Saturday, May 24, 2008

The future soon

I'm hoping that NP-complete problems are efficiently solvable, but I think it is more likely that the "obviously crucial in retrospect" item will win. In fact, it's nearly guaranteed to be true, since only ten other options are specified. (And it's unclear how combinations -- like "some 22nd-century people say that malevolent AI has taken over" -- would be characterized on this chart.)

Monday, May 12, 2008

High-speed data transfer!

Is USB 2.0 not fast enough for your data transfer needs? Then try Datastorm V1.0.

This technology is utterly delightful, fun and easy to operate, and makes all those old floppies useful again! (Via Engadget.)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Monkey tea

Toronto's Kensington market is home of many cute, tiny tea shops. I found this wall display of teas in glass jars to be aesthetically pleasing. The one in the upper right-hand corner is called "100 Monkeys." The print on its label (too small for cell-phone picture resolution) reports that it is hand-harvested by specially trained monkeys from terrain inaccessible to humans. I had just read about monkey-harvested tea recently -- is this a new tea trend?

Monday, May 5, 2008

How to traumatize your children

Our mother did not need this book:... though she might have written it. For only $10, it promises all the childhood trauma-inflicting techniques necessary to traumatize your children correctly. (Via Geekologie.)

Harvard: still better than you!

Yet another reason why Harvard is awesome: not only is the RIAA afraid of Harvard, but that fear seems to be protecting Harvard students from the recent surge of filesharing take-down notices. Actually, I agree with the hypothesis that Harvard students are just too busy to engage in illegal filesharing. (I certainly was during my time there.)

Damn right, we're better than you!