Tag Archives: Friday Links

First up, a brilliant, 20-second Pixar spoof: “USA vs. NSA.”

What else is on tap this week? Let’s see…

What happens when stupid people take The Onion seriously and post their reactions on Facebook? You get Literally Unbelievable, the funniest blog I’ve seen all week.

Or try this handy character recognizer. Just draw a character in the box and get results in seconds.

There’s a giant hidden lake miles below the surface of Antarctica. That’s not news. It is news that Lake Vostok seems to be teeming with life, shedding light on one of the most remote habitats on the planet.

SMBC nails it. When my wife gets pregnant, this is exactly how I will react.

xkcd also nails it. Unfortunately.

And PvP shows us what happens when you finally win.

That’s all there is, and there ain’t no more. May your weekend shine like the ten thousand mithril caverns of Parsanthebeb the Luminous. Or, you know, just mow your lawn or something. See you Monday!

Google and NASA are teaming up to launch the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, which will explore the real-life possibilities of quantum computers. The model of quantum computer they bought is called the D-Wave Two, the same beast that Lockheed Martin snagged a while back. This stuff is sounding less like sci fi all the time.

Welcome to Monowi, a village in Nebraska with only one resident. Said resident, Elsie Eiler, “acts as Mayor, granting herself a liquor license and paying taxes to herself.” Groovy.

Randall Munroe, a.k.a. the xkcd dude, explores this question: “When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire?” It turns out, Pitcairn Island is a lot more important than anybody suspected.

Finally: another installment of the brilliant but underappreciated webcomic Nedroid. People, the character above is called “Beartato.” If you aren’t sold already, I don’t know what else I can say.

This concludes our weekly installment of Ways You Can Change Your Screen’s Pixel Arrangement By Clicking a Button on Your Mouse, brought to you by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Have an outstanding weekend.

Bill Nye, Brent Spiner, and MIT’s professor of planetary science are pumped about it. It’s being launched by the founder of the X Prize and a former NASA engineer. I’m talking about the ARKYD, the world’s first crowd-funded, publicly interactive space telescope. If you like the idea of a telescope that sixth graders, astronomers, and you can point at any corner of the sky – if you think space exploration should be exciting again – then this is a project you don’t want to miss.

If you haven’t seen it, Wikipedia’s “nearby” feature is pretty sweet. It looks up articles for places that are near you, physically, as in latitude and longitude. To see it in action, you’ll have to allow your browser to send Wikipedia your location information.

In 1968, a girl wrote a letter to Spock and mailed it to a teen magazine:

Dear Mr. Spock,
…I know that you are half Vulcan and half human and you have suffered because of this. My mother is Negro and my father is white and I am told this makes me a half-breed. In some ways I am persecuted even more than the Negro. The Negroes don’t like me because I don’t look like them. The white kids don’t like me because I don’t exactly look like one of them either. I guess I’ll never have any friends.
F.C.
Los Angeles, Calif.

Leonard Nimoy took the time to reply to her personally. His response said, in part:

[Spock] replaced the idea of wanting to be liked with the idea of becoming accomplished…He said to himself: ‘…I will develop myself to such a point of excellence, intelligence and brilliance that I can see through any problem and deal with any crisis. I will become such a master of my own abilities and career that there will be a place for me. People of all races will need me and not be able to do without me.’

It’s worth reading his full response.

Carl Sagan says you’re awesome, and who am I to disagree? Animated gifs don’t come much better than this.

This may be the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.

The Onion reports on Obama’s ongoing Twitter feud with the Audubon Society.

Two Guys and Guy has an important lesson for writers about how to handle rejection letters.

EOF

Possibly the most useful page on all of Wikipedia. A handy reference, for those times when you get confused.

In case you haven’t seen it: Spock vs. Spock. That is, classic Spock (Leonard Nimoy) vs. new Spock (Zachary Quinto). Spoiler alert, n00bs get pwned.

Problem: getting supplies to many remote parts of the world is difficult. Solution: a network of autonomous quadcopters that can deliver stuff anywhere. Internet, meet MatterNet.

For my programmers in the audience: did you know Google has a coding style guide? Guides for C++, Python, and more.

This month, we saw the brightest meteoroid impact NASA’s ever detected on the moon.

Tech behemoth SAP makes a very unusual announcement. They’re looking for a few good…autistic people.

I can only assume Penny Arcade has cameras in my house, because this, right here, this is me. They even nailed the cantankerous grimace.

And last of all, a word about proper parenting technique from the Internet’s leading authority on the subject: SMBC.

Stop reading, it’s over!

I spent a good 40 minutes putting together my usual Friday Links, complete with pictures. Then I hit “Preview” and discovered WordPress had decided to delete it, sans explanation.

So in lieu of that, here’s the short version:

• Thingiverse is an online database of downloadable 3D printer designs. You can even print a new starship in case your old one gets busted up whilst flying Into Darkness.
• Hacking the President’s DNA isn’t possible…yet. But how far off is a future like this?
• Speaking of the future, how about a pill that knows you’ve swallowed it?
• Somebody mailed a package with a tiny camera inside. This three-minute video takes you inside the journey of mail.
• Carrie Fisher confirms she’s playing Leia once more in Star Wars: Episode VII. In spite of the rampant cynicism about yet another trilogy, I think the early signs are positive. It’s too early to get excited, but it’s also too early for prophecies of doom.
• And finally, as always, SMBC delivers.

Have a culturally enlightened weekend – or at least drink some good beer! See you Monday.

Trailer for the Ender’s Game movie! W00t!

Not sure what I think yet…could be good, but I’m not 100% sold. We’ll see.

Harvard’s created a flying robot, modeled loosely on insect anatomy, no larger than a quarter. Extremely light, highly mobile, potentially very cheap. Details and video!

A short essay proposing dead children as a unit of currency. The thesis is deliberately shocking, but he’s making a real (and kind-hearted) point about charity and opportunity costs. This is actually fairly close to the way I think about things, and it gets to the heart of my post on Monday, The Perils of Virtue.

xkcd proposes an alternate use for quadrotors.

And Questionable Content turns to the Dark Side. Uh, briefly.

That’s that, Hypothetical Reader. You may be a construct of my solipsistic hallucinations, but I like you all the same. This weekend, go forth and be excellent, and we’ll meet again three days hence!

“What Happened When One Man Pinged the Whole Internet.” Among other things: he pissed off China.

You’ve got your custom-written DNA source code (GATCCGTAGACCCGGA…) but turning it into a living organism is such an inconvenience. Sounds like you need a genome compiler.

Or maybe you’d rather have an all-terrain robot (or two!) that carries your gear and follows you anywhere. Boston Dynamics has you covered – and that’s far from the only amazing robot they’ve built.

SMBC proves the Riemann Hypothesis in the most delicious way possible.

And finally: the ever-classy Questionable Content. This comic has happened to me personally. More than once.

You stay classy too, Hypothetical Reader. Enjoy your weekend so hard. See you Monday!

Just one this week, but it’s a good one. Watch as Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield explores the age-old question: what happens when you wring out a wash cloth in zero gravity?

The answer is surprisingly cool:

Have a stellar (ah, ha!) weekend. See you Monday!