Trolling Al Qaeda

The US Government trolls terrorist groups, voter registration via Facebook, simulating the lives of bacteria, and more while Lyle and Miles take your calls and comments.

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow

“One of the most awesome books any young adult could read this summer… and one of the most important novels anyone of voting age could read in the months leading up to our next election.”

-Ron Hogan, Galleycat

It costs just $1.36 to charge an iPad for a year

“That coffee you’re drinking while gazing at your iPad? It cost more than all the electricity needed to run those games, emails, videos and news stories for a year.”

Simulating an Entire Organism With Software

“Scientists at Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute have developed the first software simulation of an entire organism, a humble single-cell bacterium that lives in the human genital and respiratory tracts.”

EFF Challenges National Security Letter Statute

“Since the first national security letter statute was passed in 1986, the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of such letters seeking private telecommunications and financial records of Americans without any prior approval from courts.”

Newest U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy: Trolling

“Within the State Department, a Silicon Valley veteran has quietly launched an improbable new initiative to annoy, frustrate and humiliate denizens of online extremist forums. It’s so new that it hasn’t fully taken shape: Even its architects concede it hasn’t fleshed out an actual strategy yet, and accordingly can’t point to any results it’s yielded. Its annual budget is a rounding error. The Pentagon will spend more in Afghanistan in the time it takes you to finish reading this sentence.”

Washington State will enable voter registration via Facebook

“The State of Washington says that early next week it will become the first state in the nation to offer voter registration via Facebook.”

New type of chemical bond may form in stars

“Bonds between atoms are electrical in character: atoms share electrons or mutually ionize, creating an attractive force binding them together. However, researchers are now suggesting that it may be possible to generate magnetic bonds, resulting in stable molecules of different types than exist on Earth. While these molecules can’t be produced with even our strongest laboratory magnets, they could form in the extreme magnetic fields near white dwarfs and neutron stars, and their unique spectral signatures may make them visible through observations.”

Computer analysis brings future of Afghanistan war into focus

“In August 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of classified documents that cataloged the harsh realities of the war in Afghanistan, a group of friends — all computer experts — gathered at the New York City headquarters of the Internet company Bitly Inc. to try and make sense of the data.”

Foundation series - Wikipedia

The Foundation Series is a science fiction series by Isaac Asimov. There are seven volumes in the Foundation Series proper, which in its in-universe chronological order are Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation’s Edge, and Foundation and Earth.

Lap joint - Wikipedia

In woodworking or metal fitting, a lap joint is a technique for joining two pieces of material by overlapping them. A lap may be a full lap or half lap. In a full lap, no material is removed from either of the members to be joined, resulting in a joint which is the combined thickness of the two members. In a half lap joint, material is removed from each of the members so that the resulting joint is the thickness of the thickest member. Most commonly in half lap joints, the members are of the same thickness and half the thickness of each is removed.