has a $1 million prize for to help improve it)… But I was thinking: what else could you do with that data? Could the ratings be applied to other compatibility scores… to improve online dating matches and the like? Has anyone tried this yet? I’d be surprised if someone...
2 tags
OpenIdea: Studying mosquitoes to inject vaccines
Think of the children… who wouldn’t be crying when they need to get vaccinations. Mosquitoes can suck out a bit of blood without you really noticing too much, so a needle with similar characteristics as a mosquito sucker should able to inject medicines into people, right? Perhaps this has already been tried, and injecting enough material via a microscopic needle would just take too...
