Phrase of the day

Nintendo shakes up YouTube

Phrase — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:11:22 +0000

Awesome. This is truly awesome. I don’t care if it’s an ad, I’m showing it to everyone.

http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii

Computer viruses make it to orbit

Phrase — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 08:33:43 +0000

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.

Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/

DIY: Build Your Own Large Hadron Collider in 1.62 x 10^28 Easy Steps

Phrase — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:32:14 +0000

Want to build the most complex machine human kind has ever produced? All you’ll need is €6 billion, enough real estate to hold your 17-mile-long ring, a staff of international geniuses, and these plans (free!). The 115MB of documentation just made available by the Journal of Instrumentation has all you need to understand the inner workings of all the major LHC components, from the EMCAL super modules to the ionizing gas straw tubes to the calorimeter end-caps. And the schematics within are, just like everything else large-hadron related, beautiful.

http://gizmodo.com/

Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan

Phrase — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:16:52 +0000

Overestimates the odds of success when applied to oneself. Everybody buying a lottery ticket mentally assumes a much better probability of winning than reality usually presents.
Attributes random events in the past as contributing to success/failure. Survivors of the shipwreck would tell the story of how they all prayed for their lives, and thus got saved. While some religious groups would tend to pick up the story as the proof of whatever agenda they’re pitching, nobody generally listens to the stories of those who prayed, but still drowned. Business journalists (with CBS MarketWatch being the worst) frequently abuse this by pitching headlines like Stocks down after Congress increasing military spending in the morning, and Stocks up as Congress approves larger military budget in the afternoon.
Looks for order and sequence where it doesn’t exist. Business book writers made a cottage industry out of this by surveying the life stories of prominent individuals, and then reselling those as recipes for success. The quirkier the trait, the better it suits the public. Peter Thiel wakes up early and runs in the morning – I see, so that’s a secret recipe for running a successful hedge fund.
Listens to the experts that don’t know any better. There’s a whole bunch of occupations, where expertise is learned, and re-learning it requires significant time investments. Mechanics, doctors, and foreign language interpreters all have such skills. Other kinds of expertise involve looking back at what happened and trying to draw the line of correlation among discordant and random events. Such experts involve financial analysts and government economists.
Hungs up on small things without seeing the big picture. If you have significant money in savings accounts, you’re probably busy looking for a better rate. However, the bigger picture, the Black Swan of the US banking industry, is significant asset consolidation among major banks. If one of them gets hit, all of them get hit significantly. The possibility of over-exposure to subprime loans and possible collapse of the banking industry generally escapes the model that your financial analyst presented.

http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/the-black-swan/1505

Google Chrome is here

Phrase — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:22:39 +0000

Google denies that its release of Chrome Tuesday night was a competitive strike against Microsoft, as many commentators have suggested.

No, it simply wants to encourage more people to use the web, more often, instead of outmoded means of communication such as the telephone. For that, it says, speed is of the essence, and Google Chrome certainly shines on this aim.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9b46cec0-7995-11dd-bb93-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Where favicons sleep

Phrase — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:51:29 +0000

Guess who can store favicons all over Internet.

Google

US economy sees surprise 3.3 percent spurt

Phrase — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:45:46 +0000

The US economy outpaced expectations as surging exports fueled a second-quarter growth spurt at a 3.3 percent pace, according to data Thursday that analysts say makes recession less likely.

http://afp.google.com

Favorite Programming Quotes

Phrase — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:05:01 +0000

Why do we never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over?
Anonymous Code Monkey

http://www.juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2008/08/17/favorite-programming-quotes/

The monetary density of things

Phrase — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:23:46 +0000

Of course, gold isn’t the only precious metal, or even the most expensive. That “honor” belongs to rhodium, whose price far exceeds that of its weight in $100 bills. There’s an interesting coincidence in this price range: Cocaine is about $50/gram, while a fifty dollar bill weighs about a gram. Even exchange? Platinum is also in the same price range, so you could say that $50 bills are worth their weight in platinum.

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/density

Bill Clinton: It’s just like those motherfuckers

Phrase — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:59:03 +0000

Former President Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver Wednesday night will be broadcast on a five-second delay similar to that used to screen callers on talk radio programs, party officials confirmed today.

The five-second delay, customarily used to censor callers who might use profanity or other unacceptable speech on a radio show, has never before been used in the broadcast of a speech by a former President of the United States, experts believe.

For his part, former President Clinton said that he was “surprised” by the DNC’s decision to institute the five-second delay, but added, “It’s just like those motherfuckers.”

http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=6926