Skyfall trailer

The trailer for the new James Bond film Skyfall looks totally awesome. Hopefully the movie itself will be that good.

Garbage - Blood for Poppies

Garbage are back with a awesome new video and a whole new album. Sweet!!

Homer's evolution

Darwin's theory of evolution as illustrated by The Simpsons... priceless. Not exactly what you'd call intelligent design either... in passing one ought to correct this blatant inaccuracy where Homer the reptile evolves into Homer the rodent: this is impossible since both classes branched out separately in the tree of life. But I suppose this was never meant to be scientifically accurate...

The latest spark of genius from cartoonist Steve Bell. Really funny and totally spot-on as usual...

Henri the French philosopher cat

Thanks to blogger Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs for pointing that one out... it just made my day.

Free lunch

As of this week France has a new president and he is Mr Normal. Sure enough, normal beats the megalomaniac and generally awful character of his predecessor. However, France might need a bit better than the average joe to sort itself and the eurozone out of its deep difficulties. My take on our new president: he is a demagogue who will most likely be unable to hold his promises and the French will be once again disappointed in five years. Unfortunately the only political alternative by then may well be Ms Le Pen, which is not very reassuring. As usual the cartoonists are giving us the best analysis of the situation... funny always wins!

Cardboard on rubber

The latest gem from The Guardian's Steve Bell. Where does he get all these ideas?? Always like the eyes...

R.I.P., Adam 'MCA' Yauch

Now this is real bad news: Adam 'MCA' Yauch of The Beastie Boys has died of cancer at the age of 47. This is so unfair. Why don't Kim Jong-un, half the Communist party of China and George Bush die of cancer? why do the good guys have to go first? at least the good news is, it looks like Hugo Chavez is practically a goner-thanks to cancer. But MCA? f**k man, this is really terrible!!

Feliz cinco de Mayo

Happy cinco de Mayo to all! Remember this is about partying, good food, nice ladies in colorful wardrobe, sunshine and generally a good time. All things that are completely lacking here in Britain. We love you, Mexico!

Burning like hell

This journalist asked the scientists at CERN what would happen if he put his hand into the path of the accelerator's proton beam. I won't spoil the full answer for you but let's just say it might hurt. A lot. In fact proton beams are now used to treat cancerous tumors in people's brains and lungs, a medical procedure known as hadron therapy. Other improved versions of the method involve shooting carbon nuclei at the target tumor to burn it instantly. So not such a silly question after all...

Marshall fridge

The good folks at Marshall have just come up with this genius concept: a compact fridge that looks just like an amp, so you can keep your beer chilled for that after-gig party backstage. A smokin' hot chick and a cool fridge, what's not to love about this ad?

The Goldman Sachs Muppet Song

I know an instant classic when I see one and this sure is what it is!!

Homo communicatus

I guess that's the present and the future of mankind right there...

OK GOpid

Viral internet music band OK GO have apparently decided to put their skills to good use by creating a new type of online dating site, which they have named OK GOpid. And yes they've managed to invent something even sillier than regular online dating sites, which are already very much silly enough. Theirs is best described as a Rube Goldberg-esque take on Chatroulette...

Oh Behave

And all this time I hadn't known how Austin Powers had been the inspiration for Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up... see the original here. Hell, we shall not shy away from sexy on this blog. Bosons? check. Protons? check. Beautiful models? check check!! Grrrr you're a tiger, baby!!

Steve Bell on Assad

Not sure if I want to laugh or cry on that one... OK to be perfectly honest, when I first saw this I totally burst into laughter-just couldn't help it. Steve Bell really is a genius...

Woz waits in line for new iPad

The Woz is still such a great guy, can't believe he's not the new CEO of Apple. He'd certainly bring the magic back that's already missing...

Steve Bell on British PM visit to U.S.

Another great laugh from The Guardian's cartoonist Steve Bell. Every time I feel grateful for the way he turns a situation that would otherwise inspire great frustration and despair at the sight of so much idiocy from our political leaders into good fun. Thank you Steve, the world would be hell without you...

Darth Vader resigns from Empire

Following Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith, who posted his resignation letter today in an op-ed in the NYT, Darth Vader has resigned from the Empire, too. In a blistering critique of his former employer, Mr Vader explains, "Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and killing your former mentor with a light saber. Today if you make enough money you will be promoted to a position of influence, even if you have a disturbing lack of faith."
This is totally frightening indeed: it means we are now living in a world where plain, old-school evil won't do anymore and taking over the world has fallen to the wayside as the ultimate evil-doer's goal. Nowadays real evil is all about building a death star, ostensibly to terrorize the Galaxy, and then selling its mortgage short over to the alliance so they can blow it up in grand, spectacular fashion and then screw the imperial storm troopers onboard, they're all just clones anyway...

Pi Day

Happy Pi Day to y'all!

Steve Bell on NATO in Afghanistan

Scary to think our politicians and generals are such a bunch of idiots cretins imbeciles incompetents... still just as bad as during the butchery in the trenches of WWI.

We love you, Japan

Why the world isn't ending in 2012

The good folks at NASA/JPL have just done an interview of astronomer Don Yeomans, in which he explains why the world won't be ending on December 21st, 2012 as many people believe. His arguments are obviously scientifically accurate and totally sensible yet I'd like to add the following one: if the world were ending this year the stock market would've already discounted it... or perhaps I'm totally wrong and Wall Street types do happen to think that the end of the world is a good thing. Now how would one short the entire world? I'm surprised I haven't yet heard of at least one clever trader selling End of the World Swaps (EWS's) and of hordes of gullible idiots buying them in droves...

Fraunhofer Institute's Portrait Robot

This past week marked the start of CeBIT in Germany and the Fraunhofer Institute staged a demonstration of a KUKA AG robotic arm taking the digital picture of passers-by and then sketching the outline on a white board. Wunderbar.

NYT profile of scientific illustrator

Wonderful interview by the NYT of Mick Ellison, scientific illustrator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I think he's absolutely right: if you draw something you essentially recreate it and then you can really get a good understanding of how things work together. That's basically the way that Leonardo approached his own scientific illustration art. Great stuff.

Steve Bell on Republican race

Can't believe I'd missed that one and so true, so true... Romney, Santorum and the other Republican candidates do make George W. Bush look like a George Washington amazingly enough...

NASA astronaut flings Angry Bird on ISS

This is so much fun and such a good way to illustrate the principle of inertia to Angry Bird-playing children. Now I wonder who nowadays is most in need of publicity: Angry Birds makers Rovio or NASA? my guess is, given the long-term debt dynamics of the U.S., soon enough it is the ISS that will be sponsored by Rovio and Apple...

The Fresh Prince of Downton Abbey

Staid British period drama takes on a new life as a hip-hop tale straight from da LA. Not sure who'd laugh the hardest at this: the English or the Angelinos?

Steve Bell on Afghanistan

Cartoonist Steve Bell once again goes straight to the point and asks, why?? why on Earth are we still in Afghanistan when this stupid war has been a massive failure from the start and has been so for more than ten years and the people there don't even want our 'help'?

ARM's CEO takes Intel seriously

Interesting interview from the WSJ with ARM's CEO Warren East, on competing with Intel and the future of mobile processor architecture. He expresses confidence in their edge over Intel and makes some interesting remarks on why processors in mobile phones are not likely to reach more than four cores anytime soon.

Maurice André plays Telemann

Can't get over Maurice André's death... it's just too sad. Here's the master playing the third movement from Telemann's Concert Sonata in D Major. Just phenomenal.

La Casa de mi Padre

Will Ferrell's latest-in Spanish and in color!!

RIP Maurice André

It is with immense sadness that I learned this week of the passing of French trumpeter Maurice André at the age of 78. Perhaps one of the greatest soloists on any instrument, if not the very greatest, Maurice André was an inspiration who combined the highest level of skill with a beautiful artistic sensitivity. We will miss you, maestro.

Horsing around

Meanwhile in Britain... the tabloid press scandal keeps on giving. At least cartoonists are having a good time with it, such as Steve Bell and his latest masterpiece.

Help!

Speaking of the Republican primary elections, I just spotted this cartoon on npr.org and now that's a really good one. Someone put it in music?

The biggest loser

Stephen Colbert gives us an insightful update on the U.S. Republican primary, showing the two main candidates hard at work trying to demonstrate how they each are the most genuine cretin of them all. It seems the Republicans nowadays are doing their very best to get Barack Obama re-elected. My guess is, they will succeed brilliantly...

Greed is not good

Gordon Gekko now works for the SEC... greed is, like, so 1987.

Procatinator

I hereby totally endorse the fantastically productive website procatinator.com. Genius ideas came to mind as soon as I started watching this...

Håkan Hardenberger plays Haydn

Yehudi Menuhin conducts the Essener Philharmoniker with Håkan Hardenberger playing the solo for Haydn's trumpet concerto in Eb major. Totally awesome!

Blofeld's cat freakout

Never noticed this before. Hilarious.

Suntory time

I was just enjoying a sip of my favorite Japanese Suntory Scotch whisky and I just couldn't resist going to YouTube and watch that old clip from Lost in Translation with Bill Murray shooting an ad for Suntory. It's priceless =)

KAL on the Greek debt deal

Here's my other favorite cartoonist's view on the Greek debt deal: it's all about rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking EU ship. I don't think Europe really is sinking after all-it will be salvaged-but the Greek stowaways are drowning nonetheless...

Admiral General Aladeen releases statement

Admiral General Aladeen rails against the Academy for having banned him from the Oscars ceremony tomorrow!!

Relatively stupid

Almost six months ago the scientific team of the CERN's OPERA experiment announced to the whole world that they had detected some neutrinos traveling from Switzerland to Italy faster than the speed of light. Immediately, theories ranging from the mundane (human error) to the very sophisticated (extra spatial dimensions) were suggested to explain the apparent anomaly. In basic physics, the speed of light is a limit that simply cannot be broken in any way: it is inherent in the mathematical equations that govern the laws of particle physics. So finding neutrinos that could travel faster than light was a real shocker to the physics community.
Whether or not the result might have been revolutionary-I didn't think it was so I didn't bother blogging about it at the time-at least one would have hoped that the explanation should have been interesting. For instance, it could have been an extra relativistic effect having to do with the GPS systems that the physicists had used in their experiment but not fully taken into account. In that case, perhaps something could have been learned that would have led to more accurate GPS receivers for everybody. But no, as New Scientist reports, it turns out the true explanation is really the most boring of all: one fiber-optic cable in the vast experimental apparatus had simply been wired too loosely, leading to a delay in an electric signal coming from a detector. The scientists are now looking stupid all over the web-as fast as light can carry the bad news to the rest of the world.

Nature calls

These zoo lions may be well fed but instinct was strongest...

Cassetteboy vs BBC News

Nicely done, Cassetteboy!!

Royal cleavage

Meanwhile, in Europe... the husband of Finland's (female) president was apparently caught on camera admiring the view on his table neighbor, Denmark's Princess Mary, at a state dinner. I can't blame him, she's a lovely lady. But why the guilty look? perhaps the gentleman may have found the solution to Europe's debt crisis: let's make love, not bankruptcy... full in-depth (pun intended) report in The Telegraph here.

ABC News Nightline visit Foxconn

ABC News' Nightline program have been allowed inside Apple's supplier Foxconn's factory in China. It's not really slavery but definitely not up to the standard you would expect in the United States. How is it moral then to buy an iPad? I am torn. Then again, most of our clothing and many, many other products that we buy on a daily basis are manufactured in third-world countries... it seems our entire living ecosystem has become dependent on cheap labour in faraway places like China.

Steve Bell on Greece

Steve Bell is, as usual, the wittiest cartoonist that I know of. Can't argue with that one, that's for sure... I don't give it a year and a half until the Europeans have to forgive part or all of the money that they've just loaned to the Greeks. Or else the Greeks themselves will choose to default as soon as they've reduced their primary deficit. The bailout deal for Greece that was just passed is really about helping Merkozy getting re-elected (and their Greek colleagues too) and also to help French banks avoid paying out on CDS contracts that they'd sold to the hedge funds. The only people who aren't being helped by this deal are the Greeks...

John Cleese responds to YouTube comments

Leno and Maher discuss Valentine's day

...and the US presidential election. Pretty funny.

The bird was pushed

Mr Brown's take on motivational posters.

North Korean Photoshop tutorial

See more at CollegeHumor

The latest lulz from College Humour. Just barely exaggerated.

Flowing paint

Starry Night (interactive animation) from Petros Vrellis on Vimeo.

Greek engineer and artist Petros Vrellis has released this mesmerizing dynamic animation of Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night canvas. It shows the paint flowing along the brush strokes and it also lets users interact with the flow of the brush strokes. Such a beautiful idea.

OK Go behind the scenes

The OK Go guys have posted this behind-the-scenes video on YouTube, in which they say a bit more on how they've shot their video for Needing/Getting. Their MO essentially consisted in spending two weeks in a warehouse banging on stuff to see how the instruments work. Genius.

Russians breach lake Vostok

A team of Russian scientists have finally breached through more than 3km of Antarctic ice to reach lake Vostok, on February 5th, after 20 years of effort. Lake Vostok itself has been trapped underneath the ice sheet for 14 million years.
Now scientists are hoping to discover new life forms in the prehistoric waters, which have been cut off from the rest of the world for so long that evolution may have produced some surprising new specimens.
However, not everybody is convinced life can exist in the lake, since its extremely high concentration in oxygen would make it very difficult for any living thing to survive in it. But the very lack of existence of life in Vostok would in itself be an important discovery: it would make it far less likely that life might develop on other planets or satellites of the solar system, where conditions would similarly be challenging. Read full feature on Lake Vostok in Wired online here and news release from New Scientist there.

Microsoft to release Windows 8 test on ARM

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft have announced that they will be releasing a public test version of Windows 8 for ARM devices on Feb. 29 at a mobile conference in Barcelona. However, the Windows 8 on ARM software will only be distributed on test machines with an ARM processor, as opposed to being released as stand-alone software.
It looks like Microsoft are now going the way of Apple, by developing their mobile software as a tightly-controlled ecosystem, as opposed to making Windows available to all ARM-based mobile phones. In a way this would make sense, as replicating their model for PC's onto mobile platforms might be both too difficult technically as well as simply too expensive. My take on it: Microsoft are really trying to preempt Mac OS X on ARM.

Pelosi attacks Colbert

U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has apparently turned against her former friend Stephen Colbert in this political attack ad in which she rails against Colbert's super PAC. I agree: Colbert is out of control, somebody stop him!!

Tokyo zoo staff battle paper rhino

This is brilliant: the staff and police at the Tokyo zoo try to contain and capture their escaped paper mache rhino as part of a drill. The vet better not shoot that anesthetic dart into the actor's behind...

North Korean accordionists cover A-Ha

Last December Norwegian artist Morten Traavik visited North Korea looking for artists to feature at an upcoming music festival. When he was introduced to the students at Pyongyang's Kum Song School of Music, Traavik gave them a tape with A-Ha's song "Take on me" on it. A couple of days later the same students came back to him and played the above cover, with gusto. They were so good that Traavik has now invited them to the Barents Festival, where they will be performing at the weekend. And thankfully for us, Traavik had also recorded the performance and posted it on YouTube and it has since gone viral on the internet. Indeed, they do play with a lot of heart.

Hysteric math

Here's Singapore's favorite comedian Mr Brown's take on his home country's third grade math education: hysteric math. I can certainly relate to this. Thank you, Mr Brown.

Psycho Siri

Given how big Apple have become today, I can only guess the future will actually be far scarier than this short film would suggest. Cool to watch nonetheless.

OK Go's Needing/Getting

You really have to admire OK Go's music-making technique. This time they really push the envelope... I really wonder where they got all these piano's and how many times did they have to rehearse this??

Camera with legs

French prankster Rémi Gaillard has made this film where he dresses up as a traffic camera. Can't make this stuff up...

Only in Tokyo

British journalist David Levene visits Tokyo's cat cafe, where punters can rent a cat for the day at the modest rate of 1,000¥ an hour. Meow!

Like, d'oh!

Now that Facebook is finally going public, I'm guessing that this is a good time to recap the social network's main contribution to the world, as best summarized by The Onion. I myself just narrowly escaped terminal brain damage when I finally deleted my FB account. Phew!!

Adding depth to graphene

Ever since graphene was first discovered as a new state of carbon that does not exist in nature, plenty of new applications have been suggested for this new chemical wonder. Among them was the possibility of using a patch of graphene as a nano-scale transistor. Indeed, working graphene transistor prototypes have been demonstrated at labs around the world, including chip giants Intel and IBM.
So far though, all such efforts had proved impractical because the conductivity of graphene was too good as graphene is not in and of itself a semiconductor. The graphene was systematically letting through way too many electrons across the sheet to create an off-state for the transistor that could be reliably distinguished from the on-state.
However, the team of Dr Leonid Ponomarenko at Manchester University in the UK have just published a new study in which they suggest sandwiching an atom-thick layer of molybdenum disulfide between two layers of graphene. In this configuration, the electrons travel through the graphene sheet vertically instead of horizontally and the molybdenum disulfide acts as a dielectric, through which electrons can tunnel. By modulating the electric potential between the two layers of graphene, one can greatly enhance or diminish the probability of tunneling for the electrons, in a non-linear fashion as in tunneling transistors, which leads to two distinct on- and off-states.
As Dr Novoselov explains, "this opens a new dimension in graphene research."

Read news brief in New Scientist here and the reference for the Science paper: DOI: 10.1126/science. 1218461.

Introducing the Apple iNett

Conan weighs in on the problem of suicides among staff at Apple's assembly plant in China... thankfully, the baby lives!

Quite the groove

Arturo Sandoval at his most baddass. Guitar dude also shreds pretty good, although I don't know his name-anyone know him? Live at Montreal from 1991, a bit old but still good to listen to!

A new CEO for RIM

Last week Canadian smartphone maker RIM have announced that they have appointed Thorsten Heins as their new CEO, in a bid to re-energize the faith of both their loyal customers and their (badly beat-up) shareholders.
As a long-time BlackBerry fan, I most definitely wish Mr Heins all the best in his mission to save the beloved BlackBerry from being either bought by another handset maker or simply dissolved the way of Kodak.
Certainly, of all people, Thorsten Heins does have the background and competence for the job. Before working for RIM, Mr Heins was responsible for mobile products development at Siemens. He therefore has all the rigorous management experience it takes to fix RIM's main weakness, namely its ability to execute on new products and strategies. So far RIM have done the right thing to acquire QNX and to adopt this excellent OS for their mobiles; now they need to deliver the phones to the (impatient) public, all without bugs and disappointments. I believe Mr Heins can do this.
As a long-time BlackBerry user, I would like to see RIM deliver the following improvements and new services over the course of this year:
1. Finally deliver BlackBerry 10 OS. Like, now!!!
2. I would like a more sturdy, better-looking handset. My next BlackBerry should look and feel better than an Apple crap-phone. I unfortunately dropped my Bold a couple of times and now the speaker is not working very well. This shouldn't happen. Make me a unibody handset that's indestructible!
3. Reduce the number of phone models but design them better and update them more frequently.
4. I want my @bbmail.com email address!! RIM have these giant servers, they have no excuse not to provide a decent email service to their customers, one that would work more reliably and more securely than Apple's .me or Google's gmail. Not to mention that RIM are based in Canada and therefore not subjected to the US of A's paranoid, email-snooping laws.
5. Give me a music streaming service. Forget selling music tracks, as in iTunes. Today the name of the game is the Cloud: with their email forwarding servers RIM are in the best position to beat Apple at providing streaming media to their customers.
6. Ditto with video: some people do like to watch movies on their phone while commuting, as well as the news.
7. I demand, I want the best built-in apps for real-time stock charting and financial news on my BlackBerry. This is something that a lot of BlackBerry's users who work in finance would love and it could be RIM's killer app. A strategic alliance with either Bloomberg or Reuters or both would be most relevant to that end. Pushing news updates and stock price alerts to financial investors' mobiles would be most useful.

RIP Etta James

This past Friday, legendary blues singer Etta James passed away at the age of 73. It simply ruined my weekend to read this in the papers-until I listened to the above track.

Symphonia in major Nokia flat

Now that literally is classic!

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Happy Chinese New Year to all!

Dinner für einz

Thanks to German TV channel ARD for this hilarious parody of the classic British comedy sketch 'Dinner for one,' which is apparently very popular in Germany.

Clic clac!

Today (former) American industrial giant Kodak officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, 131 years after it was first founded by George Eastman (pictured here with Thomas Edison.)
It is needless to say an irony, as many journalists have rightly pointed out, that the company that had first invented the digital imaging sensor more than thirty-five years ago, would become the victim of its own creation. Ever since the advent of the digital camera, nobody ever uses Kodak film anymore.
Today Kodak does make digital cameras but they are simply not earning much money from them, in a very competitive market with constantly shrinking margins. Simply put, the Taiwanese and Japanese can make better digital cameras for cheaper anyway. And of course, the same goes with small inkjet photo printers. These will never bring Kodak back to its former profitability.
So what's Kodak to do now? for one, they ought to start with an honest look at why it is they failed to recognize in advance that they would end up in this very situation and, more importantly, why they failed to act when they finally did realize the problem they were running into. In this respect, they should probably follow The Economist and compare their fate to the evolution during the same period of time of their main Japanese competitor, Fujifilm. Unlike their American rival, Fujifilm have successfully managed to engineer a transition from producing photographic film to diversifying into other areas of chemistry and electronics.
At this point it is unfortunately doubtful that there is much that Kodak can do to avoid falling into oblivion and being broken up and sold in pieces. Or at the very least, the company that will emerge from the bankruptcy proceeding will be but a pale image of the original Kodak.

GPS fail

Last night a cruise ship ran aground into an island off Italy. Judging from the press photos and videos, this looks just like a replay of the movie 'Titanic,' except this was real. This only begs the question, seriously what was the captain thinking? was it Silvio Berlusconi at the wheel? read the latest from the BBC here.

3-year-old girl stares down lion

"But what is the lion trying to tell me??" I wonder... no parent suffered a heart attack in the making of this film.

Moonrise Kingdom trailer

The trailer for Wes Anderson's latest feature, Moonrise Kingdom =)

Interview with ARM's Ian Drew

This interview of ARM's executive vice-president of strategy Ian Drew by C|NET's Brooke Crothers is definitely worth a read: Mr Drew explains how ARM's strategy is essentially to not be like Intel. Good thinking, because Intel are most certainly sinking on the Itanic.

Lenovo show off first Intel smartphone

This week at CES expo in Las Vegas, which is lasting into saturday, Intel and Lenovo have announced the first smartphone model based on an Intel chip. Yes, you have heard that right: after years of promising it and not delivering anything even remotely credible, Intel have finally managed to foist one of their silicon slabs onto hapless Lenovo, who will be selling their K800 smartphone in China only. The poor Chinese.
Unfortunately for Intel, they are releasing into the wild a one-core chip, which was the standard about two years ago, while the Nvidia's and Qualcomm's of the world are now all announcing upcoming smartphones with their latest quad-core processors.
This said, aside from the fact that Intel's x86 architecture is an awful mess that is totally not suited for mobile computing-or any kind of computing for that matter-the big hurdle that Intel salespeople will have to overcome will be to convince the millions of mobile developers to adapt and recompile their apps to work on Intel. This might have been realistically attainable two years ago but now that there are literally hundreds of thousands of apps that have been written for the ARM architecture on both the Google Android and Apple iOS platforms, Intel will have their work cut out for them. And since software emulation is bound to be a drag on power consumption, it looks to me like Intel will almost certainly fail in their latest mobile effort.

Bond 'giving nuclear bad image'

This funny article from The Guardian, in which they quote British nuclear scientist David Phillips of the Royal Society of Chemistry as saying that the villains from the James Bond movies have largely contributed to giving nuclear a bad image. Well, after Chernobyl and Fukushima how about it really was nuclear that gave nuclear a bad image? At least in James Bond the villains always had the good taste of building their reactors deep underground inside a volcano lair. Their nuclear meltdowns did not actually threaten everyone else around them... I'll take the Bond villains over the idiots at Tepco any day.

Building hubris

This interesting piece in The Guardian, which reports on a study by Barclays in Hong Kong that is predicting an impending financial crash in China based on its mad rush of skyscraper building. Indeed, such trend indicates excessive credit in the financial system, as well as rising property prices to justify building taller and a generally over-optimistic mood amongst the real-estate sector. The skyscraper building trend has been a reliable predictor of real-estate crashes in the past.

Apple coughs $5m for multitouch patents

Apple, inc. has just settled an IP lawsuit with Elan Microelectronics of Taiwan for $5 million, after 30 months of litigation. The patent in question (US number 5,825,352) refers to the application of multitouch technology in trackpads for the emulation of mouse functionality, as The Register reports. So this would really have hit Apple's MacBook trackpad as well as the Magic Mouse, rather than the iPhone's touchscreen. The patent was originally filed by Logitech in 1996 before it changed owners several times until Elan got their (multi-fingered) hands on it in 2003.

Layer by layer

This other excellent article in MIT's Technology Review gives an update on the applications of 3D printing technology at General Electric. Apparently they are now 3D printing jet engine parts, such as the fuel injector on the left. One major benefit of 3D printing is that it allows corrugating the inside volume of a metal part, thereby considerably reducing its weight. This is of course extremely important in applications such as making parts for both jet and car engines, where reducing weight translates into fuel savings.

Mathematicians Solve Minimum Sudoku Problem

This weekend it was announced that the so-called Sudoku problem had finally been solved. This was to prove that there exists no Sudoku grid with only 16 starting clues that would admit a unique solution. As reported in Technology Review, Gary McGuire and colleagues from University College Dublin have cracked the problem thanks to the magic of brute force: they used a really big computer for a whole year to solve all the possible grids with 16 starting clues-more than five billion of them-and check that indeed, none of them had a unique solution. This took more than seven million processor core-hours of computation. Now we're all waiting for a smart proof using only paper and pencil...

"Tectonic Shifts" in Employment

This article in MIT's excellent Technology Review magazine presents an interesting point of view on the impact that accelerating technological progress is currently having on labor markets around the world. Simply put the author is presenting the view, recently proposed by the MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee that recent progress in artificial intelligence and robotics is causing many human workers to be replaced by machines at an ever faster pace. The end result is that jobs are currently being destroyed faster than new opportunities are being created to replace them.
This is an interesting idea, which I have been observing for quite some time simply by following the quick improvements being made in engineering fields such as robotics and computer vision. We now have self-driving robotic cars that might some day replace all taxi drivers and delivery people. We also have automated subway trains, which no longer need a driver in front. All of these are situations where technology is simply making work redundant. Another example that is currently becoming very relevant is that of fruit and vegetable picking robots, which in the near future will be replacing millions of Mexican workers on agricultural fields throughout California.
Yet it seems to me the authors and economists cited in the article do not go far enough: a logical consequence of this phenomenon is that at some point in the not-so-distant future, all of our basic needs such as food and housing will be provided to us by machines, essentially without human intervention.
This is the point where people will simply no longer need to work in order to survive. Then the question will be, how are all the goods produced by machines going to be distributed to the people and in exchange for what? will money become irrelevant in some way?

North Korean labor camps

The latest documentary by Vice's Shane Smith, on the North Korean labor camps in Siberia. To summarize, let me just say how lucky we are to not be North Koreans...