Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Sine Wave Google Searches
June 28th, 2009UPDATE: Vitamin D? I told Becky about the “ringing ears” chart, and when the waves peaked. She said, “Maybe it’s related to Vitamin D.” Indeed, the searches peak around the nadir of Vitamin D availability in the Northern Hemisphere. —End Update— I’m developing some tools on another website—partially to help me keep track of information […]
Work Begins on World’s Deepest Underground Lab
June 28th, 2009Via: AP: Far below the Black Hills of South Dakota, crews are building the world’s deepest underground science lab at a depth equivalent to more than six Empire State buildings — a place uniquely suited to scientists’ quest for mysterious particles known as dark matter. Scientists, politicians and other officials gathered Monday for a groundbreaking […]
Google Analyzes Your Vacation Snaps to Figure Out Where You Were
June 23rd, 2009Via: Popular Science: Where were we when this was taken? Do you remember, dear? Tired of trying to identify landmarks in your endless folders of travel photos? Google’s image recognition engine could help. Just upload the mystery image to an online album, point the engine at it, and zap — turns out it was the […]
Kiwis Moving Closer to Cashless Society
June 22nd, 2009Japan was the future cashless country in yesterday’s news cycle. Today it’s New Zealand. Well, New Zealand will probably use a Pan Asian digital currency, at some point, along with Japan and several other states…either that or Kongbucks. Via: New Zealand Herald: Cash is no longer king in New Zealand, according to the Retirement Commission’s […]
Japan Considering Taxing Cash; “Nominal Rates of -4% Might be Closer to What is Required to Rescue the Economy from Another Deflationary Spiral”
June 21st, 2009Japanese people will just buy more gold and park their speculative yen back in the carry trade pachinko parlor (this may already be happening). Why wouldn’t they? If holding cash means a guaranteed loss of 4% a year, that’s a pretty good incentive to gamble. Bonus points to the state for the totalitarian surveillance grid […]
Cash to Become Extinct as Chips Take Off
June 18th, 2009Via: News AU: CASH is accelerating down the path to extinction as new technologies threaten to mark the end of loose change within a decade. Bank and credit union bosses say cash won’t be alone, with wallets and credit cards also likely to disappear too. They told The Advertiser’s round table forum that cash and […]
U.S. State Department Speaks to Twitter Over Iran
June 17th, 2009The Internet has been playing an increasingly important role in international politics. One highly significant effect of Internet use overseas has been to circumvent the informational controls imposed by authoritarian regimes on their citizens… Predictions… The Internet will be used as a tool of statecraft by national governments… The Internet will play an increasingly significant […]
NSA Intercepts of the Private Telephone Calls and E-Mail Messages of Americans Are Broader Than Previously Acknowledged
June 17th, 2009In the New York Times piece below, we learn that an email database used by the NSA is called PINWALE. Back in 2006, William M Arkin, a Washington Post blogger, published a list of hundreds of terms that were allegedly associated with NSA projects. Along with the list, he wrote: I could write volumes about […]
The Navy’s New 100 KiloWatt Laser Weapons
June 15th, 2009Don’t miss the picture of the high voltage power supply. That reminds me of my favorite English-Russia post; satellite image, machine translation. Bzzzzzt, bzzzzzt, ZAP! Via: Popular Mechanics: The Office of Naval Research has awarded Raytheon a year-long contract to develop the preliminary design of a 100 kilowatt experimental Free Electron Laser (FEL) for naval […]
Military Hush-Up: Incoming Space Rocks Now Classified
June 12th, 2009I don’t know what to do with this one. Via: Space: For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth’s atmosphere – but no longer. A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs […]
