Do you procrastinate? I do…
Here’s an insightful New Yorker article about procrastination. There are some useful ideas and techniques in this article. One of my favorites is the concept of ‘self-binding’ (not a form of masochi...
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All my blog posts and articles
Page 72 of 141
(2812 total posts)
October 2010
Big Changes coming in Curaçao!
You may not follow the news, but Curaçao is undergoing major constitutional changes, as are all the Netherlands Antilles. In fact, as of this Sunday, Oct 10, (“10-10-10”) the Netherlands Antilles will cease to exist as a legal entity. The easiest way to explain this to Americans that I have come up ...
Read more →[PRETTY-GEEKY] Interesting article about secure elections
Check out Fort Knox vs. the Barking Dog(from Benlog: ** "The Barking Dog model is different. You still build fences. Maybe even a fancy lock. But more importantly, you get a well-trained dog, maybe ...
Read more →Yes but was it charged?
Check out Actor Tony Curtis Was Buried With His iPhone(from iPhone Download Blog: > "  all the time. - What was that movie about that we saw LAST WEEK? - How come did it take till page 102 before you realized you had alread...
Read more →Advice for New Graduate Students
If you know anyone in graduate school (oops, or if you are in graduate school yourself, or planning to go to one), this is interesting reading: Advice for New Graduate Students from [Freedom to Tinker](http://freedom-to-tinker.co...
Read more →XMarks is the only thing that will sync Safari with Firefox
And, it’s leaving us: > “The past four years have been a wild ride for us: growing something from nothing to substantial scale, providing a simple service that people love because it simplifies their lives. We’ve learned tons along the way, often by making big mistakes. We’re really sorry that this ...
Read more →Owner of Segway dies in Segway accident
This is just a weird weird happening: > “His body was found late Sunday morning after a passer-by reported seeing a man plummet 30 feet into the River Wharfe, the police said, adding that a “Segway-style vehicle” had also been found. They did not say what had caused the accident.” (from New York Times)
Really? Gargling With Salt Water Can Ease Cold Symptoms – NYTimes.com
Another old-wives-tail bunked. (opposite of de-bunked?) > “At the end of the study period, the group that regularly gargled had a nearly 40 percent decrease in upper respiratory tract infectionscompared with the control group, and when they did get sick, “gargling tended to attenuate bronchial symptoms,” the researchers wrote.” (from New York Times)
Google’s servers
From an article about Google’s hardware: > “Google’s big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there’s a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers–each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.” (from CNET) There are lots of other choice tidbits about the design of the millions (?) of tiny servers that Google uses to run its data centers. Quite interesting.
Ok, but what’s a quango?
A BBC Headline says: > “Leaked list suggests 180 quangos to be abolished” (from BBC Web Site) Inquiring minds want to know, what the heck is a quango? Before you look it up, can you guess? First I thought it was a derogatory word for some ethnic group. Then I thought it might be a currency. Who knows?
This never happened: Russian Spy
This never happened… We were working on some piece of software or something and the Russians invaded our workplace and demanded that we create it for them. We were threatened in big ways. We had a kind of a robot thing small which had a video camera and it was left in the Big room while we were put ...
Read more →Get a free shipping box from the US Postal Service
Just go to this link. United States Postal Service: Free Shipping Box Nothing more to it. No strings attached (as far as I can see 🙂 No kidding. I just did it. Share and share alike!
How (not) to design a ballot
My head is full of democracy and elections these days. How come, you ask? Well for the last year or so I’ve been working for the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, on elections technology. This month’s focus is generating ballots for two elections happening in November. So more than usual, I am ...
Read more →Ever heard of the Johari Window?
I came across the idea of the Johari Window during one of the presentations at the Bif-6 Conference. I’d never heard of it before. To me it’s an interesting formalism to think about ones self knowledge. Reading about the Johari Window on Wikipedia (where...
Read more →Future of the university
I saw an article in the New York Times and other places about the future of the University, and even the End of the University. I have a bit of a curiosity about this topic as Lecturer at Brandeis University. Here’s a [blog post fr...
Read more →The Tor Anonymizer
Have you heard of this thing, the Tor Anonymizer? Ok again admittedly another highly geeky system, but pretty fascinating. Makes you think that the handwringing worrying of the security wonks isn’t as over the top as all that. > Tor is a [sophisticated privacy tool](http://tor.eff.org/overview.html....
Read more →Mathematical Foundations of Consciousness?
Say what? I came across this paper; Mathematical Foundations of Consciousness. I generally love this stuff: Mathematics and writings on the nature of consciousness. When I saw this paper the title really intrigued me. Now my math is not strong enough to tackle anyth...
Read more →Location Proofs
The more businesses reward me for showing up at their establishments, the more likely it will be that a bad guy would want to pretend that they were there to garner those rewards. I came across a very interesting paper that proposes the notion of ‘location proofs.’: [Enabling new mobile application...
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