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Category Archives: technology
Rapatronic Nuclear Photographs
An article on how some early, extremely high-speed photographs were taken. During the early days of atomic bomb experiments in the 1940s, nuclear weapons scientists had some difficulty studying the growth of nuclear fireballs in test detonations. These fireballs expanded … Continue reading
Posted in history, photography, science/nature, technology
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Bittorrent simulator
This is an extremely cool java applet that graphically demonstrates how a file is shared over Bittorrent. Just add some seeds and peers and watch the packets fly! Link (via Digg)
Posted in networking, technology
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How Products Are Made
This site has a large collection of articles on how various things are manufactured. How Products Are Made explains and details the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy … Continue reading
Posted in reference, science/nature, technology
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Enigma simulator in Flash
This site has a really nice Flash implementation of the German Enigma cipher machine. It does a great job of illustrating conceptually how the internal mechanism worked. Link (via Digg)
Posted in cryptography, history, technology
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DIY USB Alpha Radiation Visualizer
Inventgeek has a fascinating project that uses a webcam and a small radiation source from common household fire alarms to visualize radioactive decay. This could have applications as a source of entropy for a true random number generator. I started … Continue reading
Posted in diy, electronics, science/nature, technology
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LED Architecture
Wired has some great photos of buildings lit with LEDs at night. Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are reinventing the look and feel of skylines, bridges, facades and other architectural surfaces around the globe. The light bulb is being unscrewed by … Continue reading
Posted in design, technology
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The PC Boot Process – Windows XP
This page has a detailed description of the PC and Windows boot processes, beginning with the stabilization of the power supply, through to user logon. Link (via Digg)
Posted in computers, technology
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Top 10 Coolest DIY Gadgets
TechBlog has posted a Top 10 list of some pretty crazy contraptions. Anyone need a USB Floppy Disk Striped RAID? Link (via Digg)
Posted in diy, funny, odd, technology, toys
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A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
An article at Wired News says that implanting a small magnet in your fingertip allows you to sense electromagnetic fields and metallic objects through your finger! According to Huffman, the magnet works by moving very slightly, or with a noticeable … Continue reading
Posted in odd, science/nature, technology
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PC World’s 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time
PC World has posted their list of the worst tech products they have seen since they began publishing. Of course, most truly awful ideas never make it out of somebody’s garage. Our bottom 25 designees are all relatively well-known items, … Continue reading
Posted in funny, technology
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Searching for the soul in the machine
A new research initiative seeks to discover what type of society might evolve with millions of software agents. Future disaster victims rescued by robots may perhaps owe their survival to the software agents currently being prepared for life in the … Continue reading
Posted in computers, science/nature, technology
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Touchscreen Computer Display Floats in Mid-Air
This incredible display projects an image onto a “transformed” plane of air. Check out the video of this thing in action. Now this is sweetness. IO2 Technology has the coolest sounding display I have ever seen called the M2i. The … Continue reading
Posted in computers, technology
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SkypeOut now free
Skype has announced that SkypeOut calls to landline and mobile phones within the US and Canada are now free, at least until the end of 2006. Is it really free? What are the strings attached? Yes. It is really very, … Continue reading
Posted in technology, telephony
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The Billion-Dollar Space Pen
This article examines the often-repeated myth that NASA spent a billion dollars to develop a pen that would work in space, while the Russians just used a pencil. Space has its urban legends of course, and the Million Dollar Space … Continue reading
Posted in technology
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Digital Camera Noise Fingerprints
Researchers can use the noise profile of digital camera sensors to identify whether a set of images came from a certain camera. From MetaFilter: Every original digital picture is overlaid by a weak noise-like pattern of pixel-to-pixel non-uniformity. Although these … Continue reading
Posted in photography, science/nature, security, technology
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Making and Breaking HDCP Handshakes
Freedom to Tinker has an interesting post on how HDCP could be broken. Every new HDCP device is given two things: a secret vector, and an addition rule. The secret vector is a sequence of 40 secret numbers that the … Continue reading
Posted in math, rights, security, technology
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What Happened To Dynamic Range?
This article explains why current CDs are not taking full advantage of their digital medium, and in fact are sounding worse and worse. Then, one day we awoke to a new technology. It was called “digital recording.” Wow, now with … Continue reading
Posted in audio, technology
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The DIY Wireless Music Player
Nathan True has hacked together a wireless music player using a Netgear WGT634U wireless router. It might be hard to locate the Netgear router since it has been discontinued, but still a nice hack. The Mission When I began this … Continue reading
Posted in audio, diy, technology, toys
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Knife Maintenance and Sharpening
This is an extremely detailed guide to sharpening your kitchen knives for optimal performance. Knife sharpening is not difficult. It is not shrouded in mystery. With a little knowledge, a little geometry, a couple of tricks and some inexpensive tools, … Continue reading
Posted in food/cooking, technology
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Babbage’s Difference Engine built out of LEGO
Andrew Carol is building a Difference Engine that Charles Babbage designed in the 19th century but was never able to complete. And he’s doing it with LEGO. Before the day of computers and pocket calculators all mathematics was done by … Continue reading
Posted in computers, technology, toys
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